CASI research seminar: The Production of Urban Space in Osh: Preliminary Results from Neighborhood Walks and Resident Interviews

March 24, 2016

March 24, 2016

Speaker: Caitlin Ryan, PhD Candidate, Department of Geography, University of Colorado—Boulder, CASI Visiting Scholar

Discussant: Emil Nasritdinov, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

Abstract: Cities are dynamic places where local, national and global processes of development are manifest in fixed, material ways. The physical infrastructure of a city has a profound impact on how citizens think about themselves and their places in the world. In cities, the past, present and future are intertwined through the medium of streets, sidewalks, parks, private housing, public spaces, cafes and shopping malls, markets, public transport, abandoned industrial parks and monuments, to name just a few. But the way that urban residents imagine themselves and their futures also has an imprint on the built environment. City spaces are re-appropriated for uses and attributed meaning beyond official or intended purposes. Furthermore, debates about how a city should develop reflect broader discussions about citizenship, identity and belonging. Thus, urban development is a tool of both political elites and ordinary citizens. Increasingly, mainstream international development and humanitarian organizations also think of the urban as a tool of social change in its own right. The city is not just as an empty container where events take place; cities are produced physically and discursively from above and from below; and the same urban spaces are lived in a multitude of ways.

While most would recognize the truism of these statements for so-called “world cities” such as London, New York, Moscow, Rio de Janiero, Johannesburg or Beijing, the lens of the urban is rarely focused on understanding social processes in smaller secondary cities, especially “provincial” ones located on the periphery of the periphery. This paper argues that Osh is at once at the edge and at the epicenter of national development in Kyrgyzstan. It draws on preliminary findings from ongoing dissertation fieldwork in Osh to highlight how thinking at the scale of the urban can better situate ongoing socio-political processes. In particular, it draws on a series of neighborhood visits, interviews and walking tours with residents from new and old mikrorayon and mahalla districts of the city, and sets them alongside state and municipal-level discourses about urban development. The paper seeks to link recent historical, material processes of urban change and renewal with concepts of what it means to be an urban resident in the context of post-socialist nation-building.

This research is generously supported by a 2015-2016 Fulbright US Student Grant.

Bio: Caitlin Ryan is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Colorado-Boulder. She is conducting her dissertation research in Osh, Kyrgyzstan from September 2015-July 2016 on urban development and change. Her research interests include humanitarianism, refugee and IDP studies, international development, cultural geography, urban change and post socialist transformation.

Speaker: Caitlin Ryan, PhD Candidate, Department of Geography, University of Colorado—Boulder, CASI Visiting Scholar

Discussant: Emil Nasritdinov, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

Abstract: Cities are dynamic places where local, national and global processes of development are manifest in fixed, material ways. The physical infrastructure of a city has a profound impact on how citizens think about themselves and their places in the world. In cities, the past, present and future are intertwined through the medium of streets, sidewalks, parks, private housing, public spaces, cafes and shopping malls, markets, public transport, abandoned industrial parks and monuments, to name just a few. But the way that urban residents imagine themselves and their futures also has an imprint on the built environment. City spaces are re-appropriated for uses and attributed meaning beyond official or intended purposes. Furthermore, debates about how a city should develop reflect broader discussions about citizenship, identity and belonging. Thus, urban development is a tool of both political elites and ordinary citizens. Increasingly, mainstream international development and humanitarian organizations also think of the urban as a tool of social change in its own right. The city is not just as an empty container where events take place; cities are produced physically and discursively from above and from below; and the same urban spaces are lived in a multitude of ways.

While most would recognize the truism of these statements for so-called “world cities” such as London, New York, Moscow, Rio de Janiero, Johannesburg or Beijing, the lens of the urban is rarely focused on understanding social processes in smaller secondary cities, especially “provincial” ones located on the periphery of the periphery. This paper argues that Osh is at once at the edge and at the epicenter of national development in Kyrgyzstan. It draws on preliminary findings from ongoing dissertation fieldwork in Osh to highlight how thinking at the scale of the urban can better situate ongoing socio-political processes. In particular, it draws on a series of neighborhood visits, interviews and walking tours with residents from new and old mikrorayon and mahalla districts of the city, and sets them alongside state and municipal-level discourses about urban development. The paper seeks to link recent historical, material processes of urban change and renewal with concepts of what it means to be an urban resident in the context of post-socialist nation-building.

This research is generously supported by a 2015-2016 Fulbright US Student Grant.

Bio: Caitlin Ryan is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Colorado-Boulder. She is conducting her dissertation research in Osh, Kyrgyzstan from September 2015-July 2016 on urban development and change. Her research interests include humanitarianism, refugee and IDP studies, international development, cultural geography, urban change and post socialist transformation.

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