Cotton, Central Asia and the New Great Game

On this episode, rural sociologist Dr. Irna Hofman explores how Tajikistan’s cotton fields illuminate shifting power dynamics in Central Asia, historically and in the present. She discusses how the Soviet Union once showcased cotton production to visiting delegations—particularly from Muslim-majority countries—as evidence of its development model. Now, as global powers, including Russia, China, and the EU, vie for influence in the region, cotton has again become a strategic commodity—used to forge political ties, secure resources, and drive infrastructure projects. Hofman highlights local communities’ active role in shaping these developments, emphasizing that rural landscapes are not simply backdrops for a “New Great Game,” but sites where broader geopolitical forces and grassroots agency intersect. Through her long-term fieldwork, she illustrates how Tajik farmers navigate and negotiate these overlapping external interests, and in doing so, reframe Central Asia’s future amidst geopolitical tensions.

Dr. Hofman specializes in agrarian and social change in Central Asia, where she has worked since 2012. She completed post-doctoral research at Oxford's Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies as part of an ERC-funded project "China, law and development." In 2019, she obtained her Ph.D. from Leiden University in the Netherlands with a dissertation focused on the political economy of agrarian transformation in Tajikistan: "Cotton, control, and continuity in disguise: The political economy of agrarian transformation in lowland Tajikistan." Her research interests span political economy, political ecology, and political sociology. In recent years, she has focused on rural labour, gender, and commodity politics. Dr. Hofman is completing a monograph based on her dissertation and post-doctoral research projects. Her research agenda for the coming years centers on the rural everyday of geopolitics, focusing on China's growing assertiveness in the global agrifood regime, shifting geographies of production, and rural labour.

Dr Irna Hofman | School of Geography and the Environment | University of Oxford

@irnahofman

Resources:

Hofman, I. (2024) Seeds of empire or seeds of friendship? The politics of the diffusion of Chinese crop seeds in Tajikistan. Journal of Agrarian Change, 24(2): e12581.

Hofman, I. (2022) Tajikistan. The people's map of global China

Hofman, I. (2021) Migration, crop diversification, and adverse incorporation: Understanding the repertoire of contention in rural Tajikistan. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 42(4): 499-518.

Hofman, I. (2021). Chinese cotton diplomacy in Tajikistan: greasing the ties by reviving the cotton economy. Research Brief.

Hofman, I. (2018). Politics or profits along the “Silk Road”: What drives Chinese farms in Tajikistan and helps them thrive? In The Geoeconomics and Geopolitics of Chinese Development and Investment in Asia, pp. 183-208. Routledge.