TY - JOUR
T1 - Taking the discourse seriously
T2 - Rational self-interest and resistance to mining in Kyrgyzstan
AU - Ocaklı, Beril
AU - Krueger, Tobias
AU - Janssen, Marco A.
AU - Kasymov, Ulan
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was made possible by the financial support from IRI THESys . IRI THESys is funded by the German Excellence Initiative . The first author also received funding from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for the visiting fellowship at the Arizona State University, USA; the behavioural experiments and survey were designed during this fellowship. We gratefully acknowledge here a great many people behind the scenes who supported us during different stages of the underlying research: in Arizona, Jennifer Fraser, Allen Lee, Dona Azizi, Calvin Pritchard, Caren Burgermeister, Applegate-Mauskopf family; in Berlin, IRI THESys colleagues, especially Marius Derenthal for the beautiful maps; in Bishkek, Almaz Ashirov, Natalia Lee, Svetlana Dzardanova, Nestana Rysbekova, Saule Aripova, Rahat Sabyrbekov, Saltanat Suleimanbekova; in Orlovka, Symbat Kabayeva, Baktybek Chancharov. We are also thankful to all the interlocutors, experiment participants and charitable organisations in Bishkek and Orlovka. Special thanks go to Orlovkans for their time and patience, especially to Senja ezhe and Akzhibek who have against all odds opened their home to us. We extend our gratitude to the handling editor Olivier Petit for his constructive steer and the anonymous reviewers, two of which have tremendously pushed us in ordering our thoughts and tightening our arguments as presented here. And finally, the first author is grateful to Florian Coppenrath for being the Kyrgyzstan-comrade-in-arms, and to Benedikt Ibele for being there, all day, every day.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2021/11
Y1 - 2021/11
N2 - Faced with mounting resistance against mining, neoliberal governance resorts to polarising strategies that delegitimise the heterogenous positions people hold regarding mining. In this paper, we contrast and complicate these dichotomies with the lived experiences on the ground in Kyrgyzstan. We focus on the ‘Taldy-Bulak Levoberezhny’ gold mine near the town of Orlovka that has been lauded by the state and business community as a paragon of company-community ‘cooperation’. We question how the gold mine has come to be an exemplary case of cooperation in a conflict-rife sector. Based on behavioural experiments, surveys, and in-depth inquiry, we follow and unpack entanglements of valuations, discourses and practices that have repackaged Orlovka from a former Soviet mining town in depression into a putative model of progress. Our interdisciplinary account unravels the contradictory processes of re/making extractive frontiers and managing resistance to extractivist expansion that interweave neoliberal practices with nationalist discourses. Beneath the discourses praising Orlovka, we find a community that has never stopped resisting despite consenting to the gold mine. The extractive entanglements we unearth exemplify the diversity of exigencies and aspirations behind resisting, negotiating and/or allowing mining while attesting to the diversified portfolio of tactics that silence and delegitimise these life concerns.
AB - Faced with mounting resistance against mining, neoliberal governance resorts to polarising strategies that delegitimise the heterogenous positions people hold regarding mining. In this paper, we contrast and complicate these dichotomies with the lived experiences on the ground in Kyrgyzstan. We focus on the ‘Taldy-Bulak Levoberezhny’ gold mine near the town of Orlovka that has been lauded by the state and business community as a paragon of company-community ‘cooperation’. We question how the gold mine has come to be an exemplary case of cooperation in a conflict-rife sector. Based on behavioural experiments, surveys, and in-depth inquiry, we follow and unpack entanglements of valuations, discourses and practices that have repackaged Orlovka from a former Soviet mining town in depression into a putative model of progress. Our interdisciplinary account unravels the contradictory processes of re/making extractive frontiers and managing resistance to extractivist expansion that interweave neoliberal practices with nationalist discourses. Beneath the discourses praising Orlovka, we find a community that has never stopped resisting despite consenting to the gold mine. The extractive entanglements we unearth exemplify the diversity of exigencies and aspirations behind resisting, negotiating and/or allowing mining while attesting to the diversified portfolio of tactics that silence and delegitimise these life concerns.
KW - Central Asia
KW - Gold mining
KW - Neoliberal extractivism
KW - Orlovka
KW - Resistance
KW - Socio-ecological justice
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107177
DO - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107177
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85112490154
SN - 0921-8009
VL - 189
JO - Ecological Economics
JF - Ecological Economics
M1 - 107177
ER -