Mateusz Laszczkowski
Biographic Data
| ID | 637979 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mateusz Laszczkowski |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mateusz |
| FAMILY NAME | Laszczkowski |
| SIGNATURE | LASZCZKOWSKI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warsaw |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1271-1064 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 54 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Defending Dogs’ Hillock: The romance of ‘nature’ and administrative jujitsu as tactics of more-than-human resistance
Drawing on my personal involvement in defending Dogs’ Hillock – an ‘urban wasteland’ in a Warsaw neighbourhood – from transformation into an infrastructurally oversaturated city park, I examine a landscape of more-than-human resistance. First, discussing how the local residents-turned-activists were motivated by their emotional attachment to Dogs’ Hillock and concern for local fauna and flora, I suggest that ‘romance’ can be a catalyst of resista…
The Big, the Small, and the Ugly: The Politics of Scale-Making in a Contested Railway Project in Italy
This article explores the politics of scale-making in infrastructural development. It argues that 'megaprojects', rather than self-evidently 'big', are constructed and contested across a continuity of scales from the 'global' to the microscopic. Scalar struggles are constitutive of the projects as well as of their contestation. I examine this through a focus on a disputed high-speed railway project in Alpine Italy. First, I examine expert contest…
'City of the Future': Built Space, Modernity and Urban Change in Astana
Introduction Affect and the Anthropology of the State
Affective States: Entanglements, Suspensions, Suspicions
In recent years, political and social theory has been transformed by the heterogeneous approaches to feeling and emotion jointly referred to as ‘affect theory’. These range from psychological and social-constructivist approaches to emotion to feminist and post-human perspectives. Covering a wide spectrum of topics and ethnographic contexts—from engineering in the Andes to household rituals in rural China, from South African land restitution to mi…
The pulverous state
The modern state, one might argue, is an effort to control and organize time. This is one salient aspect of what the Editors of this volume, in the Introduction, call ‘chronocracy’: governance through temporal regimes and rhythms. States streamline history to cement their legitimacy. They also project teleological narratives of the future, from economic development plans to broader, vaguer, utopian visions. This chapter engages various issues thr…
Railway Territorialities: Topology and Infrastructural Politics in Alpine Italy
This article examines transportation infrastructures’ capacity to produce and transform social space through a focus on the contested history of railway development in Valsusa, Italy. I draw on participant observation and interviews with local residents and activists during ethnographic fieldwork in 2014–2015. I first describe how railways helped form modern sociality in Valsusa in the twentieth century. Subsequently, I explore contrasting topolo…
Encountering 'Micro-Dust: Material Entities, Affect, and Politics in Infrastructural Conflict in Italy
Focusing on a group of activists and a case of aerial pollution in the context of a contested railway project in Italy, this article examines the role of material entities and affects in shaping political activism. I seek an approach to affect that pays attention both to the agentive potential of materials and to human ways of knowing and feeling about them. I argue that the affective intensity of encounters with deadly airborne pollutants, media…
Rethinking resistance through and as affect
This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork with No TAV activists in Valsusa, in Alpine Italy, protesting against the planned construction of a new high-speed railway. Focusing on activists' experiences of vulnerability and police violence, the article contributes to the recent 'subjective turn' in the anthropology of resistance and contentious social movements, and responds to calls to 'de-pathologize' and 'de-exoticize' resistance. It explores…
Państwo i ryzyko: Polityka kontroli oddziaływania na środowisko podczas budowy tunelu we włoskich Alpach
Posługując się przykładem monitorowania stopnia zanieczyszczenia powietrza szkodliwymi dla zdrowia substancjami w trakcie budowy tunelu we włoskich Alpach, artykuł rozważa relacje pomiędzy państwem a ryzykiem. W praktykach zarządzania ryzykiem środowiskowym wyłania się szereg postaci „państwa”. Stosując pojęcie enframing („ujmowania w ramy”) Timothy’ego Mitchella, artykuł analizuje sposób, w jaki instytucje państwowe normalizują ryzyko za pomocą …
Affective States: Entanglements, Suspensions, Suspicions
In recent years, political and social theory has been transformed by the heterogeneous approaches to feeling and emotion jointly referred to as ‘affect theory’. These range from psychological and social-constructivist approaches to emotion to feminist and post-human perspectives. Covering a wide spectrum of topics and ethnographic contexts—from engineering in the Andes to household rituals in rural China, from South African land restitution to mi…
City of the Future: Built Space, Modernity and Urban Change in Astana
Astana, the capital city of the post-Soviet Kazakhstan, has often been admired for the design and planning of its futuristic cityscape. This anthropological study of the development of the city focuses on every-day practices, official ideologies and representations alongside the memories and dreams of the city's longstanding residents and recent migrants. Critically examining a range of approaches to place and space in anthropology, geography and…
Demo version of a city: Buildings, affects, and the state in Astana
This article brings the concept of affect to the analysis of the relationship between buildings and political ideology, as a way of contributing to recent anthropological work on the state. It focuses ethnographically on the contradictory affects of the new built environment in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, where extensive renovation and construction have been under way since the early 2000s. On the one hand, spectacular new structures induced fe…
Scraps, Neighbors, and Committees: Material Things, Place-Making, and the State in anAstana Apartment Block
Drawing on fieldwork in 2008-09, this article focuses on a courtyard (dvor) in aSoviet-era apartment block inAstana,Kazakhstan. I explore the mundane material maintenance of the courtyard, in particular the use of scraps, as a way to reflect on the relationships between material agency, the formation of locality, and the state. Historically, the courtyard was an urban form through which the Soviet state sought to define its citizenry. In the post…
Construire l'avenir: Matérialité, imagerie et politique à Astana (Kazakhstan)
Les nouvelles constructions d'Astana, la capitale du Kazakhstan, relèvent d'un projet tout à la fois symbolique et politique. L'auteur suggère que le matériel et l'imaginaire sont fusionnés à Astana afin de créer une « hétérotopie », au sens foucaldien du terme, un site distinct de la réalité prosaïque du Kazakhstan contemporain. Ce nouvel espace attire des migrants des quatre coins du pays en leur faisant miroiter une vision d'un futur personnel…
Building the future
This article focuses ethnographically on the built environment of the socalled "Left Bank" area in Astana, Kazakhstan. Previously merely a provincial administrative center, the city became the country's capital in 1997; soon a new quarter of monumental, futuristic, and stylistically extravagant administrative, residential, and commercial buildings emerged. I argue that the construction effort produces complicity by mobilizing and channeling citiz…
Rethinking resistance through and as affect
This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork with No TAV activists in Valsusa, in Alpine Italy, protesting against the planned construction of a new high-speed railway. Focusing on activists' experiences of vulnerability and police violence, the article contributes to the recent 'subjective turn' in the anthropology of resistance and contentious social movements, and responds to calls to 'de-pathologize' and 'de-exoticize' resistance. It explores…
Building the future
This article focuses ethnographically on the built environment of the socalled "Left Bank" area in Astana, Kazakhstan. Previously merely a provincial administrative center, the city became the country's capital in 1997; soon a new quarter of monumental, futuristic, and stylistically extravagant administrative, residential, and commercial buildings emerged. I argue that the construction effort produces complicity by mobilizing and channeling citiz…
Scraps, Neighbors, and Committees: Material Things, Place-Making, and the State in anAstana Apartment Block
Drawing on fieldwork in 2008-09, this article focuses on a courtyard (dvor) in aSoviet-era apartment block inAstana,Kazakhstan. I explore the mundane material maintenance of the courtyard, in particular the use of scraps, as a way to reflect on the relationships between material agency, the formation of locality, and the state. Historically, the courtyard was an urban form through which the Soviet state sought to define its citizenry. In the post…
Demo version of a city: Buildings, affects, and the state in Astana
This article brings the concept of affect to the analysis of the relationship between buildings and political ideology, as a way of contributing to recent anthropological work on the state. It focuses ethnographically on the contradictory affects of the new built environment in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, where extensive renovation and construction have been under way since the early 2000s. On the one hand, spectacular new structures induced fe…
Encountering 'Micro-Dust: Material Entities, Affect, and Politics in Infrastructural Conflict in Italy
Focusing on a group of activists and a case of aerial pollution in the context of a contested railway project in Italy, this article examines the role of material entities and affects in shaping political activism. I seek an approach to affect that pays attention both to the agentive potential of materials and to human ways of knowing and feeling about them. I argue that the affective intensity of encounters with deadly airborne pollutants, media…
Construire l'avenir: Matérialité, imagerie et politique à Astana (Kazakhstan)
Les nouvelles constructions d'Astana, la capitale du Kazakhstan, relèvent d'un projet tout à la fois symbolique et politique. L'auteur suggère que le matériel et l'imaginaire sont fusionnés à Astana afin de créer une « hétérotopie », au sens foucaldien du terme, un site distinct de la réalité prosaïque du Kazakhstan contemporain. Ce nouvel espace attire des migrants des quatre coins du pays en leur faisant miroiter une vision d'un futur personnel…
Building the future
This article focuses ethnographically on the built environment of the socalled "Left Bank" area in Astana, Kazakhstan. Previously merely a provincial administrative center, the city became the country's capital in 1997; soon a new quarter of monumental, futuristic, and stylistically extravagant administrative, residential, and commercial buildings emerged. I argue that the construction effort produces complicity by mobilizing and channeling citiz…
Scraps, Neighbors, and Committees: Material Things, Place-Making, and the State in anAstana Apartment Block
Drawing on fieldwork in 2008-09, this article focuses on a courtyard (dvor) in aSoviet-era apartment block inAstana,Kazakhstan. I explore the mundane material maintenance of the courtyard, in particular the use of scraps, as a way to reflect on the relationships between material agency, the formation of locality, and the state. Historically, the courtyard was an urban form through which the Soviet state sought to define its citizenry. In the post…
City of the Future: Built Space, Modernity and Urban Change in Astana
Astana, the capital city of the post-Soviet Kazakhstan, has often been admired for the design and planning of its futuristic cityscape. This anthropological study of the development of the city focuses on every-day practices, official ideologies and representations alongside the memories and dreams of the city's longstanding residents and recent migrants. Critically examining a range of approaches to place and space in anthropology, geography and…
Demo version of a city: Buildings, affects, and the state in Astana
This article brings the concept of affect to the analysis of the relationship between buildings and political ideology, as a way of contributing to recent anthropological work on the state. It focuses ethnographically on the contradictory affects of the new built environment in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, where extensive renovation and construction have been under way since the early 2000s. On the one hand, spectacular new structures induced fe…
Affective States: Entanglements, Suspensions, Suspicions
In recent years, political and social theory has been transformed by the heterogeneous approaches to feeling and emotion jointly referred to as ‘affect theory’. These range from psychological and social-constructivist approaches to emotion to feminist and post-human perspectives. Covering a wide spectrum of topics and ethnographic contexts—from engineering in the Andes to household rituals in rural China, from South African land restitution to mi…
Państwo i ryzyko: Polityka kontroli oddziaływania na środowisko podczas budowy tunelu we włoskich Alpach
Posługując się przykładem monitorowania stopnia zanieczyszczenia powietrza szkodliwymi dla zdrowia substancjami w trakcie budowy tunelu we włoskich Alpach, artykuł rozważa relacje pomiędzy państwem a ryzykiem. W praktykach zarządzania ryzykiem środowiskowym wyłania się szereg postaci „państwa”. Stosując pojęcie enframing („ujmowania w ramy”) Timothy’ego Mitchella, artykuł analizuje sposób, w jaki instytucje państwowe normalizują ryzyko za pomocą …
Rethinking resistance through and as affect
This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork with No TAV activists in Valsusa, in Alpine Italy, protesting against the planned construction of a new high-speed railway. Focusing on activists' experiences of vulnerability and police violence, the article contributes to the recent 'subjective turn' in the anthropology of resistance and contentious social movements, and responds to calls to 'de-pathologize' and 'de-exoticize' resistance. It explores…
The pulverous state
The modern state, one might argue, is an effort to control and organize time. This is one salient aspect of what the Editors of this volume, in the Introduction, call ‘chronocracy’: governance through temporal regimes and rhythms. States streamline history to cement their legitimacy. They also project teleological narratives of the future, from economic development plans to broader, vaguer, utopian visions. This chapter engages various issues thr…
Railway Territorialities: Topology and Infrastructural Politics in Alpine Italy
This article examines transportation infrastructures’ capacity to produce and transform social space through a focus on the contested history of railway development in Valsusa, Italy. I draw on participant observation and interviews with local residents and activists during ethnographic fieldwork in 2014–2015. I first describe how railways helped form modern sociality in Valsusa in the twentieth century. Subsequently, I explore contrasting topolo…
Encountering 'Micro-Dust: Material Entities, Affect, and Politics in Infrastructural Conflict in Italy
Focusing on a group of activists and a case of aerial pollution in the context of a contested railway project in Italy, this article examines the role of material entities and affects in shaping political activism. I seek an approach to affect that pays attention both to the agentive potential of materials and to human ways of knowing and feeling about them. I argue that the affective intensity of encounters with deadly airborne pollutants, media…
'City of the Future': Built Space, Modernity and Urban Change in Astana
Introduction Affect and the Anthropology of the State
Affective States: Entanglements, Suspensions, Suspicions
In recent years, political and social theory has been transformed by the heterogeneous approaches to feeling and emotion jointly referred to as ‘affect theory’. These range from psychological and social-constructivist approaches to emotion to feminist and post-human perspectives. Covering a wide spectrum of topics and ethnographic contexts—from engineering in the Andes to household rituals in rural China, from South African land restitution to mi…
The Big, the Small, and the Ugly: The Politics of Scale-Making in a Contested Railway Project in Italy
This article explores the politics of scale-making in infrastructural development. It argues that 'megaprojects', rather than self-evidently 'big', are constructed and contested across a continuity of scales from the 'global' to the microscopic. Scalar struggles are constitutive of the projects as well as of their contestation. I examine this through a focus on a disputed high-speed railway project in Alpine Italy. First, I examine expert contest…
Defending Dogs’ Hillock: The romance of ‘nature’ and administrative jujitsu as tactics of more-than-human resistance
Drawing on my personal involvement in defending Dogs’ Hillock – an ‘urban wasteland’ in a Warsaw neighbourhood – from transformation into an infrastructurally oversaturated city park, I examine a landscape of more-than-human resistance. First, discussing how the local residents-turned-activists were motivated by their emotional attachment to Dogs’ Hillock and concern for local fauna and flora, I suggest that ‘romance’ can be a catalyst of resista…
Political science (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Art (4 works)