Paper short abstract:

The paper compares the use of ruined buildings in Nicosia’s Buffer Zone by the Occupy movement on the one hand and professional reconstruction experts. Gentrification emerges as a major factor in the differential reception of these initiatives.

Paper long abstract:

The paper compares initiatives to reconstruct and reuse ruined buildings in two different areas in Nicosia's Buffer Zone and analyses the impact of state intervention in thwarting and allowing different kinds of practices. The paper focuses specifically on the use of buildings by the Occupy movement in Cyprus and on the professional reconstruction of derelict buildings in a different location of the Buffer Zone. The analysis addresses gentrification as a major factor in the differential reception of these initiatives. Gramsci's differentiation between types of intellectual production, framed as 'state' and 'organic', is here being applied to approaches to the material manifestations of past conflict in the form of ruined buildings and the attempts to reclaim them as forgotten aspects of cultural heritage. The evaluation and fate of these attempts is shown to be intimately linked to understandings of property in terms of monetary values and as an aspect of sovereign power.