Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the attribution of value to arable land in rural Kyrgyzstan within the context of post socialist anthropological debates on property. It explores competing regimes of value clustered around ideas of kin and economic development which people employ to justify their claims to land.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will explore the changing attribution of value to arable land as enacted in a rural Central Asian context. Based on anthropological fieldwork in a village in Kyrgyzstan, it will focus on the way value is attributed to land and the way these values facilitate villagers' claims to arable land. Specifically, it will address the attribution of values to arable land which are currently emerging following the post-socialist period of land privatisation. These values cluster around two main ideas: attachment to place through a male ancestor and productivity of the land.

This paper will look at the re-inscription of kinship and social status on place which has accompanied the allocation of arable land according to lineage affiliation and subsequent processes of village re-settlement. It will also address the role of soviet farming infrastructure and personal ability to productively farm the land in creating value. It will examine the strategies used by those seeking to increase their access to arable land following the break-up of the state farm and the subsequent growing economic significance of arable land for family livelihoods. It will explore the competing discourses of kin and economic development which people employ to justify their claims to land.

It will examine how changing social realities and identities both shape and are themselves shaped by competing regimes of value attributed to arable land in post-socialist Kyrgyzstan. It will situate these processes within the discussions of property and land privatisation emerging from post-socialist anthropology.