Temptations in Ruin

Sovereign Accumulation and the Making of Post-Genocide Turkey

Alice von Bieberstein

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781512828412
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: Social Sciences

An ethnographic account of the political-economic afterlife of the Armenian genocide in present-day Turkey

Temptations in Ruin examines the political-economic afterlife of the Armenian genocide in present-day Turkey, focusing on the region of Mu? (Moush). Anthropologist Alice von Bieberstein explores how the 1915 genocide and dispossession of Armenians shaped property regimes, citizenship, and economic logics that continue to reverberate today.

By combining ethnography with historical context and diverse perspectives, Temptations in Ruin generates new insights into how past violence shapes contemporary economic practices and social relations. To tell this history, von Bieberstein introduces the concept of "sovereign accumulation" to describe the ways in which the state and other actors mobilize histories of sovereign violence for present-day economic benefit. This framework illuminates the legacy of violence and resource extraction present in such practices as urban renewal projects, treasure hunting for "Armenian gold," and heritage tourism and identifies these practices' very existence as manifestations of the economic aftermath of the genocide.

Temptations in Ruin uncovers the ways in which the genocide gave rise to a racialized property regime and a recursive movement of sovereign accumulation that builds on and re-animates the Armenian genocide as generative of wealth in the present. And it demonstrates the complex interplay between genocide denial, destruction, and valorization in post-genocide contexts. Highlighting the enduring resonance of genocide, von Bieberstein enhances our understanding of political violence's long-term impacts on society and on the economy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction. The Armenian Genocide, Sovereign Accumulation, and the Emergence of a Racialized Property Regime
• Chapter 1. Dispossession Now and Then: Recursive Frontiers in the History of Turkish State-Formation
• Chapter 2. Hunting for “Armenian Treasures”: Historia Nullius and the Speculation on Death
• Chapter 3. “My House Is My Gold”: Spectral Publics and Private Property at the Threshold of Material Heritage
• Chapter 4. Bizimkiler: Survival, Racialized Property Regimes, and Timid Fantasies of Stewardship
• Epilogue: What Remains of Property
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments