USSR as a hydraulic society: Wittfogel, the Aral Sea and the (post-)Soviet state (Record no. 11755)
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| fixed length control field | 02281nab a2200241 4500 |
| 005 - DATE & TIME | |
| control field | 20210617111150.0 |
| 008 - FIXED-LENGTH DATA ELEMENTS--GENERAL INFORMATION | |
| fixed length control field | 210617b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d |
| 100 ## - MAIN ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME | |
| Personal name | Wheeler, William |
| 245 ## - TITLE STATEMENT | |
| Title | USSR as a hydraulic society: Wittfogel, the Aral Sea and the (post-)Soviet state |
| 260 ## - PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC. (IMPRINT) | |
| Name of publisher, distributor, etc | Sage, |
| Date of publication, distribution, etc | 2019. |
| 300 ## - PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION | |
| Pages | Vol 37, Issue 7, 2019 (1217-1234 p.) |
| 520 ## - SUMMARY, ETC. | |
| Summary, etc | Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism is not only a scholarly exposition of the ‘hydraulic hypothesis’ but also a political polemic about Soviet ‘totalitarianism’. Wittfogel does not mention that these two themes are connected: the USSR itself may be construed as a hydraulic state, especially in the Central Asian periphery, where expansion of irrigation depended on and cemented the power of the apparatus. The environmental consequences famously include the regression of the Aral Sea. This article first explores irrigation in Soviet Central Asia: while there was a connection between the centralizing tendency of Soviet bureaucracy and water’s susceptibility to political control, environmental problems were exacerbated by relatively weak control from the centre and by material qualities of water which escaped control. I then draw on my ethnographic research in Aral’sk, Kazakhstan, to examine the role of hydraulic infrastructure in imagining the strong, centralized state. I take Wittfogel’s particular constellation of connections between water, infrastructure and power as a Cold War artefact, which I compare with accounts of Soviet hydraulic projects from inhabitants of the Aral region today. Finally, I examine post-Soviet projections of statehood through a recent dam which has restored part of the Aral and mixed local reactions to it. Hydraulic infrastructure may project centralized authority, but I show that readings of the relationship between the two depend on contextual factors. |
| 650 ## - Subject | |
| Subject | Aral Sea, |
| 650 ## - Subject | |
| Subject | Kazakhstan, |
| 650 ## - Subject | |
| Subject | infrastructure, |
| 650 ## - Subject | |
| Subject | post-Soviet, |
| 650 ## - Subject | |
| Subject | Wittfogel |
| 773 0# - HOST ITEM ENTRY | |
| Host Biblionumber | 8872 |
| Host Itemnumber | 15873 |
| Place, publisher, and date of publication | London Pion Ltd. 2010 |
| Title | Environment and planning C: |
| International Standard Serial Number | 1472-3425 |
| 856 ## - ELECTRONIC LOCATION AND ACCESS | |
| Uniform Resource Identifier | https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654418816700 |
| 942 ## - ADDED ENTRY ELEMENTS (KOHA) | |
| Koha item type | Articles |
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| 650 ## - Subject | |
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| 942 ## - ADDED ENTRY ELEMENTS (KOHA) | |
| -- | ddc |
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