Discussions within the Urban Political Ecology Literature: Does the Concept of Milieu Offer a Solution?

Abstract

This article analyzes the Urban Political Ecology (UPE) literature as an interdisciplinary field of research by examining its emerging ideas and concepts. This literature urges new discussions regarding the concept of the city, the urban-rural distinction, the methodology problem with comprehensive empirical analyses. Despite this, there are still gaps in understanding social transformations and changes with the concepts of cyborg, planetary urbanization, metobolism, hybrid and so on. This article addresses these constraints by means of the concepts and discussions revealed within the literature of UPE. Therefore, by mobilizing the term of milieu, which is largely ignored in theoretical discussions within UPE, this article aims to contribute to the conceptual and empirical problems of the UPE literature. First, this paper analyzes the urban political ecology research program with different theoretical frameworks, different problem areas and different forms of conceptualization. Second, it examines the theoretical debates in the last 15 years. Third, the concept of milieu is addressed in order to contribute to these discussions. The study follows a research methodology based on secondary sources, since it includes a theoretical discussion.

Keywords

• Urban Political Ecology,Milieu,Politics,Deleuze,Foucault

Kentsel Politik Ekoloji Literatürü İçerisindeki Tartışmalar: Milieu Fikri Bir Çözüm Olabilir mi?

Abstract

Bu makale, disiplinler arası bir araştırma alanı sunan Kentsel Politik Ekoloji (KPE) literatürünün nasıl yeni fikirlere ve kavramlara açık olduğunu göstermeye çalışırken aslında bu yeni alanda karşılaştığı sorunları vurgulamayı ve bu sorunlara çözüm önermeyi amaçlar. Bu yeni sayılan KPE literatürü, şehir kavramı, kentsel-kırsal ayrımı, metodoloji sorunu ve benzeri konularla ilgili yeni tartışmalar yapılmasını önerir fakat yine de tam başarılı olamaz. Bu makale, KPE literatürü üzerinden bu kavramsal sorunları tartışmaya açar. KPE içerisindeki kuramsal tartışmalarda göz ardı edilen milieu kavramını harekete geçirmeyi amaçlar. Böylelikle bu tartışmalara katkı sağlamayı hedefler. Makale, üç amacı içerir: Birincisi, kentsel politik ekoloji araştırma programının farklı kuramsal okumalar, farklı sorun alanları ve farklı kavramsallaştırma biçimleri ile çerçevesinde incelenmesi; ikincisi, son 15 yıllık süreyi kapsayan bu yeni literatür içerisindeki kuramsal tartışmaların irdelenmesi; üçüncüsü, bu tartışmalara hitaben milieu (kentsel ortam) kavramının önerilmesini içerir. Bu çalışma kuramsal bir tartışma içerdiği için yöntem olarak ikincil kaynaklara dayalı bir araştırma metodolojisi izler.

Keywords

• Kentsel Politik Ekoloji,Milieu,Siyaset,Deleuze,Foucault

References

1. Adanalı, Y. A. (2011). De-spatialized space as neoliberal utopia: Gentrified Istiklal street and commercialized urban spaces. Red Thread, 3(2011), 1-13.
2. Adey, P. (2013). Air/atmospheres of the megacity. Theory, Culture & Society, 30(7-8), 291-308.
3. Akbulut, B., ve Candan, A. B. (2014). Bir-iki ağacın ötesinde: İstanbul’a politik ekoloji çerçevesinden bakmak. Yeni İstanbul Çalışmaları içinde, 288-299.
4. Aksümer, G., ve Yücel, H. (2018). Immaterial dimensions of the right to the city: The case of Istanbul’s Derbent neighborhood in the urban transformation process. Planning, 28(1), 76-89.
5. Altınok, E., ve Enlil, Z. (2012). Mekânin yeniden organizasyonunun ekonomi politiği. Sigma, 4, 37-44.
6. Amin, A. ve Thrift, N. (2002). Cities: reimagining the urban. Polity.
7. Angelo, H., ve Wachsmuth, D. (2015). Urbanizing urban political ecology: A critique of methodological cityism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(1), 16-27.
8. Arboleda, M. (2016). In the nature of the non‐city: Expanded infrastructural networks and the political ecology of planetary urbanisation. Antipode, 48(2), 233-251.

9. Aydalot, P. (Ed.) (1986). Milieux innovateurs en Europe. Paris: GREM
10. Beyond Istanbul. (2019). İstanbul yollarında kentsel politik ekoloji. Beyond Istanbul. MAP Akademi.
11. Camagni, R. (2005). Uncertainty social capital and community governance: The city as a Milieu. In Urban dynamics and growth: advances in urban economics (p. 121-150). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
12. Candan, A. B., ve Kolluoğlu, B. (2008). Emerging spaces of neoliberalism: A gated town and a public housing project in Istanbul. New perspectives on Turkey, 39, 5-46.
13. Canguilhem, G. (2001). The living and its milieu. Grey Room, 7-31.
14. Coates, R. (2019). Citizenship-in-nature? Exploring hazardous urbanization in Nova Friburgo, Brazil. Geoforum, 99, 63-73.
15. Cornea, N. L., Véron, R., ve Zimmer, A. (2017). Everyday governance and urban environments: Towards a more interdisciplinary urban political ecology. Geography Compass, 11(4), e12310.
16. Crevoisier, O. (2004). The innovative milieus approach: Toward a territorialized understanding of the economy?. Economic Geography, 80(4), 367-379.
17. Deleuze, G., ve Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus. Vol. 2 of Capitalism and schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
18. Demaria, F., ve Schindler, S. (2016). Contesting urban metabolism: Struggles over waste‐to‐energy in Delhi, India. Antipode, 48(2), 293-313.
19. Depietri, Y., Kallis, G., Baró, F., ve Cattaneo, C. (2016). The urban political ecology of ecosystem services: The case of Barcelona. Ecological Economics, 125, 83-100. Doshi, S. (2017). Embodied urban political ecology: five propositions. Area, 49(1), 125-128.
20. Eckers, M. ve Loftus, A. (2008). The power of water: developing dialogues between Foucault and Gramsci. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26 (4), 698–718.
21. Erensu, S. (2015). Abundance and scarcity amidst the crisis of ‘modern water’: The changing water–energy nexus in Turkey. In Contemporary Water Governance in the Global South (p. 61-78). Routledge.
22. Ernstson, H., ve Silver, J. (2014). Provincializing urban political ecology: Towards a situated UPE through African urbanism. Antipode, 46(2), 497-516.
23. Foucault, M. (2009). (1977-78). Security, territory, population. lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78, (Der. M. Senellart). (Ed. F. Ewald and A. Fontana). Palgrave.
24. Gabriel, N. (2014). Urban political ecology: Environmental imaginary, governance, and the non‐human. Geography Compass, 8(1), 38-48.
25. Gustafson, S. (2015). Maps and contradictions: Urban political ecology and cartographic expertise in southern Appalachia. Geoforum, 60, 143-152.
26. Haraway, D. (2013). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. Routledge.
27. Harvey, D. (1973). Social Justice and the City. University of Georgia Press. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46nm9v.
28. Harvey, D. (2009). Social justice and the city (revised edition). https://ebookcentral.proquest.com adresinden erişilmiştir.
29. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
30. Heynen, N. (2006). Green urban political ecologies: toward a better understanding of inner-city environmental change. Environment and Planning A, 38(3), 499-516.
31. Heynen, N. (2014). Urban political ecology I: The urban century. Progress in Human Geography, 38(4), 598-604.
32. Heynen, N. (2016). Urban political ecology II: The abolitionist century. Progress in Human Geography, 40(6), 839-845.
33. Heynen, N. (2018). Urban political ecology III: The feminist and queer century. Progress in Human Geography, 42(3), 446-452.
34. Heynen, N., Kaika, M., ve Swyngedouw, E. (Eds.). (2006). “Urban political ecology: politicizing the production of urban natures”. (Heynen, N., Kaika, M., ve Swyngedouw, E. Eds.). The nature of cities: urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism içinde. Routledge.
35. Johnson, P. (2008). The modern cemetery: a design for life. Social & Cultural Geography, 9(7), 777-790.
36. Kaika, M., ve Swyngedouw, E. (2011). The urbanization of nature: Great promises, impasse, and new beginnings. The new Blackwell companion to the city, 96-107.
37. Karaman, O. (2012). An immanentist approach to the urban. Antipode, 44(4), 1287-1306.
38. Karpouzoglou, T., Marshall, F., ve Mehta, L. (2018). Towards a peri-urban political ecology of water quality decline. Land Use Policy, 70, 485-493.
39. Keil, R. (2005). Progress report—urban political ecology. Urban Geography, 26(7), 640-651.
40. Keil, R. (2011). Transnational urban political ecology: Health and infrastructure in the unbounded city. The new Blackwell companion to the city, 713-725.
41. Keil, R. (2003), Progress report: Urban political ecology. Urban Geography, 24, 723–738.
42. Kent Suçları. (2019). Kent suçları haritası. http://kentsuclari.org/ adresinden erişilmiştir.
43. Latour, B. (2004). Politics of nature. Harvard University Press.
44. Latour, B. (2009). A collective of humans and nonhumans: Following Daedalus’s labyrinth. Readings in the Philosophy of Technology, 11.
45. Lawhon, M., Ernstson, H., ve Silver, J. (2014). Provincializing urban political ecology: Towards a situated UPE through African urbanism. Antipode, 46(2), 497-516.
46. Lefebvre, H. (1976). The survival of capitalism: reproduction of the relations of production. St. Martin's Press.
47. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford. (original. edition 1974.)
48. Legg, S. (2011). Assemblage/apparatus: using Deleuze and Foucault. Area, 43(2), 128-133.
49. Lewis, R. (2017). Comments on urban agency: relational space and intentionality. Urban history, 44(1), 137-144.
50. Liu, S., Costanza, R., Troy, A., D’Aagostino, J., ve Mates, W. (2010). Valuing New Jersey’s ecosystem services and natural capital: a spatially explicit benefit transfer approach. Environmental management, 45(6), 1271-1285.
51. Longhurst, N. (2015). Towards an ‘alternative’geography of innovation: Alternative milieu, socio-cognitive protection and sustainability experimentation. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 17, 183-198.
52. López-Durán, F., ve Moore, N. (2018). Meat-milieu: medicalization, aestheticization and productivity in Buenos Aires and its Pampas, 1868–1950. Urban History, 45(2), 253-274.
53. Malmberg, A. (1996). Industrial geography: agglomeration and local milieu. Progress in Human Geography, 20(3), 392-403.
54. McCann, E., Roy, A., ve Ward, K. (2013). Assembling/worlding cities. Urban Geography, 34(5), 581-589.
55. McKinnon, I., Hurley, P. T., Myles, C. C., Maccaroni, M., ve Filan, T. (2017). Uneven urban metabolisms: Toward an integrative (ex) urban political ecology of sustainability in and around the city. Urban Geography, 1-26.
56. Monstadt, J. (2009). Conceptualizing the political ecology of urban infrastructures: insights from technology and urban studies. Environment and planning A, 41(8), 1924-1942.
57. Ovacık Çoruh, D. (2018). Kentsel ortam [Milieu]: Özneleş[tir]meye yönelik manipülasyon ve “karşı-özneleşme” pratiği için motivasyon alanı. Tez. İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, İstanbul.
58. Ovacık Çoruh, D. ve Uluoğlu, B. (2018). Bir karşı-özneleşme [yeniden-özneleşme] pratiği olarak tasarım. Erciyes Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 32(44), 163-193.
59. Özberk, N. (2017). ‘Kentsel yıkımın’politik ekolojisi: Nevşehir Kalesi ve çevresi kentsel dönüşüm projesi örneği. İdealkent, 8(21), 200-228.
60. Öztürk, M., Hilton, A., ve Jongerden, J. (2014). Migration as movement and multiplace life: some recent developments in rural living structures in Turkey. Population, Space and Place, 20(4), 370-388.
61. Peet, R. ve M. Watts (2000). Liberation ecologies: environment, development, social movements. Routledge, New York, NY and London.
62. Philo, C. (2012). A ‘new Foucault’with lively implications–or ‘the crawfish advances sideways’. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(4), 496-514.
63. Ribeiro, L. C. D. Q., ve Santos Junior, O. A. D. (2017). Neoliberalization and mega-events: The transition of Rio de Janeiro’s hybrid urban order. Journal of Urban Affairs, 39(7), 909-923.
64. Rice, S., ve Tyner, J. (2017). The rice cities of the Khmer Rouge: an urban political ecology of rural mass violence. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42(4), 559-571.
65. Rose-Redwood, R. (2012). With numbers in place: Security, territory, and the production of calculable space. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102(2), 295-319.
66. Roy, A. (2016). What is urban about critical urban theory?. Urban Geography, 37(6), 810-823.
67. Samec, T., ve Gibas, P. (2018). Urban political ecology of worth and value: Enacting allotments in media discourse. Space and Culture, 1206331218806169.
68. Soens, T. (2019). Introduction. İçinde (Soens, T., Schott, D., Toyka-Seid, M., ve De Munck, B. Eds.). (2019). Urbanizing Nature: Actors and Agency (Dis) Connecting Cities and Nature Since 1500. Routledge.
69. Soens, T., Schott, D., Toyka-Seid, M., ve De Munck, B. (Eds.). (2019). Urbanizing Nature: Actors and Agency (Dis) Connecting Cities and Nature Since 1500. Routledge.
70. Söderström, O., Empson, L. A., Codeluppi, Z., Söderström, D., Baumann, P. S., ve Conus, P. (2016). Unpacking ‘the City’: an experience-based approach to the role of urban living in psychosis. Health & place, 42, 104-110.
71. Swyngedouw, E. (1996) The city as a hybrid -- On Nature, society and cyborg urbanisation. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 7(25), 65-80
72. Swyngedouw, E. (1997). Power, nature, and the city. The conquest of water and the political ecology of urbanization in Guayaquil, Ecuador: 1880–1990. Environment and planning A, 29(2), 311-332.
73. Swyngedouw, E. (2006). 2 metabolic urbanization. The Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism, 21.
74. Swyngedouw, E., ve Heynen, N. C. (2003). Urban political ecology, justice and the politics of scale. Antipode, 35(5), 898-918.
75. Swyngedouw, E., Kaika, M., ve Heynen, N. (2006). Urban political ecology: politicizing the production of urban natures. İçinde In the Nature of Cities (s.16-35). Routledge.
76. Tekin Bilbil, E. (2019). Yönetişim ve yönetimsellik: Kentsel mekan ve ortam. Siyasal Kitabevi: Ankara.
77. Terranova, T. (2004). Communication beyond meaning: On the cultural politics of information. Social Text, 22(3), 51-73.
78. Terranova, T. (2009). Another life: The nature of political economy in Foucault’s genealogy of biopolitics. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(6), 234-262.
79. Truelove, Y. (2011). (Re-) Conceptualizing water inequality in Delhi, India through a feminist political ecology framework. Geoforum, 42(2), 143-152.
80. Tuçaltan, G. (2017). Metabolic Urbanization of waste in Ankara: A governance perspective. Utrecht University.
81. Usher, M. (2014). Veins of concrete, cities of flow: Reasserting the centrality of circulation in Foucault’s analytics of government. Mobilities, 9(4), 550-569.
82. Venn, C. (2009). Neoliberal political economy, biopolitics and colonialism: A transcolonial genealogy of inequality. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(6), 206-233.
83. Venn, C., ve Terranova, T. (2009). Introduction: Thinking after Michel Foucault. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(6), 1–11.
84. Whitehead, M., (2005). Between the marvelous and the mundane: Everyday life in the socialist city and the politics of the environment. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23, 273–294.
85. Zeybek, S. O. (2011) Small towns in Turkey: Footnotes in somebody else’s history. Journal of Historical Sociology, 24(1), 100-115.
86. Zeybek, S. O. (2016). Ekolojinin politikası: Yeni sınırlar, yeni aktörler. Toplum ve Bilim, 138(139), 7-25.
87. Zimmer, A. (2010). Urban political ecology: Theoretical concepts, challenges, and suggested future directions. Erdkunde, 343-354.
88. Zizek, S. (2012). Antroposen’e hoşgeldiniz. Encore Publications: İstanbul.