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Beautiful Stream, Strong Dam, Useless River: What Does Good Water Look Like?

Sun, December 9, 8:00 to 9:45am, Boston Marriott Copley Place, Floor: 4th, Grand Ballroom Salon C

Abstract

The Syr Darya is one of two major rivers in Central Asia, and traverses some of the most densely populated land in the region, the Ferghana Valley. And yet, with the sole exception of Khujand, none of the Valley’s historic towns are in sight of the river, which passes no other major population centers in its 2300 km journey to the Aral Sea. It was the river’s smaller tributaries, rather than the waters of the Syr Darya, that were mostly used for irrigation before the twentieth century. Unlike the Amu, the Syr Darya was hardly used for navigation. What value might such a river have for the population of the Syr Darya river basin? How, and in what circumstances, is the river valued as more than an amount of water? In the second half of the twentieth century, the Syr Darya acquired a succession of dams, which fundamentally altered the behavior of the river, as well its plant and animal life. But was there a comparable effect on local perceptions of the river?

In this paper, I consider official artistic and literary responses to dams on the Syr Darya, to parse out shifts in perceptions of the river during a time of radical change. In particular, I am interested in aesthetic appraisals of the river and in moral judgments regarding how humans should behave towards it, and in the use of tropes of water as dangerous or life-giving, abundant or too scarce.

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