Viktoria Kobzeva

Everyday Governance in the Mahalla: Street-Level Bureaucrats and Neighbourhood Activism in Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.

Viktoria’s research focuses on neighbourhood governance and everyday forms of collective life in post‑Soviet urban contexts, with particular attention to the mahalla as both a historical institution and a contemporary site of negotiation between the state, the market, and local residents. She examines how neighbourhoods are governed in practice, how local problems are addressed, and how ideas of community, self‑governance, and responsibility are reshaped under conditions of bureaucratisation and institutional transformation.

Empirically, Viktoria’s work investigates urban neighbourhoods in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, with a focus on the capitals Tashkent and Baku. She explores the roles of neighbourhood‑level actors—including frontline bureaucrats, committee members, and local activists—who mediate between formal governance structures and the realities of everyday life. These actors frequently handle seemingly mundane yet crucial issues such as infrastructure breakdowns, waste management, and social support for elderly or vulnerable residents. Through this work, they help sustain what remains of communal practices within increasingly individualised urban environments.

Conceptually, Viktoria engages with debates on local self‑governance, street‑level bureaucracy, and urban commons. Rather than treating the mahalla as a static cultural legacy or a nostalgic remnant of the past, she approaches it as a dynamic and contested space. Her research asks whether current developments signal the emergence of a “new mahalla,” the adaptive retooling of an older institution, or the gradual erosion of communal principles in favour of more individualised logics.