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越来越受到媒体的关注，后苏联时代也不例外，西伯利亚“僵尸大火”和中亚2021年夏季干旱的新闻证实了这一点。然而，虽然人们普遍认为后苏联地区主要为全球经济提供原材料，但除了“资源诅咒”之外（Luong和Weinthal， 2010），令人惊讶的是，自1991年以来，关于这种生产形式与该地区转型之间的联系的文章很少，特别是考虑到采掘活动与气候变化之间的直接联系。乌兹别克斯坦尤其如此，它是研究和理解最少的后苏联国家之一（Pomfret 2000），也是本项目的案例研究。该奖学金将允许我将我的博士论文改写为专著和期刊文章，推进一种新的跨学科和交叉方法，有助于批判性地理解后苏联空间，特别是乌兹别克斯坦的经济变化与气候危机之间的联系。这将使政治经济学和发展研究学科与后社会主义地区研究以及性别、移民和环境研究进行对话。此外，我将开发一个新项目，调查俄罗斯采掘经济与其1991-2021年转型之间的联系，研究劳工、性别和气候变化问题。曼彻斯特大学（Charnock博士）和NWSS DTP内部（如Penati博士，利物浦；Wyman博士，Keele）的资源和专业知识对于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内外的网络，并以英语和俄语的视频、音频和书面媒体形式展示我的发现，以最大限度地达到和影响。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。由于文献关注的是后苏联国家缺乏或不完整的从苏联共产主义到西方资本主义的“过渡”，它最终陷入了一个没有过渡和转型的“悖论”（Trevisani, 2009； Ahrens和Hoen, 2012; Pomfret, 2019）。换句话说，如何解释自苏联时代以来基本上没有什么变化的地区，普通民众生活水平的下降及其与气候危机的关系？该项目超越了文献中的“悖论”，将劳动力的性别不稳定与原材料的开采联系起来，反过来又与脆弱性和对气候变化的抵抗力联系起来。我从初级商品生产的场所——土地说起。由于该地区的土地使用权被私有化，用于出口初级商品生产，在苏联工业面对外国竞争而崩溃之际，大量农民失去了他们的主要生计来源。由于后者无法吸收大多数前往城市寻找工作的人，随之而来的是广泛的不稳定现象。我的论点有三点。首先，乌兹别克斯坦的土地非集体化导致了不稳定的非正式就业形式，包括通过大规模（男性）劳动力移民，特别是向俄罗斯的劳动力移民。其次，不稳定表现出明显的性别特征，因为“留守”妇女在不断增长的非正式市场中充当日常和季节性劳动力，同时倾向于在小块家庭土地上从事自给农业，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维持生计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，并通过分担工作和保护生物多样性的生态农业等方式，站在日常抵抗气候变化的最前沿。

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.