PhD Thesis
Title: The Fabric of Everyday Life: Social Reproduction, Cotton Capitalism and State Formation in Turkey
PhD Supervisor: Elisabeth Prügl
This research examines the practices of social reproduction and care that maintain life in contexts where they are deliberately restricted and people are disenfranchised, through an on-the-ground study of work and daily life that starts from southeast Turkey — a region with a history of conflict that contributes the largest share of cotton production in the country for the domestic textile and apparel industries, and for global markets. It aims to understand how these practices get shaped by globalised neoliberal markets and processes of state formation, and how the mundane needs of social reproduction, in turn, shape openings for transformation. My methods include ethnographic participant observation and interviews.
Profile
I am a doctoral candidate in International Relations/Political Science and a researcher at the Gender Centre for the project Gendering Survival from the Margins, where I study issues of gender, labour and governance in the globalized neoliberal economy. I hold degrees from the Graduate Institute in Development Studies (MA) and in Economics (BSc honours) from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy. Next to my doctoral research, I am also examining perceptions of COVID-era disruptions and workers’ demands in garment sector factories in Indonesia. In previous research, I have written about the role of women’s promotion groups in sustaining survival and solidarity around sites of natural resource extraction.
Publications
Social reproduction, women’s labour and systems of life: A conversation, with Marianna Fernandes, Asanda Benya, Saniye Dedeoğlu, Alessandra Mezzadri and Elisabeth Prügl. Dialogues in Human Geography (online 30 May 2023): 1-11.
‘Le fléau de la soude caustique’: Bauxite Refining, Social Reproduction, and the Role of Women’s Promotion Groups. In The Lives of Extraction. Identities, Communities and the Politics of Place, International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement, 15.1 (online 22 May 2023). (Eds.) Filipe Calvão, Matthew Archer and Asanda Benya. Geneva, Boston: Graduate Institute Publications, Brill-Nijhoff.
Research Interests
- Feminist global political economies of work and social reproduction
- Natural resource industries and the everyday life of households
- Rights and contestations in global supply chains and production networks