113 research outputs found
Entrepreneurial Back-to-Landers: How Neo-Farmers in Turkey Choose Where to Settle
No full textRecently, a new trajectory of urban-to-rural migration has begun to emerge in the Turkish countryside. This trajectory consists of primarily white-collar workers, born and raised in the cities, with no background in agriculture, leaving their jobs in the cities, moving to villages and taking up farming. In this paper, through semi-structured interviews with 83 such 'neo-farmers,' I explore how they choose where to settle. I argue that even though they are concentrated in the Marmara, the Aegean and the western Mediterranean regions, commonly considered as vacation resorts with easy access to major cities, this concentration does not indicate a desire to continue urban habits and lifestyles. Rather, I show that they choose where to settle through a tradeoff between new lifestyle priorities, and political, social and economic constraints. I argue that economic and non-economic factors act as priorities and constraints, and that the eventual choice rests on a complex calculation, determined, in the final stage, by non-economic factors; more precisely, migrants' perceptions of the social and the political leanings of the larger community into which they are thinking of moving, and their thoughts on whether they can fit in or not.TÜBİTA
Beyond the ban: Explaining how Turkey reduced diversion and illicit poppy cultivation after 1974
No full textA central tenet of the drug control literature is that the prohibition of drug crops (opium poppy, coca, cannabis) generates a "prohibition premium" that strengthens illicit supply chains and provides a lucrative alternative to legal agriculture. This paper complicates this view by examining a puzzling counter-case: Turkey's transition to a fully licit opiates fully licit supply chain. Analyzing the post-1974 control regime, I argue that two interventions were critical: the switch to poppy straw process, and the Grain Board's (TMO) price stabilization policies. While the former removed opium from the supply chain and thus minimized opportunities for diversion at the farm level, latter provided stability for smallholders amidst the fluctuations generated by liberalization of the economy. The case thus demonstrates that states can successfully manage a licit opiate supply chain with minimal diversions and illicit cultivation by removing opportunities and stabilizing agrarian livelihoods through public interventions
Agroecology and back-to-land migration in Turkey: Asset or obstacle?
No full textThrough semi-structured interviews with 83 back-to-landers, this paper examines how differences in preferred production practices shape relations between these newcomers and the locals. The paper shows that production practices are more than just production practices; they signal identity: For both locals and back-to-landers, if someone is an agroecological producer, they are more likely to be a back-to-lander; and if they engage in conventional agriculture, they are more likely to be a local. That said, because back-to-landers usually come from non-agricultural backgrounds, they tend to rely on locals for skill, experience, and traditional knowledges critical for agroecology. Tapping into locals' social networks, however, is challenging given that two groups have different preferred production practices - and identities. To bridge this gap, back-to-landers follow a variety of strategies, none of which are failsafe. In the long run, the differences in preferred production practices (and by proxy, identities) often lead to disagreements, sometimes escalating into conflicts. Switch to agroecology among locals as well as integration into social networks - of either side's and for either side - remain tenuous.TÜBİTA
Entrepreneurial back-to-landers: Neo-farmers in Turkey
No full textUrban-to-rural migration, particularly back-to-land migration, has become prominent in Turkey. This paper focuses on entrepreneurial back-to-landers or neo-farmers, who have migrated to rural areas specifically to get into commercial agriculture and farming. Through an analysis of semi-structured interviews with 72 neofarmers, the paper identifies six critical attributes that aid them during entry into farming and later on, when they are running successful farm businesses: possession of financial wealth; ownership of agricultural land; familiarity with agro-food sectors; education (in agricultural and/or food sciences); experience with corporate conduct; and active connections to the local and/or national organizations associated with the food movement. The paper argues that these attributes feature entrepreneurial skills, experience and connections, which in turn provide neo-farmers with economic, social, and cultural capital and comparative advantages to run their farm businesses. Through the case, the paper shows that one, the direction of capital flows, which historically has been rural-to-urban, may change to urban-to-rural (and from non-agricultural sectors to agriculture) through entrepreneurial back-to-land migration; and two, entrepreneurial skills have become vital for smallholders - newcomer or continuer - if agriculture is going to be their primary income generating activity.TÜBİTA
Clean foods, motherhood and alternative food networks in contemporary Istanbul
No full textSince the early 2000s, the numbers of alternative food networks (AFNs) in Istanbul have increased significantly. Members are usually white collar, university educated, upper middle class Istanbulites who got into the AFNs during their (or their partner's) pregnancy. Contributing to an ongoing discussion about the exclusionary dynamics within the food movement, in this paper I trace the meanings these affluent mothers attach to "clean and fresh foods" and AFN participation-membership. Using evidence from semi-structured interviews, I argue that they link their identity as food activists and their identity as mothers, and they use motherhood discursively to distinguish themselves from others - particularly lower-class mothers who are not AFN members, and women who are AFN members, but are not mothers. Further reinforcing the socio-economic boundaries and hierarchies within (and beyond) the AFNs, these discourses on motherhood also undermine the expansive potential of the food movement in Turkey
Screening for eligibility: access and resistance in Istanbul’s food banks
No full textIntroduced in the 2000s as a component of social welfare reforms, the means test determines the eligibility of aid applicants based on previously set income categories. Replacing local committees that decided eligibility, this centralized and digitalized screening process rests on information infrastructures that are mostly invisible. This paper argues that the ways in which applicants contest the outcome of the means test, subvert the eligibility requirements, and go around the screening processes, make visible these otherwise-mostly invisible information infrastructures. Through a discussion of the contestations, subversions, and go-arounds applicants use (not always successfully) to receive emergency food relief from municipal food banks in Istanbul, the paper shows that these information infrastructures not only appear as if they are value-neutral and apolitical, but in so doing, they also serve as useful tools for obscuring who the actual decision makers are
Pluralism, Democracy and Constitutional Politics: A Schmittian Analysis
No full textAbstract Can a country that is so polarized in two fundamental issues -ethno-national Introduction When in 2007, Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power for the second time, the secular cadres in Turkey felt the blow stronger than before. They had assumed that AKP"s initial victory was coincidental. The voters had chosen AKP not because they believed in AKP"s political agenda, but rather because the seculars had not produced anything new. The second time, however, proved the seculars" interpretation of the 2002 elections was drastically off. AKP, which advertised itself as a Muslim -democrat party, waspreferred by the Turkish electorate, exactly because of its political agenda. Election results were not simply a punishment for the seculars. On the other hand, for the groups that AKP represented, the 2007 election results meant another electoral term of learning to live with the seculars. This has not always been so easy for either groups, and it continues to constitute the primary dynamic of Turkish politics. However, what many seculars feared has not happened: Although in both elections AKP came to power as a majority, it did not attempt to dismantle the secular establishment
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Embodied, Rationed, Precarious: Conceptualizations of Sovereignty in Urban Food Regimes
No full textThrough a case study of how provisioning of Istanbul has changed since the 19th century (late Ottoman Period), this dissertation unravels the ways in which food, bodies and biological processes have become objects of intervention for the modern nation-state and more contemporarily, for neoliberal governmentality. Chapters 1, 3 and 5 focus on urban provisioning models (urban provisioning, codependent provisioning, urban food supply chain respectively). Chapters 2, 4 and 6 analyze various economic dynamics, practices, tools, strategies, and mentalité deployed by different provisioning actors, and expose different conceptualizations of sovereignty embedded in each provisioning model (embodied, rationed, precarious respectively). Conclusion brings the discussion to a close by tracing certain themes that run through three conceptualizations of sovereignty. First, sovereignty is not necessarily a territorial relation, although it does rely on territorial mechanisms and other relations to function. Second, the present opposition between urban and rural is based on their conceptualization as territorial resources and is a product of a distinctive mentalité. While the current conceptualization of sovereignty may utilize, or even depend on, this mentalité to make certain populations live, or to let them die, such an approach is not endemic to all conceptualizations of sovereignty. Finally, the relationship between the ruler and the ruled is ultimately a bodily relation. While how this ‘bodily’ element is constructed may differ depending on the constellation of discourses, mechanisms and technologies deployed, the apparatus still works by intervening in, shaping, modifying bodies. Therefore, beginning with classical theories of sovereignty, this bodily component should be reintroduced to discussions of sovereignty.Political ScienceDoctor of Philosophy (PhD
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