The planetary-extended urbanization of valleys of the Eastern Black Sea Region : The dispossession of Fırtına Valley through tourism and nature conservation

Date

2023-4

Author

Açar, Onur

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The Fırtına Valley of the Eastern Black Sea Region has undergone a transformation in recent years by the tourism industry and nature conservation institutions. The primary question of this research is to explain why/how the rural geography in the Fırtına Valley has transformed into tourism centers and nature conservation zones. Within the framework of this inquiry, the research also tries to describe the sense of the emerging discontents, local protests and objections to these developments. The study used the conceptual instruments of planetary-extended urbanization, space production, environmental fix and dispossession in order to explain the recent transformations. As the objective-institutional aspect of the process, the state-led branding of the region, the centralization of political control over the lands and the infrastructural road corridors and new enclosures were important findings of the study at the regional scale. As the subjective aspects of the process, all these developments constituted on the one hand the desire to create a gentrified elite tourism enclave through macro tourism projects in the valley. On the other hand, the same process nourished the feeling of dispossession as the semantic backbone of the everyday life experience of the people of the valley. In this context, place-based oppositional views emerged on the basis of ethno-cultural, political-economic and ecological distinctiveness of the life in the valley. The field research of this study was conducted in the summer seasons of the years between 2017 and 2021. Ethnographic observations and historical research held an important place in the research.

Subject Keywords

Planetary-extended urbanization, Space production, Environmental fix, Dispossession, Fırtına Valley-Eastern Black Sea/Turkey

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/102787

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis