Post-Soviet Chaos

Violence and Dispossession in Kazakhstan

Author: Joma Nazpary Series: Anthropology, Culture and Society

Focusing on Kazakhstan, Post-Soviet Chaos and the New Capitalism examines the impact of the new capitalism on the everyday lives of the people of Central Asia.

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Summary

Focusing on Kazakhstan, Post-Soviet Chaos and the New Capitalism examines the impact of the new capitalism on the everyday lives of the people of Central Asia.

Description

In the 1990s, the former states of the Soviet Union underwent dramatic and revolutionary changes. As a result of enforced, neo-liberal reforms the fledgling republics were exposed to the familiar effects of globalized capital. Focusing on Kazakhstan, where violence and corruption are now facts of everyday life, this work examines the impact of the new capitalism on the people of Central Asia. In a detailed social and political analysis, this work charts the fragmentation of a whole society into a dispossessed majority and a predatory elite, whose interests and networks coincide with those of the global financial institutions. The elites that this work identifies employ large-scale violence and corruption to dominate the majority, who are left in a state known as chaos or "bardak". Using in-depth interviews and material gathered over more than a year's fieldwork, this text explores the responses of the dispossessed to their dispossession. Comparing the effects of neo-liberal reforms in Kazakhstan with those in other regions, it concludes that causes, forms and consequences of dispossession in Kazakhstan are particular instances of a much wider global trend.

Critic Reviews

“'The most important book you can read about Central Asia'”

'Nazpary's brilliant analysis of post-Soviet Kazakhstan reflects the author's deep ethnographic immersion in the everyday life-worlds of those inhabitants of Almaty' -- John Gledhill, Manchester University
'A wonderfully vivid account of the 'chaos' people see around them in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. An insightful exploration of the ways and means of the dispossessed in an unpredictable world' -- Caroline Humphrey
-- Jonathan Neale, Bookmarks

About the Author

Joma Nazpary is a Research Associate at the Department of Anthropology, the University of Manchester. Nazpary was born in Baluchestan, Iran and was a political prisoner in Tehran. He studied in Sweden, 1983-85, gained a BSc in Anthropology, learnt Russian, and completed his PhD in 1998 . He speaks Swedish, English, Russian, Arabic, Baluchi, Farsi and Tadjiki.