Kazakhstan in the Making
Legitimacy, Symbols, and Social Changes
Contributions by Ulan Bigozhin, Alima Bissenova, Douglas Blum, Alexander C. Diener, Natalie Koch, Diana T. Kudaibergenova, Marlene Laruelle, Mateusz Laszczkowski, Sebastien Peyrouse, Megan Rancier, Assel Tutumlu, Wendell Schwab, Kristopher White Edited by Marlene Laruelle
Not available to order
Publication date:
21 November 2016Length of book:
304 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498525480
Kazakhstan is one of the best-known success stories of Central Asia, perhaps even of the entire Eurasian space. It boasts a fast growing economy—at least until the 2014 crisis—a strategic location between Russia, China, and the rest of Central Asia, and a regime with far-reaching branding strategies. But the country also faces weak institutionalization, patronage, authoritarianism, and regional gaps in socioeconomic standards that challenge the stability and prosperity narrative advanced by the aging President Nursultan Nazarbayev. This policy-oriented analysis does not tell us a lot about the Kazakhstani society itself and its transformations.
This edited volume returns Kazakhstan to the scholarly spotlight, offering new, multidisciplinary insights into the country’s recent evolution, drawing from political science, anthropology, and sociology. It looks at the regime’s sophisticated legitimacy mechanisms and ongoing quest for popular support. It analyzes the country’s fast changing national identity and the delicate balance between the Kazakh majority and the Russian-speaking minorities. It explores how the society negotiates deep social transformations and generates new hybrid, local and global, cultural references.
This edited volume returns Kazakhstan to the scholarly spotlight, offering new, multidisciplinary insights into the country’s recent evolution, drawing from political science, anthropology, and sociology. It looks at the regime’s sophisticated legitimacy mechanisms and ongoing quest for popular support. It analyzes the country’s fast changing national identity and the delicate balance between the Kazakh majority and the Russian-speaking minorities. It explores how the society negotiates deep social transformations and generates new hybrid, local and global, cultural references.
This book brings together the best of recent Central Asian scholarship to help analysts consider what happens next. Like other volumes in the Contemporary Central Asia series, it is an essential reference for scholars, students, and policy makers and will be a valuable resource for years.