Environmentalism, Language Reclamation and Ecolinguistic Vitalities in Turkey's Hemshin
Author
Kaya Özkan, NeşeIssue Date
2023Advisor
Silverstein, Brian BSRoth-Gordon, Jennifer JRG
Metadata
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The University of Arizona.Rights
Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.Embargo
Release after 06/07/2033Abstract
This dissertation is based on 21 months of research in Turkey between 2021 and 2022 with Hemshin people in Istanbul, Artvin, and Rize in Turkey. The dissertation examines how Hemshin people (also known as Hamshens or Homshetsis), in Turkey experience and respond to language loss and the profound environmental changes in their lands. The study shows that Hemshins increasingly voice environmental concerns through a discourse of oppression which is intertwined with the loss of their language and broader assimilation of their identity. Hemshin people who did not see themselves as taking an active interest in “environmental” issues per se in the past increasingly see their identity as involving environmental sensibilities, while likewise people in the region with longstanding environmental concerns are increasingly articulating them in terms of Hemshin identity and language preservation. In the process, Hemshins realign their connections with their land, language, identity, and the Turkish state, while past relations with their human and nonhuman environments, language, and traditional knowledges and practiced are revived, re-contextualized, and revalued, furnishing new possibilities for survival. Focusing on the entanglement of language and the environment in Hemshin politics in Turkey and on the kinds of work they do in the preservation of the environment and language, the construction of socialities and identities, I argue that instead of taking language and the environment as two distinct spheres of the political, we look at how these two are mobilized and mutually constitute one another as complex, power laden entanglements emerging from specific socio-historical, political, and economic processes. An exploration of the imbrication of environmental and linguistic domains is an opportunity to better understand sociocultural, economic and environmental processes in minoritized communities worldwide from an ethnographic perspective.Type
Electronic Dissertationtext
Degree Name
Ph.D.Degree Level
doctoralDegree Program
Graduate CollegeAnthropology