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Article Citation - WoS: 34Citation - Scopus: 37Peasants Against Mncs and the State: the Role of the Bergama Struggle in the Institutional Construction of the Gold-Mining Field in Turkey(Sage Publications Ltd, 2009) Ozen, Sukru; Ozen, HayriyeIn this article, we argue that the emergent literature that integrates the neo-institutional and social movement theories for a better understanding of institutional change offers a partial picture concerning the roles of the state and society in institutional wars due to its preoccupation with the liberal polities prevalent in the Anglo-Saxon countries. We suggest that the macro-institutional perspective that recognizes the influences of varied polities should be introduced to this emergent literature, if it is to provide a full picture. Incorporating the macro-institutional insights into the integrative approach, we examine a struggle between a group of protesters, a multinational gold-mining company and governmental actors regarding an environmental issue in Bergama, Turkey, where a statist polity mediates worldwide currents towards the neo-liberal order. The findings indicate that the Turkish state repressed the mobilizations against the neo-liberal construction of the mining field and reinforced the existing neo-liberal logic in the mining field through introducing a new regulatory framework. On the basis of the findings, we suggest that both the trajectory and consequences of institutional wars are influenced by the kind of polity in which they take place.Article Citation - WoS: 23Citation - Scopus: 22What Makes Locals Protesters? a Discursive Analysis of Two Cases in Gold-Mining Industry in Turkey(Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd, 2017) Ozen, Hayriye; Ozen, SukruThis study addresses the question why a struggle emerges between local communities and mining MNCs. Many studies in the extant literature tend to explain the emergence of these struggles by relying on some "objective conditions" such as the characteristics of the industry, strategies of companies, features of community, and governmental policies. Drawing on Foucauldian and Laclauian insights, we argue that the analysis of such struggles should rather focus on meaning-making processes, through which each party to a struggle articulates surrounding conditions in particular ways, thereby giving shape to new meanings and identities. By comparatively examining Efemcukuru and copler goldmine cases from Turkey, in which a struggle emerges in the former but not in the latter in spite of similar conditions, we demonstrate that the emergence of struggles is mainly due to the construction of rival discourses that construct the issues of mining, environment, and development in highly different ways. We argue that already-prevalent conditions play a role in the emergence of struggles to the extent that they are employed, framed, and refrained in the rival anti-mining and pro-mining discourses. The argument goes further that the availability of anti-mining discourse when the local meaning systems are dislocated by the arrival of MNCs, as well as its popular appeal at the local level are critical in the emergence of local mobilizations against gold-mining. Finally, emphasis is put on the relational nature of struggle processes, where anti-mining and pro-mining discourses are mutually constituted and reconstituted through a constant reformulation of hegemonic strategies. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
