State Building(s): Construction work in Astana and the performed
state
This talk will discuss from a particular angle Kazakhstan's
1998 capital relocation to Astana (previously known as Tselinograd and Aqmola)
and the construction boom that followed from around 2000.
Our guest will
offer an ethnographic study of the labor of constructing a new cityscape and the
process of state-building which that labor quite literally represents. The
specific focus will be on the experiences of several individuals who moved to
Astana to participate in its development and thus pursue opportunities for
better lives and a renewed sense of meaningful subjective agency. These personal
narratives will help examine official ideology and broader patterns of social
and political transformation. In sum, this talk will interrogate the
relationships between the state, materiality, and political subjectivity. How is
the state encountered and produced through built forms and the process of
construction? How do citizens interact with official representations and
attributed meanings of building work, and what is their role in constructing and
maintaining the state? How are citizen subjectivities shaped in relation to the
state and construction? And more generally, why is it
that the materiality
of built forms provides such a powerful idiom for articulating the state, both
affirmatively and critically? This talk opens the door to a larger collaborative
project on the anthropology of politics in Central Asia.
Mateusz
Laszczkowski is a Wayne Vucinich Visiting Scholar at the Center for Russian,
East European, and Eurasian Studies, Stanford University. He received his PhD in
social anthropology from Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.
His research focuses on politics of space and place and the entanglements of
architectural and social change in Astana, the capital of
Kazakhstan.
The event will take place at SRH on Saturday May 18, at
5-7pm.
Silk Road House, 1944 University Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705
(between Milvia & Martin Luther King; enter by side door in passageway under
black Zabu Zabu awning); e-mail: silkroadhouse@yahoo.com; website: www.silkroadhouse.org; tel.:
510-981-0700.
Silk Road House events are sponsored by the Silkroad
Foundation.
