Placing Islam: Geographies of Connection in Twentieth-Century Istanbul

Abstract

Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.orgThe Fluvial Imagination CRITICAL ENVIRONMESERNTS: NATURE, SCIENCE, AND POLITICS Edited by Julie Guthman and Rebecca LaveThe Critical Environments series publishes books that explore the political forms of life and the ecologies that emerge from histories of capitalism, militarism, racism, colonialism, and more.Map 3. Map of the Union of South Africa circa 1975, showing the Bantustans. Note that not all Bantustans had been granted "independence" at that time. Dotted line shows the "conquered territories" of Lesotho. Cartography by Jon Caris and Tracy Tien, Spatial Analysis Lab at Smith College. Bantustan boundaries adapted by author from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w /index.php?curid=25392438 by Htonl. Conquered territories boundary digitized by author based on map in Lelimo (1998). Ocean bathymetry made with Natural Earth. All other administrative boundaries and city locations from ESRI Living Atlas. social activity: of imagination, of production, of reproduction. 40Above all, engineering storage requires regular reckoning with contradiction, namely the contradiction between storage and extraction. During apartheid, South Africa sought to store up workers it could tap at any moment. Industry then wanted laborers but not rights-bearing citizens. It needed them close, but wanted them far away. Industry today wants Lesotho's water, but without having to worry about the landscapes from which it issues. It demands minimal impact by livestock, but as I'll show it provides almost no long-term employment, leaving livestock production as one of the few options for rural people living in upstream catchments. South Africa's labor reserves required "upstream" mechanisms to manage their contradictions. 41 Some of these mechanisms were material in nature, while others were symbolic or social. Borders and passbooks, for example, helped regulate the flow of people, while ethnic or national identities helped to justify that regulation. The disciplining of kinship relations, too, for example by prohibiting spouses and children to accompany mineworkers, reinforced miners' status as "temporary sojourners" in white areas. 42 South Africa's water reserve requires similar upstream mechanisms. As during its labor-reserve era, the demands of storage and extraction in this reimagined apartheid infrastructure come into conflict. The contradictions generated by Lesotho's structural position as water reservoir must be managed. Over my sixteen months of ethnographic and ecological field research between 2011 and 2019, 43 I found that such management is in large part an exercise in theorizing environmental proce...