Bengi Akbulut, PhD

Courses Taught

ENVS 620 Adv Topics in Env Assessment: Economics for Environmentalists
HENV 670 Environmental Governance
GEOG 355 Resource Analysis and Management
GEOG 380 Ecological Economics
GEOG 480 Economics for Sustainability

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Elias-Pinsonnault, S., Akbulut, B. & Laurin-Lamothe, A. (2026) Democratic Economic Planning from and for Social Reproduction: Foundations for a Postcapitalist Research Agenda. Emancipations, 4(5), 

Akbulut, B. (2026). Diverse Economies: Degrowth, Ecology and Politics. Rethinking Marxism, 37 (3), 297-305.

Akbulut, B. (2025) Biophysicality, Social Reproduction and the Limits of Renewables Capitalism. Development and Change, 54 (4-5), 729-754.

Madra, Y.M., Akbulut, B., & Adaman, F. (2025). Decolonizing development economics: A critique of the late neoclassical reason. World Development, 188. 

Akbulut, B. (2023). Critical engagements with “Climate Change as Class War”—concepts of class. Studies in Political Economy, 104(3), 174-180.

Kaul, S., Akbulut, B., Demaria, F., & Gerber, J. F. (2022). Alternatives to sustainable development: what can we learn from the pluriverse in practice?. Sustainability Science, 17(4), 1149-1158.

Akbulut, B., Dufour, M., Legault, F., Pineault, E. and Tremblay-Pepin, S. (2022) Democratic Economic Planning, Social Metabolism and the Environment. Science & Society, 86 (2), 291-313. (under the collective pen name “Planning for Entropy”)

Tekgüç, H. and Akbulut, B. (2021) A Multidimensional Approach to Gender Gap in Poverty: An Application for Turkey Feminist Economics, 28(2), 119-151. 

Adaman, F. and Akbulut, B. (2021) Erdoğan's Three-Pillared Neoliberalism: Authoritarianism, Populism, and Developmentalism. Geoforum, 124 (August), 279-289. 

Akbulut, B. (2021). Degrowth, Rethinking Marxism, 33(1), 98-110. 

Akbulut, B. and Adaman, F. (2020) Ecological Economics of Economic Democracy, Ecological Economics, 176. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106750

Akbulut, B., Adaman, F. and Arsel, M. (2020). Turkey’s Authoritarian Regime of Accumulation: Development by Dislocation, Journal of Australian Political Economy, 86, 280-303. 

Varvarousis, A., Asara, V. and Akbulut, B. (2020). Commons: A Social Outcome of the movement of the squares, Social Movement Studies, 20 (3), 292-311. 

Akbulut, B., Demaria, F., Gerber, J-F and Martinez-Alier, J. (2019). Five theses on the relationships between degrowth and the environmental justice movement (published online ahead of print 3 August, Ecological Economics (Virtual Special Issue: Theoretical and political journeys between EJ and D: what potential for an alliance?), 165. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106418

Akbulut, B. (2019). The ‘state’ of degrowth: Economic growth and the making of state hegemony in Turkey. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2(3), 513-527.

Arsel, M., Adaman, F. and Akbulut, B. (2018) Authoritarian Populism, Neoliberal Developmentalism, and Extractivism in the Countryside: The Soma Mining Disaster in Turkey, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 46(3), 514-536.

Akbulut, B., Adaman, F. and Madra, Y.M. (2015) The Decimation and the Displacement of Development Economics. Development and Change, 46 (4), 731-766.

Arsel, M., Akbulut, B. and Adaman, F. (2015) Environmentalism of the Malcontent: Anatomy of an Anti-Coal Power Plant Struggle in Turkey, Journal of Peasant Studies, 42 (2), 371-395.

Akbulut, B. (2014) Neither Poor nor Rich but “Malcontent”: An Anatomy of Contemporary Environmentalisms. Marmara University Journal of Political Sciences, 2 (1), 9-24.

Akbulut, B. (2012) Community-Based Resource Management in Turkey: ‘Je Participe, Tu Participes, Il Participe,…Ils Profitent’. Development and Change, 43 (5), 1133-1158. 

Akbulut, B. and Soylu, C.I. (2012) An Inquiry into Power and Participatory Natural Resource Management. Cambridge Journal of Economics (Special Issue on Environment, Sustainability and Heterodox Economics), 36 (5), 1143-1162. 

Edited Books

Adaman, F., Akbulut, B. and Arsel, M. (eds), 2017. Neoliberal Turkey and its Discontents: Economic Policy and the Environment in the Justice and Development Party Era. I.B. Tauris: London. 

Akbulut, B., Dufour, M., Elias-Pinsonnault, S., Laurin-Lamothe, A. and Tremblay-Pepin, S. (eds) (forthcoming). Handbook on Post-Capitalist Political Economy. Edward Elgar: Northampton, MA. 

Journal Special Issues

2022. Alternatives to sustainable development: What can we learn from Pluriverse in practice?, Sustainability Science, Special Issue (co-edited with Federico Demaria, Julien-François Gerber and Shivani Kaul).

2020. Theoretical and political journeys between environmental justice and degrowth: What potential for an alliance?, Ecological Economics, Virtual Special Issue (co-edited with Federico Demaria, Julien François-Gerber and Joan Martinez-Alier).

Book Chapters

Akbulut, B. (forthcoming) Extractivism and Ecocide under the Justice and Development Party. In Turk, N., Jorgenden, J. and Hunt, S. (eds), Ecology and Decoloniality in Rojava/North and East Syria: Ecocide, Resistance, and Reconstruction, Blooomsbury Academic Publishing. 

Akbulut, B. (2025) Political Economy in Turkey: Between Continuity and Break. In Dinç, P. and Hünler, O. S. (eds), The Republic of Turkey and Its Unresolved Issues: 100 Years and Beyond, Palgrave MacMillan: London, 267-284. 

Akbulut, B. (2024) A Feminist Degrowth for Unsettling Transition. In Lang, M., Manahan, M.A. and Bringel, B. (eds), Geopolitics of Green Colonialism: Global Justice and Ecosocial Transitions, Pluto Press: London, 194-205. 

Arsel, M., Adaman, F. and Akbulut, B (2021) Political economy of environmental conflicts in Turkey: from the Bergama resistance to the Gezi protests and beyond. In Jongerden, J. (ed), The Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Turkey, Routledge: London, 309-321. 

Adaman, F., Arsel, M. and Akbulut, B. (2020) The Political Economy of Environmental Policymaking in Turkey: A Vicious Cycle (published online ahead of print July 2020). In Tezcur, G. M. (ed), Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics, Oxford University Press: New York. DOI:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190064891.013.24

Gerber, J. F., Akbulut, B., Demaria, F., & Martínez-Alier, J. (2020) Degrowth and environmental justice: An alliance between two movements?. In Holifield, R., Chakraborty, J. and Walker, G. (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice, Routledge: London, 94-106. 

Varvarousis, A., Asara, V. and B. Akbulut (2020) The Making of New Commons in Southern Europe: Afterlives of the Movement of Squares.  In Forno, F. and Weiner, R.R. (eds), Sustainable Community Movement Organizations: Solidarity Economies and Rhizomatic Practices, Routledge: London, 57-71.

Akbulut, B. (2020) Cooperative Economies as Commons: Labor and Production in Solidarity. In Ozkan, D. and Buyuksarac, G. B. (Eds.), Commoning the City: Empirical Perspectives on Urban Ecology, Economics, and Ethics, London: Routledge,193-206.

Akbulut, B., Adaman, F. and Arsel, M. (2018) Troubled Waters of Hegemony: Consent and Contestation in Turkey’s Hydropower Landscapes. In Menga, F. and Swyngedouw, E. (eds) Water, Technology and the Nation-State. Routledge Earthscan, 96-114. 

Soylu, C.I., Akbulut, B. and Adaman, F. (2018) The Political Economy of a Conservation Plan: The Case of Uluabat Lake, Turkey. In Göcek, F. (ed) Contested Spaces in Contemporary Turkey, I.B. Tauris: London, 257-280.

Akbulut. B. (2017) Commons Against the Tide: The Project of Democratic Economy. In Adaman, F., Akbulut, B. and Arsel, M. (eds) Neoliberal Turkey and its Discontents: Economic Policy and the Environment in the Justice and Development Party Era, I.B. Tauris: London, 231-245. 

Akbulut, B., Adaman, F. and Arsel, M. (2017) The Radioactive Inertia: Deciphering Turkey’s Anti-Nuclear Movement. In Adaman, F., Akbulut, B. and Arsel, M. (eds) Neoliberal Turkey and its Discontents: Economic Policy and the Environment in the Justice and Development Party Era, I.B. Tauris: London, 175-190. 

Arsel, M., Adaman, F. and Akbulut, B. (2017) ‘A Few Environmentalists’? Interrogating The ‘Political’ in the Gezi Park. In Adaman, F., Akbulut, B. and Arsel, M. (eds) Neoliberal Turkey and its Discontents: Economic Policy and the Environment in the Justice and Development Party Era, I.B. Tauris: London, 191-206.

Akbulut, B. (2017) Commons. In Spash, C.L. (ed) The Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society.Routledge: Abingdon, 395-403.  

Akbulut, B. (2014) ‘A Few Trees’ in Gezi Park: Resisting the Spatial Politics of Neoliberalism in Turkey. In Sandberg, L. A., Bardekjian, A. & S. Butt (eds) Urban Forests, Trees, and Green Space: A Political Ecology Perspective, Earthscan/Routledge, 2014, 227-241. 

Short Essays

“Development as Injustice: An Evaluation of Justice and Development Party’s Development Strategies”, Perspectives: Political Analysis and Commentary from Turkey, 13.15, 2015 (http://tr.boell.org/de/node/2675)

“From Global Governance to Domestic Policies, They Keep ‘Missing Women’”, Perspectives: Political Analysis and Commentary from Turkey, 12.15, 2015. (http://tr.boell.org/de/2015/05/12/global-governance-domestic-policies-they-keep-missing-women)

 “Hitting the Wall: Erdoğan’s construction-based, finance-led growth regime”, (with Fikret Adaman, Yahya M. Madra and Şevket Pamuk), The Middle East in London, April-May, 2014. 

“The Unbearable Charm of Modernization: Growth Fetishism and the Making of State in Turkey” (with Fikret Adaman), Perspectives: Political Analysis and Commentary from Turkey, 5.13, 2013. (https://tr.boell.org/sites/default/files/perspectives_5_toplu_eng.pdf)

Invited Talks

Conference Presentation