Fish as Property on the Small Aral Sea, Kazakhstan

Abstract

This chapter looks at a postsocialist fishery in Kazakhstan to explore the relationship between property rules designed to manage natural resources, and practices of resource exploitation. The Aral Sea is famous for its desiccation over the second half of the twentieth century, which stemmed from Soviet irrigation projects; in 2006 a World Bank/Republic of Kazakhstan project restored a small part of the sea, and fish catches have recently recovered somewhat. In this chapter, based on ethnographic and archival research, I explore the disjuncture between formal rules and practice to address debates about the management of common-pool resources. Within the nomadic economy, in contrast to livestock, fish were not property objects; over the colonial, Soviet and post-Soviet periods, they became objects of economic value in different ways, mediating different sorts of social relations. Turning to the contemporary property regime, I suggest that formal rules matter, but in unintended ways.

Litigating for legality: Nature conservation, commercial fisheries and disputed territoriality in Ukraine's Danube Delta

“…I also conducted semistructured interviews with people involved in fishing and nature protection including two former fishing collective directors, four fishing firm directors, the Fishing Association head, 12 fishermen, two ecological inspectors, and a MENR official. This article therefore not only contributes to the still‐small critical social science literature on post‐Soviet fisheries and protected areas (e.g., Nakhshina, 2012; Richardson, 2015; Wheeler, 2017), but also demonstrates the importance of litigation as a site for analyzing how the outcomes internal state territorialization may be disputed and renegotiated, occasionally to the benefit of local resource users. Next, I provide additional background on conservation‐related territorialization and the political economy of fisheries before turning to the cases.…”

“…Fish are renewable but exhaustible (Campling et al, 2012). In contrast to people's highly personalized relations with cattle, they are “fungible and impersonal” and resist individuation (Wheeler, 2017, p. 204). Production is highly seasonal, and large gaps exist in understandings of fish behavior and ecological relationships (Mansfield and St. Martin in Sneddon, 2007, p. 174).…”

“…30–32). Like their counterparts elsewhere, after the Soviet Union's demise, Vylkove's collective and processing plant struggled with the disappearance of state support and the introduction of new property relations (Knudsen & Toje, 2008; Wheeler, 2017). When the State Fisheries Committee was placed in Ukraine's MAP, fishing collectives became subject to the same policies as land‐based agricultural ones.…”

Drying Lakes: A Review on the Applied Restoration Strategies and Health Conditions in Contiguous Areas

“…Table 1 outlines the observations made from the implementation of SYNAS-1 project. However, there now seems to be relatively frequent instances of illegal fishing during the fish breeding seasons [65,66]. This could have severe long-term effects on the sustainability of the fish population.…”

The USSR as a hydraulic society: Wittfogel, the Aral Sea and the (post-)Soviet state

“…Although new factories have opened in the town, they often stand idle: most fish are caught illegally and exported before processing (Wheeler, 2017). The economy of Aral'sk itself remains depressed -in many ways, this is a typical small post-Soviet town, peripheral to a Kazakhstani economy based largely on oil.…”