SPATIAL EXPERIENCES OF ENERGY IN TURKEY IN THE 1930S

Date

2026-4-27

Author

Gür, Zeynep

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This dissertation examines the spatial experiences of energy in Turkey during the 1930s by approaching coal and electricity as socio-material forces that reorganized territory, reshaped everyday life, and mediated the reciprocal transformation of state and society. Rather than treating energy as a technical backdrop to modernization, the study positions energy infrastructures as active agents in the production of space. Through a scalar analysis spanning national, urban, and domestic spheres, it demonstrates how coal basins, railways, electric factories, distribution networks, street illumination, and household appliances formed an uneven yet continuous chain connecting extraction zones to interiors. Drawing on the conceptual lenses of socio-natures and energo-power, the dissertation defines energy as a relational process embedded in environmental conditions, institutional arrangements, political economy, and material practices. It argues that modernization in the early Republican period was neither linear nor uniformly experienced, but negotiated through infrastructural expansion, administrative coordination, market mechanisms, and lived adaptation. Environmental burdens, pricing disputes, uneven distribution, and differentiated access to energy technologies reveal that infrastructural governance operated as a fragmented and contested field rather than a seamless instrument of control. Methodologically, the study expands architectural historiography by treating newspapers, caricatures, advertisements, and public debates as architectural evidence. Writing architectural history through energy makes visible the infrastructural processes that shaped territorial integration, domestic routines, environmental transformation, and the differentiated experiences of modernity in 1930s Turkey.

Subject Keywords

energy, electricity, spatial experiences, Turkey, 1930s

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/119094

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis