Environment and Society in Central Asia
Project Manager: Dr. Jeanne Féaux de la Croix
Contributors: Nurzat Sultanalieva, Dr. Flora Roberts
Across the world, there are enormous inequalities in people’s access to sweet water, with climatic change likely to further exacerbate the situation. As a group of anthropologists and archaeologists, we set out to trace people’s changing attitudes to water in Central Asia. We pursue historically-informed research on moral economies of water in a landlocked region where most agriculture depends on irrigation. We ask in what contexts water in Central Asia was and is treated as sacred, as a public or private resource (in various formats) or used to produce other resources such as electricity and cotton.