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Efe Can Gürcan (M.A. in International Studies, University of Montréal) is a PhD student in sociology at Simon Fraser University. He holds a SSHRC-Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship – Category A.



His research interests lie in the areas of Marxism, political sociology (social movements and the state), Latin America (Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina), development and food studies, and Turkish politics and society.




His works have been published in prestigious journals such as Rural Sociology, Dialectical Anthropology, Latin American Perspectives, Review of Radical Political Economics, Capital & Class, and Socialism & Democracy.

His current research involves the rise of food sovereignty movements in Latin America, the non-profit industrial complex as a main constituent of contemporary imperialism, and the analysis of class formation in Turkey under the AKP government.


List of Publications

Gürcan, Efe Can. (2013). Hugo Chávez’s unwritten testament: national democratic struggle and contradictions of socialism. Dialectical Anthropology, 37(3-4), 341-356.

Otero, Gerardo, Gabriela Pechlaner and Efe Can Gürcan. 2013. "Political Economy of “Food Security” and Trade: Uneven and Combined Dependency." Rural Sociology 78(3):263–89.

Gürcan, Efe Can. (Forthcoming in 2014). Review Essay: (Van Der Pijl K. (2012) The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class, London and New York: Verso). Review of Radical Political Economics.

Gürcan, Efe Can. Forthcoming in 2014. "Cuban Agriculture and the Four Pillars of Food Sovereignty Policies: Beyond Civil Society-Centric and Globalist Paradigms." Latin American Perspectives.

Gürcan, Efe Can. Forthcoming in 2014. "Food Sovereignty in Cuba." in Cuba in a Global Context: International Relations, Internationalism and Transnationalism, edited by C. Krull. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Gürcan, Efe Can and Efe Peker. Forthcoming in 2014. "Turkey’s Gezi Park Demonstrations of Summer 2013: A Marxian Analysis of the Political Moment." Socialism & Democracy.

Otero, Gerardo, Gabriela Pechlaner and Efe Can Gürcan. Forthcoming. "The Neoliberal Diet: Fattening Profits and People." in Routledge Handbook on Poverty in the United States, edited by M. V. d. Haymes. New York: Routledge. http://www.sfu.ca/~otero/docs/NeoliberalDietInUSRoutledge-Final.pdf

Gürcan, Efe Can. (Forthcoming in 2014). L’expérience du Parc Gezi en Turquie: critique émancipatrice et action collective. Nouveaux cahiers du socialisme(12).

Gürcan, Efe Can. 2013. "Nato’s “Globalized” Atlanticism and the Eurasian Alternative." Socialism and Democracy 27(2):154-67.

Gürcan, Efe Can and Gerardo Otero. 2013, "Critical Considerations on Collective Empowerment: Class, Civil Society and the State": Mobilizing Ideas. Retrieved June 1, 2013,  (http://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/2013/05/29/critical-considerations-on-collective-empowerment-class-civil-society-and-the-state/).

Gürcan, Efe Can. (2013). Au-delà de la critique du rôle hégémonique de l’agro-industrialisation « verte » : la nature de classe des relations alimentaires et des alternatives pour une transformation radicale. Possibles, 36(4), 33-41.

Gürcan, Efe Can. 2011. "Food Crisis and Beyond: Locating Food-Sovereign Alternatives in a Post-Neoliberal Context." Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies 26(1-2):482-96.

Gürcan, Efe Can. 2010a. "New Regionalisms and Radical Identity Formation in Latin America: Towards an “Alter-Global” Paradigm." Journal of Social Research & Policy 1(2):19-33.

Gürcan, Efe Can. 2010b. "The Evolution of Turkish Nationalism." Pp. 141-68 in Beyond Imagined Uniqueness: Nationalisms in Contemporary Perspectives edited by J. Burbick and W. Glass. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle.