Peer-Reviewed Articles in English by Bengi Akbulut
Journal of Australian Political Economy, 2021
Building on extensive fieldwork in Turkey, we develop the concept of accumulation by dislocation ... more Building on extensive fieldwork in Turkey, we develop the concept of accumulation by dislocation to elucidate the particular regime of accumulation that took shape under authoritarian neoliberalism in Turkey, distinct in the interlinked flows of resources, capital and labor that it mobilizes. We operationalize the notion to demonstrate how the Turkish state orchestrates both the production of labor and capital as such, and their incorporation into circuits of accumulation, which intimates a particular form of developmentalism.
Ecological Economics, 2020
Ecological economics is at a sharp crossroads today, mostly due to the unprecedented scale of the... more Ecological economics is at a sharp crossroads today, mostly due to the unprecedented scale of the intertwined social and ecological crises we face. We argue that the discipline should engage with the thinking and practices around alternatives to capitalism more substantially, as this is essential and invaluable for the discipline's ability to contribute to a just and sustainable future. We outline an agenda for future ecological economics research on economic alternatives that are shaped by the concrete ways in which economic democracy deals with issues of uncertainty, complexity and value incommensurability, and contribute to a kind of political economy that ecological economics would advocate. We lay out how this question could be operationalised within the context of allocation and exchange (i.e. alternatives to market), production and investment (i.e. alternatives to capitalist Trm) and economic subjectivities (i.e. alternatives to self-interest).
Environmental destructions, overconsumption and overdevelopment are felt by an increasing number ... more Environmental destructions, overconsumption and overdevelopment are felt by an increasing number of people. Voices for 'prosperity without growth' have strengthened and environmental conflicts are on the rise worldwide. This introduction to the special issue explores the possibility of an alliance between post-growth and ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs). It argues that among the various branches of post-growth and EDCs, degrowth and environmental justice (EJ) movements have the best potential to interconnect. This claim is discussed via five 'theses': We argue that both degrowth and EJ movements are materialist but also more than just materialist in scope (thesis I) and both seek a politico-metabolic reconfiguration of our economies (thesis II). We also show that both degrowth and EJ seek consequential as well as deontological justice (thesis III) and they are complementary: while EJ has not developed a unified and broader theoretical roadmap, degrowth has largely failed to connect with a wider social movement (thesis IV). Finally, both degrowth and EJ stress the contradiction between capitalist accumulation vs. conditions of social reproduction (rather than that between capital and labour) (thesis V). We conclude that an alliance between degrowth and EJ is not only possible but necessary.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919306160?dgcid=author#s0045
Critical perspectives on economic growth have laid bare the fragility of the assumed link between... more Critical perspectives on economic growth have laid bare the fragility of the assumed link between material growth and socio-ecological well- being. The appeal of economic growth, however, goes beyond the economic sphere. As a societal goal, growth is often mobilized to preempt and/or coopt opposition around issues of social justice and redistribution. Not only does the constitution of growth as a collective goal serve to unite the internally-fragmented sphere of the social and brush aside (class-based) distributional conflicts, but it also enables the distribution of material concessions to subordinate classes for eliciting their consent. The degrowth proposal should thus more broadly tackle the material and discoursive ways in which growth enables the reproduction of contemporary political-economic systems.
This paper argues that the notion of growth functions as a powerful ideal that shapes state-society relationships and social-collective imaginations. It demonstrates this by discussing the making of state in Turkey through a Gramscian perspective, where the notion of economic growth is deeply imprinted in the broader practices of the state to legitimize its existence and dominates the social imaginary in a way that cannot be easily dismissed. Against this backdrop, the possibility of not only effectuating, but also imagining and desiring degrowth would call for a radical reconfiguration of state-society relationships. Within this context, The Kurdish Freedom Movement’s project of Democratic Economy emerges as an alternative, both to the nation-state paradigm and to the imperative of economic growth.
Journal of Peasant Studies, 2018
While state-society relations in Turkey have historically been top-down and coups d'état periodic... more While state-society relations in Turkey have historically been top-down and coups d'état periodically interrupted democratic politics, the recent authoritarian turn under Erdoğan is remarkable. Two dynamics are especially salient. First, Erdoğan and his AKP have been particularly effective in deepening the neoliberalisation of economy and society. Their policies have created a new form of neoliberal developmentalism, where solutions to all social ills have come to be seen as possible through rapid economic growth. Second, they have intensified the transformation of the countryside, where new forms of dispossession and deagrarianisation open the way to an unprecedented extractivist drive. Together, neoliberal developmentalism and extractivism have resulted in growing social dissent. The eruption of anger after the Soma coal mining disaster that killed 301 miners is one such case. The paper shows how Erdoğan and the AKP use populist tactics (ranging from an uptick in nationalist discourse to the provision of 'coal aid' in winter) to assuage their critics. Where these prove inadequate, an increasingly violent crackdown on social dissent is being deployed in the name of peace and order as the country remains in a state of emergency since the attempted coup of July 2016.
Development and Change, Jul 14, 2015
This paper offers a reading of contemporary mainstream development economics as an overdetermined... more This paper offers a reading of contemporary mainstream development economics as an overdetermined product of transformations internal to the discipline of economics (i.e., the late neoclassical turn within contemporary mainstream economic theory), transformations within the institutional-discursive matrix of development (i.e., the transition from growth-centered policies to poverty-alleviation and good-governance oriented policies), and a broader transition from post- war Keynesian developmentalism (with its variants in the second and third worlds) to actually existing varieties of neoliberal governmentality. Within this constellation, we claim that, while mainstream development economics has been gradually decimated into micro-level impact appraisal studies of developmental projects (the so-called ‘randomization approach’), the broader macro-economic questions are displaced from the field to the purview of methodologically individualist, late neoclassical analyses of institutions and growth (the so-called ‘new institutionalism’).
Journal of Peasant Studies
Development and Change, Jan 1, 2012
Cambridge Journal of Economics, Jan 1, 2012
Book Chapters in English by Bengi Akbulut
Commoning the City: Empirical Perspectives on Urban Ecology, Economics and Ethics, 2020
The recent years have witnessed the resurgence of the notion of the commons. In particular, the n... more The recent years have witnessed the resurgence of the notion of the commons. In particular, the notion of the commons and analyical concepts surrounding it are being operationalized in a way that moves beyond the term’s traditional use – that often denotes physical or immaterial entities such as shared natural resources, urban space or cultural knowledge— to describe processes of organizing social (re)production outside of the state and the market based on principles of democracy, collectivity and solidarity. There has been, however, relatively little dialogue between this understanding of the commons and the accumulated knowledge on solidarity economies. This chapter/article traces how the framework of the commons and commoning can contribute to debates around solidarity economies, i.e. forms of organizing processes of (re)production, exchange and consumption in egalitarian, collective and democratic ways. It does so by elaborating on how such forms of economic organizing entails different forms of commoning, and by drawing on the concrete examples of solidarity economies in Istanbul. It will particularly focus on how different forms of solidarity economies, by organizing the economic sphere differently, animate a commoning of labor, space and of knowledge.
This chapter focuses on a comparison of state-built large dams and small-scale hydropower plants ... more This chapter focuses on a comparison of state-built large dams and small-scale hydropower plants (HPPs) constructed by private firms in Turkey, by situating them within the broader historical dynamic between state and society via the Gramscian concept of hegemony. It argues that while dams could animate modernisation and development as collective interest on which the Turkish state’s hegemonic project was built on, HPPs failed to do so and thus were widely opposed. The argument is illustrated by findings from an extensive field study conducted in Artvin, a province in the north-eastern corner of Anatolia.
Urban Forests, Trees, and Green Space: A Political Ecology Perspective, 2014
Articles in English by Bengi Akbulut
Articles in Turkish by Bengi Akbulut
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Peer-Reviewed Articles in English by Bengi Akbulut
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919306160?dgcid=author#s0045
This paper argues that the notion of growth functions as a powerful ideal that shapes state-society relationships and social-collective imaginations. It demonstrates this by discussing the making of state in Turkey through a Gramscian perspective, where the notion of economic growth is deeply imprinted in the broader practices of the state to legitimize its existence and dominates the social imaginary in a way that cannot be easily dismissed. Against this backdrop, the possibility of not only effectuating, but also imagining and desiring degrowth would call for a radical reconfiguration of state-society relationships. Within this context, The Kurdish Freedom Movement’s project of Democratic Economy emerges as an alternative, both to the nation-state paradigm and to the imperative of economic growth.
Book Chapters in English by Bengi Akbulut
Articles in English by Bengi Akbulut
Articles in Turkish by Bengi Akbulut
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919306160?dgcid=author#s0045
This paper argues that the notion of growth functions as a powerful ideal that shapes state-society relationships and social-collective imaginations. It demonstrates this by discussing the making of state in Turkey through a Gramscian perspective, where the notion of economic growth is deeply imprinted in the broader practices of the state to legitimize its existence and dominates the social imaginary in a way that cannot be easily dismissed. Against this backdrop, the possibility of not only effectuating, but also imagining and desiring degrowth would call for a radical reconfiguration of state-society relationships. Within this context, The Kurdish Freedom Movement’s project of Democratic Economy emerges as an alternative, both to the nation-state paradigm and to the imperative of economic growth.
bu yazının bir arka plan olarak değerli olduğunu düşünüyoruz.
Üç Ekoloji’nin 10. yılı geride kalırken toplumsal hareketler tarihinde çok önemli bir dönüm noktası olan Gezi direnişi hakkında yayınladığımız bu ilk özel sayımızın, arşivlenecek bir sayı olacağını umuyoruz.
Müşterekler kuramından müşterekleşme pratiklerine, özel bir örnek olan Caferağa Dayanışmasından siyaset ve planlama ile ilişkisinin nasıl kurulabileceğine keyifli bir tartışma yaptık.
Gelgelelim dünyada “müşterekler” kavramının tarihsel olarak izlediği seyri ve kavram etrafında gelişen tartışmaları daha iyi anlayabilmeyi sağlayacak literatürün önemli bir kısmı dilimize çevrilmiş değildi. Literatürde en çok tartışma ve itiraz konusu olmuş Hardin’in “Müştereklerin Trajedisi” yazısı, müşterekler hakkında geliştirdiği kavramsal çerçeve sayesinde Nobel ödülü kazanmış Ostrom’un “Müşterekleri Yeniden Tanımlamak” metni ve alanın en önemli kuramcılarından “otonomist” De Angelis’in metinleri gibi kurucu metinleri içeren elinizdeki derleme bu eksikliği giderme yolunda atılmış bir adım. Kitapta bu kurucu metinlerin yanı sıra su müşterekleri, kentsel müşterekler ve müştereklerden yola çıkan toplumsal hareketleri dünyadaki ve Türkiye’deki çeşitli örnekler üzerinden tartışma konusu yapan önemli yazılar da bir araya getiriliyor.
Hem müştereklere dair farklı kavramsal çerçeveleri eleştirel ve karşılaştırmalı bir yöntemle tartışmayı, hem de ekonomi-politiğin güncel meselelerine bu çerçevelerin ne tür açılımlar getirdiğini yorumlamayı amaçlayan bu derleme, sadece “alandaki” aktivistlere değil, teorik ve pratik olarak siyasetle ve muhalefet imkânlarıyla ilgilenen herkese hitap ediyor.
İÇİNDEKİLER
Önsöz
Giriş:
Müşterekler: Çatışkılar, Hatlar, İmkânlar
Fikret Adaman, Bengi Akbulut ve Umut Kocagöz
Müştereklerin Trajedisi
Garrett Hardin
Müştereklerin Trajedisi Miti
Ian Angus
Müşterekleri Yeniden Tanımlamak
Elinor Ostrom
İlk Birikim, Mülksüzleştirerek Birikim
ve “Ekonomi-dışı Araçlarla Birikim”
Jim Glassman
Müşterekler
Massimo De Angelis ve David Harvie
Kapitalizme Karşı ve Kapitalizmin Ötesinde Müşterekler
George Caffentzis ve Silvia Federici
Komünizmde Müşterek Olan
Michael Hardt
“Meta”ya Karşı “Müşterekler”:
Küresel Güney’de Alternatif Küreselleşme, Özelleştirme
Karşıtlığı ve Suyun İnsan Hakkı Olarak Tanınması
Karen Bakker
Su Bizim Ulan!
Bolivya’da Suyun Müşterekleştirilmesi
Alexander Dwinell ve Marcela Olivera
Kentsel Müşterekler
Vinay Gidwani ve Amita Baviskar
Kent Müştereğini Aramak:
Mekânsal Adalet Tartışmasına Bir Katkı
Paul Chatterton
Çitleme, Ortak Kullanım Hakkı ve Yoksulun Mülkiyeti
Nicholas Blomley
Brezilya Kent Hareketleri:
Kenti Müşterek olarak “Yeniden-İcat Etmek”
Stavros Stavrides
Krizler, Hareketler ve Müşterekler
Massimo De Angelis
Sonuç:
Bugün Burada: Savunudan İnşaaya Müşterekler
Bengi Akbulut
Katkılar
Kaynakça