On the 18th of February 2022, at 17. 00 Tbilisi time, the project ‘Tbilisi as an Urban Assemblage’ (financed by Rustaveli Science Foundation) and the Anthropology Doctorate program invites to a talk Arboreal Atmospheres: Phantom Pains and the Transformation of Tashkent’s Urban Natures by Nikolaos Olma (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin)

Abstract:

Approaching post-socialist urban natures through an urban political ecology lens, this talk will examine the politico-economic drives behind the recent deforestation of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, as well as the social, ecological, and affective effects thereof. Hundreds of large deciduous trees are annually felled either by poachers, who harvest wood to provide the local furniture industry with raw material, or by the local authorities, who seek to eliminate parts of Tashkent associated with its Russian heritage. The main target of both offensives are oriental plane trees (Platanus orientalis), a hardwood species that for historical reasons is widely seen as a synecdoche for Tsarist- and Soviet-era Tashkent. Felled oriental plane trees are occasionally replaced by blue spruce trees (Picea pungens), a coniferous evergreen species, which, despite the authorities’ efforts, has failed to adapt to Tashkent’s hot climate. This alteration of the urban landscape and atmosphere of Tashkent—the former Soviet Union’s greenest city—has led to contestations between Russian-speaking “old-timers,” for whom oriental plane trees are a quintessential part of the cityscape, and Uzbek-speaking “newcomers,” who have different experiences of urban natures. But deforestation has also exposed pedestrians and park-goers to the scorching sun and harmful ultraviolet radiation. As the presentation will argue, the resulting sunburn acts as a physical somatic “phantom pain,” which juxtaposes “useful” plane trees with “useless” spruce trees, elicits various types of memory and nostalgic narratives, and serves as an index of the city’s post-socialist transformation.

Short bio:

Nikolaos Olma is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin and lecturer at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. In his doctoral dissertation (Copenhagen, 2018), he explored the nexus of embodied memory and urban infrastructure in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Nikolaos previously worked as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale), Germany and taught courses in economic, urban, and environmental anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Copenhagen. He currently works on a book project examining how the inhabitants of a former uranium mining town in Kyrgyzstan negotiate the consequences of chronic exposure to low doses of radiation.