Doctoral Dissertation Research: Militarized Development at the Community Level

Brown University, Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

What impact do military bases have on the social and economic life for the communities near which they are situated? Some studies have demonstrated that military investments can be critical to sustaining robust economies as well as functional and safe societies. Resources allocated for defense can create employment in military and civilian sectors, lead to scientific and technological innovations, and serve an essential public good by ensuring security at both national and international levels. Less studied is the military's role in developing the local economies and societies adjacent to where they are stationed. This project, which trains a student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, explores what role the military and civilian communities play in the production of militarized development. Further, it would broaden the participation of groups underrepresented in science, build capacity and scientific infrastructure through international scientific cooperation, and enhance public scientific understanding by broadly disseminating findings to organizations engaged in development practice. Sertac Sen, under the supervision of Dr. Matthew Gutmann of Brown University will investigate how militarized development is socially produced. The study will take place in Corlu, Turkey, which is an ideal laboratory for examining this question because the military has been playing an important role in the city's social and economic life. Not only has Corlu been home to the Fifth Army Corps of the Turkish military for a long time, but the city has also received additional troops after a failed coup attempt in 2016, as part of the government's plan to transfer military units from large Turkish metropoles to smaller Turkish cities to promote development and national security at the same time. It thus provides us with a critical comparative framework through the inclusion of ground-up examination of militarized development in real time (rather than exclusively looking at locales where military presence have long become an enduring part of civic life). The investigators will assess the reception and impacts of the military's long-standing and recently heightened presence in the city from both civilian and military perspectives. They will do so through participant observation, local archival research, and interviews with various populations, including the city's elites, Turkish and Kurdish working-class populations, active and retired military professionals, civilian defense employees, and local contractors as well as shopkeepers serving the military. Findings from this research will provide insights into the role of the military as a development actor, the state of civil-military relations after politically tumultuous events such as coup attempts, and the political economy of warfare. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.