Urban ‘utopias’: The Disney stigma and discourses of ‘false modernity’
Natalie Koch*
Department of Geography
University of Colorado, Boulder
Guggenheim 110, UCB 260
Boulder, CO 80309 USA
[email protected]
*From August 2012:
Department of Geography
The Maxwell School
Syracuse University
Abstract. This article examines the political implications of the practice of framing mega urban
development projects with the language of ‘utopia’ or ‘Disney.’ Through a case study of
Kazakhstan’s new capital, Astana, I argue that the stigmatizing language of ‘utopia’ is a highly
political bordering practice, defining the ‘imaginary’ and the ‘real.’ Coupled with ethnographic
data from fieldwork in Kazakhstan between 2009-2011, I perform a textual analysis English- and
German-language press coverage of Astana, and demonstrate how narratives of ‘false modernity’
and ‘utopia’ have become the dominant way of reading and writing about the city. Although
often critical of the project as a sign of the President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s ‘megalomania,’
this coverage obscure more complex geographies of power and state-society relations the
independent state. Symptomatic of liberal (i.e. top-down, one-dimensional) understandings of
2
power, the hegemonic discourse simultaneously reinscribes the state’s ‘coherence’ and erases the
lived realities and agencies of ordinary citizens, while obscuring the more complicated political
economic relations that condition and give rise to ‘spectacular’ urban development projects.
Keywords: Kazakhstan, capital city, utopia, modernity, textual analysis
Introduction
To look at, Astana is so strange that it has one grasping for images. It’s a space
station, marooned in an ungraspable expanse of level steppe, its name (to English
speakers) having the invented sound of a science fiction writer’s creation. It’s a
city of fable or dream, as recounted by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan. Except it’s
not quite so magical: it’s also like a battery-operated plastic toy, all whirring
noises and flashing colours, of a kind sold by the city’s street vendors. (Moore,
2010)
This description of Kazakhstan’s new capital city was recently published in a commentary in The
Guardian, and it is characteristic of how many in the West have read and written about
spectacular urban development projects in the ‘East.’ Davis (2006), for example, paints a
similarly fantastic picture of Dubai:
The result is not a hybrid but an eerie chimera: a promiscuous coupling of all the
cyclopean fantasies of Barnum, Eiffel, Disney, Spielberg, Jon Jerde, Steve Wynn
and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Although compared variously to Las Vegas,
Manhattan, Orlando, Monaco and Singapore, the sheikhdom is more like their
collective summation and mythologization: a hallucinatory pastiche of the big, the
bad and the ugly. (Davis, 2006, page 51)
Orientalist language saturates the descriptions of these ‘non-Western’ places, highlighting the
‘exotic,’ ‘strange,’ and ‘fantastic’ character of recent urban developments found across the
Middle East and Asia. This orientalism draws on the tropes of modernity, backwardness, and
underdevelopment, exemplified in Marshall Berman’s diagnosis:
3
The modernism of underdevelopment is forced to build on fantasies and dreams
of modernity, to nourish itself on an intimacy and a struggle with mirages and
ghosts. In order to be true to the life from which it springs, it is forced to be shrill,
uncouth and inchoate. It turns in on itself and tortures itself into extravagant
attempts to take on itself the whole burden of history. It whips itself into frenzies
of self-loathing, and preserves itself only through vast reserves of self-irony. But
the bizarre reality from which this modernism grows, and the unbearable
pressures under which it moves and lies—social and political pressures as well as
spiritual ones—infuse it with a desperate incandescence that Western modernism,
so much more at home in the world, can rarely hope to match. (Berman, 1989,
page 232)
From Dubai to Shanghai to Tokyo to Astana, the political language of ‘utopia’ – fantasy and
extravagance – is in full force in much Western writing about these cities. In the hegemonic
interpretive frame, ‘underdevelopment’ is seen to propel Eastern ‘others’ to pursue extravagant,
overwrought, desperate attempts to achieve an impossible modernity. The discursive frame,
however, only allows these (urban) spectacles to be façades, covering up a lack of modernity
‘underneath,’ as if “the public display of sheer size serves less to demonstrate its superiority than
to confirm the consciousness of its inferiority” (King, 1996, page 104). Through a case study of
Astana, I demonstrate how this language pervades journalistic accounts of non-Western cities,
and how it has come to define the discursive field in which these cities are subsequently
experienced, interpreted, and written about by visitors (Said, 1978).
Elites engaged in these spectacular development projects – urban or otherwise – would
never label their plans as abstract idealism, as the notion of utopia generally implies. In
Kazakhstan’s ‘2030 Strategy,’ which outlines the country’s plans for development in the
independence era, we see that President Nursultan Nazarbayev is no exception:
Sure enough all this is but a vision of the future, a model thereof, an ideal
objective and a dream. Obviously many of you would just give a bitter chuckle,
they would think it a sheer Utopia comparing this ideal picture with the present
day reality when people are short of basic things. No, it is not so. My vision is
quite attainable and the world experience supports feasibility of such plans.
(Nazarbayev, 1997)
4
Nazarbayev, who has been in power since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, here refuses
the utopia label and argues for the concrete possibility of realizing progress in Kazakhstan. As
synecdoche, Astana is a privileged site for enacting his vision of modernity. For him, “The
modern Astana is Kazakhstan in miniature” (Nazarbayev, 2010, page 53), and a “city-dream
(gorod-mechta)” (Nazarbayev, 2006, page 358). He is careful to underscore that its materiality is
evidence of the attainability of future progress: ‘Astana is a city-sign, a sign of dreams,
incarnated in reality. […] It was a dream. Now – it is a true (chudesnyi) city, the pride and heart
of Kazakhstan’ (Nazarbayev, 2006, pages 349-350). Despite the president’s effort to highlight
Astana’s ‘reality,’ the city is consistently read and interpreted by Western observers as a
‘Potemkin village’ or ‘utopia.’ Labels of the city have proliferated in the Western press, in which
it has become: ‘Nowheresville’ (Gessen, 2011), ‘the space station in the steppes’ (Moore, 2010),
‘the Jetson’s hometown’ (Kucera, 2011b), ‘Tomorrowland’ (Lancaster, 2012), ‘Aaarghmola’
(The Economist, 1997), or ‘the Disneyland of the steppe’ (Niemczyk, 2010).
How is it that this reading of Astana’s development has conformed so uniformly to this
image of ‘utopian’ ‘falseness’? And what are the political implications of this script? After
reviewing the literature on ‘utopia’ and representational practices, the goal of this article is to
explore how this narrative is constructed, through a close look at some readings and writings of
Astana’s urban landscape. These representational practices are important because interactions
with the city are not limited to actually visiting; the images and stories of the city considered
here are projected around the world and actively shape the imaginaries of Astana’s (and
Kazakhstan’s) visitors and non-visitors alike. Part of a larger ethnographic study of Astana
conducted between 2009-2011, the data for this article are drawn from textual analysis,
participant observation, interviews, and a country-wide survey (n = 1233). Since the government
5
of Kazakhstan had overwhelmingly directed its Astana advertisements and lobbying efforts to
the ‘West’ (i.e. Europe and the United States), I present a textual analysis of news reports from
these places.1 Concentrating on the coverage of two of Astana’s new buildings, designed by
Norman Foster, I argue that the Western coverage systematically writes out the agency of
Kazakhstanis, who are largely supportive of the nondemocratic regime. Although Kazakhstan’s
elites are actively developing Astana as a symbol with two audiences in mind – domestic citizens
and foreign visitors/observers – space limitations require that this article be limited in scope to
the foreign audience (and I discuss the domestic readings/writings elsewhere; Koch, 2012;
forthcoming; see also Laszczkowski, 2011a; 2011b).
The politics of utopia and the Disney stigma
‘Utopia’ is a distinctly geographic concept, but with a few notable exceptions (e.g.
Harvey, 2000; Hetherington, 1997; Pinder, 2002; 2005) it has been broadly ignored in academic
geography. Stemming from Sir Thomas More’s novel, the term has taken on many meanings in
contemporary rhetoric. Generally, it is understood to be a play on Greek roots for a place (topos),
that is both happy (eu) and non-existent (ou). The term is generally used to label some sort of
idealistic planning project, with the connotation that it is doomed to failure. Yet many such
projects were attempted in the early- to mid-1900s, ranging from Le Corbusier’s Brasília to
Ebenezer Howard’s ‘Garden Cities’ to Soviet master planning (Fishman, 1982). David Pinder
(2005, page 12) argues that there is now a widespread feeling in the West that grandiose, urban
utopia projects ‘belong to a previous age, as remnants of hopeful but naive thought.’ By locating
these monumental and ‘utopian’ projects in a distant, perhaps pre-modern past – or sometimes an
1
For this same reason, I will not consider Russian press: the public relations campaign simply does not target
Russian leaders or the Russian public.
6
otherworldly future – the notion of utopia often functions to define the non-modernity of their
present. Thus, there is a danger “of simply countering utopianism with an equally generalising
and inadequate dystopianism” (Bunnell, 2002, page 269). One of the most common tropes used
to paint the picture of dystopianism is that of Disneyland, and, it is not an exaggeration to argue
that in the West, “Disneyland and Disney World have shaped the perspective from which the real
landscape is viewed” (Zukin, 1991, page 230).
The Disney stigma, which casts the city as a theme park, also has important implications
for the people who live and build these places. Like the fantastic landscapes described by Stewart
(1984, page 60), they are “domesticated by fantasy rather than by lumberjacks, carpenters,
architects, and cleaning ladies, those workers who have ‘really’ been its causality” (Stewart 1984,
page 60). People in this theme-park imaginary are effectively depoliticized and de-modernized –
or perhaps not even seen as ‘real.’ Jameson (2004, page 39) elaborates: “The citizens of utopia
are grasped as a statistical population; there are no individuals any longer, let alone any
existential ‘lived experience.’” Much less are the citizens of utopia seen as political agents
complicit in its construction – either through their actual labor or their mere indifference. As I
argue in this article, by focusing on elite projects and political behavior and deploying the
narrative of ‘utopia,’ the Western media coverage is also complicit in this pattern of silence.
Antonio Gramsci (2008, pages 172-5) explores the politics of utopia is his discussion of
how both reaction and conservation are equally political acts of will, aimed at enacting “what
ought to be.” Why, he asks, should one person’s will be considered ‘utopian,’ but not the will of
another who merely wants to conserve what exists, and “prevent the creation of organisation of
new forces which would disturb and transform the traditional equilibrium?” (Gramsci, 2008,
page 174). He continues: “The attribute ‘utopian’ does not apply to political will in general, but
7
to specific wills which are incapable of relating means to end, and hence are not even wills, but
idle whims, dreams, longings, etc.” (Gramsci, 2008, page 175). From this perspective, the
‘utopia’ label is a political strategy to designate what the speaker deems achievable or not. It is a
bordering practice, implicated in constructing the deeply political boundary between the
‘imaginary’ (‘what ought to be’) and the ‘real’ (‘effective reality’).
This point is also found in Foucault’s work on regimes of truth (e.g. Foucault, 1970;
1972).2 For him, “Politics and the economy are not things that exist, or errors, or illusions, or
ideologies. They are things that do not exist and yet which are inscribed in reality and fall under
a regime of truth dividing the true and the false” (Foucault, 2008, page 20). His notion of
‘transactional realities’ (réalités de transaction) covers the illusory interplay between the
real/imagined by developing a distinction between immediate realities (i.e. concrete objects) and
more abstract, ‘transactional’ realities (e.g. civil society, madness, sexuality) that form part of a
governmental technology insofar as they are born at the interface of governors and governed
(Foucault, 2008, page 297). Transactional realities arise when certain sets of practices are joined
with a regime of truth – making something that does not exist “nonetheless become something,
something however that continues not to exist” (Foucault, 2008, page 19).
Foucault’s project is not about showing these realities to be an ‘error’ or ‘illusion,’ but
consists in showing how particular regimes of truth condition a transactional reality and how a
set of practices “marks it out in reality” (Foucault, 2008, page 19). He argues that “what enables
us to make reality intelligible is simply showing that it was possible” (Foucault, 2008, page 34).
Foucault is here continuing Gramsci’s reasoning about utopia above, because showing what is
2
While Foucault (1986) more explicitly addresses the issue of ‘utopia’ through his preliminary notion of
‘heterotopia,’ I do not find this concept to be of much use, following Harvey’s (2000, page 185) apt observation
that: “What appears at first sight as so open by virtue of its multiplicity suddenly appears either as banal (an eclectic
mess of heterogeneous and different spaces within which anything ‘different’ – however defined – might go on).”
8
possible is a decidedly political act, which is ultimately predicated on a binary between the
‘imaginary’ and the ‘real’.’ Recognizing that this binary is implicated in the ‘effectiveness of
modern forms of domination’ (Mitchell, 1990, page 559), scholars of developmental
improvement schemes (e.g. Ferguson, 1990; Foucault, 1975; Li, 2005, 2007) therefore challenge
us to look less at intent and more at outcome – for “power is more or less efficient, totalizing, or
dominating not in its intentions, but in its outcomes” (Nealon, 2008, page 100).
We are thus advised to ask, what do these schemes do? Accordingly, in this article, I do
not examine the ‘motives’ of actors commenting on the Astana development agenda, but I
instead ask, what is the effect of their discursive acts? This question is the crux of a practicecentered analytic (Veyne, 1997), and crucially subverts the role of the scholar as an expert
‘unveiler’ of people’s ‘hidden’ motives. Notably, this approach treats speech acts in the same
fashion as material practices, enjoining us to interrogate “texts and people at the level of what
they are saying” (Veyne, 1997, page 156), without even suspecting “that there could be any other
level” (Veyne, 1997, page 177). From this perspective, representational practices are not just
‘about’ Astana, but help to constitute the city (as object) and the ‘state’ (as author) as
transactional realities.
As I demonstrate in this article, representational practices also factor into a political
economy of the built landscape (see also Koch, 2010). Astana’s copious new architectural megaprojects, like Dubai’s US $1.5 billion Burj Khalifa tower that now stands almost completely
empty, exemplify the fact that certain individuals and companies will still enrich themselves
through working with ‘utopian’ or ‘megalomaniac’ visions – no matter how utopian and how
megalomaniac they are. These elite actors are complicit in producing a particular
representational order, which works to obscure the uneven political economic relations that are
9
the condition of its possibility. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens may understand themselves to stand
‘outside’ the Burj or the Khan Shatyry, and read them as symbols of modernity or national
greatness, but in so doing, they subjectify themselves (e.g. as ‘modern’ consumers in a capitalist
economy, citizens of an independent state, etc.) and participate in the very same depoliticizing
representational order.
And yet, ordinary Kazakhstanis do not see Astana as a utopian dreamland, and especially
not the residents, for whom it has become ‘their’ city. It is something they have made their own,
and many with great pride. For Astana’s residents, it is part of their life and their lives are ‘real.’
In many ways, their behaviors are just as important (and just as political) as those performances
of statecraft, in which President Nazarbayev stars as the leading actor. They are not just cogs in a
depoliticized simulacrum or fantasy-land. Under Nazarbayev’s guiding hand, Astana’s built
landscape not only reflects new conceptions and functions of representation in the independent
state, but the city’s image has also crucially constituted this new order as a reality for many
people. The city does not just guide their movements and serve as some external framework.
Visitors and residents alike perform the daily practices of shopping, driving, working, resting,
playing, learning, dining, etc. – and these practices are what constitute the city. But these
practices are also part of how they are constituted as citizens, subjects of the new ostensibly
coherent, and benevolent/paternal state, and residents of the central node of the new territorial
state. Rather than being relegated to some abstract higher realm apart from the material, these
practices are precisely what constitutes the city, the state, and their subjectivity as a material and
lived experience. Although this article cannot explore these practices in great detail, given the
focus on elite and Western representational practices, I draw on ethnographic data where it can
10
help to contextualize the significance and political implications of these hegemonic readings and
writings of Astana.
New representational concerns in Kazakhstan
In Colonising Egypt, Mitchell (1988, page 29) describes how, prior to being subjected to
the Orientalist and European colonial gaze, the Middle East had not been organized
‘representationally,’ i.e. it was not seen as something to be divided up and contained through
fixed divisions of inside and outside (Mitchell, 1988, page 44). The urban landscape in
Kazakhstan has long been organized representationally in the manner that Mitchell suggests
(Alexander and Buchli, 2007; Crews, 2003; Ford, 2008; Gritsai and van der Wusten, 2000;
Kotkin 1995; Rylkin, 2003; Stronski 2010), but upon gaining independence in 1991, the tactics
of representationally organizing space were transformed dramatically. Now engaged with the
capitalist economy, they have been carefully crafted for performing a new, market-oriented
identity for a global community. The Nazarbayev regime has relentlessly pursued a strategy of
putting Kazakhstan ‘on the map,’ through a variety of schemes, amounting to what is referred to
as the state’s ‘imidzh proyekt’ (‘image project’). In this effort, the regime has established a
particular economy of representation, designed to ‘brand’ Kazakhstan as a ‘reformed,’ ‘modern,’
and ‘engaged’ new country, ideal for investment.
This tactic of ‘place-branding’ (Govers and Go, 2009) frequently privileges cities and, as
elsewhere around the world, Nazarbayev’s favored site for this performance is its new capital
city, Astana. Operating on the basis of a ‘synecdochic imaginary,’ in which the part (the city) is
supposed to stand for the whole (the country), this urban strategy to ‘brand’ a place and to invite
speculative capital is especially visible in the recent swelling of mega-urban development
11
projects throughout Asia. Sometimes framed in the language of ‘world cities’ (and sometimes
not, as in the case of Astana), the phenomenon is strongly tied to global changes in the nature of
the capitalist economy and knowledge production, amply explored in the urban studies literature
on ‘urban inter-referencing’ and policy transfers (e.g. Bagaeen, 2007; Barthel, 2010; Bunnell and
Das, 2010; McCann, 2010; McCann and Ward, 2011; Robinson, 2002; 2011; Roy and Ong,
2011; Sklair, 2005).
Although previously a concern, this goal of putting Kazakhstan ‘on the map’ intensified
when British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen happened to select Kazakhstan as the ‘obscure’
homeland of his fictional television character, Borat. Eventfully making a highly successful film
based on the character, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation
of Kazakhstan (2006), Cohen portrayed the country as a backward and intolerant place, which set
Kazakhstan’s government into a frenzy (Saunders, 2007; 2008; Schatz, 2008). Since the Borat
scandal, the government has poured millions of dollars into a ‘multi-vector’ public relations (PR)
campaign, justified on the basis of the shame it has brought to the country’s citizens. Some
speculate that the PR campaign is just an element of Nazarbayev’s self-aggrandizement and
pursuit of international accolades, while others see it as a mere continuation of the ‘Great Power’
mentality inherited from Soviet times. Scholars have also suggest that the state’s “multilateralism
in the extreme” (Schatz, 2006) is part of the state- and nation-building process, absent any other
viable sources of legitimacy (e.g. economic performance, a majority ethnic community) in the
early years of independence (Adams and Rustemova, 2009; Schatz, 2006). Whatever the reasons,
the regime’s imidzh proyekt has leant credibility to its capital city development scheme, with
Astana featuring centrally in effort to improve Kazakhstan’s international image. And based on
12
the results of a country-wide survey I had administered in Fall 2010, Kazakhstan’s citizens seem
to think it is working (see Figures 1-2).3
Figure 1. Astana and Kazakhstan’s international image. Total responses: Yes (996), No (176),
Don’t know (61). Source: Author.
Figure 2. Justifications of those that answered the yes to the question, “Has Astana improved
Kazakhstan’s international image?” (n=935). Source: Author.
While the international imidzh proyekt is undeniably a nation-building project to be
“broadcast inward to domestic audiences” (Schatz, 2006, page 270), so too is it intended to be
‘read’ by foreign observers, and thus to factor into global politics. However, the dominant
3
The survey I developed for the larger study was administered by a professional firm, CESSI-Kazakhstan, from
September to October 2010. CESSI interviewers conducted door-step interviews with individuals over the age of 18
in all 16 of Kazakhstan’s regions, to achieve a country-wide representative sample of 1233.
13
themes in Western readings of the country do not readily conform with the regime’s message of
being a ‘modern’ and ‘progressive’ country, made possible by President Nazarbayev’s
‘enlightened’ leadership. Tending to focus on the Astana development project, commentators
have instead consistently read and represented the city as a ‘utopian’ fantasy, symptomatic of
Nazarbayev’s megalomania and of pretensions to a ‘false’ modernity.
Stigmatizing the city: Reading and representing Astana
This section presents the results of my textual analysis of Western media coverage of
Astana, which includes reports from the German- and English-language (US and British) press.
In addition to the main issue of language accessibility, there are two specific reasons for
including German-language coverage. First, Kazakhstan was once home to a substantial minority
of people with German heritage. Through generous immigration policies in the immediate
aftermath of the Soviet Union’s disintegration (Diener, 2006), the German government invited
them to immigrate and they do so on a massive scale.4 The spatially-diffuse presence of this
minority in Germany has not only heightened popular awareness of Kazakhstan, but it has also
been instrumental in building and sustaining a network of personal and economic relationships
across the two places. Kazakhstan does not have this sort of a relationship with any other
Western state on such a broad and personal scale, which is why we might expect the media
coverage there to be somewhat exceptional. Second, the German-language press is generally less
sensational as compared to, for example, the U.S. media. Since the idea of ‘utopia’ could easily
slot into sensationalist reporting, it is important to consider media sources that are not generally
known for this style.
4
Nearly a million ethnic Germans resided in Kazakhstan according to the 1989 census, but this number dropped to
about 178,000 according to the 2009 census (ASRK, 2010), with most relocating to Germany.
14
I reviewed approximately 40 articles, dating back to 1997, when Astana became the
capital.5 Table 1 illustrates the main themes found in the survey. Overall, the German-language
articles were characterized by less orientalizing language, and tended to give a fuller image of
the city beyond the Kazakhstan officials’ equation of Astana with its new administrative center,
the ‘Left Bank.’ They also tended to concentrate more on the city as a symbol of Nazarbayev’s
megalomania than the English-language press – though this was also an important theme there.
The German articles highlighted both the major social and spatial divisions that characterize
Astana, namely among the Right/Left bank and wealthy newcomers/poorer locals – whereas
these divides were scarcely mentioned in the English-language press. For the most part, however,
the overall gist of the reports was quite similar in both languages.
Table 1. Main themes found in the Western coverage of Astana.
Theme
Describing Astana’s inhospitable environment, bad weather, barrenness of
the steppe
Characterizing the city as strange, utopian, fantastic, and futuristic
Naming the architects involved in construction and planning
Connecting the city to Nazarbayev’s megalomania
Connecting the city’s development with Kazakhstan’s oil wealth
Characterizing the city as somehow false, just a façade, a Potemkin village
Noting the unpopularity of the decision to move the capital
Naming historical precedence of grand capital city projects
Contrasting Astana with Almaty
Noting the rushed speed of the city’s development
Mentioning criticism of the project
Mentioning the Borat scandal, or just the film itself
Describing the social and spatial divisions in the city
5
Count in
English press
(n = 21)
Count in
German press
(n = 10)
16
4
13
12
12
10
9
7
7
7
5
4
4
0
5
4
6
4
2
2
2
2
1
2
3
4
Regarding the specific sources, in the German press, I focus on the news magazine Der Spiegel, and its online
news site, Spiegel Online. I also reviewed articles from various local papers, such as the Kölner-Stadtanzeiger,
which tend to run stories from larger, country-wide press agencies. In the English-language press, I focused on The
New York Times, The Economist, the BBC’s online news site, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and various other
magazines, such as The New Yorker.
15
Figure 3. Khan Shatyry, shopping and entertainment complex (100,000 m2, 150 m high).
Completed in July 2010 by Foster + Partners, Buro Happold (Mike Cook), Vector Foiltec
(climate shell), Sembol Construction. Cost: US $400 million, funded by the Khan Shatyry
Consortium. Image source: Author.
16
Figure 4. Palace of Peace and Accord (the ‘Pyramid’), cultural events venue, originally the
World Religions Conference (28,791 m2, 62 m high). Completed in 2006 by Foster + Partners,
Tabanlıoğlu Architecture, Buro Happold (Mike Cook), Anne Minors Consulting (acoustics),
Sembol Construction. Cost: US $58 million, funded by the Republic of Kazakhstan. Image
source: Author.
Since Table 1 cannot adequately convey how these themes come out in the coverage, the
remainder of this section illustrates them through an in-depth focus on the two Foster + Partners
buildings in Astana, the Khan Shatyry (Figure 3) and the Palace of Peace and Accord (Figure 4;
hereafter the ‘Pyramid,’ for brevity and it is popularly known as such in Astana). This
description will be supplemented with my own data from my own research and interviews in
Astana, so as to contextualize the picture presented by the press. I have selected these two
structures because they have received the most attention in the Western press, primarily due to
Norman Foster’s involvement. Furthermore, as Astana Master Plan director, Amanzhol
17
Chikanayev, explained to me in July 2011, involving prestigious foreign architects in these
projects was a conscious strategy to attract international attention. The Pyramid was completed
in 2006 at the cost of US $58 million – a sum dwarfed by the US $400 million price-tag (perhaps
higher) of the Khan Shatyry, opened in summer 2010. These two buildings, which are supposed
to serve as the end points of an East-West axis framing the new administrative center on the Left
Bank: the Khan Shatyry, meaning the ‘Khan’s tent,’ is the Western node, and the Pyramid is the
Eastern node.
Palace of Peace and Accord (Pyramid)
The Pyramid is generally introduced in the press coverage as a ‘religiously neutral’
(Coish, 2008), symbolic structure, intended to host the triennial Congress of World Religious
Leaders (for more, see Koch, 2010). Most authors note that it was specially commissioned by
President Nazarbayev and that the pyramid shape was his idea (e.g. Gessen, 2011; Moore, 2010;
Steen, 2008), although Pearman (2005) suggests that the shape was chosen by Norman Foster.
However, in my interview with Astana master planner Amanzhol Chikanayev, he revealed that
the idea of the pyramid actually came from a Kazakh architect, who submitted it to the first
design competition in 2002. The elite decision-makers liked the idea, but they did not want a
Kazakh to win the competition because they did not feel that a local would bring the
international prestige and attention that they desired from the project. The pyramid idea was
retained, and the competition was held several more times, with the aim to attract a worldfamous designer. Only after a fourth competition did Norman Foster enter and assume the
pyramid project, which he re-designed from the original Kazakh architect’s entry. This story
recounted by Chikanayev is not common knowledge, but it is nonetheless telling that the news
18
stories showed almost no deviation from the official narratives that construct Nazarbayev and
Foster as the central players: the reports are subtly complicit in confirming the authority and
coherence of both ‘individuals’ (whose work and public personas are more realistically the
product of an extensive team effort).
While nearly all articles mention Norman Foster or Foster + Partners, none detail the role
of other companies involved in the construction (although this is typical of writing about
architectural projects, with the convention being to attribute one lead architect with essentially all
the credit for the project; see McNeill, 2005; 2009). Pearman (2005) briefly mentions the
involvement of Turkish companies, Sembol Construction and Tabanlıoğlu Architecture and
Consulting, but does not explain their role. As it turns out, Foster + Partners was the lead
designer, but sent ‘information packages’ for Tabanlıoğlu to implement, while Sembol had a
‘Design and Build’ contract, which gave them wide liberty in the construction details and
finishes – a liberty that was apparently taken because they made many changes that were
considerably different from the intent of Foster + Partners and Tabanlıoğlu. Many of these
changes were probably the result of the hurried pace of construction due to a deadline imposed
by Nazarbayev: at the first Congress of World Religious Leaders in 2003, he promised to have a
new palace ready for the second congress in 2006. The frenzied pace was commonly mentioned
in the press: “It was, like much else here, built in a rush” (Myers, 2006). Gessen (2011) points
out how Nazarbayev even “sent the Army” to speed the construction, while Pearman (2005) and
Steen (2008) both quote Foster on his shock about proposed timeline:
Typically you would be thinking six to eight years for such a cultural project. […]
If somebody says ‘hey there’s this congress meeting point/public space/
university/exhibition space and we need it in two years’, you know, that makes
your pulse quicken and slightly takes your breath away. (quoted in Steen, 2008).
19
The media coverage suggests that there was a highly unusual power dynamic at work in the
relationship between the client (Nazarbayev) and the architect (Foster) – and that indeed the
entire undertaking was strange: “But nothing [Foster] has done to date compares with this latest
job. Because nobody asks for buildings like this. Unless you happen to be President Nursultan
Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan” (Pearman 2005). Moore (2010) similarly suggests that when
Nazarbayev asked for the pyramid-shaped palace, it “may be the first and only time a client has
told the mighty Foster what a building should look like, and been obeyed.”
We can already discern a trend that runs through much of the media coverage: that the
Pyramid, and indeed the entire Astana project, is a one-man show. Steen (2008), for example,
titles his article “Kazakh President’s ‘backyard’ pyramid,” and quotes Hugh Pearman, editor of
the Royal Institute of British Architects’ monthly RIBA Journal, saying, “It’s an unbelievable
folly, in the sense that it’s a grand monument by one man to himself.” Especially in the German
press, Nazarbayev is overwhelmingly portrayed as a megalomaniac (see Table 1), who is “only
faintly acquainted with the rigours of the democratic process” (MacInnes, 2008). Others have
described the Pyramid more as part of a broader effort to ‘ornament’ (‘schmücken’) the new
capital (e.g. Hoelzgen, 2006; Moore, 2010), and as just another sign of Astana’s ‘unnatural’ or
‘inorganic’ development on the steppe (Gessen, 2011; Myers, 2006; Niemczyk, 2010; Steen,
2008): “It is not subtle, but little is here in Astana, a new capital rising self-consciously out of the
treeless steppe of Central Asia” (Myers, 2006). Similarly, Steen (2008) writes of how the
Pyramid “juts out into the barren plain behind President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s palace,” and
asks, “Sounds odd? Astana, a Brasilia of the steppe, is like that.”
Nazarbayev’s goal of making a statement about Kazakhstan’s interethnic and interfaith
harmony through this architectural project is consistently read and written about as symbolic of
20
his megalomania, Kazakhstan’s lack of modernity and democracy, and the strangeness of the
entire Astana project. So while the Western press tends to frame the Pyramid as symbolic, it is
not exactly the symbolism that Kazakhstan’s elites had in mind. Instead, Astana becomes a
utopia, which the press systematically unveils as false. This practice of ‘unmasking’ hovers over
the issue of eccentricity and abnormality, but rarely goes much further into the how this politics
factors into people’s lived realities. One exception is found in a BBC article:
But beyond the walls of the spectacular pyramid, there are concerns that the
Kazakh government, although more tolerant than others in Central Asia, has
recently itself moved to restrict religious freedoms. Muslim groups that are
outside state control and non-traditional groups like Hare Khrisna have
complained about official harassment. This is one of the reasons why critics have
questioned whether the Congress was as much aimed at serving President
Nazarbayev’s goal of promoting his country, as it was designed to promote world
peace. (Antelava, 2006b)
Nazarbayev’s harmony rhetoric, as Antelava points out, directly obscures official restrictions
placed on religious freedom (most recently in September 2011; see Najibullah, 2011) and an
overwhelming lack of tolerance for religious diversity by the general population and elites alike.
Proselytizing is strictly forbidden and Christian missionaries, for example, tend to resort to
unconventional means of reaching out to people (e.g. a Protestant woman in Astana owns a
café/bookstore, where religious conversations can be overheard and religious books found on the
shelves, but all of which is carefully controlled so as to limit grounds for official harassment).
There is also significant intolerance for overt displays of Muslim religiosity. The following
experience I had in summer 2011, for example, is typical: when traveling to Astana from a
nearby town, I was seated next to a Kazakh woman reading the newspaper. When she arrived at
an article about religion in Kazakhstan, she pointed to the accompanying picture of a veiled
Muslim woman and proceeded to tell me how awful it was that there were ‘such’ people in
Kazakhstan – implying conservative Muslims who dress to reflect their beliefs, as opposed to
21
most Kazakhs, who consider themselves Muslim but do not wear ‘Muslim’ attire. This was not
an isolated occurrence; women who veil in Kazakhstan are deeply stigmatized and openly
degraded, primarily by other women.
While I am not interested in a project of ‘unmasking’ some ‘more real’ social existence,
this ethnographic data pushes us to ask questions about the effect of official discourses of
religious tolerance in spite of practices of intolerance. In this case, although the blind spots and
silences factor into a complex set of domestic politics, I am more concerned in this article with
how this rhetoric is reproduced in the foreign press. Judging by the failure of the Western media
to scrutinize the issue of religious intolerance – instead concentrating on the eccentricity of the
Pyramid project – the Nazarbayev regime’s representational practices seem to be effective in
limiting political discussion about this issue. But the coverage also reflects certain biases within
the Western press with respect to the ‘East,’ i.e. a certain fixation with non-democratic regimes
and dictators. While the issue of illiberal politics is an important issue, the overall effect is to
inscribe an orientalizing vision of Astana as ‘false’ and ‘strange,’ while still excluding from sight
the realities of the ordinary people – whether it is their fear of persecution, individual intolerance,
or more commonly, their mere political indifference.
This apathy is pervasive among Kazakhstanis and, as one informant told me, “We
[Kazakhs] are all pofigisty.” (This is a play on Russian euphemistic curse word, figa. The
sentence is probably best translated to English as, ‘No one gives a shit’). But this indifference,
which generally translates into silence, is itself a political subjectivity, which is precisely what
constitutes, sustains, and reproduces the entire system as a field of power relations. State-based
actors, consciously or not (the point being moot), draw on these quotidian performances of
indifference and silence to support their positions in the hierarchy of power relations. But by
22
ignoring these quotidian realities, and dwelling on the odd and megalomaniac character of the
entire Astana project (of which the Pyramid is presented as symbolizing), the ‘utopia’ script
followed in the press coverage “never tempts us for one minute to try to imagine ourselves in
their place, to project the utopian individual with concrete existential density, even though we
already know the details of his or her daily life” (Jameson, 2004, page 39).
Khan Shatyry
The utopian or theme-park theme is unavoidable in the second case I consider, however.
The Khan Shatyry entertainment complex is primarily a large shopping mall, but it has several
theme-park elements, such as a roller coaster and a handful of other adrenaline-inducing
amusements. In simply describing the complex, the Western press necessarily comments on
these attractions, as well as the indoor beach with sand and tropical plants imported from the
Maldives. Foster + Partners was also commissioned for the project, reportedly because
Nazarbayev was so pleased with the Pyramid (Antelava, 2006a; Coish, 2008; Der Spiegel, 2007;
Gessen, 2011; Myers, 2006). Inscribing a rather colonial vision of Astana, the authors describe
the city as a ‘testing ground,’ with both the Pyramid and the Khan Shatyry giving Foster a
chance to experiment (Steen, 2008) and opportunistically get a share of “Astana’s oil-money
fuelled architectural extravaganza” (Antelava, 2006a). The structure itself is supposed to look
like a traditional Kazakh tent, ‘bent as though blown by the harsh winds that are notorious here”
(Myers, 2006). It is enveloped in a special ethylene tetrafluoroethylene polymer (ETFE), which
gives the effect of translucence (from the outside, this is really only noticeable at night, but
during the day it lets in sunlight). Follath and Neef (2010, page 130) describe it as an
embodiment of the superlative, which is actually its intent: to be the world’s largest ‘tent.’
23
A common theme in coverage about the Astana project in general, the ‘extreme’ is
underscored with reference to Astana’s steppe location. Indeed, this notion of the ‘extreme’ was
part of the original conception of the Khan Shatyry: it was to be an ‘oasis’ for the residents of
Astana, who could go there during the during the harsh winter months and enjoy a ‘summery
indoor climate’ (Antelava, 2006a; Coish, 2008; Follath and Neef, 2010, page 130; Hoelzgen,
2006; Moore, 2010). As with nearly every article written on Astana, the descriptions of the Khan
Shatyry consistently cite the weather extremes (ranging from -40 Celsius to 40 Celsius). Like
elsewhere, this harsh climate is regularly used to explain the early resistance of elites to the
capital change (see Table 1). Follath and Neef (2010, page 130) even suggest that the Khan
Shatyry has been understood as a way to silence the last of these critics. I again heard this
narrative about needing to appease critics in my July 2011 interview with Astana master planner
Chikanayev, who used it to rationalize a new mega-project also supposed to carry Norman
Foster’s name: the ‘Indoor City’ (see Figure 5).
24
Figure 5. Model of the ‘Indoor City,’ a project currently in the design phase, as presented at the
Astana Master Plan in July 2011. Image source: Author.
As with the Pyramid, the press coverage consistently underscores its outlandishness and
profligacy, often mentioning its astounding price-tag. However, none of the articles mention the
source of the funding. Although the identity of the investors has remained private to journalists,
it is easy to discover that the project was funded by the ‘Khan Shatyry Consortium.’ And though
it is not clear precisely who was involved in the project, the participation of certain companies
(specifically Sembol Construction) suggests that the project is tied to the regime’s widespread
money laundering schemes in Astana (LeVine, 2007, page 322; Schatz, 2004, page 126). So
instead of even hinting at this highly political question, the media reports deploy the script of
utopia, which “emerges at the moment of the suspension of the political” (Jameson, 2004, page
43). Gessen (2011), for example, claims that the ETFE coating makes the tent look, at certain
25
times of the day, “like a terrible sea creature risen from the steppe,” while Hoelzgen (2006)
caricatures it as an upside-down Swiss Alpine horn.
The Khan Shatyry has also been read and written about as a symbol of Nazarbayev’s
megalomania (Größenwahn) (e.g. Follath and Neef 2010, page 130; Gessen, 2011; Niemczyk,
2010), but perhaps slightly less so than the Pyramid. Nonetheless, it is portrayed as his brainchild
and part of his vision for a monumental East-West axis defining the city’s new administrative
center (e.g. Follath and Zand 2009, page 106; Myers, 2006; Niemczyk, 2010). Other supporting
evidence for the president’s megalomania is drawn from the fact that the building was opened on
5 July, during the 2010 Astana Day celebrations. For the capital’s 10th anniversary in July 2008,
the government established ‘Astana Day’ as a national holiday, which coincides with
Nazarbayev’s birthday on 6 July. The Western press has consistently read the grandiose
spectacles held during the holiday not as celebrations of the capital city’s ‘birthday’ (as in the
official version), but as a birthday party for Nazarbayev himself (e.g. BBC, 2011; Follath and
Neef 2010, page 130; New York Times, 2008, 2011; Orange, 2011; Saidazimova, 2008; The
Economist 2008).
Regarding the Khan Shatyry opening, Follath and Neef (2010, page 130) exclaim: ‘What
a birthday present!’ Despite not being quite finished, the complex was opened for Nazarbayev’s
70th birthday, which is considered an important life-milestone among Kazakhs. The opening
ceremony was a true spectacle: Andrea Bocelli, a famous operatic singer, gave a concert, and
guests included President Medvedev of Russia, President Yanukovych of Ukraine, President Gül
of Turkey, President Lukashenko of Belarus, President Sargsyan of Armenia, President Rahmon
of Tajikistan; the President Otunbayeva of Kyrgyzstan, the Crown prince of Abu Dhabi
Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and the King Abdullah II of Jordan (Kucera, 2011a; Orange,
26
2010). That they were not in town for this event, but rather for a Eurasian Economic Community
(EurAsEc) summit meeting, did not diminish the prestige the stately guests added to the opening.
However, read as it was, as a birthday party for Nazarbayev, the megalomaniac trope was easily
deployed. Gessen (2011) also fits this into a broader picture of politics in the region, and
Nazarbayev’s self-attributed image of being an international unity-builder:
The Presidents of many countries, including countries that hate one another, came
to the opening ceremony, last July 5th. It was a fitting present for Kazakhstan’s
leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who turned seventy the next day, and who had
constructed this entire city, ex nihilo, in the middle of the Kazakh steppe.
The inaccuracy of the ‘ex nihilo’ image aside, the overall effect of this sort of coverage is one
that emphasizes the ruling regime’s hegemony and removes ordinary Kazakhstanis from sight. In
this removal, we are left with a fantastic landscape, depopulated and depoliticized. Or, if
populated and politicized, then characterized by a one-dimensional power of the external state
bearing down on unassuming and victimized citizens. Both versions erase their active
participation in (or silent observation of) the Khan Shatyry’s construction, the pleasure they have
found inside (or from which they have been excluded through exorbitant prices), and their
uniform admiration for the look of the structure (Koch, 2012) – in short, all the practices
surrounding the structure, which constitute them as subjects. Their gratitude (or mere silence) to
the Nazarbayev regime for bringing the project to fruition is part of what inscribes the authority
of the ‘state’ and naturalizes power relations. But all these practices, these emotions, these lived
realities of Astana residents are systematically written out of the media coverage on the Khan
Shatyry (as with the coverage on the Astana project in general), which tends to focus on its
megalomaniac and fantastic sources of inspiration.
Conclusion
27
This article began with the argument that the act of labeling something ‘utopian’ is a
political bordering practice, which reflects more on the speaker’s vision of the possible and the
impossible, the real and the false. ‘Modernity,’ like utopia, often functions as a political
pronouncement dividing the ‘real’ from the ‘false.’ Yet, locating modernity is ultimately about
performing a certain contemporary desire, regardless of whether others deem it ‘utopian’ or not.
The practices constituting this performance can never belong to some abstract, ‘other’ realm of
‘representations’ – for there is no such realm (Mitchell, 1988). There cannot be some ‘real’
modernity ‘underneath’ the representations. Nonetheless, the actors and authors I have
considered here are all engaged as subjects of a certain ‘representational economy,’ which
depends on the idea that the urban form’s ‘exterior’ actually reflects some ‘interior’ social reality.
Following Mitchell (1988), I argue that this ‘exterior’ – for example, of the Khan Shatyry – is
not just an abstraction, but a materiality factoring into concrete political, economic, and
quotidian practices. Nazarbayev may describe it as a symbol, the Western media may read and
write it as a different symbol, and citizens may see it as yet another symbol. But the fact is that,
despite all this, real people labored to build it, hundreds of millions of dollars changed hands,
and since it opened, thousands of people have visited to acquire goods and experiences alike.
Yet the discourses I have explored in this article systematically write out these
materialities when they employ the stigmatizing language of ‘utopia,’ ‘fantasy,’ and ‘Disney.’
Perhaps more (or differently) worrisome than the prevalence of these Orientalizing scripts in the
popular media is the fact that they often creep into academic writings. As we saw in the
introduction, Mike Davis (2006) and Marshall Berman (1989) are especially culpable, but so too
do these narratives pervade much recent urban studies work mega-urban development projects
(e.g. Jackson and della Dora, 2009; Ong, 2011; Roy, 2011; Simpson, 2012). Jackson and della
28
Dora’s (2009) fascinating study of artificial islands, for example, begins to address important
questions about the political economic interests that condition these spectacular projects, noting
how, “The artificiality of the artificial island works to hide the technical preconditions of the
island experience to promote the dream space as space” (Jackson and della Dora, 2009, page
2100). But, throughout, the authors lapse into the very same Orientalizing language of fantasy, in
which the islands “territorialise, in new ways, commodity fantasies and reinforce hegemonies by
literally enscribing the earth fantastique” (Jackson and della Dora, 2009, page 2099) and “offer a
hypermodern, technically hybrid space as an avatar for contemporary Edenic longing” (Jackson
and della Dora, 2009, page 2100). This is not to say that all scholars are guilty of this, and there
are indeed some excellent and embodied accounts of these urban development projects, such as
Mohammed and Sidaway’s (2012) work on South Asian migrant workers in Abu Dhabi, as well
as numerous careful studies of the political economic relations that give rise to the ‘spectacular’
(e.g. Acuto, 2010 on Dubai; Mitchell, 2007 on Cairo; Simpson, 2008 on Macao). While an
important lesson to be drawn from my analysis of Western press coverage of Astana is that the
language of utopia is not neutral, so too should we be aware of how this language is employed in
our own scholarship of these complex new urban developments around the world.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback, though all
remaining faults are my own. This material is based upon work supported by the US National
Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. 1003836. This research was also supported by a NSF
Graduate Research Fellowship, a NSF Nordic Research Opportunity grant, an IREX Individual
Advanced Research Opportunity Grant, and a US State Department Title VIII Grant for work at
29
the University of Illinois Summer Research Laboratory on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, or any
other granting organization.
Works Cited
Adams L, and Rustemova A, 2009, “Mass Spectacle and Styles of Governmentality in
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan” Europe-Asia Studies 61 1249 - 1276
Alexander C, Buchli V, 2007, “Introduction”, in Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia Eds. C
Alexander, V Buchli, C Humphrey (University College London Press, London) pp 1 - 39
Antelava N, 2006a, “Giant Tent to be Built in Astana” BBC News 9 December,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6165267.stm
Antelava N, 2006b, “Kazakh Stage for Religious Event” BBC News 13 September,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5341822.stm
ASRK 2010, “Perepis”, The Agency of Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan,
http://www.stat.kz/p_perepis/Documents/Перепись%20рус.pdf
Bagaeen S, 2007, “Brand Dubai: The Instant City; or the Instantly Recognizable City”
International Planning Studies 12 173 - 197
Barthel P-A, 2010, “Arab Mega-Projects: Between the Dubai Effect, Global Crisis, Social
Mobilization and a Sustainable Shift” Built Environment 36 133 - 145
BBC 2011, “Sting Cancels Kazakhstan Concert over ‘Rights Abuses’” BBC News 4 July,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14011860
30
Berman M, 1989 All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Simon and
Schuster, New York)
Bunnell T, 2002, “Multimedia Utopia? A Geographical Critique of High-Tech Development in
Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor” Antipode 34 265 - 295
Bunnell T, Das D, 2010, “Urban Pulse - a Geography of Serial Seduction: Urban Policy Transfer
from Kuala Lumpur to Hyderabad” Urban Geography 31 277 - 284
Coish S, 2008, “Pyramid Scheme” The New York Times 23 March,
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/style/tmagazine/30kazak.html
Crews R, 2003, “Civilization in the City: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Colonization of
Tashkent” in Architectures of Russian Identity: 1500 to the Present Eds. J Cracraft, D
Rowland (Cornell University Press, Ithaca) pp 117 - 132
Davis M, 2006, “Fear and Money in Dubai” New Left Review 41 47 - 68
Der Spiegel 2007, “Parade der Giganten” [Parade of Giants] Der Spiegel 40 164
Diener A, 2006, “Homeland as Social Construct: Territorialization among Kazakhstan’s
Germans and Koreans” Nationalities Papers 34 201 - 235
Ferguson J, 1990 The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development”, Depoliticization, and
Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge University Press, New York)
Fishman R, 1982 Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd
Wright, and Le Corbusier (MIT Press, Cambridge)
Follath E, Zand B, 2009, “Gipfel des Größenwahns” [Summit of Megalomania] Der Spiegel 51
102 - 106
Follath E, Neef C, 2010, “Die Marke Nasarbajew: Kasachstan und der Schneeleopard” [The
Nazarbayev Brand: Kazakhstan and the Snow Leopard] Der Spiegel 40 130 - 136
31
Ford L, 2008, “World Cities and Global Change: Observations on Monumentality in Urban
Design” Eurasian Geography and Economics 49 237 - 262
Foucault M, 1970 The Order of Things: An archaeology of the Human Sciences (Routledge,
London)
Foucault M, 1972 The Archaeology of Knowledge (Pantheon Books, New York)
Foucault M, 1975 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Pantheon Books, New York)
Foucault M, 1986, “Of Other Spaces” Diacritics 16 22 - 27
Foucault M, 2008 The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-1979
(Picador, New York)
Gessen K, 2011, “Nowheresville: How Kazakhstan is Building a Glittering New Capital from
Scratch” The New Yorker 87 96 - 106
Govers R, Go F, 2009 Place Branding: Glocal, Virtual and Physical Identities, Constructed,
Imagined and Experienced (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke)
Gramsci A, 2008 Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (International
Publishers, New York)
Gritsai O, van der Wusten H, 2000, “Moscow and St. Petersburg, a Sequence of Capitals, a Tale
of Two Cities” GeoJournal 51 33 - 45
Harvey D, 2000 Spaces of Hope (University of California Press, Berkeley)
Hetherington K, 1997 The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and Social Ordering (Routledge,
New York)
Hoelzgen J, 2006, “Gigantisches Zelt in Borats Welt” [Gigantic Tent in Borat’s World] Spiegel
Online 16 December, http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,454871,00.html
32
Jackson M, and della Dora V, 2009, “‘Dreams So Big Only the Sea Can Hold Them’: Man-Made
Islands as Anxious Spaces, Cultural Icons, and Travelling Visions” Environment and
Planning A 41 2086 - 2104
Jameson F, 2004, “The Politics of Utopia” New Left Review 25 35 - 54
King A, 1996, “Planning Perspectives: Worlds in the City: Manhattan Transfer and the
Ascendance of Spectacular Space” Planning Perspectives 11 97 - 114
Koch N, 2010, “The Monumental and the Miniature: Imagining ‘Modernity’ in Astana” Social &
Cultural Geography 11 769 - 787
Koch N, 2012 The City and the Steppe: Territory, Technologies of Government, and
Kazakhstan’s New Capital PhD dissertation, Department of Geography, University of
Colorado, Boulder, CO
Koch N, forthcoming, “Representing Astana: New practices of exclusion in independent
Kazakhstan” Under review at Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.
Kotkin S, 1995 Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (University of California Press,
Berkeley)
Kucera J, 2011a, “Five Presidents and a King” Slate Magazine 1 August,
http://www.slate.com/id/2300317/entry/2300318/
Kucera J, 2011b, “New Capital for a New Kazakhstan” Slate Magazine 2 August,
http://www.slate.com/id/2300317/entry/2300319/
Lancaster J, 2012, “Tomorrowland” National Geographic Magazine 221 80-101
Laszczkowski M, 2011a, “Building the Future: Construction, Temporality, and Politics in
Astana” Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 60 77–92
Laszczkowski M, 2011b, “Superplace: Global Connections and Local Politics at the Mega Mall,
33
Astana” Etnofoor 23 85-104
LeVine S, 2007 The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea
(Random House, New York)
Li T M, 2005, “Beyond ‘the State’ and Failed Schemes” American Anthropologist 107 383 - 394
Li T M, 2007 The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics
(Duke University Press, Durham)
MacInnes P, 2008, “After Borat: What the Kazak Film Industry Did Next” The Guardian 15
September, http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/sep/12/borat.kazakhstan
McCann E, 2010, “Urban Policy Mobilities and Global Circuits of Knowledge: Toward a
Research Agenda” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101 107 - 130
McCann E, Ward K, 2011, “Introduction. Urban Assemblages: Territories, Relations, Practices,
and Power”, in Mobile Urbanism: Cities and Policymaking in the Global Age Eds. E
McCann, K Ward (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis) pp xiii - xxxv
Mitchell T, 1988 Colonising Egypt (University of California Press, Berkeley)
Mitchell T, 1990, “Everyday Metaphors of Power” Theory and Society 19 545 - 577
Mitchell T, 2002 Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (University of California
Press, Berkeley)
Mitchell T, 2007, “Dreamland”, in Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism Eds. M Davis,
D Monk (New Press, New York) pp 1 - 33
Mohammad R, and Sidaway J, 2012, “Spectacular Urbanization Amidst Variegated Geographies
of Globalization: Learning from Abu Dhabi’s Trajectory through the Lives of South
Asian Men” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
Moore R, 2010, “Astana, Kazakhstan: The Space Station in the Steppes” The Observer 8 August,
34
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/08/astana-kazakhstan-space-station-steppes
Myers S, 2006, “Astana Journal; Kazakhstan’s Futuristic Capital, Complete With Pyramid” The
New York Times 13 October,
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D03E0D61030F930A25753C1A9609C
8B63
Najibullah, F, 2011, “Following Terror Attacks, Kazakhstan Hurriedly Tightens Religious Law”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 27 September,
http://www.rferl.org/content/kazakhstan_new_religious_law_islam_extremism/24341450
.html
Nazarbayev N, 1997, “Strategy 2030: Prosperity, Security and Ever Growing Welfare of All the
Kazakhstanis” Official Site of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan,
http://www.akorda.kz/en/kazakhstan/kazakhstan2030/strategy_2030
Nazarbayev N, 2006 Kazakhstanskii Put’ [The Kazakhstan way]. Karaganda.
Nazarbayev N, 2010, “Future vision, Interview with K Magazine” Condé Nast K Magazine 1 48
- 53
Nealon J, 2008 Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and Its Intensifications since 1984 (Stanford
University Press, Stanford)
Niemczyk R, 2010, “Das Disneyland der Steppe” [The Disneyland of the Steppe] Merien,
http://www.merian.de/kolumnen/europop/a-743369.html
New York Times 2008, “Kazakhstan Celebrates its Capital’s 10th Anniversary”, 6 July,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/world/asia/06iht-kazakh.4.14278399.html
New York Times 2011, “Sting Cancels Kazakh Concert Over Oil Worker Dispute”, 3 July,
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/07/03/world/asia/life-us-sting-
35
kazakhstan.html?scp=1&sq=sting kazakhstan&st=cse
Ong A, 2011, “Hyperbuilding: Spectacle, Speculation, and the Hyperspace of Sovereignty”, in
Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global Eds. A Roy, A Ong
(Wiley-Blackwell, Malden) pp 205-226
Orange R, 2010, “Giant Indoor Park Opened for Kazakh President’s Birthday” The Daily
Telegraph 5 July,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/kazakhstan/7873035/Giant-indoorpark-opened-for-Kazakh-presidents-birthday.html
Pearman H, 2005, “The Pyramid of Peace: Norman Foster Assumes the Monumental Mantle of
Boullée. In Kazakhstan” The Sunday Times 20 February,
http://www.hughpearman.com/articles5/pyramid.html
Pinder D, 2002, “In Defence of Utopian Urbanism: Imagining Cities After the ‘End of Utopia’”
Geografiska Annaler 84B 229 - 241
Pinder D, 2005 Visions of the City: Utopianism, Power and Politics in Twentieth-Century
Urbanism (Routledge, New York)
Robinson J, 2002, “Global and World Cities: A View from Off the Map” International Journal
of Urban and Regional Research 26 531 - 554
Robinson J, 2011, “The Spaces of Circulating Knowledge: City Strategies and Global Urban
Governmentality”, in Mobile Urbanism: Cities and Policymaking in the Global Eds. E
McCann, K Ward (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis) pp 15 - 40
Roy A, 2011. Conclusion: Postcolonial Urbanism: Speed, Hysteria, Mass Dreams”, in Worlding
Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global Eds. A Roy, A Ong (WileyBlackwell, Malden) pp 307-335
36
Roy A, Ong A, 2011 Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global (WileyBlackwell, Malden)
Ryklin M, 2003, “‘The Best in the World’: The Discourse of the Moscow Metro in the 1930s” in
The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space Eds. E Dobrenko, E
Naiman (University of Washington Press, Seattle) pp 261 - 266
Said E, 1978 Orientalism (Pantheon Books, New York)
Saidazimova G, 2008, “Nazarbaev Celebrates ‘Day of Astana,’ But Critics Scoff at Grandiose
Festivities” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 5 July,
http://www.rferl.org/articleprintview/1181848.html
Saunders R, 2007, “In Defence of Kazakshilik: Kazakhstan’s War on Sacha Baron Cohen”
Identities 14 225 - 255
Saunders R, 2008, “Buying into Brand Borat: Kazakhstan’s Cautious Embrace of Its Unwanted
‘Son’” Slavic Review 67 63 - 80
Schatz E, 2004, “What Capital Cities Say About State and Nation Building” Nationalism and
Ethnic Politics 9 111 - 140
Schatz E, 2006, “Access by Accident: Legitimacy Claims and Democracy Promotion in
Authoritarian Central Asia” International Political Science Review 27 263 - 284
Schatz E, 2008, “Transnational Image Making and Soft Authoritarian Kazakhstan” Slavic
Review 67 50 - 62
Simpson T, 2008, “Macao, Capital of the 21st Century?” Environment and Planning D: Society
and Space 26 1053 - 1079
Simpson T, 2012, “Tourist Utopias: Las Vegas, Dubai, Macau” Asia Research Institute Working
Paper 177 3-29
37
Sklair L, 2005, “The Transnational Capitalist Class and Contemporary Architecture in
Globalizing Cities” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29 485 - 500
Steen M, 2008, “Kazakh President’s ‘Backyard’ Pyramid” The Age 13 November,
http://www.theage.com.au/travel/kazakh-presidents-backyard-pyramid-20081113624b.html
Stewart S, 1984 On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the
Collection (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore)
Stronski P, 2010 Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930-1966 (University of Pittsburgh Press,
Pittsburgh)
The Economist 1997 “Aaarghmola” The Economist 344 35 - 36
The Economist 2008, “Capital Idea for a Present” The Economist 387 60
Veyne P, 1997, “Foucault Revolutionizes History” in Foucault and His Interlocutors Ed. A
Davidson (University of Chicago Press, Chicago) pp 146 - 182
Zukin S, 1991 Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (University of California
Press, Berkeley)