National Dissemination of a Local Movement

The recent decades have witnessed the emergence of local struggles against corporate globalization. This book provides an analysis of one of these struggles that emerged in Turkey in opposition to gold-mining activities in a small town called Bergama. Analyzing the Bergama struggle within a conceptual framework developed through the articulation of the insights of mainstream Social Movement approaches within the discourse-theoretical framework of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, it demonstrates the transformation of the Bergama struggle from a local environmental campaign to a broad-based national movement. It argues that the constitution of an anti-gold mining discourse played the key role in this process by providing a political space for the articulation of a number of social demands. The book also demonstrates the consequences of this transformation for the Bergama struggle.