Voulvouli, A; (2008) Arnavutköy district initiative: From environmentalism to transenvironmentalism: Practising democracy in a neighbourhood of Istanbul. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The work at hand, discusses from an anthropological viewpoint a grassroots mobilisation in the neighbourhood of Arnavutkoy in Istanbul - Turkey. This mobilisation was the result of the announcement of the construction of a bridge over the Bosphorus straight that would connect the Asian with the European shores of the city. As a response, the residents of the European neighbourhood, in which the bridge would be placed organised an initiative called Arnavutkoy District Initiative (Arnavutkoy Semt Girisimi - ASG), opposing the construction of the bridge. According to the participants of ASG, the reasons that motivated their resistance concerned the destructive effects that the construction of the bridge would have on the areas' natural and cultural assets as well as on the lifestyle of its residents. After conducting fieldwork on the area, the present work's analysis of the protest moves from contextualising it in contemporary Turkey and Istanbul to a closer ethnographic examination of the protest itself. Therefore, in the pages that follow, I have attempted to examine ASG as a product of the particular character of Turkish public life and to illustrate the particular character of ASG as a product of the identities evolving, the activities taking place and the community that these have created amidst the struggle. This consideration lead to a distinction between the formal face of the initiative which is the environmental face and its informal face: the transenvironmental.

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