Des familles rurales confrontées à la dégradation de l’environnement dans les oasis d’Asie centrale : héritage soviétique et nouveaux défis

Based on ethnographies on Uzbekistan (Khorezm) and South Kazakhstan (Hungry Steppe, Syr-Daria Delta), this paper describes, contextualizes, and discusses how rural families in oases of Central Asia adapted to changing environmental conditions by increasingly relying on kinship ties. Where ecological conditions called into question the viability of old farming practices, kinship ties remained important in people’s lives when social disparities, economic insecurity, and environmental vulnerability were increasing. Sharing a common Soviet past, agriculture in these oases is now on diverging paths because of the independent states’ differing economic frameworks and policies. However, regardless of the adopted policies, environmental degradation is everywhere on the rise in irrigated agriculture. Kinship-embedded farming practices sometimes enabled rural families to better adapt to environmentally degraded contexts, but sometimes further aggravated preexisting environmental problems. Either way, kinship and family networks retained central importance in navigating growing difficulties in Central Asia’s irrigated agriculture.