About the project
How do different actors understand and practice soil repair? This PhD project attempts to answer this question by focusing on Central Asia during the Soviet period and after independence. It examines production, translation and transformation of environmental knowledge by focusing on different set of actors: Soviet science, international development organizations and local actors. Each kind of these knowledges is embedded in different traditions of understanding and valuing nature. This thesis aims to explore the differences and similarities in the ways these actors treat and understand an environmental object such as soil, focusing on a particular geographic location. This will allow to engage with the academic discussion on the role of place in production of scientific knowledge. Science tells us that knowledge is universally applicable regardless of place, yet its production is characterized by asymmetries of power relations, especially when studied “beyond North Atlantic shores” (Anderson 2015). This will be the basis of the theoretical discussion of this dissertation.
The PhD thesis is part of the “Anthropogenic Soils” project that studies how people have invented, practiced, and imagined ways of recuperating damaged and depleted soils in different parts of the globe.
Thesis supervisor
- Professor Susanne Bauer (TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo)
Commentators
- Professor Kristin Asdal (TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo)
- Associate Professor Johanna Conterio (Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo)
About the candidate
Tokhir Pallaev is a PhD candidate at the TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture at the University of Oslo. Before starting his PhD, he worked in the field of international development and cooperation and contributed to projects and research on Central Asia and countries of the former Soviet Union. He holds a master's degree in development studies from the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID) with a specialization in climate, resources, and sustainability and a B.A. in political science from the American University of Central Asia (AUCA).
How to participate
The seminar is open for everyone to join. Welcome!
The manuscript is available upon request. Please send the request to Tokhir Pallaev tokhir.pallaev@tik.uio.no.