Browsing by Subject "Informal settlement"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Open Access
Formalization by the state, re-informalization by the people: a gecekondu transformation housing estate as site of multiple discrepancies
(Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2016) Erman, T.
This article demonstrates residents' transformative practices and discusses attendant outcomes to contribute to an understanding of state-built housing estates for people affected by urban transformation projects. It draws upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a social housing estate (K-TOKI) in the Northern Ankara Entrance Urban Transformation Project (NAEUTP). It addresses questions on why formalization of informal housing takes place today, under what conditions it is countered by re-informalization practices, and what the outcomes of this process are. As informal housing became formalized by NAEUTP, gecekondu dwellers were forced into formalized spaces and lives within K-TOKI, which was based on a middle-class lifestyle in its design and its legally required central management. Informality re-emerged in K-TOKI when the state's housing institution, in response to the estate's poor marketability, moved out, allowing residents to reappropriate spaces to meet their needs and form their own management system. When cultural norms that are inscribed in the built environment and financial norms that treat residents as clients conflict with everyday practices and financial capabilities, the urban poor increasingly engage in acts of informality. I argue that the outcome of this informality in a formal context is a site of multiple discrepancies. © 2016 Urban Research Publications Limited
Open Access
Rendering responsible, provoking desire: women and home in squatter/slum renewal projects in the Turkish context
(Routledge, 2017) Erman, T.; Hatiboğlu, B.
This article is situated at the intersection of urban restructuring, cultural conservatism and neoliberalism in the Turkish context to understand the new subject formations of poor women as they are relocated to high-rise apartment blocks in slum/squatter renewal projects by the prospect of homeownership via long-term mortgage loans. It contributes by showing the gendered effects of urban transformation on poor women as neoliberalism and conservatism interact. It draws upon two ethnographic studies that reveal women’s experiences embedded both in neoliberalism and patriarchy. In neoliberalism, women’s participation in the informal job market was promoted as they were made responsible for contributing to mortgage payments, and they were brought into consumption as they were provoked the desire for good homes via furnishing, and in patriarchy, women’s traditional roles in social reproduction were demanded in spite of their new roles and responsibilities. The study ponders women’s differentiated negotiations with patriarchy which resisted radical challenges when the family and the home framed women’s new responsibilities and desires. The rising conservatism rooted in Islam in Turkey, which prioritizes the family over individual women, created the conditions for it. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Open Access
Understanding the experiences of the politics of urbanization in two gecekondu (squatter) neighborhoods under two urban regimes: ethnography in the urban periphery of Ankara, Turkey
(The Institute, Inc., 2011) Erman, T.
This article investigates the politics of urbanization in the Turkish context. It is built upon the premise that the "urban coalition" in the era of nationalist developmentalism, which was populist in nature, is replaced by a "new urban coalition," a neoliberal one, since the 1980s. I argue that the bargaining power of gecekondu (squatter) residents with municipal authorities for their "extra-legal" practices in building their houses in the former era was lost after neoliberal policies were adopted. This argument is substantiated by the ethnographic fieldwork in which the experiences of gecekondu residents in building, improving and (not) defending their houses and neighborhoods were obtained. Two ethnographic studies were conducted in two different sites in Ankara: a neighborhood where the Alevis were the majority, which became the site of leftist mobilization in the 1970s, and a district where conservative Sunnis lived, who supported right-wing politics. By situating the two neighborhoods in the context of the two different urban regimes, namely, those in the populist and neoliberal eras, the article points out the changing relationship of the gecekondu residents with the state, showing variances with respect to the differing political positions and social compositions of the two neighborhoods. © 2011 The Institute, Inc.