Borderlands of Industrial Modernity: Explorations into the History of Technology in Central Asia, 1850–2000

Straeten, Jonas van der

doi:10.1353/tech.2019.0069

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 59 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Following the Abkhazian-Georgian war of 1992-1993, Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia in 1999, though no other countries recognised the declaration. After the war between Russia and Georgia in 2008 (over South Ossetia), Russia recognised Abkhazian sovereignty and a few other countries followed, though for the most part Abkhazia's sovereignty is defacto (Clogg, 2008;Trier et al, 2010). The population of Abkhazia has reduced since the end of the Soviet Union, as Mingrelians and other Georgian communities have fled back to Georgia, leaving entire stretches of landscape in ruins (Venhovens, 2019).…”

Section: Haunted Memoryscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Urban planning in the Soviet Union followed a 30-year general plan ‘regarded as the central policy document controlling the process of urbanisation and guiding the transformation of cities and towns into socialist-type settlements’ (Shaw, 1983: 393). For Soviet leaders, planners and bureaucrats, as well as local elites in the peripheries, urbanisation was a singular leap from tradition to modernity, spatially and socio-culturally (van der Straeten, 2019). This singular leap required memorials and monuments celebrating ideological lineages, futures and struggles fought along the way and large open squares for military parades that helped tie the peripheries of Empire to the core (Stronski, 2010).…”

Section: Post-soviet Memoryscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The ludic lives of memoryscapes: Skateboarding post-Soviet peripheries

McDuie‐Ra

2021

Memory Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Post-Soviet cities vary dramatically yet share common elements desired by skateboarders and filmers as ‘spots’; assemblages of objects, obstacles and surfaces offering the chance to perform difficult skateboard tricks in public space. Memoryscapes are desired as spots for their scale, smooth surfaces, in-built obstacles and aesthetic appeal on video. As more skateboarders travel to post-Soviet cities in Central Asia and the Caucuses, their reinterpretation of memoryscapes reveal the ludic lives of memoryscapes, the interplay between memory and place, and the tension between hegemonic memory practices of state and state-like agents and the seemingly apolitical reinterpretation by skaters. This article explores two contrasting post-Soviet memoryscapes as seen on skate video, Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) and Sukhumi (Abkhazia) to make three arguments. First, while battles are fought over public memory online and offline, skaters approach the landscape as ludic space; as playgrounds for unsanctioned performance, capture and circulation. Second, these memoryscapes are enrolled in global circulations of skate culture, giving memoryscapes an adjacent existence online detached from their intended meanings and counter-meanings. Third, in some cases the friction between ludic approaches and the power of memory unravels the singular focus on spots, even for skaters with limited knowledge of the context.

show abstract

Section: Haunted Memoryscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Post-soviet Memoryscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ludic lives of memoryscapes: Skateboarding post-Soviet peripheries

McDuie‐Ra

2021

Memory Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…11 According to the narrative underlying most studies, Soviet rule in Central Asia profoundly reconfigured every aspect of the material foundation of state, sociality and everyday life. 12 In this narrative, Central Asians only appear as actors once they have been incorporated into the Soviet state economy as workers, technicians and later also engineers or specialists -especially in the two post-World War II decades, when the first generation of Central Asians had passed through the Soviet higher education system. What these studies largely ignore, however, is the persistence of technologies that are termed "local" or "traditional" and their interaction with the Soviet project.…”

Section: Building and Improving Homes In Late Soviet Samarkand: Framework Of Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mud Bricks in a Concrete State:

Straeten¹,

Petrova²

2021

The Persistence of Technology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Jonas van der Straeten and Mariya PetrovaIn 1963, the journal Building and Architecture in Uzbekistan printed an arranged photo of four urban planners engaged in an animated conversation about an architectural model in front of them. 1 This model displayed the prospective city centre of Samarkand after its socialist transformation. In the model, the city's old Islamic neighbourhoods had been entirely demolished and replaced by multistorey, prefabricated residential buildings that lined roads radiating from the historical Registan complex. These neighbourhoods of the Old City, known as mahallas, had long been a thorn in the side of Soviet planners -symbolically and materially the narrow alleyways and mud-brick houses stood in the way of the city's modernisation. Now, after having barely changed in appearance for several hundred years -throughout half a century of Russian colonial administration and thirty years of Soviet Stalinist rule -the mahallas were set to finally give way to the rational urban planning of the Khrushchev era. This model of the new city centre, however, never became reality, owing to resource constraints and controversies over the final concept for its reconstruction. 2 Ultimately, the mahallas would even survive the mass housing campaign that started in the late 1950s. The overall vision of an all-out modernisation of Samarkand remained confined to a handful of micro-districts (mikrorayons) on the outskirts of the city. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond, Samarkand would large-

show abstract

“…La première partie du dossier considère donc le projet atomique soviétique du point de vue de ses espaces périphériques. Plus que toutes les autres technologies, l'énergie nucléaire jette une lumière révélatrice sur les « régions limitrophes de la modernité industrielle » soviétiques 83 . Ainsi, pour des raisons de secret, de disponibilité des ressources et d'impact environnemental, les premières bases du programme soviétique d'armes nucléaires se situaient souvent dans la périphérie éloignée.…”

Section: Globalization Of Nuclear Technologyunclassified