eprintid: 10136736
rev_number: 12
eprint_status: archive
userid: 639
dir: disk0/10/13/67/36
datestamp: 2021-10-19 15:49:44
lastmod: 2021-10-25 06:10:26
status_changed: 2021-10-19 15:49:44
type: book
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Wheeler, W
title: Environment and Post-Soviet Transformation in Kazakhstan’s Aral Sea Region: Sea change
ispublished: pub
keywords: anthropology, Aral Sea, Kazakhstan, fishing, ethnography, post-Soviet
note: Text © Author, 2021
Images © Author and copyright holders named in captions, 2021
This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. This licence allows you to share and adapt the work for non-commercial use providing attribution is made to the author and publisher (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work) and any changes are indicated. Wheeler, W. 2021. Environment and Post-Soviet Transformation in Kazakhstan’s Aral Sea Region: Sea changes. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800080331. Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at 
 https://creative commons.org/licenses/
abstract: The Aral Sea is well known for its devastating regression over the second half of the twentieth century, and for its recent partial restoration. Environment and Post-Soviet Transformation in Kazakhstan’s Aral Sea Region is the first book to explore what these monumental changes have meant to those living on the sea’s shores.

Following the fluctuating fortunes of the pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet fisheries, the book shows how the vast environmental changes the region has undergone cannot be disentangled from the transformations of Soviet socialism and postsocialism. This ethnographic perspective prompts a critical rethinking of the category of environmental disaster through which the region is predominantly known. Tracing how the sea’s retreat and partial return have been apprehended by diverse local actors in the former port of Aral’sk and surrounding fishing villages, as well as by scientists, bureaucrats and international development workers, William Wheeler draws out the multiple meanings environmental change acquires within different contexts. This study of how people make their lives amidst overlapping ecological and political-economic upheavals is rich in ethnographic detail that is both rooted in Soviet legacies and alive to the new transnational connections that are reshaping the region.

Offering a rigorous political ecology of Soviet socialism and after, the book is a major contribution to the nascent environmental anthropology of Central Asia. It will be of interest to environmental anthropologists, environmental historians, and scholars of all disciplines working on Central Asia and the former USSR.
date: 2021-10-25
publisher: UCL Press
official_url: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800080331
oa_status: green
full_text_type: pub
book_type: book
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
verified: verified_manual
doi: 10.14324/111.9781800080331
isbn_13: 9781800080331
full_text_status: public
series: Economic Exposures in Asia
place_of_pub: London, UK
pages: 288
citation:        Wheeler, W;         (2021)    Environment and Post-Soviet Transformation in Kazakhstan’s Aral Sea Region: Sea change.       [Book].            Economic Exposures in Asia.  UCL Press: London, UK.       Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10136736/1/9781800080331.pdf.pdf