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Contested Sustainabilities : Assessing narratives of environmental change in southeastern Turkey Harris, Leila
Abstract
This article contends that there is a need to more fully assess convergences and divergences between local environmental narratives in studies of environmental change and evaluations of sustainability. While much work has established the importance of being attentive to local knowledges the possibility of evaluating points of overlap and dissonance between diverse narratives of change offers a particularly fruitful path for future work. Drawing on survey data and interviews related to irrigation-related changes in southeastern Turkey, narratives of environmental change offered by different actors are analyzed to highlight key points of overlap and tension. Specifically, there is general agreement that degradation is occurring, even as actors disagree on the causal explanations for these changes. More revealing, narratives also share a tendency to validate technoscientific approaches and continued state intervention thus revealing crucial insights related to future agroecological possibilities in this region. Apart from offering empirical insights from a context in the Middle East where social science evaluations of environmental change and sustainability remain relatively thin, the analysis also speaks to broader theoretical and methodological concerns at the intersection of debates related to local knowledges, narrative and discursive approaches to environment, and sustainability.
Item Metadata
| Title |
Contested Sustainabilities : Assessing narratives of environmental change in southeastern Turkey
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| Creator | |
| Contributor | |
| Date Issued |
2009
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| Description |
This article contends that there is a need to more fully assess convergences and divergences between local environmental narratives in studies of environmental change and evaluations of sustainability. While much work has established the importance of being attentive to local knowledges the possibility of evaluating points of overlap and dissonance between diverse narratives of change offers a particularly fruitful path for future work. Drawing on survey data and interviews related to irrigation-related changes in southeastern Turkey, narratives of environmental change offered by different actors are analyzed to highlight key points of overlap and tension. Specifically, there is general agreement that degradation is occurring, even as actors disagree on the causal explanations for these changes. More revealing, narratives also share a tendency to validate technoscientific approaches and continued state intervention thus revealing crucial insights related to future agroecological possibilities in this region. Apart from offering empirical insights from a context in the Middle East where social science evaluations of environmental change and sustainability remain relatively thin, the analysis also speaks to broader theoretical and methodological concerns at the intersection of debates related to local knowledges, narrative and discursive approaches to environment, and sustainability.
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| Subject | |
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| Type | |
| Language |
eng
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| Date Available |
2018-01-02
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| Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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| Rights |
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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| DOI |
10.14288/1.0362446
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| URI | |
| Affiliation | |
| Citation |
Harris, L. (2009). Contested Sustainabilities: Assessing Narratives of Environmental Change in Southeastern Turkey. Local Environment 14 (8): 699-720.
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| Publisher DOI |
10.1080/13549830903096452
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| Peer Review Status |
Unreviewed
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| Scholarly Level |
Faculty
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| Rights URI | |
| Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Citations and Data
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International