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Sinem Kavak

Researcher

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Rethinking the political economy of rural struggles in Turkey: : Space, structures and altered agencies

Author

  • Sinem Kavak

Summary, in English

By focusing on recent water struggles in rural Turkey against run‐of‐the‐river hydropower plants (SHPs), the research delves into the societal and economic factors that enable or inhibit the emergence of strong mobilizations through a comparison of four localities of the Eastern Black Sea region. The main aim of the cross comparison is to determine whether there is a relationship between the forms of rural livelihood (and class position) and political mobilization against SHP construction. The article offers a multilayered relational framework to analyse rural mobilizations. Through a comparative spatial analysis of material and immaterial territories, I argue that the spatio‐economic transformation of the localities that unevenly transform rural settings in terms of production and consumption activities have an impact on the patterns, discourses, and agency in contemporary “rural” mobilizations. This is especially observable with regard to upward mobility and the middle‐classization processes embedded in crop system and household accumulation opportunities. The children of upwardly mobile farmers who became city‐based middle‐class actors tend to present an estheticized and carnivalesque framing in their resistance strategies through the re‐invention of traditions and culture, whereas the lower‐class peasants voice their grievances based strictly on material concerns.

Department/s

  • LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)
  • MECW: The Middle East in the Contemporary World

Publishing year

2021

Language

English

Pages

242-262

Publication/Series

Journal of Agrarian Change

Volume

21

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Topic

  • Political Science
  • Social and Economic Geography

Keywords

  • material territories
  • immaterial territories
  • middle-class activism
  • rural mobilization
  • rural space
  • water struggles

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1471-0366