The politics of in/visibility: carving out queer space in Ul'yanovsk

<p>In spite of a growing interest within sexualities studies in the concept of queer space (Oswin 2008), existing literature focuses almost exclusively on its most visible and territorialised forms, such as the gay scene, thus privileging Western metropolitan areas as hubs of queer consumer culture (Binnie 2004). While the literature has emphasised the political significance of queer space as a site of resistance to hegemonic gender and sexual norms, it has again predominantly focused on overt claims to public space embodied in Pride events, neglecting other less open forms of resistance.</p><p> This article contributes new insights to current debates about the construction and meaning of queer space by considering how city space is appropriated by an informal queer network in Ul’ianovsk. The group routinely occupied very public locations meeting and socialising on the street or in mainstream cafés in central Ul’ianovsk, although claims to these spaces as queer were mostly contingent, precarious or invisible to outsiders. The article considers how provincial location affects tactics used to carve out communal space, foregrounding the importance of local context and collective agency in shaping specific forms of resistance, and questioning ethnocentric assumptions about the empowering potential of visibility.</p&gt

What is new in new nuclear criticism? : Post-Chernobyl perspective

Researching the literary dimension of the “nuclear” narrative in Eastern-European and North American writing practices gives an opportunity to distinguish not only the local/global features of the nuclear “Other” implementation in the context of researching ecological memory and nuclear identity formation in the post-Cold-War societies but also the new concepts, methods for analysis and forms, launched by the new “nuclear” age. The “original” nuclear criticism (posted by Derrida “No Apocalypse, Not Now: Seven Missiles and Seven Missives, 1984) seemed to be fading (due to the fact that the Cold War was considered to be over) and resulted in ecocritical movement. Nevertheless, Chernobyl as well as other “nuclear energy” events, and nuclear energy in general, changed the way we think about nuclear criticism, which has proved the launch of new nuclear criticism with its methodologies of literary analysis. My presentation will demonstrate the transformations of “nuclear energy” concept - from “the politicized Chernobyl” (regarded as a tomb of the Soviet regime, the “alternative history”, the Soviet self-destroying science, as a peace of propaganda policy, a factor of national identity formation) to “slow violence of the nuclear”(“Atom for Peace”, “Sarcophagus”, “the Exclusion Zone”, “cancer death”, “Zone culture”) - in writing practices about “Chernobyl” within the last 30 years (actually covered by the post-Chernobyl experience). Basing on “hyber object frame” (T.Morton), “intergenerational memory” studies (S.Lindsay), “collective narrative” (N.Bekhta) and through the psychoanalytical lens, such approach to “nuclear” subject formation and nuclear phobia as key concepts in the contermporary nuclear narratives encourages to discuss what a new nuclear criticism might look like today and reframe the “provincialized” nuclear narratives.Peer reviewe

From “the dialectics of nature” to the inorganic gene

The concept of projection from one space to another, with a consequent loss of information, can be seen in the relationships of gene to protein and language description to real situation. Such a transformation can only be reversed if extra external information is re-supplied. The genetic algorithm embodying this idea is now used in applied mathematics for exploring a configuration space. Such a dialectic – transformation back and forth between two kinds of description – extends the traditional Hegelian concept used by Engels and others of change as resulting from a resolution of the conflict of two opposing tendencies and provides for evolution of the joint system

Broadening Civic Space Through Voluntary Action Lessons from 2011

This publication explores how non-formal voluntary action outside of formal organizations can lead to greater citizen participation in governance; serves as a resource to help civil society organizations (CSOs) explore the opportunities for engagement this presents; highlights recent examples of how socially-oriented volunteerism has connected to more change-oriented activism; and suggests how both non-formal voluntary citizen action and social activism within CSOs can be strengthened

Place Mapping – transect walks in Arctic urban landscapes

This article investigates how experimental forms of urban mapping can reveal the particularity of places in non-standard urban situations with the intention of moving beyond the reductivism of still-dominant modernist modes of mapping and associated forms of planning. In order to do so, it reports on the emergence of a methodology involving transect walks, with the purpose of mapping the peculiarities of cultural landscapes. The study is located in cities and communities in the Arctic that are undergoing rapid transformation and are in urgent need of new conceptual approaches capable of enabling future thinking and strategic action. The article specifically asks how such a methodology works to includes the ephemeral and emergent, but also digital, dimensions of urban landscapes, and results in a complex reflexive method of critically reading and writing, of moving and locating, of seeing and picturing place mapping

Place Mapping – transect walks in Arctic urban landscapes

This article investigates how experimental forms of urban mapping can reveal the particularity of places in non-standard urban situations with the intention of moving beyond the reductivism of still-dominant modernist modes of mapping and associated forms of planning. In order to do so, it reports on the emergence of a methodology involving transect walks, with the purpose of mapping the peculiarities of cultural landscapes. The study is located in cities and communities in the Arctic that are undergoing rapid transformation and are in urgent need of new conceptual approaches capable of enabling future thinking and strategic action. The article specifically asks how such a methodology works to includes the ephemeral and emergent, but also digital, dimensions of urban landscapes, and results in a complex reflexive method of critically reading and writing, of moving and locating, of seeing and picturing place mapping

Living in the Margins of the State

This thesis explores the various forms of state manifestation in the lives of the Uzbek population living in the borderlands of Kyrgyzstan. With a particular focus on the stateless persons amongst this group, the thesis examines how the state materialises, manifests and transcends the lives of Uzbeks living in the physical, social and legal margins of the state. Based on fieldwork conducted along the militarized Kyrgyz-Uzbek border from 2013–2014, the ethnography presented in this work illuminates how people are experiencing, interacting and dealing with such manifestations of the state as borders, document practices and citizenship regime. This work addresses the scarcity of literature on statelessness in Central Asia and on rural Uzbek communities in Kyrgyzstan expanding the knowledge and understanding of the lived realities of this community by exploring how their worlds have been both shattered and coalesced through various political projects that temporarily both inhibits and facilities the existence of their cross-border social worlds. This thesis explores how the state is shaping the lives of the people who have become entangled with the increased presence of the state in the form of physical border barriers, state documentation practices and the prevalent citizenship regime. It particularly looks at the physical manifestation of the state boundaries, namely the borders and their morphology, illustrating how the physical presence of the borders have created new ways of socialising for a community whose lives transcend and spill over the state boundaries. By illuminating how the particular morphology of the border shapes and directs sociality, this work calls for more attention to the materiality of borders in the anthropological literature. Furthermore, this thesis advances the anthropological understanding of the state’s manifestation process itself by illustrating it’s fluctuating presence. The thesis shows how through scrutinising people’s engagement with documents, the temporal dynamic of state’s spatialising practices become visible. Finally, this thesis illustrates how the most prominent material artefact denoting the citizenship status, the passport, is central to the way people narrate their experiences of statelessness and to their understandings of citizenship status as such. This work advances the study of statelessness by focusing on the statelessness experiences and understandings of this status, rather than its legal dimensions, and argues for the incorporation of a spatial dimension and documentation aspects in exploring how people situate their lives in spaces where the nation-state is not always the main point of reference. Attending to such material state manifestations as borders and documents, this thesis highlights how locating the state in its concrete expressions in everyday lives enables us to explore the ways the state becomes present and transcends the lives of people, and how people on their own behalf engage with these state manifestations.Doktorgradsavhandlin