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Environment and Political Economy on the North Aral Sea, Kazakhstan

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Environment and Political Economy on the North Aral Sea, Kazakhstan Sea changes: environment and political economy on the North Aral Sea, Kazakhstan William Wheeler Department of Anthropology Goldsmiths College, University of London Submitted in fulfilment of the requirement of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 I, William Wheeler, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. All photographs and maps are, unless otherwise indicated, my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract The Aral Sea regression is globally famous as a devastating ecological disaster, though recently a dam has led to the partial restoration of the North Aral. These ecological changes have overlapped with the collapse of the USSR and resultant political-economic transformations. From ethnographic fieldwork in Aral’sk and fishing villages, and archival research, I argue that the sea’s regression and partial return cannot be analytically separated from political-economic processes of socialism and postsocialism. This study of the entanglements of environmental and political-economic change has, I suggest, implications for anthropological engagements with climate change. Chapter 1 offers narratives of Soviet irrigation policies (which caused the regression) and of the construction of a socialist fishery, arguing that similar political-economic processes drove both. Chapter 2 explores official responses to the regression, especially importing ocean fish for processing in Aral’sk, and sending fishermen to fish elsewhere in Kazakhstan. Chapters 3 and 4 explore how these practices, and their cessation after the collapse of the USSR, shape local understandings of the regression. I thus decentre the environmental disaster narrative. Part 2 examines post-Soviet projects in the region, arguing that the disaster narrative, though partial, rallied actors and mobilised projects, including the dam, which have to some extent reshaped the region. Part 3 analyses the divergent outcomes of the sea’s return today. No longer embedded in the command economy, the sea is enmeshed in new sets of relations connecting fishermen, private actors, state and markets extending as far as Germany. Catch is limited, but over-quota fishing is widespread. For some fishing villages, this has led to new-found prosperity, with extensive ritual expenditure. However, because over-quota fish cannot be sold openly, they do not reach newly-opened factories in Aral’sk, where the sea is felt to be marginal and the fishing industry figures as a symbol of corruption. 3 Table of contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................ 3 Table of contents .................................................................................................................................. 4 List of pictures and graphs ................................................................................................................... 5 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................. 7 Note on transliteration and pronunciation ............................................................................................ 9 Glossary ............................................................................................................................................. 10 Map 1: Central Asia ........................................................................................................................... 11 Map 2: North Aral Sea region. ........................................................................................................... 12 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 13 Part 1 .................................................................................................................................................. 43 Chapter 1. The Aral Sea and the modernisation of Central Asia: Cotton, water, fish .................... 44 Chapter 2. Seeing like an apparatchik: A problem of living standards and employment .............. 67 Chapter 3. Ocean fish, state socialism and nostalgia in Aral’sk .................................................... 89 Chapter 4. Change and continuity in Aral villages ...................................................................... 112 Part 2 ................................................................................................................................................ 135 Chapter 5. The Kökaral dam: post-Soviet development, statehood and governmentality ........... 136 Chapter 6. Flounder, the Danes and Aral Tenizi .......................................................................... 157 Part 3 ................................................................................................................................................ 177 Chapter 7. The social lives of fish and the drama of resource management ................................ 178 Chapter 8. Zander and change in Bögen ...................................................................................... 201 Chapter 9. Aral’sk today: fish, money, ekologiia ......................................................................... 225 Postscript: Lessons for an anthropology of global climate change .................................................. 249 Appendix: Fish catches, 1905-2014 ................................................................................................. 258 Bibliography..................................................................................................................................... 260 4 List of pictures and graphs Introduction Fig. 1: The Aral Sea from space, 1989 and 2014 .......................................................................... 13 Fig. 2: Rusting ships on the dried up seabed ................................................................................. 13 Fig. 3: The Kökaral dam ................................................................................................................ 15 Fig. 4: Fisherman casts his nets, October 2013 ............................................................................. 15 Fig. 5: Mosaic, Aral’sk station ...................................................................................................... 17 Fig. 6: View from fort above Raiym ............................................................................................. 27 Fig. 7: Warming up for a day’s fishing, January 2013 .................................................................. 30 Fig. 8: Laying nets, January 2013 ................................................................................................. 30 Chapter 1 Fig. 1: Russian fishermen, c.1900 ................................................................................................ 48 Graph 1: Area of irrigated land and water withdrawals in Central Asia, 1913-1995 ................... 50 Graph 2: Fish catches, tonnes, in whole Aral Sea (blue), of which northern Aral ....................... 53 Fig. 2: Fishing boats, 1940 ........................................................................................................... 56 Fig. 3: Ship in the ice, 1940s ........................................................................................................ 56 Fig. 4: Factory labour, Aral’sk ..................................................................................................... 58 Fig. 5: Factory labour, Aral’sk ..................................................................................................... 58 Fig. 6: Unloading from refrigerated ship, undated ....................................................................... 59 Chapter 3 Fig. 1: Aral’sk harbour, past ..................................................................................................... 94 Fig. 2: Aral’sk harbour, present ................................................................................................ 94 Fig. 3: Old fish plant, Aral’sk ................................................................................................... 95 Fig. 4: Shipyard, seen from harbour ......................................................................................... 96 Fig. 5: Stanok Lenina (Lenin’s lathe), Aral’sk shipyard .......................................................... 96 Fig. 6: Orderly modernity? Fish plant, Aral’sk, 1983 .............................................................. 97 Fig. 7: Military town, Aral’sk ................................................................................................... 98 Fig. 8: Smoking workshop, undated ......................................................................................... 104 Fig. 9: Smoking workshop, undated ......................................................................................... 104 Chapter 4 Fig. 1: Stump of post for pontoon in former harbour, Bögen ................................................. 113 Fig. 2: Zhaqsylyq with his nor camel (on the left) ................................................................. 118 Fig. 3: Fishing on the Aral, undated ....................................................................................... 126 Fig. 4: Fishing on the Aral, undated ......................................................................................
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