Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia: Performing Politics

Contents

Contents Note on Transliteration vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Performances, Possibilities, and Practices of the Political in Central Asia Johan Rasanayagam, Judith Beyer, and Madeleine Reeves 1 Part1.StagingthePolitical 1. The Global Performance State: A Reconsideration of the Central Asian “Weak State” John Heathershaw 29 2. Dialogic Authority: Kazakh Aitys Poets and Their Patrons Eva-Marie Dubuisson 55 3. Performing Democracy: State-Making through Patronage in Kyrgyzstan Aksana Ismailbekova 78 4. “There is this law . . .”: Performing the State in the Kyrgyz Courts of Elders Judith Beyer 99 Part2.PoliticalMaterials,PoliticalFantasies 5. The Master Plan of Astana: Between the “Art of Government” and the “Art of Being Global” Alima Bissenova 127 6. State Building(s): Built Forms, Materiality, and the State in Astana Mateusz Laszczkowski 149 7. The Bulldozer State: Chinese Socialist Development in Xinjiang Ildikó Bellér-Hann 173 8. The Time of the Border: Contingency, Conflict, and Popular Statism at the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Boundary Madeleine Reeves 198 vi Contents Part3.MoralPositionings 9. Reclaiming Ma’naviyat: Morality, Criminality, and Dissident Politics in Uzbekistan Sarah Kendzior 223 10. The Reshaping of Cities and Citizens in Uzbekistan: The Case of Namangan’s “New Uzbeks” Tommaso Trevisani 243 11. Massacre through a Kaleidoscope: Fragmented Moral Imaginaries of the State in Central Asia Morgan Liu 261 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 285 Contributors 311 Index 315 ...