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Winner of the 2014 Central Eurasian Studies Society Book Award in the Social Sciences. Under Solomon's Throne provides a rare ground-level analysis of post-Soviet Central Asia's social and political paradoxes by focusing on an urban ethnic community: the Uzbeks in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, who have maintained visions of societal renewal throughout economic upheaval, political discrimination, and massive violence. Morgan Liu illuminates many of the challenges facing Central Asia today by unpacking the predicament of Osh, a city whose experience captures key political and cultural issues of the region as a whole. Situated on the border of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan-newly independent republics that have followed increasingly divergent paths to reform their states and economies-the city is subject to a Kyrgyz government, but the majority of its population are ethnic Uzbeks. Conflict between the two groups led to riots in 1990, and again in 2010, when thousands, mostly ethnic Uzbeks, were killed and nearly half a million more fled across the border into Uzbekistan. While these tragic outbreaks of violence highlight communal tensions amid long-term uncertainty, a close examination of community life in the two decades between reveals the way Osh Uzbeks have created a sense of stability and belonging for themselves while occupying a postcolonial no-man's-land, tied to two nation-states but not fully accepted by either one. The first ethnographic monograph based on extensive local-language fieldwork in a Central Asian city, this study examines the culturally specific ways that Osh Uzbeks are making sense of their post-Soviet dilemmas. These practices reveal deep connections with Soviet and Islamic sensibilities and with everyday acts of dwelling in urban neighborhoods. Osh Uzbeks engage the spaces of their city to shape their orientations relative to the wider

The European Union was institutionally ill-prepared to manage the 2007-2008 financial crisis, with an inadequate architecture for resolving problems within the European single financial market. Throughout the period 2007-2009 the situation in the EU has been characterised by a lingering lack of transparency, not only vis-à-vis market participants and the public, but also among policy-making institutions. Management of coordination has been ad hoc, but, remarkably, it has not been impeded by the divide between the euro area, and the main financial centre of London. Crisis management has mostly taken place according to the assignment of competences in the EU: the European Central Bank and national central banks have provided liquidity in their respective jurisdictions, national governments have stepped in to ensure financial stability, and the European Commission has enforced competition disciplines. So far, policy performance has been better than expected given the sub-optimal nature of EU financial institutional arrangements.

This dissertation is an ethnomusicological study of value and diaspora, centered on the cultural production of carnival in one of the Caribbean's largest overseas communities: London. While acknowledging the significant economic contributions of the Notting Hill Carnival street festival to the British economy, which generates an estimated �100M during its annual production, the principal aim of this dissertation is to illustrate how non-economic forms of value are produced through carnival that are (or may be at times) external to its market value. This is done by integrating anthropological theories of value with my ethnography of London's carnival arts scene to better understand how music, cultural practices, festival performances, and even social spaces have come to acquire significance and value among black Britons of Caribbean heritage in particularly meaningful ways. Additionally, considering that Caribbean Britons are an underrepresented, dispossessed, and historically exploited social group, this dissertation argues that attention must be given to the specific ways that structural inequality and asymmetrical power relations in Britain impact the lives of racialized peoples, which also affects how value and meaning are assigned to particular things, activities, spaces, and places by members of marginalized groups. Drawing on 18 months of field research in London between 2013 and 2017, this dissertation illustrates: 1) how carnival art, music, and festival performances in London have been mobilized as a community-oriented, space- and place-making initiative for marginalized black groups in post-WWII Britain; 2) how London-based carnival arts practices help to facilitate sociocultural interconnections between disparate communities within the African/Caribbean diasporas; and 3) how distinct kinds of value (economic, social, cultural, symbolic, and political) are produced and disseminated through carnival-related activities in London.