Environmental Relationalities 103
Experience is not the same as knowledge, as it is rooted in everyday reasoning and is culturally processed. As demonstrated in this chapter, experiences with the natural environment (and its pollution) are submitted to
social relations and may take considerable time until they are integrated into
the discourses of health and claims for political responsibility.
The transformation from the viloyat Ghafurov, the former military secret
zone, into a national nuclear landscape has been less a top-down process
than the redefinition of the environmental relationships by the citizens that
remained after the many Russians, Germans, and other nationalities had left
in the 1990s due to the civil war. The latter was also responsible for nuclear
waste still being treated hesitantly and with the simple goal of making things
invisible in order to remove them from public perception.
Khujand is today (just as before in the Soviet Union) directly supplied
by farmers who come to the main market in the city center. The order of
the environmental relationship regarding this primary provision seems to be
re-established. Sovkhozes have ceased to exist and therefore small farmers
have taken over the supply of the town. Chkalovsk has lost its privileges
but kept an aura of modernity. Its citizens live just as in most other towns,
dependent on small farmers. Palas is becoming the central garrison for soldiers. Regarding the mines of Tabashar, China and India received concessions to mine the nearby mountains. 58
Protest that is at most phrased through anonymous comments in Ozodi
does not warn of environmental disasters, but of a corrupt regime that may
soon lose track of money and security. 59 A nuclear research reactor, 6.6 million dollars in 2014 for rehabilitation of legacy tailings from the IAEA, and
an additional eight million from the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development to manage radioactive contaminated material, is a good deal
for the Tajik government and renders a certain degree of disclosure of the
pollution problem on the international stage beneficial.
The relationalities between urban citizens and the environment are rooted
in social and natural environmental relationships, whereas the rural is subordinated to the urban. This is not an invention of the Soviet period, but the
Soviet period has changed the quality of this relationship from agricultural
and religious interdependencies toward mining and political relationships.
Raw material was mined in different uranium plants and the more it was
moved to the urban space, the more processed it became. Uranium waste was
returned to the rural spaces, whereas the highly valuable material was loaded
on trains in the Leninabad plant and transported further to Kazakhstan and
Russia. The urban citizens continue to shape their identity in relation to their
environment in a hierarchical way. In this relationship, they integrate uranium as part of the environment and not as a danger per se. It has yet to be
researched how the new nuclear reactor and the international attention of the
nuclear waste will impact the relationship between Khujand, Chkalovsk, and
the rural environment.
Experience is not the same as knowledge, as it is rooted in everyday reasoning and is culturally processed. As demonstrated in this chapter, experiences with the natural environment (and its pollution) are submitted to
social relations and may take considerable time until they are integrated into
the discourses of health and claims for political responsibility.
The transformation from the viloyat Ghafurov, the former military secret
zone, into a national nuclear landscape has been less a top-down process
than the redefinition of the environmental relationships by the citizens that
remained after the many Russians, Germans, and other nationalities had left
in the 1990s due to the civil war. The latter was also responsible for nuclear
waste still being treated hesitantly and with the simple goal of making things
invisible in order to remove them from public perception.
Khujand is today (just as before in the Soviet Union) directly supplied
by farmers who come to the main market in the city center. The order of
the environmental relationship regarding this primary provision seems to be
re-established. Sovkhozes have ceased to exist and therefore small farmers
have taken over the supply of the town. Chkalovsk has lost its privileges
but kept an aura of modernity. Its citizens live just as in most other towns,
dependent on small farmers. Palas is becoming the central garrison for soldiers. Regarding the mines of Tabashar, China and India received concessions to mine the nearby mountains. 58
Protest that is at most phrased through anonymous comments in Ozodi
does not warn of environmental disasters, but of a corrupt regime that may
soon lose track of money and security. 59 A nuclear research reactor, 6.6 million dollars in 2014 for rehabilitation of legacy tailings from the IAEA, and
an additional eight million from the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development to manage radioactive contaminated material, is a good deal
for the Tajik government and renders a certain degree of disclosure of the
pollution problem on the international stage beneficial.
The relationalities between urban citizens and the environment are rooted
in social and natural environmental relationships, whereas the rural is subordinated to the urban. This is not an invention of the Soviet period, but the
Soviet period has changed the quality of this relationship from agricultural
and religious interdependencies toward mining and political relationships.
Raw material was mined in different uranium plants and the more it was
moved to the urban space, the more processed it became. Uranium waste was
returned to the rural spaces, whereas the highly valuable material was loaded
on trains in the Leninabad plant and transported further to Kazakhstan and
Russia. The urban citizens continue to shape their identity in relation to their
environment in a hierarchical way. In this relationship, they integrate uranium as part of the environment and not as a danger per se. It has yet to be
researched how the new nuclear reactor and the international attention of the
nuclear waste will impact the relationship between Khujand, Chkalovsk, and
the rural environment.