Page date:1 Sept. 2003
Joma Nazpury. 2003. Post-Soviet Chaos: Violence and Dispossession in Kasakhstan.
London: Pluto Press.
In
the 1990s, the former Soviet states of Central Asia have experienced dramatic,
revolutionary changes. Liberal economic reforms have affected every aspect of
daily life, from economic to cultural values, and a new local elite of mafia
has rapidly taken power, where corruption and violence are now a fact of daily
life. Focusing on Kazakhstan, Joma Nazpary examines the impact of the new capitalism
on the everyday lives of the people of Central Asia. Nazpary illustrates, through
in-depth interviews, how the dispossessed have constructed 'imagined communities'
as a form of resistance faced by growing social instability.
The most significant aspect of change in the post-Soviet region is the way
in which tiny elites of all post-Soviet countries have dispossessed the majority
by implementing neoliberal reforms. This is the first book to examine in detail
post-Soviet dispossession from the perspective of the dispossessed. Joma Nazpary
argues that the main instrument of dispossession has been a chaotic mode of
domination, marked by sudden and dramatic polarisation between wealth and poverty,
general crisis and breakdown of the fabric of daily life, and the collapse of
the economy and culture. Focusing on Kazakhtstan and drawing on extensive fieldwork
material, Nazpary provides a detailed analysis of the process of dispossession,
the responses of the dispossessed and their strategies of survival.
Joma Nazpary is a Research Associate at the University of London.
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publisher.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction / 2 People And Places / 3 Bardak: Elements Of Chaos. / 4 Networking
As A Response To The Chaos / 5 Women And Sexualised Strategies: Violence And
Stigma / 6 Construction Of The Alien: Imagining A Soviet Community / 7 Ethnic
Tensions / 8 Conclusions: Whose Transition? / References / Index
US$ 24.95 PAPER
232pp
ISBN: 0745315976