'City of the Future' Built Space, Modernity and Urban Change in Astana [Paperback]

Astana, the capital city of the post-Soviet Kazakhstan, has often been admired for the design and planning of its futuristic cityscape. This anthropological study of the development of the city focuses on every-day practices, official ideologies and representations alongside the memories and dreams of the citys longstanding residents and recent migrants. Critically examining a range of approaches to place and space in anthropology, geography and other disciplines, the book argues for an understanding of space as inextricably material-and-imaginary, and unceasingly dynamic  allowing for a plurality of incompatible pasts and futures materialized in spatial form.

Mateusz Laszczkowskiis 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.

This book truly epitomizes twenty-first century scholarship in the social sciences. From this standpoint, despite its primary focus on a Central Asian society, it can be considered a useful reference for Europeanists in the broader sense, especially those involved in post-communist studies. As a matter of fact, the book was written in English by a Polish researcher, in a German institution, with European funding, drawing on extensive fieldwork in Kazakhstan&[It] opens stimulating debates in many field&The reader is caught in the midst of fascinating stories and compelling arguments. The structure allows us to grasp multiple times, plural spaces, thus numerous modernities. EuropeNow

Lasczckowski offers a rich and dynamic picture of migration, identification, alienation and change behind seemingly straight lines of plans, streets and buildings. Allegra lab

The book can serve as the perfect companion to post-graduate studies in many fields, because lƒ'