An Anthropocene History of Central Asia

Abstract

Pipe Dreams — the late Maya Peterson’s first and sadly sole monograph — presents a history of water and power in the Anthropocene. 1 Though the Anthropocene is a less overt facet of her overall framing than questions of empire and environment in the modern history of Central Asia, I would like to suggest that an enduring contribution of this splendid book will be the rich and sophisticated account it presents about how a major world region was forcefully brought into a new geological epoch. modern transformations contesta-tions and on and minus-cule scales, and struggles over touch food to the realization me she would a blue on her book’s cover rather than its vivid red. This design choice would have mir-rored the book’s suggestion that water was even more powerful in Central Asian history than the Soviet regime.