Conclusion
Chapter 3: Methodology
3.3. Bringing Time and Space Together
The differences between the written material and the field revealed the need to focus on the complex ways people are included in the process of
gentrification as well as analysing the ‘richly heterogeneous complexities of the lived experience of marginality’ (Auyero and Jensen, 2015, p. 360). To do that, I integrate the aspect of ‘temporality’ into the analysis of the right to shelter struggle in the valley. Bahar Sakızlıoğlu (2013) mentions this need through an ethnographic analysis of displacement led by the urban transformation project in Tarlabaşı, Istanbul. She argues that the local state expanded the process of
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implementation of the project after declaring it, and this impeded effective mobilisation against displacement as people’s expectations from the project were constantly lowered and stirred. Indeed, one of the problems of previous explorations of the housing activism in the valley was the limits of approaching the struggle as static, and the people living there as immobilised.
The struggle had lasted since 2006 and was still continuing when I left the field in October, 2015. Throughout these years, the dynamics in the neighbourhood had changed radically. The collective action started with almost 3000 people whereas there were approximately 600 people left in the neighbourhood when I started my fieldwork in January, 2015. The houses in the fourth phase of the project area were almost completely demolished and started to be occupied by newcomer migrants, namely the Syrians and waste collectors. Many luxurious high-rise residential and commercial buildings had been constructed around the remaining squatter neighbourhood in the fifth phase of the project area. Moreover, the resistance in the valley seemed to lose its popularity in the news media and academia.
Within this context, rather than trying to find heroes and emphasise class solidarity in such a way that overlooks the complexities and contradictions within struggling communities, I intended to explore the inner tensions generated over the course of its 9-year history alongside the already existing differences. With an analysis of the struggle as a process, I was able to attend to the limitations of those claims while emphasising the ways rights claims have empowered oppressed groups.
I focus on the ‘interactions in a changing field’ (Desmond, 2014, p. 555) ‘from multiple and even opposing perspectives’ (p. 559) to reveal the struggles over boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. Thus, in order to avoid freezing my participants in an ‘ethnographic present’ (Burton, 1988 cited in Desmond, 2014, p. 552), I use the past tense throughout the thesis, as the field has continued to change since I left in mid-October 2015. Taking a temporal perspective, I focus on struggle and tension as well as cooperation and
coherence in the asymmetrical interactions within the squatter communities.
Alongside ethnographic study, I undertook documentary research about the historical progression of urbanisation in Ankara with regard to the
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and the construction of the built environment. I researched secondary
materials such as books, journal articles in the National Library and the library of the Middle East Technical University in Ankara and also online reports of chambers about urbanisation processes, the development of squatting, and the popular representation of the squatter communities in the mainstream printed media and scholarly works.
I also scanned online archives of mainstream newspapers to investigate the newspapers articles about the squatter settlers. I analysed some weekly municipal bulletins in Ankara to uncover the popular representation of the squatter settlers in the Dikmen Valley. To get access to the former volumes of the bulletins, I contacted the Head Office of the Chamber of Environmental Engineers in Ankara and consulted their archive. In addition to these, I
analysed the speeches of key actors of the urban transformation campaign that I accessed through scanning websites of some online and printed newspapers to uncover the ways in which gentrification was promoted and the people were drawn into it. Last, I collected photographs showing how the squatter dwellers were represented in the local and national mainstream newspapers based on these sources and other types of visual data including maps, graphics, and statistics from scholarly works about the urbanisation and urban
transformation processes in the valley and in Ankara.
By bringing time and space together through an analysis of the ethnographic data together with the historical research on the urbanisation and formation of spaces of citizenship and the official definition of (good) citizens, I aim to examine the dynamic relationship between conflict among the multiple meanings and practices that are simultaneously at play and the specific ‘mode of integration’ (Mills, 1959, p. 47) (at that particular time) of the urban regime.
Conclusion
This chapter explained how using relational ethnography and historical analysis is enabling in terms of moving beyond the cultural and economic analyses of class impact of gentrification and attending to the complexities and dynamism thereof. It outlined how taking boundaries, rather than bounded groups/places, and processes as the objects of inquiry equipped me with better tools to uncover the dynamic ways the disciplining efforts of gentrification operates are contested in multiple yet interconnected spaces. Alongside
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bringing different experiences and perspectives into view, I also critically reflected upon the limitations of my ‘relational’ ethnographic approach in prioritising the perspectives of former and current squatter dwellers.
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