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Systems of accumulation have been considered mainly at the national scale, though with some attempts to widen to the international (hegemonic imperialisms, etc.). But the concept has not to date been applied, at least explicitly, to the local and regional scale. A Marxist approach to a local/regional system of accumulation would specify relatively durable patterns of class relations within a locality, in both production and the reproduction of people, relations which can be different in different localities even of the same country. This session aims to make a modest contribution towards such a theorisation. It considers three contemporary changes or transitions in local/regional systems of accumulation. These are analysed as major restructurings of the forms of capital accumulation and of reproduction of labour power, powered by class struggles.
| AUTHOR(s) | TITLE & ABSTRACT |
| Ozlem Celik | Changing Forms and Strategies of State Intervention with Respect to the Housing of the Poor in Istanbul: The Role of Mass Housing Administration |
| Istanbul has experienced fundamental spatial restructuring through large scale urban investments, gentrification and urban regeneration projects especially since 2000s when the country accelerated its integration into global capitalist dynamics. In particular, the restructuring of the built environment is being organised by a newly-created city-region authority and by the national housing agency, the Mass Housing Administration (MHA), each with newly-given strong powers. Integral to this programme are ‘regeneration’ projects organised by the MHA to redevelop low-income, high-density housing built on publicly-owned land (gecekondu) in the inner city. Such process crucially involves evicting most of the residents of the poor housing areas and relocating them to the periphery. These developments have been met with well-organised resistance by residents. The aim of this paper is to investigate the changing forms and strategies of state intervention with respect to the housing of the poor since 2000 under the effects of the ‘global city’ project for Istanbul focusing on the recent housing and urban policies led by MHA. | |
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| Ibrahim Gundogdu | Turkish Regionalization: A Cure for Economy, An Attack Against National Development or A Scalar Reflection of the Contradictions and Conflicts in Turkish Capitalism? |
| After the sharp economic-political crisis of 2000-1, Turkish capitalism has accelarated its integration with international capital through fundamental restructuring policies that have given rise to social as well as spatial changes. In this process, institutional regulations with some key international actors such as the IMF, WB and more influentially the EU have appeared as the decisive dynamics leading the country to be adapted to global capitalism. Such internationalization has recently turned into more productivist strategies among Turkish capital and capital producing in Turkey that has been reflected in some key policy papers prepared by State Planning Organization. The contemporary paradigm of regional development seems to become the keystone in this shift towards a set of industrial policies as it is formulated, and expected to develop, on the basis of construction of sub-national regional economic-political forms in a country historically being stick to nationally-formed economic and political regulations. Interestingly enough, departing from similar understanding of Turkish regionalization as a kind of policy transfer, while mainstream analyses have celebtrated it as a way of mobilizing local dynamics and improving economic development as well as local democracy, critical approaches generally consider it being designed to serve for international capital seeking to exploit new geographies and imperialist aims to prevent national development. It is within this context that domestics dynamics are either totally ignored as passive recipients shaped by international actors, or constrained to the subject of narrow ideological-political conflicts irrespective of materiality of social/class relations.
Instead this study, by drawing on a historical-geographical materialist approach, will argue that the emergence of Turkish regionalization has been rooted in class relations and dynamics of capital accumulation in Turkey, revealed in contradictory economic-political forms, and thus developed through various conflicts among social classes, political forces and institutional actors operating at different scales. Since reflecting these contradictions and tensions, Ninth Development Plan for 2007-1012 and recenty-published Medium-Term Plan for 2010-1012 as well as other key policy reports prepared by influential social actors will be specifically focused in the study. | |
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| Dr Jamie Gough | Class relations and class tensions in political-economic regionalisation: Britain and Turkey compared |
| In the last ten years, regional development agencies (RDAs) based within regions and with some autonomy from central government have been formed in both Britain and Turkey. This paper considers the commonalities between these developments in the two countries: despite the very different histories and income levels, I argue that the RDAs have been a response to similar class pressures, and embody similar class relations. In both countries, after periods of nationalist-Keynesianism in the postwar boom, sharp class struggle emerged in the 1970s, to which the bourgeoisies responded with neoliberal strategy enforced by authoritarian state measures. Central government inter-regional distribution policies were severely weakened. However, from the 1980s deep contradictions of neoliberalism became evident: neoliberalism was incapable of organising vital interdependencies amongst productive capitals, and was failing to organise reproduction of labour power useful for capital. The ruling classes, however, feared that a return to national-state regulation of these things could lead to re-politicisation of economy and welfare. The solution adopted was to set up local and then regional levels of coordination of production and reproduction. These used local/regional loyalties and, in the case of the ‘Anatolian Tiger’ industries, Islam, to construct class collaboration within the region, underpinned by ‘the need for the region to compete’. Thus mild forms of intervention and coordination became possible while avoiding class conflict and politicisation. There are major differences between regional development in the two countries, in particular the importance of regional industrial complexes (stronger in Turkey), the size of the significant industrial firms (smaller in Turkey), and the degree of unity of the bourgeoisie (more divided in Turkey). It is striking that, despite such differences, the class trajectories of regionalism have been similar. | |
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