From state commodification to local reproduction of vulnerability: ethnographic insights from a Risk Zone Urban Renewal Project in Turkey

Abstract

This paper explores how vulnerability is not only defined by the state but also actively reshaped through policy implementation and lived experience. Drawing on ethnographic research in Eskişehir, Turkey, I propose an analytical distinction between the ‘commodification of vulnerability’—framing risk in technoscientific and moral terms to justify intervention—and the ‘reproduction of vulnerability’—capturing the emergent precarity produced by such action. Following the 2011 Van earthquakes, Turkey's central government advanced disaster prevention as a national imperative. In 2012, Law No. 6306 was enacted to facilitate large-scale urban transformations in the name of risk prevention. Eskişehir's Metropolitan Municipality quickly adopted the ‘Renewal Law’, initiating the Risk Zone Urban Renewal Project with the stated aim of protecting lives and property. While official definitions of vulnerability centred on the structural durability of the built environment, residents of the designated area have encountered new and unanticipated vulnerabilities, ranging from housing insecurity and prolonged legal limbo to socioeconomic instability and emotional distress.