From: Serguei A. Oushakine

We are pleased to announce a new publication:

Urban Spaces after Socialism. Ethnographies of Public Places in Eurasian Cities, edited by Tsypylma Darieva, Wolfgang Kaschuba and Melanie Krebs,
Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 2011 ? 325 pages ? ISBN 978-3-593-39384-1

The two decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union brought great changes to the new nations on its periphery. Urban Spaces after Socialism offers a detailed ethnographic look at one area of change: the use and understanding of public space in the region's cities. Presenting case studies from Tashkent, Yerevan, Gumri, St. Petersburg, Tbilisi, Baku, and Osh, the book examines the way that different groups, from Christians and Muslims to ardent reformers and Soviet apologists, assign meaning to public spaces and deploy them in attempts to construct-and even control-the way the history of their cities is understood.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/U/bo12251838.html

Contents:
Tsypylma Darieva and Wolfgang Kaschuba, Sights and Signs of Postsocialist Urbanism. An Introduction

Part I: Contours and Places

Artyom Kosmarski, Grandeur and Decay of the »Soviet Byzantium«: Spaces, Peoples and Memories of Tashkent
Gayane Shagoyan, The Second City as the First City: The Development of Gyumri from Anthropological Perspective
Madlen Pilz, Symbolic Transformation of Urban Landscape: Tbilisi City Maps
Melanie Krebs, Maiden Tower Goes International? Representing Baku in a Global World
Levon Abrahamian, Yerevan Sacra: Old and New Sacred Centres in the Urban Space
Tsypylma Darieva, A Remarkable Gift in a Postcolonial City. The Past and Present of the Baku Promenade

Part II: Places and Voices

Oleg Pachenkov, Every City has the Flea Market it Deserves. The Phenomenon of Urban Flea Market in St.-Petersburg
Zaza Shatirishvili and Paul Manning, Why are the Dolls Laughing? Tbilisi between Intelligentsia Culture and Socialist Labour
Sergey Rumyansev and Sevil Huseynova, Between Jazz Centre and the Capital of Muslim Culture. Some Insights into Baku?s Public and Everyday Life
Shorena Gabunia, Gay Culture and Public Places in Tbilisi
Paul Manning and Zaza Shatirishvili, The Exoticism and Eroticism of the City: The Kinto and his Tbilisi
Stefan Kirmse, »Nested Globalization« in Osh, Kyrgyzstan: Urban Youth Culture in a »Southern« City

Alaina Lemon, Afterword to Urban Socialisms