The territorialisation of water in the north-western Caucasus

Abstract

On the outskirts of stanitsa Zakubanskaya, a Kuban Cossack settlement in the Russian federal region of Krasnodar kray, local inhabitants use a spring as a source of drinking water. In 2007, a conflict arose over ownership of, and access to, this spring. Through detailed analysis of the conflict, the article explores the limits of neoliberal “accumulation by dispossession”. Four modes of appropriation are discernible here: communal labour, sacralisation, autochthony, and privatisation from within the realms of state bureaucracy. It is argued that this local conflict crystallises key features of spatial politics in north-western Caucasus that are linked to privatisation, religion, and ethno-politics.