LAND, PETROLEUM, and MORAL TRANSFORMATION in POST-SOVIET AZERBAIJAN a Dissertati
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WHAT CAN THE LOCAL TELL US ABOUT GLOBALIZATION? LAND, PETROLEUM, AND MORAL TRANSFORMATION IN POST-SOVIET AZERBAIJAN A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Sara Rafail qizi Rzayeva May 2014 2014 Sara Rafail qizi Rzayeva WHAT CAN THE LOCAL TELL US ABOUT GLOBALIZATION? LAND, PETROLEUM AND MORAL TRANSFORMATION IN POST-SOVIET AZERBAIJAN Sara Rafail qizi Rzayeva, Ph.D. Cornell University 2014 This dissertation asks how rural populations accepted and adjusted to Azerbaijan’s neoliberal restructuring under IMF guidance from a mainly agricultural Soviet economy to an urban-based petroleum exporter of the world. The answers draw a history of changing land-use patterns, livelihood strategies, and mind-sets in rural Azerbaijan, illuminating ideological aspects of what Michael Woods called “rural globalization”—of how rural places are remade with globalization. This work will show how breaking the rural resistance to the IMF-designed restructuring of post-Soviet Azerbaijan has depended on igniting hopes in the bounties of the market system, the individualization and disintegration of rural communities through land reforms, and rural migration. The spread of hopes in the market system as the just distributor of resources and as a road to prosperity through organized government efforts was a crucial first step and involved a redefinition of prosperity from long-term communal goal to immediate personal goal. Land reforms, held in hopes of self-sufficient prosperity, individualized and disintegrated rural communities, diminishing their ability to stand up against the land manipulations and enclosures that followed. Finally, rural migration was instrumental to the transformation of rural Azerbaijan, not just in easing social tensions but as a key channel through which the ideas and values of the market, specifically seeking individual material interests, travelled to the countryside and began to be accepted as normal. Rural areas’ acceptance of the neoliberal development of post-Soviet Azerbaijan rested on a profound and massive moral transformation, which furthered a specific model of individual–community relationship, and thus helped marketization succeed. Globalization has often been presented as a transnationally orchestrated process against which locales have been helpless. Yet, as this dissertation reminds, the expansion and deepening of the global market crucially rests on building wider consent to market values as legitimate guiding principles of life. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Sara Rzayeva earned her BA in International Relations from Eastern Mediterranean University in 2003. In 2004 she joined the MS/PhD program in Development Sociology at Cornell University. While pursuing her degree, Sara Rzayeva has served as a teaching assistant for the Department of Development Sociology, as a research assistant at the Polson Institute for Global Development, and as a Graduate Community Advisor for Cornell’s Graduate and Professional Housing. Rzayeva has received funding to support her research travel from the Cornell Graduate School, and from the Polson Institute for Global Development. Sara Rzayeva’s dissertation, What the Local Can Tell Us About Globalization: Land, Petroleum, and Moral Transformation in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan, was supervised by Professor Max Pfeffer. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would have never been able to finish this dissertation without the guidance of my committee members and support from family. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Max Pfeffer, for his guidance, care, patience, and for providing an excellent mentorship atmosphere for conducting and completing this research. I would like to thank Professors Valerie Bunce and Fouad Makki for their excellent literature suggestions and field research advice. I owe thanks to all the faculty in whose classes I had a chance to think about the nature of our times and methods of such thinking, developing my background to undertake this dissertation research. This research would not be possible without the support and encouragement of my family. Words cannot express how much I owe my father and mother for their time, care, all the sacrifices they made for my education, and their strong confidence in me during my dissertation research. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.........................................................................................iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.............................................................................................iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ...............................................................................................v LIST OF BOXES .........................................................................................................vii LIST OF FIGURES.....................................................................................................viii LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................iix CHAPTER 1: WHAT AZERBAIJAN CAN TELL US ABOUT GLOBALIZATION........................................................................................................ 1 Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Globalization, Neoliberalism, and the Global-Local Antinomy...............................1 History of Neoliberalism in the Post-Soviet Space ................................................10 What the Globalization Story Can and Cannot Tell Us about Azerbaijan.............13 The Rural Puzzle ....................................................................................................20 What Azerbaijan’s Story Can Tell Us about Globalization ...................................22 CHAPTER 2: ON METHODOLOGY AND SITES.................................................... 25 Local Livelihoods—Forgotten Explanation Points for Globalization....................25 Searching for Answers ...........................................................................................25 Interviews with Rural Laborers..............................................................................27 Looking for interviewees..................................................................................29 Interviews with State Officials ...............................................................................31 Open-Ended Questions...........................................................................................33 Side by Side with the Interviews............................................................................35 Choosing Sites........................................................................................................36 Local Governments in Lenkeran and Shamakhy....................................................37 Fieldnotes, Coding, and Data Analysis ..................................................................43 CHAPTER 3: HOPES .................................................................................................. 45 Selling Hopes..........................................................................................................45 From Hopes to Landowning Wage-Laborers: More Stories ..................................53 On Proletarianization in the Countryside ...............................................................58 On Choice...............................................................................................................61 Wheat Example ......................................................................................................65 Conclusion..............................................................................................................71 CHAPTER 4: COMMUNITY, INDIVIDUAL, AND LAND ..................................... 73 Land Reforms: An Overview .................................................................................73 New Property Relations: Individual Farming?.......................................................77 Land Reforms, Individualization, and the Disintegration of Village Communities 81 Lost leaders.......................................................................................................84 Community and Enclosures....................................................................................87 v Capitalocentrism, Economic Self-Interest/Gain Motive, and an Implicit Conditioner of Human Action.........................................................................91 Human Choice and Its Social Consequences .........................................................97 Human Choice and Its Social Context: The Suggested Purpose of Human Life .101 Ivanovka and Others.............................................................................................107 Community and Energy........................................................................................112 What happens when there is unity? Chukhuryurd utilities battle...................115 Conclusion............................................................................................................118 CHAPTER 5: RURAL MIGRATION AND THE BUILDING OF A MARKET SOCIETY ................................................................................................................... 119 Azerbaijan’s Rural Outmigration: Scale and Overview.......................................119 Rural Migration as a Negotiation