The national dancers of Uzbekistan are almost always female. In a society that has been Muslim for nearly seven hundred years, why and how did unveiled female dancers become a beloved national icon during the Soviet period? Also, why has their popularity continued after the Uzbek republic became independent? The author argues that dancers, as symbolic girls or unmarried females in the Uzbek kinship system, are effective mediators between extended kin groups, and the Uzbek nation-state. The female dancing body became a tabula rasa upon which the state inscribed, and reinscribed, constructions of Uzbek nationalism.

Doi describes the politics of gender in households as well as the dominant kinship idioms in Uzbek society. She traces the rise of national dance as a profession for women during the Soviet period, prior to which women wore veils and kept purdah. The final chapter examines emerging notions of Uzbek, as regional and national groups contest the notion through debates about what constitutes authentic Uzbek dance. Doi concludes with a comparative discussion of the power of marginality, which enabled Uzbeks to maintain a domain where Uzbek culture and history could be honored, within the Russocentric hegemony of the Soviet state.

This outstanding textbook on polymer physics gives a clear and concise description of modern theory. Intended as an introductory text it describes basic concepts and methods and explains the statistical properties of the assembly chain-like molecules. It is ideal as a text in short course on polymer physics for graduate students and advanced undergraduates.

Over the past twenty years our understanding of polymer solutions has undergone a dramatic evolution. New methods and concepts have extended the frontier of the theory from dilute solutions in which polymers move independently of each other, to concentrated solutions where many polymers entangle with each other. This book provides a comprehensive account of the modern theory for the dynamical properties of polymer solutions. This includes viscoelasticity, diffusion, dynamic light scattering and flow and electric birefringence. Nonlinear viscoelasticity is discussed in detail on the basis of molecular dynamical models. The book fills a gap between classical theory and modern developments and constructs a consistent picture for the dynamics of polymer solutions over the entire concentration range.