Full Description
This volume contributes new insights to the scientific debate on post-Socialist urbanities. Based on ethnographic research in cities of Central Asia, the Caucasus and Russia, its contributions scrutinise the social production of diverse public, parochial and private spaces in conjunction with patterns of everyday encounter, identification, consumption and narration. The analyses extend from the transnational entanglements between a Dushanbe bazaar and hyper-modern Dubai to the micro-level hierarchies in a flat-sharing community in Astana. They explore competing notions of urban belonging and aesthetics in Yerevan, local perception of Central Asian Muslims in Kazan and Saint Petersburg, and more, providing a rich tapestry of academic study. Taken together, the case studies address cities as gateways to 'new worlds' (both local and global), discuss ambitions of states at taming urban landscapes, and illustrate current trends of economic, religious and other lifestyles in urban Central Asia and beyond. This book was originally published as a special issue of Central Asian Survey.
Contents
Introduction: Urban spaces and lifestyles in Central Asia and beyond: an introduction
Philipp Schröder
1. The manufacturing of Islamic lifestyles in Tajikistan through the prism of Dushanbe's bazaars
Manja Stephan-Emmrich and Abdullah Mirzoev
2. Where the whole city meets: youth, gender and consumerism in the social space of the MEGA shopping mall in Aktobe, western Kazakhstan
Philipp Frank Jäger
3. The ignoble savage in urban Yerevan
Susanne Fehlings
4. Avoidance and appropriation in Bishkek: dealing with time, space and urbanity in Kyrgyzstan's capital
Philipp Schröder
5.Experiencing liminality: housing, renting and informal tenants in Astana
Kishimjan Osmonova
6. 'Only by learning how to live together differently can we live together at all': readability and legibility of Central Asian migrants' presence in urban Russia
Emil Nasritdinov
7. Assemblages of mobility: the marshrutkas of Central Asia
Wladimir Sgibnev and Andrey Vozyanov
8. Prayer house or cultural centre? Restoring a mosque in post-socialist Armenia
Tsypylma Darieva
