Fisherfolk of the Steppe: Water, Resource Use, and Environmental Transformation in Kazakhstan, 1950s–Present
While Kazakhstan is commonly known as a land of herders and steppes, it has a less known identity as a country of lakes and fisherfolk. Subsistence fishing has long existed along Kazakhstan’s rivers and lakes, and industrial fisheries established during the Soviet period made it the second-largest fish producer in the USSR after Russia. This project aims to renew our understanding of Soviet projects of environmental transformation and economic development in Central Asia by inscribing the study both at the international and place-based levels. Soviet fisheries largely followed global trends of the 20th century, adopting similar chronologies and technologies. To understand the specificities of the Soviet and Kazakh contexts, I focus on the lived experiences of those directly involved in fish capture and farming. The key question is how bottom-up dynamics, together with the global circulation of knowledge and technology in fisheries, shaped the implementation and appropriation of transformative, extractive projects to develop wild fish capture and farmed fish production in Kazakhstan.