Central Asian Survey最新文献

{"title":"Employment of master’s degree graduates in Kazakhstan: navigating an uncertain labour market","authors":"D. Jonbekova, G. Kuchumova, Bridget A. Goodman, J. Sparks, S. Kerimkulova","doi":"10.1080/02634937.2022.2141690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2022.2141690","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores the employment experiences of government scholarship graduates from one master’s degree programme at a flagship university in Kazakhstan. Analysis of interviews with graduates of a master’s degree programme designed in response to a national policy agenda shows that graduates encountered numerous challenges transitioning from university to work despite obtaining a degree from a top Kazakhstani university. The key challenges included limited employment opportunities, hostile attitudes toward younger graduates, difficult working conditions and employers’ misunderstanding of the new master’s programmes. We argue that despite significant government financial investment in education, a weak enabling support system hinders graduates’ career advancement and results in job mismatch and underutilization of skills. We suggest that policymakers need to shift debates on human capital development and graduate employability from supply-side factors to a more comprehensive model in which graduate employment is supported through the collaboration of the higher education system, industry, policymakers and graduates themselves.","PeriodicalId":46602,"journal":{"name":"Central Asian Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44316651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rentier capitalism and its discontents: Power, morality and resistance in Central Asia","authors":"Galym Zhussipbek","doi":"10.1080/02634937.2022.2132708","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2022.2132708","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46602,"journal":{"name":"Central Asian Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46728170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Tajik Civil War and Russia’s Islamist moment","authors":"Vassily Klimentov","doi":"10.1080/02634937.2022.2134298","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2022.2134298","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Contra the often-held assumption that the Islamist danger has been at the forefront of Moscow’s security agenda since the Soviet–Afghan War, this article shows how different Russian decision-makers held different views of Islamism during the Tajik Civil War (1992–97). It argues that different relations to the Soviet past, especially to the Soviet–Afghan War, explain the differences in assessing Islamism in Tajikistan between the security agencies and political elites. Unlike the reformers in the Kremlin, the legacy Soviet security elites and diplomats in Russia and the neo-communist leaders in Central Asia recalled the Islamist danger from Soviet times. They emphasized it to the Kremlin who came to embrace their view as the Tajik Civil War progressed and tensions rose in Chechnya.","PeriodicalId":46602,"journal":{"name":"Central Asian Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48549744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Parliamentary representation in Central Asia: MPs between representing their voters and serving an authoritarian regime","authors":"Rico Isaacs","doi":"10.1080/02634937.2022.2132698","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2022.2132698","url":null,"abstract":"The study of informality has generally defined research on Central Asian politics since 1991. Such a trend is not without justification, formal institutions such as parliaments, constitutions and political parties are largely subservient to the whims of personal political power in Central Asia. However, the lack of focus on formal institutions does not mean parliament and parties are not important, nor a fundamental element of the mosaic of authoritarian logic in the region. Therefore, Esther Somfalvy’s monograph on parliamentary representation in Central Asia is a much welcome, insightful, and analytically detailed intervention into our understanding of formal institutions in the region.","PeriodicalId":46602,"journal":{"name":"Central Asian Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46209924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Yearning for a homogeneous Chinese nation: digital propaganda campaigns after the 2020 protest in Inner Mongolia","authors":"Gegentuul Baioud, Cholmon Khuanuud","doi":"10.1080/02634937.2022.2131736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2022.2131736","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study examines the digital propaganda campaigns carried out by the Chinese Communist Party in Inner Mongolia following Mongols’ protest against the bilingual education reform in 2020. It analyses texts and images posted on WeChat official accounts of the Inner Mongolia Daily and Inner Mongolia Education Department. Through a detailed discourse and semiotic analyses of propaganda texts we reveal that the national unity and development discourses are replete with Han-centric assimilationist ideology. In our analysis, by drawing on a Bakhtinian chronotope, we foreground how the past, present and future are turned into a unified folkloric-cum-colonial space–time. This study also elucidates how the drastic policy shift and the re-articulation of national form in China is reflected in publicly circulated words and images in Inner Mongolia.","PeriodicalId":46602,"journal":{"name":"Central Asian Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48484529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"EU–Central Asian interactions: perceptions, interests and practices","authors":"Rick Fawn, Karolina Kluczewska, O. Korneev","doi":"10.1080/02634937.2022.2134300","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2022.2134300","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT By shifting the study of European Union (EU)–Central Asian relations from its fixed category of black-boxing both the EU and Central Asia, this article advances the case for the approach of examining multi-level and multi-actor interactions that identify the dynamic processes of reciprocal action and meaning-making that characterize the mutual cooperation. It distinguishes perceptions, interests and practices, pointing to the rationales and modes of behaviour of multiple EU and Central Asian actors. The article also advances five reasons why EU studies should take more interest in Central Asia, given that the EU’s larger external relations and security agenda extends to this region. Similarly, it shows that Central Asian studies can benefit from the analysis of the region’s interactions with external actors, including the EU, given that external actors contribute to reshaping national policy agendas and influence everyday life.","PeriodicalId":46602,"journal":{"name":"Central Asian Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42076948","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Soviet policy in Xinjiang: Stalin and the national movement in Eastern Turkistan","authors":"A. Kamalov","doi":"10.1080/02634937.2022.2123157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2022.2123157","url":null,"abstract":"view. The Soviet system worked on dual tracks, celebrating diversity while embedding Russian superiority. The structural embedding was the stronger force. Edgar is more concerned with the messiness of lives lived than with theory, which is a great strength of the book. Her informants span generations, from those whomet in the chaos of the Second World War to the children of perestroika. Marriages between Muslims and non-Muslims were rare, and when they occurred they were almost always between Muslim men and Slavic women. Edgar considers the minefields of relations with the in-laws, cultural identity and language as well as marriages that were happy or unhappy in general. While Edgar stresses that the data are not systematic enough to support rigorous analysis, broad patterns do emerge. Families tended to be hostile to the idea of mixed marriage, except for the most dedicated communists. The appearance of grandchildren usually fixed that problem, but not always. A major concern for Kazakh and especially Tajik families was that the Slavic bride would not fulfil expected duties to her in-laws with the appropriate deference. While some brides did indeed chafe at the model of the selfless ‘Eastern woman’, others embraced it as providing a more supportive network than Soviet Russian family dysfunction. Meanwhile the few Central Asian women who married Slavs were attracted to their husbands’ less patriarchal demeanour. Raising children posed many dilemmas: What to name them? Whose language should they speak? Whose nationality should they claim on their passports when they turned 16? Like mixed couples everywhere, parents made choices depending on practical considerations and family and personal opinions. However, the Soviet insistence on distinct, stable national categories forced particular choices. While few multi-ethnic children reported being harassed by their peers, a child with an Islamic name and a Slavic appearance, or vice versa, caused consternation. Parents tried to match names with physiognomy. Many of these children were raised with Russian as their first language, but if neither of their parents were Russian they could not claim ‘Russian’ on their passports, no matter how much Pushkin they had imbibed. If they did not identify with the nationality of either parent, or if they believed they were Soviet citizens first and foremost, the state did not allow them to choose ‘both’ or ‘none’. The Communist Party said it was working toward a world without nations, but underneath its actions were driven by older ideas of fixed racial and gender hierarchies that permeated Soviet society. Edgar’s study provides a fascinating window into these contradictions.","PeriodicalId":46602,"journal":{"name":"Central Asian Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43039425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The interplay of narratives on regionness, regionhood and regionality: European Union and Central Asia","authors":"Selbi Hanova","doi":"10.1080/02634937.2022.2117134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2022.2117134","url":null,"abstract":"<p><b>ABSTRACT</b></p><p>This paper identifies the interplay between narratives on Central Asia as a region. It compares European Union (EU) narratives with those of the five post-Soviet states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. By doing so, it investigates the manifestations of narratives, stories and narrators who continue to construct and convey certain discourses about the region, comparing EU discourse and that of the local political elites in Central Asia, respectively. By looking at official discourse conveyed by the presidents of the countries and in key foreign policy documents, the interplay of narratives as dialogues between narrators is analysed, thus expanding into ideational analysis, an emerging trend in the literature on post-Soviet Central Asia.</p>","PeriodicalId":46602,"journal":{"name":"Central Asian Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50167872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring civil society perspectives on the situation of human rights defenders in the Commonwealth of Independent States","authors":"Paul Chaney","doi":"10.1080/02634937.2022.2113034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2022.2113034","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This first pan-regional analysis of civil society organizations’ perspectives on the contemporary situation of human rights defenders (HRDs) in the Commonwealth of Independent States uses United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review (UPR) data and reveals a shrinking civil space as HRDs face a raft of rights pathologies, including threats, violence and murder. Their work is curtailed by increasing state restrictions on freedom of association and expression. The analysis reveals how women HRDs are particularly subject to discrimination and gender-based oppression. The malaise is compounded by impunity for offenders, corruption and government inaction following earlier UPR recommendations. The findings are theorized with reference to Weissbrodt’s causal typology and Hollyer and Rosendorf’s model of authoritarian government treaty accession.","PeriodicalId":46602,"journal":{"name":"Central Asian Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42412496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The EU and China: how do they fit in Central Asia?","authors":"S. Krivokhizh, E. Soboleva","doi":"10.1080/02634937.2022.2115009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2022.2115009","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since the collapse of the USSR, the European Union (EU) and China have launched a range of leadership initiatives in Central Asia. Focusing on non-traditional security, connectivity and water management cooperation, this paper contributes to the special issue by highlighting the evolution of the EU's goals and practices in Central Asia, contrasting them with China's leadership strategy, and discussing implications for states in the region. The EU and China have diverging approaches to Central Asia due to differences in foreign policy goals and domestic politics. Nevertheless, as of now there seems to be no rivalry between their projects, as neither claims sole leadership nor builds formal institutions with exclusive membership. The presence of two very different leaders is beneficial for Central Asian states as it has allowed them to draw more material resources, generate new ideas, diversify partners and balance external influence.","PeriodicalId":46602,"journal":{"name":"Central Asian Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46734519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}