Madeleine Reeves is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester and editor of Movement, Power and Place in Central Asia and Beyond: Contested Trajectories.

Johan Rasanayagam is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen and author of Islam in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan: The Morality of Experience.

Judith Beyer is Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and author of Kyrgyzstan: A Photoethnography of Talas.

edited by Madeleine Reeves, Bruce Grant, edited by Johan Rasanayagam, Judith Beyer, with contributions by John Heathershaw, Eva-Marie Dubuisson, Aksana Ismailbekova, Alima Bissenova, Mateusz Laszczkowski, Ildiko Beller-Hann, Madeleine Reeves, Sarah Kendzior, Tommaso Trevisani, Morgan Yih-Yang Liu, Cynthia Werner, Kathleen Purvis-Roberts, Bruce Grant

Introduction: Performances, Possibilities, and Practices of the Political in Central Asia Johan Rasanayagam, Judith Beyer, and Madeleine Reeves

Part I. Staging the Political
1. The Global Performance State: A Reconsideration of the Central Asian "Weak State" John Heathershaw
2. Dialogic Authority: Kazakh Aitys Poets and Their Patrons Eva-Marie Dubuisson
3. Performing Democracy: State-Making through Patronage in Kyrgyzstan Aksana Ismailbekova
4. "There is This Law..." Performing the State in the Kyrgyz Courts of Elders Judith Beyer

Part II. Political Materials, Political Fantasies
5. The Master Plan of Astana: Between the "Art of Government" and the "Art of Being Global" Alima Bissenova
6. State Building(s): Built Forms, Materiality, and the State in Astana Mateusz Laszczkowski
7. The Bulldozer State: Chinese Socialist Development in Xinjiang Ildikó Bellér-Hann
8. The Time of the Border: Contingency, Conflict and Popular Statism at the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Boundary Madeleine Reeves

Part III. Moral Positionings
9. Reclaiming Ma'naviyat: Morality, Criminality and Dissident Politics in Uzbekistan Sarah Kendzior
10. The Reshaping of Cities and Citizens in Uzbekistan: The Case of Namangan's "New Uzbeks" Tommaso Trevisani
11. Massacre Through a Kaleidoscope: Fragmented Moral Imaginaries of the State in Central Asia Morgan Liu
12. Cold War Memories and Post-Cold War Realities: The Politics of Memory and Identity in the Everyday Life of Kazakhstan's Radiation Victims Cynthia Werner and Kathleen Purvis-Roberts