BUDOWANIE PAŃSTWA – STOLICA KAZACHSTANU I PAŃSTWO JAKO KONSTRUKT MATERIALNY
BUILDING THE STATE – KAZAKHSTAN’S CAPITAL CITY AND THE STATE AS A MATERIAL CONSTRUCT

Summary/Abstract: In this article, I focus ethnographically on the construction boom in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, and the ‘state-building through building-work’ metaphor in Kazakhstani political discourse. I investigate the relations between the state, space, and materiality. In the Soviet period, the state was a material and social whole, bound together by diverse infrastructures. After perestroika, that whole disintegrated, as was made evident by the splitting up of production facilities and infrastructures. However, since around the year 2000, the construction of the new capital has become a process of the reconstruction, at once material and metaphorical, of the state. Astana became the destination for hundreds of thousands of internal migrants, Kazakhstani citizens. For many, participating in the making of the new capital became a way to regain a sense of agentive subjectivity. The construction process and spectacular new buildings make the state the object of emotional involvement: hope, pride, and identifi cation. On the other hand, protracted construction and its inherent contradictions give rise to disillusionment and doubts as to the working of the state. In sum, in this article I point to the materiality of buildings and infrastructures as what lends a tangible reality to the state and allows for it to be infused with diverse, often mutually contradictory emotions.

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