@article{Ocaklı2021b,

title = {Making and unmaking gold as a resource. Resistant socionatures in Maidan, Kyrgyzstan},

author = {Beril Ocaklı and Jörg Niewöhner},

url = {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359510612_Making_and_unmaking_gold_as_a_resource_Resistant_socionatures_in_Maidan_Kyrgyzstan},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.03.015},

year  = {2022},

date = {2022-04-01},

urldate = {2021-12-01},

journal = {Geoforum},

volume = {131},

pages = {151-162},

abstract = {In October 2013, around 200 protestors from the rural settlement Maidan in Kyrgyzstan clashed violently with the representatives of the exploration company as they brought in the first excavator to construct the mining infrastructure for the 'Shambesai' gold deposit. This paper is an attempt to understand the processes and practices that have led to this escalation and that continue to sustain Maidan's rejection of the gold mine to date. Motivated by state and corporate assertions that attribute such actions primarily to material interests, we engage this resistance to gold extractivism in sociomaterial terms trying to understand more deeply the dynamics of ordinary citizens' activism. Based on multi-stage interdisciplinary research, we trace and reconstruct the socionatural conditions and practices that have culminated in Maidan's decade-long struggle to unmake gold as a resource on their territory. Focusing on resource materialities, their valuations and governance, we present an historico-geographical analysis of making and unmaking of a resource frontier. Against the backdrop of the extractive order that has prevailed in Kyrgyzstan over the last three decades, we understand Maidan's struggle to be a form of situated institutional experimentation for shaping meaningful and just more-than-human socionatures.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Ocaklı2021,

title = {Taking the discourse seriously: Rational self-interest and resistance to mining in Kyrgyzstan},

author = {Beril Ocaklı and Tobias Krueger and Marco A. Janssen and Ulan Kasymov},

editor = {Ocaklı, Beril, Tobias Krueger, Marco A. Janssen, and Ulan Kasymov. 2021. "" Ecological Economics 189:107177. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107177.



},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107177},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-08-01},

journal = {Ecological Economics},

volume = {189},

number = {107177},

abstract = {-- preprint available form the lead author upon request --



Faced with mounting resistance against mining, neoliberal governance resorts to polarising strategies that delegitimise the heterogenous positions people hold regarding mining. In this paper, we contrast and complicate these dichotomies with the lived experiences on the ground in Kyrgyzstan. We focus on the ‘Taldy-Bulak Levoberezhny’ gold mine near the town of Orlovka that has been lauded by the state and business community as a paragon of company-community ‘cooperation’. We question how the gold mine has come to be an exemplary case of cooperation in a conflict-rife sector. Based on behavioural experiments, surveys, and in-depth inquiry, we follow and unpack entanglements of valuations, discourses and practices that have repackaged Orlovka from a former Soviet mining town in depression into a putative model of progress. Our interdisciplinary account unravels the contradictory processes of re/making extractive frontiers and managing resistance to extractivist expansion that interweave neoliberal practices with nationalist discourses. Beneath the discourses praising Orlovka, we find a community that has never stopped resisting despite consenting to the gold mine. The extractive entanglements we unearth exemplify the diversity of exigencies and aspirations behind resisting, negotiating and/or allowing mining while attesting to the diversified portfolio of tactics that silence and delegitimise these life concerns.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Ocaklı2020,

title = {Shades of Conflict in Kyrgyzstan: National Actor Perceptions and Behaviour in Mining},

author = {Beril Ocaklı and Tobias Krüger and Jörg Niewöhner},

doi = {http://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.988},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-02-20},

journal = {International Journal of the Commons},

volume = {14},

number = {1},

pages = {191-207},

abstract = {Confronted with advancing resource frontiers, local communities increasingly rely on conflict to re-establish order in the face of problematic interdependences brought about by mining transactions. This article captures the interactions at national level that engender these interdependences in the first place. We explore how national actor groups influence emerging regularities of behaviour in mining through the example of gold mining in Kyrgyzstan – a fragile resource-dependent country divided by mining conflicts. For the analysis of these emerging patterns of behaviour, we focus on shared beliefs and norms that in interaction with perceived dimensions of transactions provide motivation to act. The identified regularities of behaviour help differentiate the otherwise crude dichotomy of conflict and cooperation, pointing to shades of conflicts. Mining conflicts in Kyrgyzstan are driven by profound structural factors that are rooted in weak governance, lack of institutional trust and limited cooperation across national actor groups. Risks and costs are distributed to outgroups, threatening the local social-ecological systems and further fragmenting Kyrgyz society. If extraction continues in the current mode of governance, resource-based grievances are likely to persist in Kyrgyzstan, as mining will increasingly encroach on local ecosystems, livelihoods and cultural commons – unless the national perceptions and shared beliefs change.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}