Rentier capitalism and global economic imaginaries in Central Asia

This chapter examines how the US, Russia and China have promoted and expanded rent extraction in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. While the global powers have articulated competing discourses and strategies on economic development in the region, they have largely achieved similar outcomes of rentierism. The chapter will investigate how the economic imaginaries of the US, Russia and China have been responsible for instituting and normalising various forms of rent, and will evaluate the implications of rentierism for human flourishing.