State cotton. Exploitation of labor, environment and authoritarianism in post-colonial Uzbekistan

Abstract

This article presents a historical and anthropological analysis of some
socio-political dynamics related to cotton production in the Republic
of Uzbekistan. The goal is to analyse how labor exploitation, and
particularly the exploitation of land workers, is strictly intertwined
with specific power centralization policies and directly legitimated
by State authority, thus emerging as an institutionalized or
productive exploitation (Viti 2007:256). The article will also explore
how this exploitation is deeply connected to environmental
impoverishment. Cotton industry is the context where particular
forms of enslavement are reproduced through the use of laws and
executive power, the control of land and market prices, the
elaboration of state’s propaganda, the limitation and control of
individual liberties.