This chapter looks at a postsocialist fishery in Kazakhstan to explore the relationship between property rules designed to manage natural resources, and practices of resource exploitation. The Aral Sea is famous for its desiccation over the second half of the twentieth century, which stemmed from Soviet irrigation projects; in 2006 a World Bank/Republic of Kazakhstan project restored a small part of the sea, and fish catches have recently recovered somewhat. In this chapter, based on ethnographic and archival research, I explore the disjuncture between formal rules and practice to address debates about the management of common-pool resources. Within the nomadic economy, in contrast to livestock, fish were not property objects; over the colonial, Soviet and post-Soviet periods, they became objects of economic value in different ways, mediating different sorts of social relations. Turning to the contemporary property regime, I suggest that formal rules matter, but in unintended ways.

No abstract

Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism is not only a scholarly exposition of the 'hydraulic hypothesis' but also a political polemic about Soviet 'totalitarianism'. Wittfogel does not mention that these two themes are connected: the USSR itself may be construed as a hydraulic state, especially in the Central Asian periphery, where expansion of irrigation depended on and cemented the power of the apparatus. The environmental consequences famously include the regression of the Aral Sea. This article first explores irrigation in Soviet Central Asia: while there was a connection between the centralizing tendency of Soviet bureaucracy and water's susceptibility to political control, environmental problems were exacerbated by relatively weak control from the centre and by material qualities of water which escaped control. I then draw on my ethnographic research in Aral'sk, Kazakhstan, to examine the role of hydraulic infrastructure in imagining the strong, centralized state. I take Wittfogel's particular constellation of connections between water, infrastructure and power as a Cold War artefact, which I compare with accounts of Soviet hydraulic projects from inhabitants of the Aral region today. Finally, I examine post-Soviet projections of statehood through a recent dam which has restored part of the Aral and mixed local reactions to it. Hydraulic infrastructure may project centralized authority, but I show that readings of the relationship between the two depend on contextual factors.

No abstract

The Aral Sea regression, the outcome of Soviet irrigation practices in Central Asia, is famous as one of the most serious ecological disasters of the twentieth century. This article examines Soviet policies to mitigate the sea's regression, in particular efforts to keep people in employment. I argue that property relations are intimately connected not only with the causes of environmental change but also with its effects, and explore this proposition through three case studies. First, I use archival materials to show how late Soviet bureaucrats framed the regression not as an environmental disaster but as a problem of living standards and employment, which shaped measures to address it. Secondly, I examine memories of the late Soviet period among fishermen in Aral villages, arguing that their experiences of the sea's regression were shaped both by their position within the Soviet fishery and by local understandings of property. Finally, I explore nostalgic narratives in the town of Aral'sk today, arguing that the history of environmental change is re-read through post-Soviet changes in property relations.