Kazakhstan in the Making: Legitimacy, Symbols, and Social Changes

(Paperback)

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Kazakhstan is one of the best-known success stories of Central Asia, perhaps even of the entire Eurasian space. It boasts a fast growing economyat least until the 2014 crisisa 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 countrys recent evolution, drawing from political science, anthropology, and sociology. It looks at the regimes sophisticated legitimacy mechanisms and ongoing quest for popular support. It analyzes the countrys 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.

Reviews

This book fills a gap in the literature by providing a scholarly depth in tandem with a multidisciplinary outlook on Kazakhstani politics that accounts for important socio-political drivers, while looking beyond the countrys resource bounty that preoccupies many studies on Kazakhstan. As editor, Marlene Laruelle has succeeded in bringing together a strong cast of contributors, including well-established and talented emerging scholars from both Kazakhstan and the wider world. A range of audiences will be well served by this book: on the one hand, it provides those new to the study of Kazakhstan with a clear introduction to the central themes and issues animating contemporary Kazakhstan political life; on the other hand, those more familiar with the country and its people will also find the empirical detail insightful.... Although the volume brings together contributions on a wider range of topics and employing diverse methodological approaches, it retains an admirable degree of coherence as all chapters work to address core issues salient to understanding the political dynamics of todays Kazakhstan.... Readers will get a taste of the diverse dynamics of Kazakhstans contemporary development, and some satisfyingly detailed insights into facets of this geopolitically significant but as yet under-researched state. * Europe-Asia Studies *
This edited volume contains eleven different contributions offering new perspectives on the emerging research about Kazakhstan. . . . The book effectively explains the patterns of identity, nationhood and governance that have evolved since Kazakhstans independence in 1991. * The Muslim World Book Review *
Marlene Laruelle has assembled a notable set of scholars to dig deep into the well of the multi-voiced and contentious process of post-Soviet nation-making in Kazakhstan. This volume traverses a journey across the vast Kazakh steppe and provides new interpretive frames to understand the complex and diverse set of phenomena associated with the development of the state, nation, and society of Kazakhstan. From accounts of neopatrimonial relations to the symbolic power of the fairy tale city of Astana and the role of ethno-pop in promoting traditional Kazakh values in an interconnected and globalized world, the contributors demonstrate an impressive command of the subject and draw on an extensive range of original empirical material. These essays will pique the interest of readers wanting to understand the politics and society of contemporary Kazakhstan, but also those with a broader fascination with the process of state and nation-building in the Eurasian region and beyond. -- Rico Isaacs, Oxford Brookes University
Large, varied, and rapidly changing, Kazakhstan can sometimes seem inscrutable. In fact, all we need to understand this country of great cultural, economic, and political importance is the excellent research conducted by scholars at the top of their respective fields. Kazakhstan in the Making is the most wide-ranging, comprehensive, and welcome addition to the literature we have seen in many years. -- Edward Schatz, University of Toronto

Author Bio

Marlene Laruelle is research professor, director of the Central Asia Program, and associate director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the Elliott School of International Affairs of George Washington University.