ABSTRACT
People who live in cotton-growing villages in Uzbekistan, adjoining enormous cotton farm fields, continue to plant and harvest “white gold” in ways similar to ongoing practices of the last 100 years. Until very recently-the past fifteen years or so-Uzbek villages, extending from the humid Ferghana Valley in the east to the arid lands of Khorezm in the west, existed almost as self-contained and self-maintained units of production and economy. In keeping with a model developed by the Soviet Union from the 1920s onward, rural places were developed as they increased their range of basic consumer goods, used technological innovations, and offered new educational, entertainment, and other leisure facilities and activities that reflected urban aspects and tastes.
