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Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia

Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia

Name: Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia
Author: Madeleine Reeves
ISBN: 9780253011411

Performing Politics

Edited by Madeleine Reeves, Johan Rasanayagam and Judith Beyer

Contributions by John Heathershaw, Eva-Marie Dubuisson, Aksana Ismailbekova, Alima Bissenova, Mateusz Laszczkowski, Ildiko Beller-Hann, Madeleine Reeves, Sarah Kendzior, Tommaso Trevisani, Morgan Yih-Yang Liu, Cynthia Werner and Kathleen Purvis-Roberts

Published by: Indiana University Press

Imprint: Indiana University Press

344 Pages, 152.00 × 229.00 mm, 16 b&w illus., 1 map

Paperback
9780253011411
Published: January 2014

£26.99

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Hardcover
9780253011404
Published: January 2014

£68.00

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Digital download
9780253011473
Published: January 2014

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise
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With fresh and provocative insights into the everyday reality of politics in post-Soviet Central Asia, this volume moves beyond commonplaces about strong and weak states to ask critical questions about how democracy, authority, and justice are understood in this important region. In conversation with current theories of state power, the contributions draw on extensive ethnographic research in settings that range from the local to the transnational, the mundane to the spectacular, to provide a unique perspective on how politics is performed in everyday life.

Introduction: Performances, Possibilities, and Practices of the Political in Central Asia Johan Rasanayagam, Judith Beyer, and Madeleine Reeves

Part I. Staging the Political
1. The Global Performance State: A Reconsideration of the Central Asian "Weak State" John Heathershaw
2. Dialogic Authority: Kazakh Aitys Poets and Their Patrons Eva-Marie Dubuisson
3. Performing Democracy: State-Making through Patronage in Kyrgyzstan Aksana Ismailbekova
4. "There is This Law..." Performing the State in the Kyrgyz Courts of Elders Judith Beyer

Part II. Political Materials, Political Fantasies
5. The Master Plan of Astana: Between the "Art of Government" and the "Art of Being Global" Alima Bissenova
6. State Building(s): Built Forms, Materiality, and the State in Astana Mateusz Laszczkowski
7. The Bulldozer State: Chinese Socialist Development in Xinjiang Ildikó Bellér-Hann
8. The Time of the Border: Contingency, Conflict and Popular Statism at the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Boundary Madeleine Reeves

Part III. Moral Positionings
9. Reclaiming Ma'naviyat: Morality, Criminality and Dissident Politics in Uzbekistan Sarah Kendzior
10. The Reshaping of Cities and Citizens in Uzbekistan: The Case of Namangan's "New Uzbeks" Tommaso Trevisani
11. Massacre Through a Kaleidoscope: Fragmented Moral Imaginaries of the State in Central Asia Morgan Liu
12. Cold War Memories and Post-Cold War Realities: The Politics of Memory and Identity in the Everyday Life of Kazakhstan's Radiation Victims Cynthia Werner and Kathleen Purvis-Roberts

Madeleine Reeves is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester and editor of Movement, Power and Place in Central Asia and Beyond: Contested Trajectories.

Johan Rasanayagam is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen and author of Islam in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan: The Morality of Experience.

Judith Beyer is Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and author of Kyrgyzstan: A Photoethnography of Talas.

Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia is the right kind of edited volume. . . . it showcases the richness and diversity of the scholarship that is being carried out at the intersection of anthropology and science. The chapters . . . speak the same conceptual language, address each other's claims, and complement each other's insights. . . . The volume is enjoyable to read and largely jargon-free, meaning that it is suitable for assigning in an undergraduate course, but it is theoretically sophisticated enough that it will serve as a valuable source for graduate research as well.
(Russian Review)
It is a rare edited volume that keeps readers moving from chapter to chapter like a single-author book, but that is precisely what Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia accomplishes.
(Central Asian Survey)

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