Staying at home Sanders, Rita
2016., 20160801, 2016, 2016-08-30, Letnik:
13
eBook
Despite economic growth in Kazakhstan, more than 80 per cent of Kazakhstan's ethnic Germans have emigrated to Germany to date. Disappointing experiences of the migrants, along with other aspects of ...life in Germany, have been transmitted through transnational networks to ethnic Germans still living in Kazakhstan. Consequently, Germans in Kazakhstan today feel more alienated than ever from their 'historic homeland'. This book explores the interplay of those memories, social networks and state policies, which play a role in the 'construction' of a Kazakhstani German identity.
Atomic Steppe tells the untold true story of how the obscure country of Kazakhstan said no to the most powerful weapons in human history. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the marginalized Central ...Asian republic suddenly found itself with the world's fourth largest nuclear arsenal on its territory. Would it give up these fire-ready weapons-or try to become a Central Asian North Korea?This book takes us inside Kazakhstan's extraordinary and little-known nuclear history from the Soviet period to the present. For Soviet officials, Kazakhstan's steppe was not an ecological marvel or beloved homeland, but an empty patch of dirt ideal for nuclear testing. Two-headed lambs were just the beginning of the resulting public health disaster for Kazakhstan-compounded, when the Soviet Union collapsed, by the daunting burden of becoming an overnight nuclear power.Equipped with intimate personal perspective and untapped archival resources, Togzhan Kassenova introduces us to the engineers turned diplomats, villagers turned activists, and scientists turned pacifists who worked toward disarmament. With thousands of nuclear weapons still present around the world, the story of how Kazakhs gave up their nuclear inheritance holds urgent lessons for global security.
city of the future Laszczkowski, Mateusz
2016., 20160801, 2016, Letnik:
14
eBook
Astana, the capital city of the post-Soviet Kazakhstan, has often been admired for the design and planning of its futuristic cityscape. This anthropological study of the development of the city ...focuses on every-day practices, official ideologies and representations alongside the memories and dreams of the city's longstanding residents and recent migrants. Critically examining a range of approaches to place and space in anthropology, geography and other disciplines, the book argues for an understanding of space as inextricably material-and-imaginary, and unceasingly dynamic - allowing for a plurality of incompatible pasts and futures materialized in spatial form.
This book challenges the conventional wisdom that informal institutions—networks, clientelism, and connections—have to disappear in modern societies due to liberalization of the economy, rapid ...urbanization, and industrialization. The case of Kazakhstan shows that informal reciprocal institutions continue to play an important role in people’s everyday lives. Liberalization of the economy and state retrenchment from the social sphere decreased the provision of public goods and social support to the population in the post-independence period. Limited access to state benefits has, in turn, stimulated people’s engagement in informal reciprocal relations. The author investigates informal channels and mechanisms people use to gain access to quality public goods—education, housing, and healthcare. Comparing the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, the author shows that people are more likely to rely on family networks and clientelist relations rather than on help from the state to obtain scarce resources. The book provides an important contribution to the literature on informal institutions and explains the relationship between a formal welfare state and informal reciprocity.
InKnowledge and the Ends of Empire, Ian W. Campbell investigates the connections between knowledge production and policy formation on the Kazak steppes of the Russian Empire. Hoping to better govern ...the region, tsarist officials were desperate to obtain reliable information about an unfamiliar environment and population. This thirst for knowledge created opportunities for Kazak intermediaries to represent themselves and their landscape to the tsarist state. Because tsarist officials were uncertain of what the steppe was, and disagreed on what could be made of it, Kazaks were able to be part of these debates, at times influencing the policies that were pursued.
Drawing on archival materials from Russia and Kazakhstan and a wide range of nineteenth-century periodicals in Russian and Kazak, Campbell tells a story that highlights the contingencies of and opportunities for cooperation with imperial rule. Kazak intermediaries were at first able to put forward their own idiosyncratic views on whether the steppe was to be Muslim or secular, whether it should be a center of stock-raising or of agriculture, and the extent to which local institutions needed to give way to imperial institutions. It was when the tsarist state was most confident in its knowledge of the steppe that it committed its gravest errors by alienating Kazak intermediaries and placing unbearable stresses on pastoral nomads. From the 1890s on, when the dominant visions in St. Petersburg were of large-scale peasant colonization of the steppe and its transformation into a hearth of sedentary agriculture, the same local knowledge that Kazaks had used to negotiate tsarist rule was transformed into a language of resistance.
Is globalization in danger of diluting national identities and 'transnationalizing' cultures? How can societies attempt to manage globalization and become developed while maintaining a viable ...national identity? In this 2007 study of three globalizing states and cities in post-Soviet Eurasia - Russia (Astrakhan), Kazakhstan (Almaty), and Azerbaijan (Baku) - Douglas W. Blum provides an empirical examination of national identity formation, exploring how cultures, particularly youth cultures, have been affected by global forces. Blum argues that social discourse regarding youth cultural trends - coupled with official and non-official approaches to youth policy - complement patterns of state-society relations and modes of response to globalization. His findings show that the nations studied have embraced certain aspects of modernity and liberalism, while rejecting others, but have also reasserted the place of national traditions.
The Hungry Steppeexamines one of the most heinous crimes of the Stalinist regime, the Kazakh famine of 1930-33. More than 1.5 million people perished in this famine, a quarter of Kazakhstan's ...population, and the crisis transformed a territory the size of continental Europe. Yet the story of this famine has remained mostly hidden from view. Drawing upon state and Communist party documents, as well as oral history and memoir accounts in Russian and in Kazakh, Sarah Cameron reveals this brutal story and its devastating consequences for Kazakh society
Through the most violent of means the Kazakh famine created Soviet Kazakhstan, a stable territory with clearly delineated boundaries that was an integral part of the Soviet economic system; and it forged a new Kazakh national identity. But this state-driven modernization project was uneven. Ultimately, Cameron finds, neither Kazakhstan nor Kazakhs themselves were integrated into the Soviet system in precisely the ways that Moscow had originally hoped. The experience of the famine scarred the republic for the remainder of the Soviet era and shaped its transformation into an independent nation in 1991.
Cameron uses her history of the Kazakh famine to overturn several assumptions about violence, modernization, and nation-making under Stalin, highlighting, in particular, the creation of a new Kazakh national identity, and how environmental factors shaped Soviet development. Ultimately,The Hungry Steppedepicts the Soviet regime and its disastrous policies in a new and unusual light.
Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia that has been under the leadership of President Nursultan Nazarbayev since independence in 1991, has proven that a mostly Muslim nation can be ...active on the international scene. Its leaders have worked fervently to bridge the ugly schism that has developed since the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent invasions of Arab and Muslim lands byWestern forces. How has Kazakhstan been able to maintain its Muslim heritage yet remain on track toward modernization while other Muslim countries have imposed strict Shari’a law upon their citizens, clamped down on individual freedoms, and persecuted all who do not adhere to the diktat of the ruling theocracy? Claude Salhani examines the successful phenomenon of Kazakhstan today.He looks at the progress it has attained in just two decades since independence. While there is no doubt as to the Muslim identity of the country,Kazakhstan is living proof that there can be a “kinder, gentler” mode of Islam, in which one can live at peace with oneself and with one’s neighbors, despite their differences.
•Chemical pretreatment with HCl resulted in incomplete dispersion or aggregation.•Oxidisation of organic binding material with H2O2 caused complete sample dispersion.•Pretreatments for particle size ...distribution (PSD) did not affect texture class.•Pedotransfer functions based on PSD by laser diffraction need further investigation.•Soil loss estimates showed no variation based on obtained PSD data.
The particle size distribution (PSD) of soil plays a vital role in wind erosion prediction. However, the impact of different pretreatments to remove binding agents for PSD and consequences for wind erosion modelling have not been tested. We collected 90 topsoil samples of Chernozems and Kastanozems from different test sites in Kazakhstan. Soil samples covered typical land-use types and farming methods with calcium carbonate contents reaching from 2.2 to 117.3 g kg−1 and soil organic carbon content from 11.2 to 48.7 g kg−1. Prior to particle size analysis by laser diffraction, samples were chemically pretreated separately and successively with 10% hydrochloric acid (HCl), to dissolve carbonates and 30% hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), to oxidise organic binding material. The HCl pretreatment resulted in incomplete dispersion or even aggregation due to calcium ions released by the dissolution of carbonates, while removing organic matter with H2O2 caused complete sample dispersion. The associated changes in PSD were overall minor, and only a few of our samples were assigned to a different texture class. Obtained PSD data was used to calculate texture-based properties, such as the geometric mean diameter (GMD), with a pedotransfer function. Calculated and measured input data were applied to the Single–event Wind Erosion Evaluation Program (SWEEP) to estimate potential soil losses. As a result, SWEEP's simulations showed substantial variations if the GMD is calculated based on PSD under the influence of different pretreatments. At the same time, there was no variation if the GMD was independently measured. We suggest that for standard particle size analysis of calcareous soils, pretreatment with HCl should be avoided because it might cause misleading results. Considering the variation induced by PSD analysis and resulting potential soil losses, pretreatments for laser diffraction analysis can be omitted for the investigated, silt-dominated Chernozems and Kastanozems if additional texture-based parameters are measured.
Robert Kindler's seminal work is a comprehensive and unsettling account of the Soviet campaign to forcefully sedentarize and collectivize the Kazakh clans. Viewing the nomadic life as unproductive, ...and their lands unused and untilled, Stalin and his inner circle pursued a campaign of violence and subjugation, rather than attempting any dialog or cultural assimilation. The results were catastrophic, as the conflict and an ensuing famine (1931-1933) caused the death of nearly one-third of the Kazakh population. Hundreds of thousands of nomads became refugees and a nomadic culture and social order were essentially destroyed in less than five years.Kindler provides an in-depth analysis of Soviet rule, economic and political motivations, and the role of remote and local Soviet officials and Kazakhs during the crisis. This is the first English-language translation of an important and harrowing history, largely unknown to Western audiences prior to Kindler's study.
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