The Politics and Poetics of the Nation:

Following the downturn of the transitional economy
in Kazakhstan in the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of
Kazakh villagers left their homes for urban areas.
This research examines the notions of identity,
ancestry, the shejýre (Kazakh historical narratives
articulating ancestral ties), and the nation that
emerged in the testimonies of recent rural to urban
migrants in Almaty. In addition, special attention
is paid to how their experiences of displacement and
adjustment to their new environment have been
systematically misconstrued in urban mass media and
social analysis in a fashion that resonates with the
colonial rhetoric of the Soviet regime. This
analysis of urban narratives should help shed light
on identity politics and the poetics of nationhood
at the time of historic transformation and should be
especially of interest to the students of identity,
social change, nationalism, and historical
narratives.

Autorentext

Saulesh Yessenova is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Calgary, Alberta. She received her Ph.D. from McGill University in 2003. She was awarded with a Social Sciences&Humanities Research Council of Canada post-doctoral fellowship and was a fellow at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

Klappentext

Following the downturn of the transitional economy in Kazakhstan in the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of Kazakh villagers left their homes for urban areas. This research examines the notions of identity, ancestry, the shejýre (Kazakh historical narratives articulating ancestral ties), and the nation that emerged in the testimonies of recent rural to urban migrants in Almaty. In addition, special attention is paid to how their experiences of displacement and adjustment to their new environment have been systematically misconstrued in urban mass media and social analysis in a fashion that resonates with the colonial rhetoric of the Soviet regime. This analysis of urban narratives should help shed light on identity politics and the poetics of nationhood at the time of historic transformation and should be especially of interest to the students of identity, social change, nationalism, and historical narratives.