ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book aims to complement previous efforts towards an anthropology of post-Socialist urban spaces. It shows that urban spaces are gateways to new worlds. Within the former Soviet sphere, the opportunities to connect to and to experience previously unfamiliar flows of people, goods and ideas increased significantly after 1991, when cities such as Almaty, Dushanbe and Yerevan became capitals of newly independent states. The book also demonstrates that in each city the pathways of contemporary incorporations of the global are significantly shaped by the urban locale's histories and imagined futures. It further provides illustrations of how social contracts have been reconfigured in the post-Socialist era, a dynamic that primarily depends on a particular nation-state's current financial capabilities as defined by GDP and the praxis of redistributing state revenues.
