Commodification and the Social Commons: Smallholder Autonomy and Rural–Urban Kinship Communalism in Turkey. (December 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Öztürk, Murat; Jongerden, Joost; Hilton, Andy
• Is Part Of: Agrarian south. Volume 3:Number 3(2014:Dec.)
• Page Start: 337
• Page End: 367
• Publication Date: 2014-12
• Subjects: Rural and agricultural commons -- commons and space -- commons and social transformation -- Turkey; Agriculture -- Economic aspects -- Southern Hemisphere -- Periodicals; Agriculture and politics -- Southern Hemisphere -- Periodicals; Agriculture -- Economic aspects -- India -- Periodicals; Agriculture and politics -- India -- Periodicals; Rural development -- Southern Hemisphere -- Periodicals; Rural development -- India -- Periodicals; 338.1
• DOI: 10.1177/2277976014560950
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2277-9760

Abstract

This article focuses on two ways in which smallholders—rural families, the peasantry—are responding to the contemporary neoliberal environment in Turkey by resisting commodification. This resistance, which takes place both by definition, insofar as smallholders refuse to enter, or properly conform to, the logic of capital, and in terms of its characteristics, values and practices of autonomy and sharing, is located in the context of two sites or structures of social commons. These comprise the maintenance of non-commodity circuits, along with the development of what may be identified as a new, dual-circuit articulation, one that involves financial inputs, particularly through engagement in labour relations, in combination with the non-commodity circuits. The latter emerges through manifold, variegated, and informal linkages structured around kin and community and enabled by mobility and migration. Thus, superseding the rural–urban division of space and going beyond capitalistic relations, these comprise a contemporary form of 'solidarity-network-based social commons'. Presented in this example from Turkey, therefore, are different ways in which smallholder farming operates as a locus of resilience for extended family and village/locality interconnectivity that offers a distance from markets, even as it utilizes them with novel forms of communally oriented autonomies in a more generalized re-spatialization that extends to the urban and goes beyond capital.