TY - THES ID - 136954862 TI - Not In My Backyard? : The Case of Local Environmentalists in Eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey AU - Kiyman, Fatih AU - K.U.Leuven. Faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen. Opleiding Master of Cultures and Development Studies PY - 2014 PB - Leuven K.U.Leuven. Faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen DB - UniCat UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:136954862 AB - As removed as they may be from bodies of power and bureaucratic structures of opportunity, environmental activist groups of Eastern Blacksea Region of Turkey (BS) present us cases in which marginality becomes the very characteristic that enables counter- hegemonic discourses to emerge. By leaving politically (la politique) formulated sources of legitimacy aside and lacking the means of counter-democratic scientific knowledge production, which is decidedly the rationalizing spirit of the age, environmentalists of BS have turned to something much more primordial in constructing legitimate grounds of resistance. They challenge official developmental discourses through reinserting a pre-objective nature, free from the categories of science or economy, into the political arena (le politique). And as the reference point of an autonomous nature with a right of its own, they simply prioritize the local ways of being in the nature, which happens to have ecologist aspirations of harmony and appreciation towards the preexisting order. In this regard, here I argue that these groups, present challenging alternative theses to not only the national government in the country, but also to globally hegemonic environmental discourses, which are still, to the dismay of many, marked by scientific, developmentalist, economizing views. ER -