Kaan Kubilay Aşar is a PhD candidate in Sociology and Social Anthropology. His dissertation project focuses on the politics of piecemeal urban rebuilding of Istanbul, Turkey, catalyzed by "Disaster Law, n. 6306," initially conceived as a law for rebuilding cities to be earthquake-resilient. During a year-long ethnographic fieldwork, he participated in apartment meetings, conducted studies at the offices of small-scale contractors ("müteahhit"), and analyzed the social and economic activities of some of the 300,000 contractors in Turkey. His research is based on interviews with contractors, residents, municipal officials, and activists, as well as participant observations at construction sites, contractors' offices, and municipal offices. The thesis explores how people's demands for secure and affordable housing coexist with desires and aspirations for rent-oriented and speculative development.
He uses quantitative and qualitative methods, as exemplified in his case study of gentrification in Kadıköy, Istanbul. His publication, "Protest and Taste: Socio-spatial Restructuring of Moda after Gezi Protests," examines how progressive gentrifiers might transform political memories of emancipatory social movements into practices of cultural distinction. His unpublished MA dissertation at the University of Bologna, "Powerful Artefacts: Locals' Antiquities and the Rituals of Looting in Turkey," explores questions of time and temporality. Based on travelogues, legal documents, and oral histories, this work focuses on diverse perceptions of antiquities by examining the encounters between locals, archaeologists, and officials in the late nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire.
Research Interests: urban redevelopment, time/temporality, infrastructures, disasters, and political anthropology.
