Dr Catherine Alexander
Lecturer | BA MPhil PhD
c.alexander (@gold.ac.uk)
Research Interests
I am currently completing a Leverhulme Trust funded project on transformations in urban life in post-socialist Central Asia. A MacArthur Foundation funded project into migratory processes in Kazakhstan will begin in 2003. The main fieldwork site for these research projects is Almaty and surrounding villages in Kazakhstan where I have been examining emerging bureaucratic, economic and legislative forms in the post-socialist context, contracts between public and private sectors, architecture, migration, and cities. This work continues interests started during my PhD research into different understandings of the state and contractual relations in Turkey through the case study of the Turkish Sugar Corporation. In addition I have studied domestic space practices (including gardens) in Turkey, Kazakhstan and Britain. A new strand of research into sustainability and waste management issues in collaboration with engineers follows up all these themes.
Recent Publications
- (forthcoming) 'The cultures and properties of empty buildings', A world of cultures: culture as property in anthropological perspective (eds.) D.Kaneff and E. Kasten. Washington University Press.
- (2002) Personal States: making connections between people and bureaucracy in Turkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- (2002) 'The Garden as Occasional Domestic Space', Signs: The Journal of Women, Culture and Society , Vol. 27, No. 3.