''City of the Future'' (eBook)

Mateusz Laszczkowski is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, at the University of Warsaw, Poland. In 2007-2012 he conducted his doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany.

List of Maps, Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Translation

Introduction: Pathways into the ‘City of the Future’


Astana, Kazakhstan and the Global Lives of Modernist Urbanism

Anthropology’s Space

Space and Time

Theorizing the City Anthropologically

Fieldwork in the ‘City of the Future’


Chapter 1. Materializing the Future: Images and Practices


Deconstruction, Reconstruction

The Cityscape of the Future

Becoming ‘Contemporary’

The Roots of Disenchantment, and Its Limits


Chapter 2. Performing Urbanity: Migrants, the City and Collective Identification


Identities beyond Representation

Urbanity and Rurality in Kazakhstan

Migration to Astana

Migrants’ Stories


Kumano: A Pioneer Settles Down

Kirill and Gisele: Love on the Move

Bakytgul: Caught Up in Deferrals

Aynura: The Girl Who Played the Accordion

Madiyar: The Struggling Southerner



Embodying Identity


Chapter 3. Tselinograd: The Past in the ‘City of the Future’


Building Tselinograd

Nostalgia and Spatial Intimacy

Walking in Tselinograd

Tselinograd’s Glory


Chapter 4. Celebration and the City: Belonging in Public Space


What Is Public Space?

The Setting: City Squares

Public Holiday Celebrations


...in Late-Soviet Tselinograd

...in Astana



Whose Celebration, Whose City?

Public Space Reopened


Chapter 5. Fixing the Courtyard: Mundane Place-Making


Shifting Frameworks

Material Place-Making in the Dvor

Digression: Things Make a Difference

The KSK Takeover


Chapter 6. Playing with the City: ‘Encounter’ in Astana


What is ‘Encounter’?

Game Types

‘Encounter’ as Play

Play or Politics: Carnival, Stiob and ‘Encounter’

‘Encounter’s Creativity'

Creasing Space


Conclusion

References
Index