Full Description
Astana, the capital city of the post-Soviet Kazakhstan, has often been admired for the design and planning of its futuristic cityscape. This anthropological study of the development of the city focuses on every-day practices, official ideologies and representations alongside the memories and dreams of the city's longstanding residents and recent migrants. Critically examining a range of approaches to place and space in anthropology, geography and other disciplines, the book argues for an understanding of space as inextricably material-and-imaginary, and unceasingly dynamic - allowing for a plurality of incompatible pasts and futures materialized in spatial form.
Contents
List of Maps, Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Translation
Introduction: Pathways into the 'City of the Future'
Chapter 1. Materializing the Future: Images and Practices
Chapter 2. Performing Urbanity: Migrants, the City and Collective Identification
Chapter 3. Tselinograd: The Past in the 'City of the Future'
Chapter 4. Celebration and the City: Belonging in Public Space
Chapter 5. Fixing the Courtyard: Mundane Place-Making
Chapter 6. Playing with the City: 'Encounter' in Astana
Conclusion
References
Index
