War-torn Ecologies, An-Archic Fragments
Reflections from the Middle East
Ed. by Umut Yıldırım
Cultural Inquiry, 27
Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2023
War-torn Ecologies, An-Archic Fragments: Reflections from the Middle East identifies a conceptual intersection between war, affect, and ecology from the Middle East. It creates a counter archive of texts by ethnographers and artists, and enables divergent worlds to share a conversation through the crevices of mass violence across species. Delving into vital encounters with mulberry trees, wild medicinal plants, jinns, and goats, as well as bleaker experiences with toxic war materials like landmines, this volume expands an ecological sensorium that works through displacement, memory, endurance, and praxis.
Umut Yıldırım explores transnational development programmes, expert networks, and aid policies in the Armenian/Kurdish region of Turkey, with a focus on the environmental effects of forced military migration and the political and ecological mobilization war generates. She is an assistant professor of anthropology at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland.