Journals at the University of Arizona
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Fierce Fighters, Caring Mothers: State-Sponsored Feminism in Early Republican Turkey and the Dersim Question
No full textDiscussions of gender in early Republican Turkey have traditionally been dominated by the Kemalist approach, which posits that Atatürk’s reforms emancipated Turkish women from the patriarchal norms of Ottoman society. This view has been disputed by Turkish feminist scholars like Şirin Tekeli, and continues to be challenged, among others, by Deniz Kandiyoti Nilüfer Göle, Zeynep Türkyılmaz, and Hale Yılmaz. Recent scholarship re-assesses Kemalist reforms, examining their wider effects and connecting them to the regime’s authoritarianism and the historical legacies of the Ottoman Empire. Nationalism is of key importance to this conversation, and was linked to the idea that embracing Turkishness was the road to modernity and the resulting violent suppression of identities that contradicted it. In this context, the Kurdish populations of Southeastern Anatolia gained symbolic significance as an internal “other”, a pre-modern remnant of the Empire that needed to be subdued in order for the Young Republic to advance. This paper examines how state-sponsored feminism was applied to Kurdish women, exerting both symbolic and literal violence on them in the name of modernity. In doing so, it juxtaposes Sabiha Gökçen, known as the Turkish Amelia Earhart, who participated in the quelling of the 1937 Dersim Rebellion by bombing Kurdish civilians, against Sıdıka Avar, an Istanbulite teacher who became the director of the Elazığ Girls’ Institutes, one of the new regime’s tribal schools for girls. By reading Gökçen as a symbol of Kemalist feminism and Avar as its literal agent, and by considering the very real violence carried out against tribal populations by both women, I argue that state feminism became a tool of domination and pacification within the new Republic’s contested provinces
Cultivating urban conviviality: urban farming in the shadows of Copenhagen's neoliberalisms
No full textIn this article I explore how the possibilities for commoning and conviviality through small-scale urban farming initiatives intertwine with neoliberal trends. I do this by recounting the trajectory of a small rooftop garden in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark. Drawing on ethnographic research in and around this garden, I show how such communal, anti-capitalist, eco-social endeavors are thoroughly entangled in the city's neoliberal turn over recent decades. Various manifestations of neoliberalism, ranging from formalization processes to austerity pressures, articulate with convivial urban farming initiatives in contradictory and recursive relationships that both nurture and endanger these local initiatives. I describe for example how formalization engenders legitimacy but also homogenization and how green initiatives are celebrated while undermined by austerity measures. This happens within a broader context of neoliberal labor, food systems, and housing policies and politics that subvert convivial urban farming efforts in multiple and often unacknowledged ways. Finally, I forward the view that attending to such contradictory and complex realities of and surrounding urban farming is essential to illuminating the iterative relations between context and practice, and the actions required at multiple scales to nurture and expand the possibilities for urban commoning and conviviality, including through farming.Key words: the commons, urban farming, neoliberalism, Copenhage
An urban political ecology of Bangkok's awful traffic congestion
No full textUrban political ecology (UPE) can contribute important insights to examine traffic congestion, a significant social and environmental problem underexplored in UPE. Specifically, by attending to power relations, the production of urban space, and cultural practices, UPE can help explain why traffic congestions arises and persists but also creates inequalities in terms of environmental impacts and mobility. Based on qualitative research conducted in 2018, the article applies a UPE framework to Bangkok, Thailand, which has some of the world's worst congestion in one of the world's most unequal countries. The city's largely unplanned and uneven development has made congestion worse in a number of ways. Further, the neglect of public transport, particularly the bus system, and the highest priority given to cars has exacerbated congestion but also reflects class interests as well as unequal power relations. Governance shortcomings, including fragmentation, institutional inertia, corruption, and frequent changes in leadership, have also severely hindered state actors to address congestion. However, due to the poor's limited power, solutions to congestion, are post-political and shaped by elite interests. Analyses of congestion need to consider how socio-political relations, discourses, and a city's materiality shape outcomes.Key Words: urban transport governance, Bangkok traffic congestion, urban political ecology, Thailand political economy, Bangkok's bus syste
Comunalidad, Guendaliza'a and anti-mine mobilizations in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec
No full textHow do grassroots strategies for the defense of territory inter-relate with the "politics of time" in the early phases of socio-environmental struggles? This article addresses this question via ethnographic research and in-depth interviews in Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Opponents of mines and a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in this region invoke comunalidad and Guendaliza'a— indigenous ways of life associated with mutual aid and territorial sovereignty. These values are enacted by networks of activists seeking to protect the land and livelihoods of future generations against global capitalism's drive for cheap raw materials. By rejecting dualist distinctions between Society and Nature, indigenous cosmovisions can help defensive movements forge alternatives to socio-environmental violence. Engaging with this case brings separate theoretical frameworks of defensive resistance, cheap nature, ecological-distribution conflicts, and indigenous cosmovisions into dialogue with one another.Key words: social movements, indigenous peoples, global capitalism, ethnography, anti-minin
Review of Li and Shapiro. 2020. China goes Green: coercive environmentalism for a troubled planet.
No full textThis review critiques Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro’s China Goes Green: Coercive Environmentalism for a Troubled Planet (2020). The authors explore what it means for the world’s longest-lasting authoritarian state to pursue “ecological civilization.” This is an important work that recasts the trade-offs of tackling catastrophic climate change
Reducing deforestation in Colombia while building peace and pursuing business as usual extractivism?
No full textIn this article, I examine the contradictions and tensions in Colombia's simultaneous embrace of REDD+ and a peace-building process premised on continued extractivism. Colombia is emerging from an internal conflict that lasted more than 50 years. In this process rural land-use is being transformed, generating new conflicts over land use and control with detrimental effects on Colombia's forests. Based on official documents, reports, existing scholarly work, interviews and observations collected during fieldwork in the Colombian Amazon, I analyze the ways in which peace-building and post-conflict transition have precipitated factors which have aggravated land conflicts and led to the escalation of deforestation in Colombia. I argue that Colombia's current REDD+ efforts mainly serve to attract international funding and legitimize the status quo since they remain disconnected from the structural processes that directly and indirectly drive deforestation. As such, REDD+ in Colombia contributes to a contradictory neoliberal approach to development, which promises to safeguard the environment, while supporting large-scale extractive industries, mining, cattle ranching and intensive agriculture, resulting in the increase in deforestation and forest degradation.Key Words: Colombia, post-conflict, peace-building, extractivism, deforestation, REDD
A HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE ROLE OF EXERCISE IN THE PREVENTION AND TREATMENT OF CANCER-RELATED LYMPHEDEMA
No full textIn the absence of guidance from scientific evidence, a range of lymphedema prevention and management, guidelines were developed by relevant organizations around the world. These became publicly available, promoted and endorsed, particularly to women with breast cancer. The recommendations advised avoidance of any activity that could overload or restrict the lymphatic system and need for caution when participating in specific physical activities. However, over the past 20 years evidence has accumulated which has significantly challenged the safety of these recommendations, in particular for those with cancer. There now exists consistent and compelling evidence in support of exercise following a diagnosis of cancer. Participating in exercise during and following cancer treatment improves function and quality of life, reduces treatment-related morbidity, and may improve survival. Further, exercise, including resistance exercise at moderate or high load, is considered safe for those at risk- or with lymphedema. That is, exercise has not been shown to cause or worsen cancer-related lymphedema. This article provides a historical account of the advice given to patients in the prevention and management of lymphedema and how this advice has evolved.
A MODIFIED MOUSE-TAIL LYMPHEDEMA MODEL
No full textOne of the main obstacles to studying the pathophysiology of lymphedema development is the lack of appropriate experimental models. Following up on a mouse-tail method that has been described, we performed changes to the method which made it easier to perform in our hands and demonstrated similar results. Twenty C57Black mice were operated on using the previous technique and euthanized after 3 or 6 weeks. Another twenty mice were submitted to the new technique developed in our laboratory and euthanized at the same time points. Tissue samples were collected from the proximal part of the tail (control) and from the distal part (lymphedema) for both models. Animals in both operative groups developed marked edema in the distal part of the tail. This was characterized by lymph vessels dilation, edema, inflammatory cell infiltration, and adipose tissue deposition. Lymphedema was detected after 3 weeks in both models, reaching its maximum after 6 weeks. Adipocytes detected by histology (Oil red O staining) and molecular markers for adipogenesis, lymphangiogenesis and inflammation (lipin 1 and 2, SLP76, and F4-80) were demonstrated to be increased equally in both models. In conclusion, both models provide a reliable method to study lymphedema pathophysiology. However, our modified technique is easier and faster to perform while still providing reliable and consistent results
