Professor Catherine Alexander BA MPhil PhD

Staff Details

I’ve carried out fieldwork in Turkey, Kazakhstan and Britain on changing relations between state, market and the third sector, the built environment, migration, waste and technology. My most recent period of fieldwork explored how formerly elite closed ‘nuclear’ towns in Kazakhstan were trying to re-connect to broader economies. I read English Literature at Durham, later moving to social anthropology at Cambridge University; inbetween I worked for a number of central government departments in Britain and Turkey.

Teaching

Catherine Alexander is Head of Department and teaches on the postgraduate Research Design course.

Areas of supervision

I am interested in supervising PhDs based in Central Asia, Britain and the middle east and / or on the following topics: the built environment; planning; privatization; alternative economies; economic anthropology; community groups/voluntary/welfare/third sector; waste and recycling; energy. However, if you look at the students I supervise, you’ll see that their topics range beyond this.

Research Supervision

Research interests

Most of Catherine Alexander's work focuses on relations between citizens and the state and changes in the public sphere. She has approached these questions through a number of ways in Turkey, Britain and Kazakhstan . Personal States (2002, Oxford University Press) is about different understandings of the state  and contractual relations in Turkey through a study of the nationalised Turkish Sugar Corporation. In this she brought together analyses of narrative genres, architecture and the social geography of factory compounds as well as legal forms and uses of history as means through which diverse perceptions and practices of the state could be observed.

An interest in the effects of dissolving centralised economies took her to Central Asia in 2000. Urban life in post Soviet Asia (Routledge, 2007) and a series of articles resulted. She is currently completing a monograph about Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan. This analyses the effects on urban citizens of the abrupt changes after independence: mass-privatisation of work, housing and the urban infrastructure in the 1990s, the pathologisation of the city and new semi-legal developments on the edge: shanty towns, extravagant private villas and giant markets. She has also published on property rights (industrial privatisation, cultural property, indigenous rights) and on English suburban gardens.

In 2004 work began in Britain on the concept and efficacy of the 'social economy' or third sector and on practices and spaces that act as interfaces between public and domestic domains. Current research is on nuclear wastes and formerly closed cities in Kazakhstan; and waste treatment technologies in Britain. In 2004 she was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for work on state institutions, cities and economic and political anthropology more generally.

Editorial Boards: Critique of Anthropology, Anthropologies in Translation, Anthropology of the Middle East, Sean Kingston Publishing.

Grants and Awards

Remaking Knowledge Communities: the opening of closed nuclear towns, PI, Nuffield Foundation, 2009-2010.

The Waste of the World, Co-Investigator with K. Bickerstaff (Durham, Geography), N. Gregson (PI: Sheffield, Geography), R. Hudson (Durham , Geography), D. Miller (UCL , Geography), Economic and Social Research Council, Large grants scheme (2006- 2011), £3,600,000. www.thewasteoftheworld.org/

SocAnth , Marie Curie Early Stage Training network, Co-Investigator with Stewart, M., UCL (PI, co-ordinator), D. Kalb, (CEU, Budapest ), B. Mann (Max-Planck Institute of Ethnology, Germany ), (2006-2010), FP6 Marie Curie Programme (EU), £1,500,000 Euros. www.ucl.ac.uk/mariecuriesocanth/

Re-thinking Economies , Principal Investigator, ESRC Research seminar series, (2005- 2008), £15,000 + sponsorship from Critique of Anthropology www.rethinkingeconomies.org.uk/

Instabilities, migration and labour in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, Principal Investigator with Bazin, L. (CNRS, IRD), N. Akimova (Uzbekistan), B. Tatibekov (Kazakhstan, Academy of Sciences), (2005- 2007), INTAS (EU) 98,000 Euros.

Philip Leverhulme Prize, C. Alexander (Sept 2005-Sept 2007), Leverhulme Trust, £50,000. www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/archive/leverhulme-prize-newsletter/

Strategies for sustainable urban waste management , Co-Investigator with W. Powrie (PI: Southampton, Civil and Environmental Engineering),, T. Jackson (Centre for Environmental Policy, Surrey), M. Leach (Engineering, Imperial College), S. Simons (Chemical Engineering, UCL ), J. Swithenbank (Chemical Engineering, Sheffield), (2003- 2008) Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, £1,500,000. www.suewaste.soton.ac.uk/

Migration patterns in Almaty and Surrounding settlements, Principal Investigator (2003- 2005), John and Catherine MacArthur Foundation, £68,000.

Transformations in urban life in post-Soviet central Asia, Co-investigator with C. Humphrey and V. Buchli (2000- 2003), Leverhulme Trust,  £110,000.

Selected publications

2012

Alexander, C. (2012) ‘Remont: Works in process’, and Alexander C. & Reno, J. ‘Introduction’, in Alexander, C. & Reno, J. (eds.) ‘Economies of Recycling: Global transformations of materials, values and social relations’. London: Zed Books.

Alexander, C., (2012) The Occasional Garden, in Mezei, K. and Briganti, C. (eds.) The Domestic Space Reader. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press.

2010

Alexander, C., (in press) Value: economic valuations and environmental policy, in Carrier, J. (ed.) A Handbook of Economic Anthropology (revised and updated edition). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 455-471.

Alexander, C., (2010), The Third Sector, in Hart, K., Laville, J-L. and Cattani, A. D. (eds.) The Human Economy: a citizen’s guide. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 213-25.

Alexander, C., (2010) Wasting the Planet? Review essay of Garbage In, Garbage Out: Solving the Problems with Long-Distance 
Trash Transport, by Vivian Thomson, University of Virginia Press. Anthropology Now.

Alexander, C., (2010) review of One Homeland or two? The nationalization and transnationalization of Mongolia’s Kazakhs, by Alexander Diener, (2009) Stanford: Stanford University Press. Central Asian Survey Vol 29(3): 361-3.

2009

Alexander, C. , A. Druckman, C. Osinski, and T. Jackson, (2009), Estimating household material flows in deprived areas, Journal of Waste and Resource Management.

Alexander, C ., C. Smaje, A. Curran, and I. Williams  (2009), An evaluation of bulky waste and furniture re-use schemes in England, Journal of Waste and Resource Management 162(3): 141-150.

Alexander , C., C. Smaje, R. Timlett, and I. Williams, (2009), Improving social technologies for recycling: interfaces, estates, multi-family dwellings and infrastructural deprivation, Journal of Waste and Resources Management, 162(WR1): 15-29.

Alexander, C., A. Curren, C. Smaje and I. Williams (2009). Use of home food digestors to reduce household waste. Journal of Waste and Resource Management 162(3): 129-139.

Alexander , C., (2009), Illusions of freedom: Karl Polanyi and third sector recycling schemes in Britain, in C. Hann and K. Hart. (eds.), Market and Society, The Great Transformation Today, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. 

2008

Alexander, C., (2008), Privatization: jokes, scandal and absurdity in a time of rapid change, in Sykes, K. (ed.) Ethnographies of moral reason: living paradoxes of a global age. Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 43-67.

Alexander , C., (2008), Waste under socialism and after: a case study from Almaty, in West, H. and Raman, P. (eds.) Enduring Socialism. Explorations of Revolution, Transformation and Restoration. Oxford : Berghahn Books, pp. 148-169.

Alexander , C., and C. Smaje, (2008), Surplus retail food distribution: an analysis of a third sector model, Resources, Conservation and Recovery 52(5): 1290-8.

Alexander, C., and C. Smaje, (2008), Evaluating third-sector re-use organisations in the UK : case-studies and analysis of furniture re-use schemes, Resources, Conservation and Recovery, 52(5):  719-730.

2007

Alexander , C., V Buchli and C Humphrey (eds), (2007), Urban life in post-Soviet Asia , London : Routledge ( UCL Press). Pp212.

Alexander, C. and V Buchli, (2007), Introduction, in Alexander, C., V Buchli and C Humphrey (eds). Urban life in post-Soviet Asia, London : Routledge ( UCL Press). Pp1-40.

Alexander , C., (2007), Almaty: rethinking the public sector, in Alexander, C., V Buchli and C Humphrey (eds), Urban life in post-Soviet Asia, London: Routledge ( UCL Press). Pp70-102.

Alexander , C., (2007), Rationality and Contingency: socialist city planning, in Ways of knowing: Epistemologies in practice (volume of selected papers from the 5th Decennial ASA conference), (eds.) Jeanette Edwards, Penny Harvey and Peter Wade, Oxford : Berg. pp 58-74.

Alexander , C., (2007), Local state knowledges in city planning: a case study from Almaty, Critique of Anthropology 27(2) pp165-182.

2006

Alexander , C., (2006), Rethinking the household and domestic material flows, Warmer Bulletin: journal of sustainable waste management & resource recovery. Pp11-14.

Alexander, C., and B. Tatibekov, (2006), Characteristics of migration in Kazakhstan , Europe-Asia Journal: society, policy, culture, Vol 1(53): 101-107 (Russian).

Alexander , C., (2006), The returning past: repatriates and the wrong kind of Kazakh, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Cultural Diversity and the Contemporary World, Chinese Ethnological Society, Guangzhou .

2005

Alexander , C., (2005). Value: economic valuations and environmental policy, in A Handbook of Economic Anthropology, (ed.) James Carrier, Cheltenham : Edward Elgar, pp455-472. pp455-471.

2004

Alexander , C., (2004), Who Owns Native Culture?, a review essay for The Political and Legal Anthropology Review, (PoLAR). Vol 27(2) pp 113-129.

Alexander , C., (2004). The Cultures and Properties of Decaying Buildings, Focaal - European Journal of Anthropology 44, pp 48-60.

Alexander , C. (2004) 'Values, Relations and Changing Bodies: Industrial Privatisation in Kazakhstan ', in C. Humphrey and K. Verdery (eds.), Property in Question: appropriation, recognition and value transformation in the global economy. (eds.). Oxford : Berg. pp251-274.

2003

Alexander , C., (2003). Taking Control of Aisha Bibi: nationalist projects and local heritage, Kumbez: Space, Time, Architecture 2003/1, Almaty. (Russian).

Alexander , C. (2003) Images of the state in contemporary Turkey , Turkish Area Studies Review.

2002

Alexander , C. (2002), Personal States: making connections between people and bureaucracy in Turkey . Oxford : Oxford University Press. Pp282.

Alexander , C., (2002), The Garden as Occasional Domestic Space, Signs: The Journal of Women, Culture and Society 27:3, pp 857-872.

2001

Alexander , C., (2001), 'Legal and Binding: time, change and long term transactions'. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Vol 7(3), pp467-485.

2000

Alexander, C., (2000), 'Fabricating the State: The Factory', Journal of Material Culture. Vol.5(2), pp177-195.