Urban Spaces and Lifestyles in Central Asia and Beyond
ThirdWorlds Series

This volume contributes new insights to the scientific debate on post-Socialist urbanities. Based on ethnographic research in cities of Central Asia, the Caucasus and Russia, its contributions scrutinise the social production of diverse public, parochial and private spaces in conjunction with patterns of everyday encounter, identification, consumption and narration. The analyses extend from the transnational entanglements between a Dushanbe bazaar and hyper-modern Dubai to the micro-level hierarchies in a flat-sharing community in Astana. They explore competing notions of urban belonging and aesthetics in Yerevan, local perception of Central Asian Muslims in Kazan and Saint Petersburg, and more, providing a rich tapestry of academic study. Taken together, the case studies address cities as gateways to ?new worlds? (both local and global), discuss ambitions of states at taming urban landscapes, and illustrate current trends of economic, religious and other lifestyles in urban Central Asia and beyond. This book was originally published as a special issue of Central Asian Survey.

Introduction: Urban spaces and lifestyles in Central Asia and beyond: an introduction

Philipp Schröder

1. The manufacturing of Islamic lifestyles in Tajikistan through the prism of Dushanbe’s bazaars

Manja Stephan-Emmrich and Abdullah Mirzoev

2. Where the whole city meets: youth, gender and consumerism in the social space of the MEGA shopping mall in Aktobe, western Kazakhstan

Philipp Frank Jäger

3. The ignoble savage in urban Yerevan

Susanne Fehlings

4. Avoidance and appropriation in Bishkek: dealing with time, space and urbanity in Kyrgyzstan’s capital

Philipp Schröder

5.Experiencing liminality: housing, renting and informal tenants in Astana

Kishimjan Osmonova

6. ‘Only by learning how to live together differently can we live together at all’: readability and legibility of Central Asian migrants’ presence in urban Russia

Emil Nasritdinov

7. Assemblages of mobility: the marshrutkas of Central Asia

Wladimir Sgibnev and Andrey Vozyanov

8. Prayer house or cultural centre? Restoring a mosque in post-socialist Armenia

Tsypylma Darieva

Philipp Schröder is a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. His teaching and research focuses on urban spaces and mobilities, identities and integration, youth cultures and political economies in Central Asia, Russia and China.