Another way of saying enough: environmental concern and popular mobilization in Kyrgyzstan

Wooden, Amanda E.

doi:10.1080/1060586x.2013.797165

Cited by 25 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…Economic concerns came first for 31% of survey participants, followed closely by the electricity crisis for 28%. A large majority of people in every one of the seven provinces surveyed and interviewed in 2009 identified water issues -both water supply and quality issues -as the 'most important environmental problem[s]' they faced (Wooden 2013). Several interview participants said directly that energy -as experienced everyday -is equated with water in Kyrgyzstan.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From my content analysis of news stories about 'environmental protest' in 13 news sources about Kyrgyzstan from 1 December 2003 to 1 December 2007, water resource issues are a dominant theme. The two most common issues covered for all sources were water and gold, with stories about hydropower and Issyk-Kul figuring prominently (Wooden 2013).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The likely outcome will again be electricity shortage and possible power cuts during fall and winter 2014-15. The main purpose of this article is to present some average Kyrgyzstan citizens' perspectives about hydroelectricity resources before 2010, specifically how a sense of nationalism with environmental content, sometimes referred to as resource or eco-nationalism (Dawson 1996;Schwartz 2006) -in contest with Bakiev's naturalistic nationalist (Hamilton 2002) discourseled people into the streets and ultimately forced Bakiev out of the White House. In order to explore the role of contestations and blame over hydropower management in the 2010 events, I build on my previous work (Wooden 2013) to argue that mass discontent has a clear influence on political outcomes and elite behaviours. It is not enough to understand policy choices, organization of discontent and elite defection.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Kyrgyzstan's dark ages: framing and the 2010 hydroelectric revolution

Wooden

2014

Central Asian Survey

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Prior to the 2010 overthrow of Kyrgyzstan's government, there were tangible signs of popular dissatisfaction with the ruling Bakiev regime. Beginning in spring 2008, electricity shortages and forced restrictions became a daily reminder of the government's ineptitude, corruption and regional vulnerability. This article reports the results of a survey and interviews conducted in 2009-10. The results reveal how popular perceptions of energy and water supply shaped the average Kyrgyzstani's frustration with the ruling regime in the year before the revolution. The paper explores how the Bakiev administration attempted to frame the electricity crisis in nationalistic and naturalized ways, and how this framing only partly resonated and created mismatch with daily lived experiences and widespread suspicions of corruption in the hydroenergy sector. Ultimately, this mismatched framing generated collective emotions of shame and blame, creating the context for revolution.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Kyrgyzstan's dark ages: framing and the 2010 hydroelectric revolution

Wooden

2014

Central Asian Survey

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“…But this marginal politics that lies beyond centered state space is not merely local. The margins of politics may also be transnational and include offshore companies and extraterritorial jurisdictions (Cooley and Heathershaw 2017), spaces of migration (Reeves 2012), moral economies opposing neoliberalism (Sanghera and Satybaldieva 2012;Spector 2017), and social movements against extractive industries (Wooden 2013;. As Spector (2017) notes, in her study of Kyrgyzstan, growing economic and political importance of the bazaar may be understood "as confirmation of a global trend in which individuals increasingly rely on themselves as governments have become discredited as social welfare providers" (2, 31) None of these works makes their object of analysis the political regime; each analyzes politics spatially from the local and transnational margins of the state.…”

Section: Three Generations In the Study Of Post-soviet Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Playing the “Game” of Transparency and Accountability: Non-elite Politics in Kyrgyzstan’s Natural Resource Governance

Moldalieva

Heathershaw

2020

Post-Soviet Affairs

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This article demonstrates the role of non-elites in the struggle for transparency and accountability in Kyrgyzstan's mining sector. Most existing accounts foreground elite strategies and political machines in the governance of post-Soviet societies. Drawing on recent anthropological work on post-Soviet politics and applying it critically to the literature on neopatrimonialism, this article sheds light on the adoption of political game strategies by community members (non-elites) to advance their interests and challenge elite dominance within the case study's mining communities. This finding responds to recent calls to interrogate the activities of non-elites at the margins of neopatrimonial contexts. The article advances a research agenda on how practices by non-elites shape the multiple meanings and enactments of transparency and accountability by elites in natural resource governance. It also points to the need to explore how and why "communities" exert their "agency" in governing natural resources within post-Soviet contexts.

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“…In these theoretical discourses, the local scale is subordinate to the national scale, with local people's actions dictated by political elites. Recent scholarship on anti-mining social movements in Mongolia [9,21] and Kyrgyzstan [22,23] has attempted to offset the supremacy of the state as the preeminent scale of analysis. This work highlights local communities' concerns about the environmental impacts of infrastructure projects, especially risks to water supply in this arid region.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dirty Water, Muddied Politics: Hybridisation of Local and National Opposition to Kumtor Mine, Kyrgyzstan

Horrocks-Taylor

2018

Land

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From a Mongolian 'super mine' to China's One Belt One Road, rapid infrastructural development is reforging Central Asia as an economic pivot of the future. Such development offers enticing economic benefits, but threatens fragile environments and local livelihoods. Due to the weakness of the state, the emphasis will be on citizens to hold developers accountable to their social and environmental pledges. Reports of political elites influencing the demands of popular protests call into question the ability of citizens to fulfil this function. This paper examines protest authenticity in Kyrgyzstan, focusing on an environmental social movement against Kumtor gold mine. We trace the emergence and evolution of the social movement, identifying the flexible discursive and scalar strategies it uses to achieve emphasis of the local level and relevance on the national scale. The discussion focuses on how national political saliency may incentivise elite involvement with social movements. This involvement can mask the local demands of the social movement, fixing the environmental problem as a national issue. It is crucial to understand the scalar dynamics of elite-protest interaction if Central Asian civil society is to hold future infrastructural developments to account.

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Another way of saying enough: environmental concern and popular mobilization in Kyrgyzstan

Cited by 25 publications

References 68 publications

Kyrgyzstan's dark ages: framing and the 2010 hydroelectric revolution

Kyrgyzstan's dark ages: framing and the 2010 hydroelectric revolution

Playing the “Game” of Transparency and Accountability: Non-elite Politics in Kyrgyzstan’s Natural Resource Governance

Dirty Water, Muddied Politics: Hybridisation of Local and National Opposition to Kumtor Mine, Kyrgyzstan

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