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Abstract

Cotton production historically played a central role in Central Asia. Under the Tsarist Russian rule and the Soviet planning economy Russian Turkestan and later Soviet republics such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were transformed into major cotton-producing regions through policies that promoted low-taxation, large-scale irrigation and cotton seed bank loans. These policies reorganized traditional rural agriculture introducing collective farms and used rural labour force to build the cotton economy. Cotton production and environmental changes as a consequence had important implications for public health in Central Asia yet it was silenced during the Soviet era. While existing research examined the socio-economic and environmental consequences of cotton farming in Central Asia, the studies which focus on the relationship between cotton agriculture and public health remain lacking. This research aims to fill in this gap by studying this relationship. The main objective of this research is to examine the relationship between cotton production and public health in Central Asia, through the example of rural Kyrgyzstan under the Soviet rule. This study adopts a medical anthropological framework to investigate the relationships between cotton production, environmental change, and public health in Soviet and post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan – namely the southern oblasts of Osh and Jalalabad which are the main regions where cotton was cultivated. Medical anthropology provides a lens to understand not only the biomedical impacts of environmental change but also the social, political, and historical contexts in which health outcomes are produced and often silenced, including the local knowledge. The methodology combines archival research, ethnographic fieldwork, oral histories, and environmental health assessment to capture the complex interplay between cotton monoculture and public health in Osh and Jalalabad.