Cultivating the Nation in Nature: Forestry and Nation-Building in Turkey.
详细信息
文摘
This dissertation is about nation-building and the emergence of a new forestry regime in modern Turkey. I employ a historical and ethnographic approach to argue that the establishment of a national forestry paradigm was a major building block in the foundation of Turkey as a young nation-state. What makes such a study of the development of forestry in Turkey significant is that it allows for the analysis of larger issues of state formation,development and subject formation. Taking as my cue the argument that both the discourses and practices of nature have much to reveal about the processes of state formation and subjectivities,I argue that ideas on forests and practices of forestry in Turkey have played a foundational role in the process of nation building. As defined by professional foresters and other intellectuals of the early Republic,forestry was a national cause,whose fate was intricately tied to the faith in development and nationalism. In that sense forests fulfilled two goals. First,they were an essential source of energy and a resource pool,which meant they were vital to the economic development of the young nation. Second,nature,more specifically,verdure was considered a sign of civilization and was associated with not just the material and economic,but also the moral,aesthetic and cultural development of the nation. To investigate these points further,I use state-making as an analytical tool to analyze the simultaneous production of a hegemonic state and the nation. I focus on how forestry functioned as a domain through which ideas of nationalism,modernity and development were inscribed within the definition of citizenship. I analyze the role of forestry in the context of nature-making,nation-building and subject formation by investigating the uses,representations and management of forests as well as the creation of forest villagers as a certain category of citizens. Although forestry was an integral part of the Turkish modernization project,it has been considered a technical issue and has been confined to forest sciences. The absence of narratives on Turkish forestry also stems from the fact that agriculture has dominated analyses of Ottoman and Turkish studies in general. I argue that the depoliticization of forestry has functioned as a governmental tool in the high-modernist project of nationalism,but has consequently engendered new forms of subjectivity to undermine the authoritarian and universalizing effects of this project. By exploring the states changing role in forests and in the lives of Turkish citizens,I trace the narratives of nationalism and nature,while also contributing to studies on the state and society.