The monumental and the miniature: imagining ‘modernity’ in Astana

This article examines the elite nation-building project in post-independence Kazakhstan through an analysis of monumental architecture and miniature models in Astana. It considers the role of the country's new capital as a modernist project, in which elite geopolitical imaginaries are multiply inscribed in the cityscape. Drawing on interdisciplinary literatures on modernity and authoritarian regime legitimation, the article considers modernity as a discursive trope employed in legitimating the Nazarbayev government, and one that has various material manifestations in the urban landscape of Astana. The research is based on fieldwork in Kazakhstan in Summer 2009, and examines architecture, monuments, and the 2009 Astana Day celebrations. Through a focus on the monumental and the miniature, it highlights their similar roles in transforming symbols of Kazakhstani independence and identity into objects of reverie outside the field of political contestation.     

Reviews

AUSTRALIA AND THE COLONIAL QUESTION AT THE UNITED NATIONS. W. J. Hudson. Sydney University Press, 1970. ix, 214 pp. $6.

POLITICS AND CHANGE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DEVELOPMENT. Colin Leys (ed.). Cambridge University Press, 1969. xi, 289 pp. 45s. stg.

EXPERTS IN ASIA. A. H. Boxer. Australian National University Press. 180 pp. $6.

BACK IN ASIA. Daphne M. Keats. Australian National University Press. 190 pp. $4.50.

INDONESIAN POLITICAL THINKING. 1945–1965. Herbert Feith and Lance Castles (eds.). Cornell University Press, Ithaca & London, 1970. ix, 505 pp. $US13.50.

THE GROWTH OF A PARTY SYSTEM IN CEYLON. Calvin A. Woodward. Providence, R.I., Brown University Press, 1969. xiv, 338 pp. $8.50.

THE SECURITY OF CHINA. Arthur Huck. Chatto & Windus, London, 1970. 93 pp.

INDICTMENT WITHOUT TRIAL: THE CASE OF LIU SHAO‐CH'I. A. E. Kent. Australian National University. 68 pp. $A1.

GENEVA 1954: THE SETTLEMENT OF THE INDO‐CHINESE WAR. Robert F. Randle. Princeton U.P., 1969. 639 pp. $US17.50.

THE ESTRANGEMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN AND JAPAN, 1917–35. Captain Malcolm D. Kennedy. Manchester University Press, 1969. x, 345 pp. $8.15.

THE U.S., INDIA, AND THE BOMB. Shelton L. Williams. The Johns Hopkins Press. $3.05.

ISSUES IN UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY. M. S. Rajan (ed.). Indian School of International Studies, New Delhi, July‐October, 1968. 244 pp. $US4.50.

FRENCH POLITICIANS AND ELECTIONS, 1951–1969. Philip M. Williams. Cambridge University Press, 1970. xviii, 313 pp. $3.

HOUSE OF REVIEW?: THE NEW SOUTH WALES LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL, 1934–68. Ken Turner. Sydney University Press, 1969. $5.

THE HOUSE WILL DIVIDE. Don Whitington. Lansdowne Press, 1969. $4.50.     

Commonlands,mineral rights and industry: changing evaluations in an industrializing society

This paper is concerned with a society experiencing significant change, an industrializing society. Throughout the South Wales coalfield in the second half of the eighteenth century, rural structures were being supplanted by urban-industrial structures, traditional modes of landuse were being dislocated by new enterprises and the former pastoral landscape was being invaded by the paraphernalia of mining and manufacturing. The old cultural region, “Blaenau Morgannwg” was being transmuted into the new cultural region, “The Valleys”.More particularly, this industrializing society experienced a significant change in the attitudes of landowners to their estates and also a change in both the mechanisms and intensity of control. With the recognition of the opportunities for industrial development, many lords evinced an increased concern for the integrity of their manorial perquisites, particularly those related to minerals and their access to them. The assertion of neglected rights, the institution of rigorous estate management and the prosecution of previously neglected abuses constituted a dislocation of local landuse practices and traditional ways of life. To some extent, the experience was similar to that of other areas experiencing increased industrial activities at this time, although the effect of certain local cultural influences may be recognized in the particulars of the response.The specific focus of this study is on the important roles which manorial wastes were to play in these new industrial enterprises. Whereas in the past the wastes had been but peripheral elements of the total estate economy, the industrial demand for minerals, fuel and land occasioned a radical reappraisal of their contribution. Many studies have considered encroachments and enclosure in the context of agricultural systems but it is argued here that in certain parts of Britain, industrial considerations were of paramount importance. The primary challenge to the very existence of manorial wastes and commons, the Enclosure Movement, was contemporaneous with the initial stages of the industrialization of this region. But rather than expediting the elimination of these lands, several factors caused manorial wastelands and commons to bulk large in the early industrialization of the South Wales coalfield.The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to attempt a better understanding of the impact of industrialization upon the wastelands of the South Wales coalfield and of the society formerly dependent upon them. Particular attention will be focused upon the way in which this process affected the attitudes of the various interested parties towards mineral rights, encroachments and parliamentary enclosure, and which in turn required reappraisals of a way of life by an old social order.     

Men Without Clothes: Heroic Nakedness and Greek Art

The naked men of Greek art have been an excuse for male nakedness in more recent art, but the significance of male nakedness in classical art is debated. Osborne traces the history of the representation of the naked male body in Greek art and argues that although in early Greek art nakedness was unmarked, and clothing was used only to draw special attention to men, changes in visual rhetoric led artists to make increasingly detailed reference to the male body, causing a loss of semiotic innocence. Naked male bodies thus came to carry messages about sex as well as gender. The reinstatement of the naked male body in classical art followed the development of a highly artificial convention in which beardlessness was equated with sexual immaturity and held to render the male body asexual.     

Trans embodiment in carceral space: hypermasculinity and the US prison industrial complex

Queer geographers have recently begun to examine the lives of transgender persons, a heretofore gap in the literature. This article examines the experiences of incarcerated trans persons in the USA, thus extending this nascent trans geography work by considering a new population in a new space. As some scholarly and activist research has shown over the last decade or so, US trans persons are incarcerated at a disproportionately high rate and face harsh conditions while imprisoned. First-hand accounts of trans prisoners' experiences are, however, limited due to the difficulty of accessing this population for research purposes. Working in cooperation with a Montreal-based organization that facilitates pen-pal communications between queer persons inside and outside penitentiaries in the USA, we conducted qualitative research with 23 trans feminine individuals confined in facilities in several states. Our findings unfortunately corroborate the findings laid out in the small existing literature on trans prisoner issues, demonstrating that they endure harsh conditions of confinement. We detail these conditions here, while also pointing to informant responses that offer insight into the ways in which trans incarcerated persons cope with the hypermasculine and heteronormative environment of the US prison. These results are offered in the spirit of advancing a queer abolitionist politics that centers the knowledge and experiences of trans incarcerated persons.