Risky Areas’ of Diyarbakir: Normalization of the use of counterinsurgency strategies in urban restructuring

Tas’ doctoral project, “‘Risky Areas’ of Diyarbakir: Normalization of the use of counterinsurgency strategies in urban restructuring,” is an extension of her master thesis, which examines the normalization and generalization of the counterinsurgency strategies in urban policies in other parts of Diyarbakir. With her doctoral project, Tas was awarded the sowi:docs Fellowship in 2022. Her comparative ethnographic project hypothesizes that urban destruction, forceful displacement, dispossession, and urban redevelopment as counterinsurgency strategies, which were developed and employed in the context of the exceptional urban warfare in Sur, are turning into common practices by the Turkish state to subjugate the low-income Kurdish population living in clustered spaces that are deemed dangerous – “risky” – for the state.

Land deals, residents’ voices and entangled landscapes

Diverse engagements of rural residents in Zambia with processes of large-scale land acquisition

The immense global increase in Large-Scale Land Acquisitions (LSLAs) from the early 2000s onward has been reflected in a growing body of research on land deals and/or land grabbing. However, within this literature, there is usually little attention devoted to the heterogeneity of ‘communities’ residing in areas faced with LSLAs. Residents are presented only as a homogeneous and passive ‘affected community’, which does not match the realities on the ground. Additionally, LSLAs are often studied at only one particular moment in time, treating land deals as standalone events rather than ongoing and historically embedded processes. After the initial acquisition of land, however, many rural residents are often left ‘in limbo’: LSLAs are rarely straightforward processes, projects are often abandoned or changed by investors over time. Residents constantly have to adapt and renegotiate their positions and their engagements with the LSLA projects, and many face an ongoing threat of eviction. Simultaneously, critical public attention devoted to the residents’ cases fades as time goes by. My project focuses on the ongoing realities of LSLAs in Zambia, a country which has seen a recent increase in LSLAs for agriculture, with the aim of enhancing the understanding of the heterogeneity and diversity among rural residents faced with agricultural land deals, and their engagements with LSLAs over time, within a wider contexts.

Identitarian Logics of Islamophobia, National Populism, and Nativism

Restrictive Refugee Policies in Austria and the United States

This doctoral project, “Identitarian Logics of Islamophobia, National Populism, and Nativism: Restrictive Refugee Policies in Austria and the United States,” builds and expands upon Myott's previous MA research to include “native” perspectives as well as the geographic realm of the United States. This comparative project begins with the hypothesis that certain logics transcend national borders and can at least partly explain the transnational rise in support for increasingly restrictive refugee policies. To discern these logics, this project examines these questions through two case studies and include fieldwork in Central Minnesota, USA and Vienna, Austria.

Becoming a State Actor. Prison Officer Training in Accra, Ghana

Weberian ideals of the neutrality and loyalty to the office of civil servants are globally widespread notions that often form the basis for a deficiency discourse of the civil service in the Global South. My doctoral project aims to illuminate the production of the self-understanding of state actors and the relationships actors develop with ‘the’ state in the training of Ghanaian prison staff. Focusing on the process of creating a state awareness gives an insight beyond preconceived notions and questions global (western) ideals of a ‘functioning state’. While much work has been done on the state consciousness of civil servants in the social sciences, the process of becoming a state actor has not been addressed. When looking at the question on how a unified ethos is produced, Ghana is an interesting case to study as existing research with civil servants (including my own), has shown that despite diverse affiliations (ethnic, religious, linguistic), Ghanaian civil servants have a strong commitment to the ‘good of the nation’. Because the prison is an important part/ in the centre of ‘the’ state, I look at the development of norms and values in the training of Ghanaian prison staff. The transformation process of recruits into state actors is made visible by applying long-term ethnographic research in the Prison Officer Training School (POTS) in Accra. My project combines anthropological theory to state, related debates on bureaucracy and the civil service, and prison ethnographies. It contributes to the literature on prisons by providing insight into prison staff training that has received little attention so far.

Rose-colored glasses of urban renewal: Vienna’s branding vs. doing policy

The city of Vienna, Austria, proudly positions itself as a forerunner when it comes to participatory policy in the domain of urban renewal. The city’s self-representation is lent international legitimacy through practitioners of other places looking up at Viennese policy, as well as through the most prestigious UN Habitat prize “Scroll of Honour”. My work aims to understand the relation of involved governance arrangements with inclusiveness: whom are the policy practices serving in what ways? I look at how values drive everyday practices of urban renewal through the vantage point of a public service facility endowed with participatory tasks in this context. Ironically, at times inclusion as a value held by practitioners does not drive inclusiveness. In part, barriers to inclusiveness arise from local governance arrangements but in part from larger globalized processes. Public renewal projects commonly have the goal of providing the public good of public space “to all”. However, new public goods such as transparency or decentralization sometimes get in its way.