The transformation of resource-rich countries in the International Division of Labour: ‘backward' industrialisation and relative surplus population in Uzbekistan

This article explains independent Uzbekistan’s transformation starting from its integration into the global economy as a primary commodity exporter. It argues that, in line with other resource-rich countries of Global South, this exhibited two enduring and interlinked features, namely rent-subsidised ‘backward’ industrialisation rise vast relative surplus population (RSP). First, end collective agriculture expropriated most Uzbek rural land, so rents cotton exports could subsidise industries manufacturing for domestic market. Second, these only absorb minority due to their limited (largely domestic) scale production, majority was turned RSP that struggles informal sector, including labour migrants. Third, cotton’s replacement by gold natural gas main export commodities laid basis current liberalisation. Still, Uzbekistan endures raw material exporter, hence industrialiser reservoir RSP. As such, paper problematises transition literature’s framing an example failed reform or successful developmentalism, showing instead how features development paralleled similar dynamics raw-material-exporting South.