This article advances a framework for the study of community economies as assemblages constituted and shaped by three primary dynamics: relations, resources and constraints, and processes of stabilization and destabilization. Drawing on diverse and community economies scholarship, assemblage theory and actor-network theory, we develop a framework that will contribute significantly to understandings of the emergence of community economies and the strategies that make them more resilient and sustainable. The conceptual framework is illustrated through a case study from Turkey’s Kurdish region – a women’s cooperative that remained resilient in the face of armed conflict and political violence.

No abstract

This paper explores the governance of a state-led urban renewal project in a politically contested area in the aftermath of a major armed conflict. Building on the ethnocratic regime theory, we explore the governance of the urban renewal process in the historic district of Suriçi by focusing on the political, spatial, and governmental underpinnings of displacement and dispossession in the context of the unresolved “Kurdish Question” of Turkey. We argue that this exclusionary and state-led urban renewal project is shaped around the ethnocratic state interests with limited real estate returns that aims to sanitize and dehistoricize the historic core of Diyarbakir given its political and socioeconomic significance for the Kurdish Movement. The rhetorical formation of a “renewed” historic core epitomizes the racialized governance that intensifies the race-class realities sitting at the center of the decades-old ethnic conflict in Turkey. The central government authority's use of gentrification in practice illustrates the ethnocratic regime's spatial, political, and economic repercussions for the Kurdish population as the country's largest ethnic minority. Suriçi‘s redevelopment illustrates that ethnocratic regime practices coexist with a democratic façade and militarization activates an ethnocratic urban regime. Our findings contribute to the literature on space and power by illustrating the incompleteness and paradoxical elements of settler-colonial urbanism.

Under the Democratic Autonomy project, Turkey's Kurdish Movement has pursued self‐governance since the mid‐2000s and promoted cooperatives and communal modes of production across Northern Kurdistan. Drawing upon the engagement of diverse and community economies studies with assemblage thinking, this article utilizes assemblage thinking to expand our understanding of power dynamics in community economies, and to reveal the power‐led processes involved in building and maintaining community economies. The article focuses on the case of a women's cooperative spearheaded by the Kurdish Movement, which managed to circumvent state oppression and stay in business, despite the turmoil that erupted in Northern Kurdistan after the collapse of peace negotiations between the Turkish state and the Kurdish Movement in 2015.