Living Language in Kazakhstan
Living Language in Kazakhstan

Author: Eva Marie Dubuisson

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2017-06-30

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0822982838

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Eva-Marie Dubuisson provides a fascinating anthropological inquiry into the deeply ingrained presence of ancestors within the cultural, political, and spiritual discourse of Kazakhs. In a climate of authoritarianism and economic uncertainty, many people in this region turn to their forebearers for care, guidance, and advice, invoking them on a daily basis. This "living language" creates a powerful link to the past and a stable foundation for the present. Through Dubuisson's participatory, observational, and lived experience among Kazakhs, we witness firsthand the public performances and private rituals that show how memory and identity are sustained through an oral tradition of invoking ancestors. This ancestral dialogue sustains a unifying worldview by mediating questions of faith and morality, providing role models, and offering a mechanism for socio-political critique, change, and meaning-making. Looking beyond studies of Islam or heritage alone, Dubuisson provides fresh insights into understanding the Kazakh worldview that will serve students, researchers, GMOs, and policymakers in the region.

Approaches to Language and Culture
Approaches to Language and Culture

Author: Svenja Völkel

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-08-22

Total Pages: 572

ISBN-13: 3110726629

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This book provides an overview of approaches to language and culture, and it outlines the broad interdisciplinary field of anthropological linguistics and linguistic anthropology. It identifies current and future directions of research, including language socialization, language reclamation, speech styles and genres, language ideology, verbal taboo, social indexicality, emotion, time, and many more. Furthermore, it offers areal perspectives on the study of language in cultural contexts (namely Africa, the Americas, Australia and Oceania, Mainland Southeast Asia, and Europe), and it lays the foundation for future developments within the field. In this way, the book bridges the disciplines of cultural anthropology and linguistics and paves the way for the new book series Anthropological Linguistics.

The Kazakh Spring
The Kazakh Spring

Author: Diana T. Kudaibergen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-05-23

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1009454277

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How can a de-institutionalised protest movement disrupt a solidified, repressive and extremely resilient authoritarian regime? Using the context of the Kazakh Spring protests (2019–ongoing), Diana T. Kudaibergen focuses on how the interplay between a repressive regime and democratisation struggles define and shape each other. Combining original interview data, digital ethnography and contentious politics studies, she argues that the new generation of activists, including Instagram political influencers and renowned public intellectuals, have been able to de-legitimise and counter one of the most resilient authoritarian regimes and inspire mass protests that none of the formalised opposition ever imagined possible in Kazakhstan. 'The Kazakh Spring' is the first book to detail the emergence of this political field of opportunities that allowed the possibility to rethink the political limits in Kazakhstan, essentially toppling the long-term dictator in unprecedented mass protests of the Bloody January 2022.

The Central Asian World
The Central Asian World

Author: Jeanne Féaux de la Croix

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-20

Total Pages: 815

ISBN-13: 100087589X

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This landmark book provides a comprehensive anthropological introduction to contemporary Central Asia. Established and emerging scholars of the region critically interrogate the idea of a ‘Central Asian World’ at the intersection of post-Soviet, Persianate, East and South Asian worlds. Encompassing chapters on life between Afghanistan and Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Xinjiang, this volume situates the social, political, economic, ecological and ritual diversity of Central Asia in historical context. The book ethnographically explores key areas such as the growth of Islamic finance, the remaking of urban and sacred spaces, as well as decolonizing and queering approaches to Central Asia. The volume’s discussion of More-than-Human Worlds, Everyday Economies, Material Culture, Migration and Statehood engages core analytical concerns such as globalization, inequality and postcolonialism. Far more than a survey of a ‘world region’, the volume illuminates how people in Central Asia make a life at the intersection of diverse cross-cutting currents and flows of knowledge. In so doing, it stakes out the contribution of an anthropology of and from Central Asia to broader debates within contemporary anthropology. This is an essential reference for anthropologists as well as for scholars from other disciplines with a focus on Central Asia

Throw Your Voice
Throw Your Voice

Author: Meghanne Barker

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2024-08-15

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1501776479

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Throw Your Voice is a story of loss and recovery. It relates how children placed in a temporary care institution make sense of their situations. Moving between a Kazakhstan government children's home, Hope House, and the Almaty State Puppet Theater, Meghanne Barker shows how children, and puppets, as proxies, bring to life ideologies of childhood and visions of a rosy future. Sites and stories run in parallel. Framed by the narrative of Anton Chekhov's "Kashtanka," about a lost dog taken in by a kind stranger, the author follows the story's staging at the puppet theater. At Hope House, children find themselves on a path similar to Kashtanka, dislodged from their first homes to reside in a second. The heart of this story is about living in displacement and about the fragile intimacies achieved amidst conditions of missing. Whether due to war, migration, or pandemic, people get separated from those closest to them. Throw Your Voice examines how strangers become familiar, and how objects mediate precarious ties. She shows how people use fantasy to mitigate loss.

Modality in Kazakh as Spoken in China
Modality in Kazakh as Spoken in China

Author: Aynur Abish

Publisher: Harrassowitz

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783447106269

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This is a comprehensive study on modality in one of the largest Turkic languages, Kazakh, as it is spoken in China. Kazakh is the official language of the Republic of Kazakhstan and is furthermore spoken by about one and a half million people in China in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and in Aksai Kazakh Autonomous County in the Gansu Province. The method employed is empirical, i.e. data-oriented. Modal expressions in Kazakh are analyzed in a theoretical framework essentially based on the works of Lars Johanson in which semantic notions of modality are defined from a functional and typological perspective. The modal categories volition, deontic and epistemic evaluation express attitudes towards the propositional content and are conveyed in Kazakh by grammaticalized moods, particles and lexical devices, treated in detail in this book. Plenty of examples of their different usages are provided with interlinear annotation. The Kazakh expressions are compared with corresponding ones used in other Turkic languages. Contact influences of Uyghur and Chinese are also dealt with. The Appendix contains nine texts recorded by Aynur Abish in 2010-2012, mostly in the northern regions of Xinjiang.

The Shamaness in Asia
The Shamaness in Asia

Author: Davide Torri

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-08

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1000204545

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This book concentrates on female shamanisms in Asia and their relationship with the state and other religions, offering a perspective on gender and shamanism that has often been neglected in previous accounts. An international range of contributors cover a broad geographical scope, ranging from Siberia to South Asia, and Iran to Japan. Several key themes are considered, including the role of bureaucratic established religions in integrating, challenging and fighting shamanic practices, the position of women within shamanic complexes, and perceptions of the body. Beginning with a chapter that places the shamaness at the centre of the discussion, chapters then approach these issues in a variety of ways, from historically informed accounts, to presenting the findings of extensive ethnographic research by the authors themselves. Offering an important counterbalance to male dominated accounts of shamanism, this book will be of great interest to scholars of Indigenous Peoples across Religious Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, and Gender Studies.

Staying at Home
Staying at Home

Author: Rita Sanders

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2016-08-01

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1785331930

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Despite economic growth in Kazakhstan, more than 80 per cent of Kazakhstan’s ethnic Germans have emigrated to Germany to date. Disappointing experiences of the migrants, along with other aspects of life in Germany, have been transmitted through transnational networks to ethnic Germans still living in Kazakhstan. Consequently, Germans in Kazakhstan today feel more alienated than ever from their ‘historic homeland’. This book explores the interplay of those memories, social networks and state policies, which play a role in the ‘construction’ of a Kazakhstani German identity.

Language Change in Central Asia
Language Change in Central Asia

Author: Elise S. Ahn

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-01-15

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1501500430

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Twenty years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are still undergoing numerous transitions. This book examines various language issues in relation to current discussions about national identity, education, and changing notions of socio-cultural capital in Central Asia.

Cultural Conceptualizations in Language and Communication
Cultural Conceptualizations in Language and Communication

Author: Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-06-10

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 303042734X

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The book comprises a selection of papers concerning the general theme of cultural conceptualizations in language. The focus of Part 1, which includes four papers, is on Metaphor and Culture, discussing general as well as language-specific metaphoricity. Part 2, which also includes three papers, is on Cultural Models, dealing with phenomena relating to family and home, nation and kinship, blood, and death in different cultures. Six papers in Part 3, which refers to questions of Identity and Cultural Stereotypes, both in general language and in literature, discuss identity in native and migration contexts and take up motifs of journey and migration, as well as social and cultural stereotypes and prejudice in transforming contexts. Three papers in the last Part 4 of the book, Linguistic Concepts, Meanings, and Interaction, focus on the semantic interpretation of the changes and differences which occur in their intra- as well as inter-linguistic contexts.