Till Mostowlansky on ‘Moscow Provisioning’

I received a link to a short article by Till Mostowlansky today on ‘Moscow provisioning’ (moskovskoe obespechenie), a phenomenon that Till also explores in his remarkable dissertation on the Trans-Pamir highway (‘Azan on the Moon’).  In it, he makes the important point that ‘Moscow provisioning’ was qualitatively different from the other forms of additional payments that workers in particularly remote, cold or high-altitude regions of the Soviet Union received. It signalled a particular form of social, material and aesthetic connection too, in which Moscow literally ‘multiplied’. As Till says there:
Continue reading

Upcoming review of Peter Finke Variations on Uzbek Identity

I’ve recently reviewed Peter Finke’s 2014 monograph, based on his Habilitation dissertation, Variations on Uzbek Identity: Strategic Choices, Cognitive Schemas and Political Constraints in Identification Processespublished by Berghahn. The review will shortly be out in the Asia Pacific Journal of AnthropologyI’ve uploaded a pre-print version of the review here.  The first paragraph is pasted in below:
Continue reading

Публикации на русском языке

Ривз, М. (2016)  След, траектория, точка давления: как переосмыслить “региональные исследования” в эпоху миграции // Антропологический Форум. 2016 №. 1. С 97-116. [пер. с англ. Александры Касаткиной]

Ривс, М. (2014) Антропология Средней Азии через десять лет после «состояния поля» : стакан наполовину полон или наполовину пуст? // Антропологический Форум. 2014 №. 1. С 60-79.

Ривс, М. (2014) Дороги, разъединяющие Кыргызстан и Таджикистан. Eurasianet.org. 24.01.14

Ривз, М. (2013) Как становятся «черными» в Москве: практики власти и существование мигрантов в тени закона // Гражданство и иммиграция: концептуальное, историческое и институциональное измерение / Под ред В. С. Малахова. М: Kanon+. C.146-177. Continue reading

Book Chapters

Reeves, M. (2017) ‘Economies of favour and indifference in Moscow’s temporary housing market’. In David Henig and Nicolette Makovicky, eds., Economies of Favour After Socialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 73-95.

Reeves, M. (2016). ‘Time and contingency in the anthropology of borders: on border as event in rural Central Asia.’ In Tone Bringa and Hege Toje, eds., Eurasian Borderlands: Spatializing Borders in the Aftermath of State Collapse. New York: PalgraveMacmillan, pp. 159-198. 

Reeves, M. (2016). ‘The black list: on infrastructural indeterminacy and its reverberations.’ In Penny Harvey, Casper Bruun Jansen and Atsuro Morita, eds., Infrastructures and Social Complexity: A Companion. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 296-308.

Reeves, M. (2015). ‘In search of tolerantnost’: preventive development and its limits at the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan border.’ In Marlene Laruelle and Johan Engvall, eds., Kyrgyzstan Beyond ‘Democracy Island’ and ‘Failing State’. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 79-98.

Reeves, M. (2014) ‘Politics, cosmopolitics, and preventive development at the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan border’. In Nina Glick Schiller and Andrew Irving, eds. Whose Cosmpolitanism? Critical Perspectives, Relationalities, Discontents. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 201-217.

Continue reading

Reviews and review essays

  • 2015 – Debora Dergousoff. An Institutional Ethnography of Women Entrepreneurs and Post-Soviet Rural Economies in Kyrgyzstan. PhD dissertation, Simon Fraser University, 2014. Dissertation Reviews: Central and Inner Asia1st April.

Continue reading

Journal Articles

Reeves, M. (2016). ‘”And Our Words Must Be Constructive!” On the Discordances of Glasnost’ in the Central Asian Provincial Press at a Time of Conflict.’ Cahiers d’Asie centrale 26 (1): 77-1

Reeves, M. (2016). ‘Diplomat, Landlord, Con-artist, Thief: Housing Brokers and the Mediation of Risk in Migrant Moscow.’ The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 34 (2): 93-109.

Ривз, М. [Reeves, M.] (2016) Sled, traektoriia, tochka davleniia: kak pereosmyslit’ “regional’nye issledovaniia” v epokhu migratsii [Trace, Trajectory, Pressure Point: Re-imagining ‘Area Studies’ in an Age of Migration]. Антропологический Форум 28 (2016): 97-116.

Reeves, M. (2016) ‘Infrastructural hope: Anticipating ‘independent roads’ and territorial integrity in southern Kyrgyzstan’. Ethnos (online first, no pagination).

Reeves, M. (2015) ‘Living from the nerves: deportability, indeterminacy and the feel of law in migrant Moscow.’ Social Analysis 59 (4): 119-136.

Laszczkowski, M. and Reeves, M. (2015) ‘Introduction: Affective States–Entanglements, Suspensions, Suspicions.’ Social Analysis 59 (4): 1-14  (Special issue on Affective States, co-edited with Mateusz Laszczkowski).

Reeves, M. (2014) “‘We’re with the people!’ Place, nation, and political community in Kyrgyzstan’s 2010 ‘April Events’”. Anthropology of East Europe Review 32 (2): 68-88.

Reeves, M. (2014) ‘Roads of hope and dislocation: infrastructure and the remaking of territory at a Central Asian border’. Ab Imperio 15 (3): 235-256.

Ривс, М. [Reeves, M.] (2014) Антропология Средней Азии через десять лет после «состояния поля» : стакан наполовину полон или наполовину пуст? [The Anthropology of Central Asian a Decade After ‘The State of the Field’: A Cup Half Full or Half Empty?’] Антропологический Форум, 20 (1): 60-79. Available in English here

Reeves, M. (2014) ‘Afterword: Neoliberal Opportunism.’ Anthropology Matters, 15 (1): 141-150.

Continue reading

Labour and legibility in the Russian migration regime

In 2008 I began work on a postdoctoral research project entitled Black Work, Green Money: Navigating the Bounds of Legal Labour in a Moscow Migrant Community, funded by an RCUK Research Fellowship, a small grant from the Nuffield Foundation and a Gibbs Travelling Fellowship from Newnham College, Cambridge. This project is an ethnographic exploration of the Russian migration regime as it is encountered, negotiated and co-produced by state officials, migration brokers and migrant workers from southern Kyrgyzstan. Continue reading