Paper short abstract:

This paper concerns itself with the resource environments of the Çoruh Valley, Turkey to examine how the moral and material revaluations of the land and the built environment by the local residents are shaped by the complex relations between different forms of resource extraction.

Paper long abstract:

This paper concerns itself with the 'resource environments' (Richardson and Weszkalnys, 2014) of the Çoruh Valley, Turkey where the planning and construction of mega-dams and small-scale hydro-electric energy projects (HEPPs), along with the extraction of minerals (gold and copper), set the ground for various material and moral revaluations of the land and the built environment. Based on ten months of fieldwork research in and around the town of Yusufeli, I draw attention to the intricate connections between these different forms of extraction projects to account for the local experiences and narratives of environmental devastation, displacement and dispossession, as well as the visions of survival and economic improvement. My paper seeks to move the discussion on resource politics beyond the contestations over isolated substances and instead frames the politicization and ethicization of resources as a relational process by which the temporal and spatial logic of each extraction project exerts an influence on the local responses given to another one.