About Fethullah Gülen and the Gülen Movement
How do individuals and groups in the Gülen Movement “make sense of their world through networks”?
How do individuals and groups in the Gülen Movement “make sense of their world through networks”?
Individuals and groups have come together in the Movement to make sense of their being in togetherness and in action.
They recognize and sustain the meanings, values and plurality of aspects that they find in being and acting together. They share orientations that bind actors and the specific way of acting together through time. They share, within the opportunities and constraints, what is produced by their work. They share also the definitions of legitimate goals and ways of achieving them, the field in which they are working, and what sort of investments they can make in a project and what rewards they can expect. These continuous processes become a network of active relationships between actors who interact, communicate, influence each other, negotiate, and make decisions.
In fact, people can participate in the service-projects and institutions of the Gülen Movement at various levels of commitment and with different degrees of involvement. To be sure, a shared identity characterizes the Movement as a whole. But different levels of affiliation of participants and non-participants with the service-projects and SMOs make the identity of the Movement open and inclusive.
Networking, participation and affiliation within the Gülen Movement are not alienating or sectarian because the Movement is open to the outside world, and it does not have or seek a totalitarian organizational structure, but instead has and seeks compatibility with other collective actors and civil society bodies. The Movement is not restricted to a certain time and place (or territory). However, this inclusiveness has no negative effect on the homogeneity or effectiveness of the service-projects.
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