Umut Kuruüzüm
Biographic Data
| ID | 842491 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Umut Kuruüzüm |
| GIVEN NAMES | Umut |
| FAMILY NAME | Kuruüzüm |
| SIGNATURE | KURUÜZÜM U |
| AFFILIATIONS | Istanbul Technical University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7088-1507 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 5 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 5 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Forging fragility: Capitalogenic flows and landscapes in the Middle East
This theme issue introduces the concept of capitalogenic flows to explain how ‘fragile landscapes’ are forged across , and signify, the Middle East through infrastructures of extraction, militarisation and global supply chains. Drawing on critical political ecology and Capitalocene scholarship, we show that environmental degradation in the region is not inherent but produced through historically specific circuits and spatialisations of capital. I…
Trapped Under the Orient's Night: Blind‐Sourced Child Labour in Contract Tobacco Farming
This paper examines the organisation of child labour under contract farming in Oriental tobacco production in Türkiye's Aegean region. Drawing on long‐term fieldwork between July 2022 and July 2025, it argues that the post‐2000 transition from state procurement to buyer‐driven contracting restructured not only market coordination but also household labour regimes. Taking the household as a differentiated site of gendered and generational labour m…
A plastic root of toxic survival
This paper investigates the entanglement of Syrian refugees with toxic agro-plastic waste sourced from agricultural fields along the Çukurova Delta, off the northeastern Mediterranean coast of Türkiye. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Delta over more than two years, from June 2021 to December 2023, the study documents embodied, sensory ways of knowing that arise through the circulation of agro-plastic waste, whether discarded,…
From rubble to rebuilding: Recycling scrap metal on the Iraqi Kurdistan-Isis war frontier
Since the mid-2000s, the steel recycling industry in Iraqi Kurdistan has rapidly expanded within the broader context of material destruction, state fragmentation, and the persistence of a war economy in Iraq. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a steel mill southwest of Erbil-located along the frontlines of the ISIS occupation between 2014 and 2016-this article traces the material and social afterlife of war scrap as it moves…
Alienated imagination through a mega development project in Turkey: The case of the Osman Gazi Bridge
Since the rise of the ruling Justice and Development Party in the early 2000s, Turkey has invested in several mega transport and infrastructure projects for the purposes of economic transformation, growth, and development. This article explores the impact of a recently completed mega-project—the Osman Gazi Bridge—on material change and popular imagination about the future. It claims that, while the Bridge created a colossal material change that c…
Alienated imagination through a mega development project in Turkey: The case of the Osman Gazi Bridge
Since the rise of the ruling Justice and Development Party in the early 2000s, Turkey has invested in several mega transport and infrastructure projects for the purposes of economic transformation, growth, and development. This article explores the impact of a recently completed mega-project—the Osman Gazi Bridge—on material change and popular imagination about the future. It claims that, while the Bridge created a colossal material change that c…
Alienated imagination through a mega development project in Turkey: The case of the Osman Gazi Bridge
Since the rise of the ruling Justice and Development Party in the early 2000s, Turkey has invested in several mega transport and infrastructure projects for the purposes of economic transformation, growth, and development. This article explores the impact of a recently completed mega-project—the Osman Gazi Bridge—on material change and popular imagination about the future. It claims that, while the Bridge created a colossal material change that c…
A plastic root of toxic survival
This paper investigates the entanglement of Syrian refugees with toxic agro-plastic waste sourced from agricultural fields along the Çukurova Delta, off the northeastern Mediterranean coast of Türkiye. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Delta over more than two years, from June 2021 to December 2023, the study documents embodied, sensory ways of knowing that arise through the circulation of agro-plastic waste, whether discarded,…
From rubble to rebuilding: Recycling scrap metal on the Iraqi Kurdistan-Isis war frontier
Since the mid-2000s, the steel recycling industry in Iraqi Kurdistan has rapidly expanded within the broader context of material destruction, state fragmentation, and the persistence of a war economy in Iraq. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a steel mill southwest of Erbil-located along the frontlines of the ISIS occupation between 2014 and 2016-this article traces the material and social afterlife of war scrap as it moves…
Forging fragility: Capitalogenic flows and landscapes in the Middle East
This theme issue introduces the concept of capitalogenic flows to explain how ‘fragile landscapes’ are forged across , and signify, the Middle East through infrastructures of extraction, militarisation and global supply chains. Drawing on critical political ecology and Capitalocene scholarship, we show that environmental degradation in the region is not inherent but produced through historically specific circuits and spatialisations of capital. I…
Trapped Under the Orient's Night: Blind‐Sourced Child Labour in Contract Tobacco Farming
This paper examines the organisation of child labour under contract farming in Oriental tobacco production in Türkiye's Aegean region. Drawing on long‐term fieldwork between July 2022 and July 2025, it argues that the post‐2000 transition from state procurement to buyer‐driven contracting restructured not only market coordination but also household labour regimes. Taking the household as a differentiated site of gendered and generational labour m…
Agriculture (3 works) · Sociology (2 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (2 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (1 works) · Bridge (graph theory (1 works) · Capital (architecture) (1 works) · Circulation (fluid dynamics) (1 works) · Contract farming (1 works) · Corporate governance (1 works) · Disaster Management and Resilience (1 works)