Suchergebnisse

This book is an exploration of the environmental makings and contested historical trajectories of environmental change in Turkey. Despite the recent proliferation of studies on the political economy of environmental change and urban transformation, until now there has not been a sufficiently complete treatment of Turkey's troubled environments, which live on the edge both geographically (between Europe and Middle East) and politically (between democracy and totalitarianism).

The contributors to Transforming Socio-Natures in Turkey use the toolbox of environmental humanities to explore the main political, cultural and historical factors relating to the country's socio-environmental problems. This leads not only to a better grounding of some of the historical and contemporary debates on the environment in Turkey, but also a deeper understanding of the multiplicity of framings around more-than-human interactions in the country in a time of authoritarian populism.

This book will be of interest not only to students of Turkey from a variety of social science and humanities disciplines but also contribute to the larger debates on environmental change and developmentalism in the context of a global populist turn.

In this article we introduce a Special Issue of Energy Research and Social Science focused on energy infrastructure and the political economy of national development. Many countries are experiencing transformational growth in energy infrastructure, such as transmission and distribution systems; import, export and storage facilities; the development of domestic energy resources; and construction of new power generating stations based on wind, water, coal, gas and nuclear sources. Large-scale projects like these are frequently justified by appeals to grand narratives – promoting economic growth, securing energy supply, modernizing energy service provision, and transitioning to more environmentally sustainable energy systems - in which the fate of the nation is closely tied to infrastructural development. The papers in this collection present compelling empirical evidence of how claims for energy infrastructure's national significance and/or necessity intersect with the (re)production of political and economic power. Drawing on case material from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe, they highlight the capacity of different energy technologies and infrastructural assemblages to shape political and economic outcomes beyond their role in storing, transporting or transforming energy. This Introduction to the Special Issue does three things. First, it characterises the scale and significance of the contemporary 'infrastructural moment', observing how, in many national contexts, energy policy-making remains centralised and divorced from public participation. Second, it critically differentiates existing literature on the political economy of energy infrastructure to identify five distinctive ways in which research understands the 'political work' infrastructure performs. Third, it introduces the papers in the Special Issue and organises them into four key themes. Overall, the Introduction affirms the importance for social science of understanding the economically and politically constitutive power of energy infrastructures. The critical reflexivity this requires is essential to moving towards energy infrastructures that are just, equitable and sustainable.

This book is an exploration of the environmental makings and contested historical trajectories of environmental change in Turkey. Despite the recent proliferation of studies on the political economy of environmental change and urban transformation, until now there has not been a sufficiently complete treatment of Turkey's troubled environments, which live on the edge both geographically (between Europe and Middle East) and politically (between democracy and totalitarianism). The contributors to Transforming Socio-Natures in Turkey use the toolbox of environmental humanities to explore the main political, cultural and historical factors relating to the country's socio-environmental problems. This leads not only to a better grounding of some of the historical and contemporary debates on the environment in Turkey, but also a deeper understanding of the multiplicity of framings around more-than-human interactions in the country in a time of authoritarian populism. This book will be of interest not only to students of Turkey from a variety of social science and humanities disciplines but also contribute to the larger debates on environmental change and developmentalism in the context of a global populist turn.

In this chapter, we take a critical look at the historical transformation of grassroots mobilization and political engagement in Aliağa in the period between these two historical moments (1990 and 2016) by using archival material from two national newspapers with wide circulation, secondary literature, and indepth interviews with some of the key actors. Aliağa appears to be a curious case for neglect in the scholarly literature on environmental activism in Turkey, a history of victories and defeats only partially told. This is particularly relevant and important since the powerful coalition that had emerged in the 1990s (formed by locals, the Green Party, the main social democratic opposition party in parliament, the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects and labor unions) fought and won a major victory giving way to the cancellation of the government's plans and the birth of a combatant environmental movement in the region. Although it was one of the fi rst nationally debated environmental justice successes of this scale in Turkey ( Şahin, 2010 ), anti-coal movement in Aliağa still remains somewhat under-investigated in the country's history of environmental movements. Thus, providing a micro-historical account would not only give the Aliağa anti-coal movement the due credit it deserves, but also help us illustrate the changing nature and shifting contours of environmental mobilizations in Turkey at large in a time of re-escalating authoritarianism. Since "there is not a right or wrong environmentalism, but narratives and practices of environmentalism which are historically produced" ( Armiero and Sedrez, 2014 : 11), our effort here also helps to reveal some hidden narratives and practices which are equally relevant for contemporary environmental movement in Turkey. To this end, we describe how the hegemonic state – in a counter-movement – reacted to the legal developments and the activism in Aliağa by changing the rules of the game; amending institutional and legal frameworks for investment ...

This book is an exploration of the environmental makings and contested historical trajectories of environmental change in Turkey. Despite the recent proliferation of studies on the political economy of environmental change and urban transformation, until now there has not been a sufficiently complete treatment of Turkey's troubled environments, which live on the edge both geographically (between Europe and Middle East) and politically (between democracy and totalitarianism). The contributors to Transforming Socio-Natures in Turkey use the toolbox of environmental humanities to explore the main political, cultural and historical factors relating to the country's socio-environmental problems. This leads not only to a better grounding of some of the historical and contemporary debates on the environment in Turkey, but also a deeper understanding of the multiplicity of framings around more-than-human interactions in the country in a time of authoritarian populism. This book will be of interest not only to students of Turkey from a variety of social science and humanities disciplines but also contribute to the larger debates on environmental change and developmentalism in the context of a global populist turn.

In this research design challenge, we focus on the 'how' question of transdisciplinary study of energy systems and futures, taking into consideration the challenges of control. However, as Stirling (2014) reminds us, deterministic pictures of control can be problematic. Rather, our overarching aim here is to contribute to the emerging literature on energy research and social science by grounding it with contributions from three distinct perspectives (organization studies, political ecology and societal metabolism). We identify some opportunities for mending the gap between qualitative and quantitative approaches to energy research and suggest potential entry points to unpack energy decisions and their consequences, both expected and unexpected. We first start with a presentation of multiple epistemologies on energy and reflect on the multiplicity of knowledge. Then we move on to reflect on different ways of approaching energy questions including a specific focus on embracing the inherent complexity in societally relevant energy research. In the penultimate section, we turn to questions of power, scale and space. We conclude with some bottlenecks and opportunities for a truly transdisciplinary energy research that is societally relevant, just, equitable, sustainable and useful at once. ; QC 20180411

At the root of energy policy are fundamental questions about the sort of social and environmental futures in which people want to live and how decisions over different energy pathways and energy futures are made. The interdisciplinary field of political ecology has the capacity to address such questions, while also challenging how energy policy conventionally gets done. We outline a political ecology perspective on EU energy policy that illuminates how the distribution of social power affects access to energy services, participation in energy decision-making and the allocation of energy's environmental and social costs.