‘Bringing lights to the yurts’: Visions of future and belonging surrounding pastures and hydropower in Kyrgyzstan

Drawing on everyday use patterns and poetry from the Toktogul valley, this article compares notions of future and belonging about two sites that embody visions of what Kyrgyzstan ought to be: hydroelectric dams and mountain pastures. There is no simple equation between hydroelectric dams and ‘modernity’, mountain pastures and ‘tradition’. The dams are viewed as a source of future wealth but also create potential liabilities, while renewed intensive use of mountain pastures arose through privatization usually described as ‘modernizing’. Both sites formally constitute state property, but ‘belong’ to citizens in entirely different ways, with government actors monopolizing access to dams while non- ethnic Kyrgyz are excluded from the use of highland pastures. A comparison of the use and imagination of the two places points to moments of conjunction and conflict between these visions and practices, and their political consequences in everyday access to these conceptual and material resources.