Designing Zoöpolis — [Zoöpolis’i Tasarlamak]
PhD Dissertation, Özyeğin University, Design, Technology and Society, 2019 - 2024
Supervisor: Özlem Özkal
ABSTRACT
Based on a 5-year fieldwork (2019–2024) employing Situational Analysis informed by Constructivist Grounded Theory, this research presents a substantive theory of design for interspecies care in Istanbul’s feline interventionist arena. This arena is characterized by human interventions, designerly or otherwise, deemed a moral imperative in response to present or imminent feline events—frictions between the anthropocentric city and the feline user, implicated on a dependency-autonomy continuum. Central to this arena is a three-partite community-driven feline spatial population management (CDFSPM), including designing of cat houses, as a care-based response to the neglect of municipal veterinary departments (MVDs) and societal apathy. To contain imminent feline events foreseeable in the future, all eligible cats regardless of sex are subject to nonselective neutering as part of population control. In addition, while cats with heightened dependency transition from public space to private households during selective defelinization, human proxies actively engage in a process of refelinization by design, reshaping the urban landscape to support feline cohabitation for cats deemed independent and able. Feline non-use of cat houses discloses species script, that is, the epistemic limitations of human configuration of the animal user. Despite divergent positions regarding their functionality, cat houses not only point to Zoöpolis as a political horizon due to their symbolic function owing to their emphasis on liminal animal belonging in the city but also design a multi-species and care-based urban living here and now.
RESEARCH METHODS
Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2006), Situational Analysis (Clarke, 2005; Clarke et al., 2015)
DOCTORAL MONITORING COMMITTEE
Özlem Özkal, Supervisor
Design, Technology and Society Graduate Program
Özyeğin University
Melike Şahinol, Co-Supervisor
Human, Medicine and Society Research Cluster
Orient-Institut Istanbul, Max Weber Foundation
Ayşe Hazar Köksal, Internal Member of Doctoral Monitoring Committee
Design, Technology and Society Graduate Program Coordinator
Özyeğin University
Yekta Bakırlıoğlu, External Member of Doctoral Monitoring Committee
Senior Lecturer in Design Management & Postgraduate Director of Studies for School of Design, Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University
LIST OF SCHOLARLY OUTPUT
Below is a list of original publications I wrote between the years 2019 – 2021 as part of my dissertation research. Since I started conducting fieldwork in early 2019 and throughout the writing of my dissertation, I have had multiple opportunities to disseminate my work, some of which became separate publications. These publications are a documentation of my exploratory Grounded Theory research trajectory, where I focus on the matter from different angles and in different formats for different audiences throughout the course of my study. Data I have collected such as photographic documentations of cat houses or field-notes may appear in different publications, interpreted from a fresh perspective.
GRANTS
- İnsanın Dışında, Tasarımın Ötesinde: Sokak Hayvanları, Geçici Birleştirmeler, Tasarım Aktivizmi [Other than Human, Beyond Design: Street Animals, Temporary Assemblages, Design Activism] - 1 of 12 recipients of MAD research grant in 2019 of c.$900. (August 2019 - February 2020)
Public talk at Center for Spatial Justice.
BOOKS / MONOGRAPHS
- Taşdizen, B. (2020). Imagining a more-than-human Istanbul [İnsandan Öte Bir İstanbul Düşlemek]. Istanbul: Mekânda Adalet Derneği [Center for Spatial Justice].
BOOK CHAPTERS
- Taşdizen, B. (2020). İnsanın Dışında, Tasarımın Ötesinde: Sokak Kedileri, Geçici Birleştirmeler ve Tasarım Aktivizmi. In A. Turanlı, M. Şahinol, & A. Aydınoğlu (Eds.), Türkiye’de STS: Bilim ve Teknoloji Çalışmalarına Giriş. Istanbul: İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
- Taşdizen, B. (2021). İnsandan Öte Bir İstanbul Düşlemek: Sakat Şehrin Kedi Evleri. MAD Journal 2, 124-133.
ESSAYS
- Taşdizen, B. (2020). Knitting Unruly Kinships through Design, a World-making Assemblage. EASST Review, 39(02).
- Taşdizen, B. (2021). Feral (Im)mobilities. In İ. Burçak (Ed.), Locomotion (pp:40-48). Berlin: Well Gedacht Publishing.
INVITED TALKS
- “Together at the Same Table: An Exercise on More-Than-Human Design Research” at Working with Nonhumans in Design | Insights From The Field, organised by Koç University KUAR Design Lab, as part of UNIC project “Developing a Platform for Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing to Support More-Than-Human City Design”, 14 December 2023, hybrid.
- “Tasarım-Bakım Dolanıklıkları: Alanyazının Konuştukları”, at Poedat Gelecek Çalışmaları, 28 August 2021.
- “Tasarımı İnsan Olmayanlara Açmak: Sahanın Söyledikleri”, at Poedat Gelecek Çalışmaları, 28 August 2021.
- “Care as Design: Urban Cats and Affordance Assemblages of Istanbul”, at ITU Industrial Design, Contemporary Issues in Design by Çiğdem Kaya, 2021.
INTERVIEWS
PRESENTATIONS