The earthquake of 1999 in Marmara Region of Turkey affected approximately 16 million people, leaving behind thousands of deaths, injuries and material damages. Since then a number of studies on natural disasters are being conducted in Turkey and reached a consensus that another earthquake at the magnitude of 7 will hit Istanbul, causing at least 30 thousands deaths and collapse of over 50 thousand buildings. According to scientific reports, 38 percent of the buildings in Istanbul are considered dangerous and required to be reconstructed. The already accelerated urban transformation in Istanbul has taken a more radical path with the enactment of new natural disaster policies. This has resulted in a shift from the state’s responsibility for earthquake management to the citizens, who are now left up to their own devices in preparing for the expected natural disaster. At the intersection of the discussions of preparedness, uncertainty and risk, a new official discourse about the citizens has emerged: they have to be responsible, autonomous and entrepreneurial in earthquake management. Drawing from the ethnographic research conducted with people whose buildings are under danger in Istanbul, this paper will analyze the attempts of citizens’ risk management techniques. It will also discuss how the emerging state/scientific discourse governs the “present” of the society with reference to a disaster that has not happened yet.

Drawing on primary sources in Ottoman, Arabic, and English, such as governmental memoranda, consular reports, local chronicles, and travelogues, this paper analyzes the role that concepts of ‘nature’ played within the context of Ottoman imperial governance in the Province of Yemen from its establishment in 1872 to the First World War. As historians of Yemen have argued, sectarian ties, local forms of conflict resolution, and social stratification were the principal categories of knowledge through which Ottoman policy makers sought to elaborate forms of governance that the locals could accept as legitimate rule. Building on this body of scholarship, I argue that Ottoman notions not only of Yemen’s social and cultural realities but also of its natural environment shaped concepts and practices of governance in this part of the empire. Especially the mountainous areas of the northern highlands and the desert-like coastal plain epitomized what soldiers and administrators considered natural challenges to greater state control. For one, the terrain made the deployment of troops difficult and favored local efforts at limiting government interference. Further, the scarcity of water spiraled into episodes of severe drought between circa 1890 and 1910 and thus greatly limited the locals’ ability to survive as farmers. As a result, many turned to making a living in ways that threatened Ottoman state authority, namely by engaging in unregulated trade or by fighting as mercenaries for the principal opponents of the Ottoman central government, the Zaydi imams. In response, Ottoman policy makers drew up several grand irrigation schemes that were meant to turn the locals into prosperous and docile, tax-paying farmers. While in Ottoman Egypt and – to a lesser extent – Ottoman Iraq, an increasingly interventionist state did indeed re-make local ‘nature’ through irrigation projects during the long 19th century, the Ottoman state was ultimately unable and unwilling to commit the necessary resources to realize these schemes in Yemen. Instead, more limited policies were carried out that were not about re-making Yemen’s ‘nature’ but rather about minimizing the hazards it posed to Ottoman rule: Taxes were lowered and militias created in order to ease the fiscal pressure on local communities and to offer their males employment in times of scarcity. Moreover, officials authored guidebooks intended to teach their peers how to survive in a forbidding environment. In rendering more complex our understanding of ‘nature’ and Ottoman governance my paper adds to a growing literature on late Ottoman imperial rule.

This paper explores the ways in which various natural disasters (earthquake, fire, and disease) affect an urban environment on physical, economic and societal levels. Bursa, the first capital of the Ottoman Empire, was rebuilt in the wake of such disasters in the nineteenth century. The paper brings together an earthquake that hit Bursa in 1855, a fire that burnt down the Armenian neighborhood in 1863, and an epidemic in silkworms that cripled the sericulture industry in 1857. Following these calamitous events, the imperial administration initiated a reconstruction program as it identified Bursa as a pilot region for the ongoing Tanzimat (the official name for the grand Ottoman modernization project) reforms. Bursa recovered from this ‘crisis’ period through the reconstruction of its quake-ridden monuments planned in relation to a new city structure, through creating a gentrified area now inhabited by silk merchants and factory owners in place of the burnt down Armenian neighborhood, and through establishing a Silk Institute headed by an Ottoman student educated in France which adopted the Pasteurian method for raising silkworms. The recovery was made possible by the cooperation of central government bureaucrats and local elites but not always appreciated by common city dwellers. Using mainly the documents from the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives in addition to the UK National Archives and the Archives Diplomatiques of France, this paper tells the story of how these actors interacted during the post-disaster recovery. It argues that the case of Bursa in the second half of the nineteenth century shows that a crisis situation in the physical and economic urban environment may determine the pace of transformation, facilitate the implementation of novel ideas and projects, and mobilize local and governmental actors to take advantage of an extraordinary crisis moment. Thus, the experience of Bursa demonstrates that even supposedly standardized grand reform programs aiming at centralization are informed heavily by local conditions.

Previous discussions of the politics of humanitarian aid have focused on its spatial, discursive and legal arrangements. Based on interviews with aid workers in Jordan and analysis of aid policy and project documents, this paper contributes to recent interest in humanitarianism’s material and economic components (Meiches, 2015; Jacobsen, 2015). It argues that developments in humanitarian technology play a yet untold part in the politics of emergency aid. Recent work has documented important aspects of the relationship between Jordan’s political economy and international refugee aid (Turner, 2015; Lenner, 2016). For instance, international aid providers have had to accept Jordan’s preference for short-term aid, and its opposition to refugees’ long-term residence (which Western donors promote) in the context of high unemployment. This paper argues that such anxieties stemming from Jordan’s political and economic constraints have not simply limited the scope of humanitarian action in the country, but have facilitated and legitimized experimentation in humanitarian technology. The expansion of digital and biometric technologies to deliver cash and food assistance has been driven by pressures to demonstrate refugee aid’s positive impact on the Jordanian economy, producing Syrians more as consumers than rights bearers. Syrians in Jordan have come to serve as a test population for extensive digital data collection systems which allow aid agencies to track their purchases, detect ‘unusual’ behavior and calibrate refugees’ impact on the local economy. Aid organizations are embracing technological innovation to make humanitarianism more neutral and efficient. This paper scrutinizes humanitarians’ celebratory stance by a) placing current experiments in humanitarian technology within a wider history of experimentation and harm in the periphery, and b) expanding current discussions to consider the role of technological success in deepening humanitarianism’s entanglement with ‘issues of power, politics and profitability’ (Chandler in Jacobsen, 2015). In addition to extending the scope of refugees’ biopolitical management, the use of digital technology has expanded knowledge production about refugees’ everyday life, creating novel areas of intervention. Moreover, ‘success’ in a humanitarian context can confer normative and scientific legitimacy on otherwise controversial technologies and their (wider) application, making strict safeguards seem unnecessary. Donor interest in expanding digital technologies, such as biometric data in registration and monitoring, is already closely related to broader moves to securitize refugees – with major donors having voiced interest in accessing biometric refugee data (Jacobsen, 2015). This indicates the dangers of expansion and repurposing 'successful' humanitarian technologies (for instance in immigration or counter-terrorism systems).

Siege, a process of political domination aimed at isolating an entire population, represents a unique threat to healthcare provision. This study is a qualitative examination of the impacts of siege on the practices and systems that underlie health in Gaza. The siege has significant and deliberate deleterious effects on the provision of medical care, and exacerbates problems present in Gaza’s overtaxed medical services. Methods Data are from participant observation conducted over a period of eight years (2009-2017), along over 20 interviews with doctors and health administrators in the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), Governmental, and United Nations sectors. These data were analyzed using a critical political economic framework, based largely on the concepts of primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession, surplus populations, and de-development. These analytical frames are developed to interpret neoliberal trends in healthcare systems organizing and financing as they apply in the distorted social and economic context of siege. Findings The elimination of political sovereignty through the twin processes of occupation and siege are the primary impediments to the successful promotion of public health in Gaza. Findings indicate that siege impinges on effective healthcare provision through two central, intertwined processes: withholding materials and resources and undermining healthcare at a systems level. These strains pose considerable threats to healthcare. Gazan society is continually divested of any of the underpinnings necessary for a well-functioning sovereign health care infrastructure. Instead of a self-governing, independent system, this analysis of health care structures in Gaza reveals a system that is comprised of captive clients who are entirely dependent on Israel, international bodies, and the aid industry for goods and services, with no means of independent development. Interpretation This study points to the importance of foregrounding the geopolitical context for analysis of medical service delivery within conflict settings. While the siege creates a seemingly unique economic context for analysis of health care provision, critical analyses that deconstruct the depredations of neoliberalism in the health care setting provide a useful framework for analysis of the failings of the Gazan health care sector. Indeed, health care providers are in an impossible position of attempting to provide quality care without the ability to coordinate with their colleagues in other sectors, in the face of an occupying force that refuses to abide by its obligations under international law. The final analysis also highlights the importance of advocating for sovereignty and self-determination as related to health systems.