Capital, Class, and Crisis in Resource-Rich Countries: Rethinking the Transformation of the Post-Soviet Space in the Age of Climate Change

全球气候变化的影响正受到媒体越来越多的关注，后苏联时代的太空也不例外，西伯利亚僵尸大火和中亚2021年夏季干旱的消息证实了这一点。然而，尽管人们普遍认为，后苏联时代的空间对全球经济的贡献主要是原材料，但除了“资源诅咒”(Luong和Weinthal，2010)之外，关于这种生产形式与1991年以来该地区转型之间的联系的文章令人惊讶地很少，特别是考虑到非激进主义和气候变化之间的直接联系。这对乌兹别克斯坦来说尤其如此，乌兹别克斯坦是后苏联国家中研究和了解最少的国家之一(Pomfret 2000)，以及这个项目的案例研究。奖学金将使我能够将我的博士论文修改为专著和期刊文章，提出一种新的跨学科和跨部门的方法，有助于批判性地理解后苏联时代经济变化和气候危机之间的联系，特别是在乌兹别克斯坦。这将使政治经济学和发展研究的学科与后社会主义地区研究以及性别、移民和环境研究对话。此外，我将开发一个新项目，调查俄罗斯非激进主义经济与其1991-2021年转型之间的联系，着眼于劳工、性别和气候变化问题。曼彻斯特大学(Charnock博士)和西北地区社会保障司DTP(如利物浦的Penati博士、Keele的Wyman博士)可用的资源和专业知识对实现这两个目标至关重要。通过这个项目，我将扩大我在英语学术界的人脉，并以英语和俄语的视频、音频和书面媒体格式展示我的发现，以最大限度地扩大影响和影响。自20世纪90年代以来，关于后苏联空间的辩论在很大程度上未能解释该地区变化和气候危机的交叉动态。由于文学关注的是后苏联国家从苏联共产主义到西方资本主义的缺乏或不完整的“过渡”，它最终陷入了一个没有过渡和变革的“悖论”(Trevisani，2009；Ahrens and Hoen，2012；Pomfret，2019)。换句话说，人们如何解释整个地区普通民众生活水平的下降及其与气候危机的关系--自苏联时代以来，该地区的气候危机基本上没有什么变化？该项目超越了文献中的“悖论”，将劳动力的性别预产化与原材料的提取联系在一起，进而与脆弱性和对气候变化的抵抗力联系在一起。我先从初级商品生产地说起：土地。由于该地区的土地使用权被私有化，以用于出口初级商品生产，在苏联工业面临外国竞争而解体之际，大量农民人口失去了主要的生计来源。由于后者无法吸纳大多数进城找工作的人，随之而来的是广泛的预产化。我的论点有三点。首先，乌兹别克斯坦的土地非集权化导致了不稳定的非正规就业形式，包括通过大规模(男性)劳动力迁移，特别是向俄罗斯的迁移。其次，预产期表现出明显的性别特征，“留守”妇女将日益增长的非正规市场扩大为日常和季节性劳动者，同时倾向于在家庭小块土地上从事自给自足的农业，以保证家庭的再生产。第三，继续使用土地生产出口原料，日益耗尽对自给自足的粮食生产至关重要的资源(土壤肥力、水)。因此，妇女更容易受到气候变化的影响，并通过分享劳动和保护生物多样性的农业生态等方式，站在日常抵制气候变化的最前列。

The effects of climate change around the globe are receiving increasing attention in the media, and the post-Soviet space is no exception, as news about Siberia's 'zombie fires' and Central Asia's 2021 summer drought confirm. However, while it is widely acknowledged that the post-Soviet space mostly contributes raw materials to the global economy, beyond the 'resource curse' (Luong and Weinthal, 2010) surprisingly little has been written on the link between this form of production and the region's transformation since 1991, particularly given the direct link between extractivism and climate change. This is especially true of Uzbekistan, one of the least studied and understood post-Soviet countries (Pomfret 2000), and the case study of this project.The Fellowship would allow me to rework my PhD thesis into a monograph and a journal article, advancing a novel interdisciplinary and intersectional approach that contributes to a critical understanding of the linkages between economic change and the climate crisis in the post-Soviet space, specifically in Uzbekistan. This would bring the disciplines of political economy and development studies into dialogue with postsocialist area studies, as well as gender, migration, and environmental studies. Moreover, I would develop a new project that investigates the links between Russia's extractivist economy and its transformation in 1991-2021, looking at issues of labour, gender, and climate change. The resources and expertise available at The University of Manchester (Dr Charnock) and within the NWSS DTP (e.g. Dr Penati, Liverpool; Dr Wyman, Keele) would be crucial to achieve both goals. Through the project, I would expand my networks in and beyond anglophone academia and present my findings in video, audio, and written media formats in English and Russian for maximum reach and impact.Since the 1990s, the debate on the post-Soviet space has largely failed to explain the intersecting dynamics of change and climate crisis in the region. As the literature focusses on the lack of, or incomplete, 'transition' from Soviet communism to Western capitalism in the post-Soviet countries, it ends up being stuck in a 'paradox' of no transition and transformation (Trevisani, 2009; Ahrens and Hoen, 2012; Pomfret, 2019). Put differently, how can one explain the collapse in living standards for the general population and its relation to the climate crisis across a region that, in essence, has changed little since Soviet times?Moving beyond the literature's 'paradox', the project links the gendered precarisation of labour to the extraction of raw materials and, in turn, to dynamics of vulnerability and resistance to climate change. I start from the locus of primary commodity production: land. As access to land in the region was privatised to put it to use for primary commodity production for export, large peasant populations lost their main source of livelihood at a time when Soviet industry was disintegrating in the face of foreign competition. With the latter unable to absorb most of the people moving to the cities in search of employment, widespread precarisation ensued.My argument is threefold. First, land decollectivisation in Uzbekistan gave rise to precarious forms of informal employment, including via mass (male) labour migration especially to Russia. Second, precarisation exhibited clear gendered characteristics, as 'left behind' women swelled the growing informal markets as daily and seasonal labourers, while tending to subsistence agriculture in small family plots to guarantee the reproduction of their households. Third, the continuation of land use for the production of raw materials for export increasingly depletes resources (soil fertility, water) vital to subsistence food production. As such, women have been more vulnerable to climate change and at the forefront of day-to-day resistance to it via e.g. work-sharing and agroecology for biodiversity conservation.