"Tribes" and "clans" in Modern Power PDF Download

Author: Edward Schatz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Kazakhs
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
"An explosion of literature on identity politics has generated critical insights into the dynamics of group solidarities. This literature is all but silent, however, on lower-aggregate, subethnic attachments. Dominant approaches to identity anticipate that such divisions become decreasingly important with the rise of the modern state. In former Soviet Central Asia, where salient subethnic divisions propel the power dynamic, such approaches find a paradox. The empirical challenge of subethnic politics in Central Asia begs two interrelated questions that animate this dissertation. First, what accounts for the persistence of subethnic identity politics, when dominant approaches expect the gradual marginalization of these low-aggregate group solidarities as the modern state improves its empirical capacity? Second, how can we explain the distinctive political forms that subethnic competition assumes? On the basis of archival research, ethnographic work, focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and a broad reading of indigenous periodicals and papers, this project addresses these questions in the context of Kazakhstan. First, why did the coercive practices of modernization and ethnicization exercised by the Soviet state not preclude the political salience of subethnic identities in Kazakhstan? Part one argues that low-aggregate solidarities persist not in spite of attempts at modernization, industrialization, and cultural homogenization, but because of the particular ways in which these practices are carried out. Specifically, it suggests that two aspects of Soviet modernization promoted subethnic divisions. The political economy of pervasive shortages encouraged access networks to proliferate. Across the Soviet southern tier, these access networks often fell along subethnic lines. Moreover, Soviet nationalities policy deeply stigmatized subethnic affiliations as 'backward' and the 'remnants of feudalism.' In doing so, it drove them underground: their function became illicit and sub rosa and unlikely to be detected by the agents of Soviet surveillance. Thus, Soviet modernization promoted subethnicity because it encouraged network of access--specifically along subethnic lines. The second part inquires into the particular forms that subethnic politics assumes. It argues that subethnic politics routinely involves a central component of meta-conflict (defined as conflict over the terms of the conflict itself) ..."--Leaves i-ii.