Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:05:32.399Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Reconceptualizing Clans: Kinship Networks and Statehood in Kazakhstan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Edward Schatz*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Southern Illinois University, [email protected]

Extract

What role, if any, does kinship play in modern political life? Recent work in comparative politics has focused on a variety of informal relationships. It is striking that kinship has not received similar, sustained attention. The broad assumption of most theoretically-driven work is that kinship is the domain of the anthropologist; to the extent that political scientists consider kinship, they do so as something for modern institutions to overcome, as something in fundamental opposition to the state apparatus.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Partial exceptions include Laitin, David D., Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change Among the Yoruba (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1986) and I. Schapera, Government and Politics in Tribal Societies (New York: Schocken Books, 1967). On loosely defined “informal politics” across Africa, see Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works, Disorder as Political Instrument (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). On rent-seeking networks and other opaque politics in East Europe, see Anna Gryzmala-Busse, “Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East Central Europe,” Comparative Political Studies, December 2003; and David Stark and Laszlo Bruszt, Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

2. Schatz, Edward, Modern Clan Politics: The Power of “Blood” in Kazakhstan and Beyond (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2004).Google Scholar

3. The synthetic study that marks a change on thinking on ethnicity is Young, Crawford, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976).Google Scholar

4. On the role of social communication, see Deutsch, Karl. Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (New York: Wiley, 1953), and “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 55, 1961, pp. 493514. On print-capitalism, see Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).Google Scholar

5. Olcott, Martha Brill, “The Fabrication of a Social Past,” in Aronoff, Myron, ed., Political Anthropology Handbook (Rutgers, Transaction Press, 1980), pp. 193212.Google Scholar

6. James C. Scott's contributions are exceptional. See his Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

7. Akbarzadeh, Shahram, “Why did Nationalism Fail in Tajikistan?Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 48, No. 7, pp. 11051129; Barnett Rubin, “Russian Hegemony and State Breakdown in the Periphery: Causes and Consequences of the Civil War in Tajikistan,” in Rubin, Barnett R. and Snyder, Jack, eds, Post-Soviet Political Order: Conflict and State Building (London: Routledge, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Poliakov, Sergei, Everyday Islam: Religion and Tradition in Rural Central Asia (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1992); Vaisman, Demian, “Regionalism and Clan Loyalty in the Political Life of Uzbekistan,” in Yaacov Ro'i, ed., Muslim Eurasia: Conflicting Legacies (London: Frank Cass, 1995), pp. 105121.Google Scholar

9. Kushlubayev, Vladimir, “Tribalism and the State Formation in Kyrgyzstan” (thesis, Central European University, 1995); Collins, Kathleen, Clans, Pacts, and Politics: Understanding Regime Transition in Central Asia (Ph.D. dissertation 1999, Stanford University, and book ms., 2002).Google Scholar

10. Lieven, Anatol, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 335345. See also Fedorovich, Alexander, “Clans and Religion in Chechnya,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2001, pp. 108113.Google Scholar

11. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, trans. and ed., From Max Weber (New York, 1946), pp. 8182.Google Scholar

12. Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York, 1947), p. 332.Google Scholar

13. On how bureaucratic efficiency is implicated in modern atrocities, see Bauman, Zygmunt, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

14. To be fair, Weber painted these as ideal–types, but as with most ideal–types, once created, they assumed a categorical character that proved less flexible than Weber perhaps would have preferred.Google Scholar

15. Landa, Janet Tai, Trust, Ethnicity, and Identity: Beyond the New Institutional Economics of Ethnic Trading Networks, Contract Law, and Gift Exchange (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).Google Scholar

16. Collins, Kathleen, “The Political Role of Clans in Central Asia,” Comparative Politics , No. 35, 2003, pp. 171190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Clan behaviors were not the cause of state breakdown in Somalia, but once the disintegration of the state began, clan-based insecurity sped up its total collapse.Google Scholar

18. Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Niolitic People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940).Google Scholar

19. Evans-Pritchard, ; and Gellner, Ernest, Muslim Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

20. Geertz, Clifford, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 331.Google Scholar

21. Blood ties are often Active, but they are assumed to be real.Google Scholar

22. This article does not theorize the conditions under which this discursive exchange occurs or does not occur. Much depends on whether states provide space for free expression or, alternatively, criminalizes the exchange of genealogical information.Google Scholar

23. Horowitz, Donald L., A Democratic South Africa? (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991); René Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnocide as Discourse and Practice (Cambridge and New York: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

24. Liberals advocate civic polities as ways to preclude the need for ethnic belonging. Even as they do so, they implicitly recognize the legitimacy of ethnic categories by suggesting ways to move beyond ethnicity. Clans usually remain unrecognized categories by the state and the international system.Google Scholar

25. Stevens, Jacqueline, Reproducing the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 24.Google Scholar

26. I elaborate on these issues in Schatz, Modern Clan Politics .Google Scholar

27. This discussion of clan and umbrella clan does not exhaust the store of identity categories that were relevant in the pre-Soviet steppe, but ethnic and social class categories (for examples) were far less central to political and social life in the region than were kinship-based divisions. For a broader discussion of various identity categories, see Martha Brill Olcott, The Kazakhs: Second Edition (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1995); and, Schatz, , Modern Clan Politics, Chapter 2.Google Scholar

28. Evans-Pritchard.Google Scholar

29. Vostrov, V. V. and Mukanov, M. S., Rodoplemennoi sostav i rasselenie Kazakhov: konets XIX–nachalo XX v . Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1968).Google Scholar

30. Olcott, , The Kazakhs , p. 13.Google Scholar

31. Varieties of primordialist thinking include Isaacs, Harold, Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change (New York: Harper & Row, 1977); Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Alexander J. Motyl, Revolutions, Nations, and Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

32. Steffen W. Schmidt, Laura Guasti, Carl H. Lande and James C. Scott, eds, Friends, Followers, and Factions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).Google Scholar

33. On the key difference between individuals behaving as rational, utility-maximizers and playing social roles, compare North, Douglass C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) with Merton, Robert K., Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1957).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Holos Ukrayiny , 13 October 1993, as reported by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS-SOV-93-198).Google Scholar

35. Ashimbaev, D. R., Kto est' kto v Kazakhstane (Almaty: Credo, 2001).Google Scholar

36. Jones Luong argues that regional (oblast) identities and interests were promoted during the Soviet period. See her Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). What I consider here is different. Each umbrella clan encompasses several regions, and many regions have several different umbrella clans.Google Scholar

37. Non-Kazakhs and urban-born Kazakhs were not coded, since the former do not have clan backgrounds and the latter's clan background cannot be discerned with accuracy. There is no reason to suspect that this creates a selection effect.Google Scholar

38. Estimates are from Tynyshpaev, “Genealogiia,” as reported in Werner, Cynthia, “The Significance of Tribal Identities in the Daily Life of Rural Kazaks in South Kazakhstan,” presented at Association for the Study of Nationalities convention, 24–26 April 1997, p. 13. Given the lack of census data on umbrella clan backgrounds, estimates are rough, a point to which I return below.Google Scholar

39. On the possibility of ethnic Russian separatism, see Bremmer, Ian, “Nazarbaev and the North: State-Building and Ethnic Relations in Kazakhstan,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, 1994, pp. 619635.; and Bhavna Davé, “The Politics of Language Revival: National Identity and State Building in Kazakhstan” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Syracuse University, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. I estimated Nazarbaev's influence in the following way. For 1997, I considered that Nazarbaev had greatest influence over those government agencies involved in economic development and economic reform. At the time, this was the single most important imperative for the regime. I estimated the degree to which an agency was involved in economic issues. For 2001, Nazarbaev's focus shifted largely to domestic and international security. Accordingly, for that year I considered the degree to which each agency was involved in security issues.Google Scholar

41. By the late 1990s, the context for umbrella clan politics had changed, with the immediate threat of separatism diminished, and therefore the need for an Elder–Middle alliance no longer strong. In such a context, an Elder–Younger alliance began to emerge. It remains to be seen whether this too will trickle down into the broader elite. On the diminished threat of ethnic Russian separatism, see Commercio, Michele E., “The ‘Pugachev Rebellion’ in the Context of Post-Soviet Kazakh Nationalization,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2004, pp. 87113 and Schatz, Edward, “Framing Strategies and Non-Conflict in Multi-Ethnic Kazakhstan,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2000, pp. 7092.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42. Based on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty electronic daily reports, I reconstructed the duration in office for each regional governor in the 1990s. In 1997 four regions were absorbed into others, losing their separate administrative status. The average tenure in office in these four regions was 29.7 months.Google Scholar

43. On fiscal decentralization, see Luong, Pauline Jones, “Economic Decentralization in Kazakhstan: Causes and Consequences” (working paper, Yale University).Google Scholar

44. Interview, Sabyr Kairkhanov, Atyrau, 12 October 1998.Google Scholar

45. Zhanuzakova, L. T., “Problemy vzaimootnoshenii akima oblasti s vyshestoiashchimi i nizhestoiashchimi organami ispolnitel'noi vlasti v usloviiakh unitarnogo Kazakhstana,” Izvestiia Akademii Nauk RK, Vol. 4, 1997, pp. 1418.Google Scholar

46. Dozhivem do ponidel'nika , 29 March 1996, as reported in V. N. Khliupin, “Bol'shaia sem'ia' Nursultana Nazarbaeva: politicheskaia elita sovremennogo Kazakhstana (Moscow: Institut aktual'nykh politicheskikh issledovanii, 1998), p. 12.Google Scholar

47. Khliupin, , ‘Bol'shaia sem'ia’, p . 12.Google Scholar

48. Tileulesov, Temirtas, Ordaly zhylan: korruptsiia turaly (Shymkent, 1998). The author of this book on the region's corruption found himself on “trial” for its publication. In 2000 he was severely beaten by unknown assailants.Google Scholar

49. Author's field notes, South Kazakhstan region, June and July 1997, passim; interview, “Bakhyt,” Shymkent akimat, 28 May 1998. Many informants preferred to have their identity protected.Google Scholar

50. Levshin, A., Opisanie kirgiz-kazach ‘ikh, ili kirgiz-kaisatskikh, ord i stepei (Almaty: Sanat, 1832, 1996 reprint).Google Scholar

51. I cover quasi-state actors in Schatz, Modern Clan Politics .Google Scholar

52. Professor Masanov was more than willing to have his story told as an illustration of the political threat posed by subethnicity-based analyses.Google Scholar

53. Masanov, Nurbulat, Kochevaia tsivilizatsiia Kazakhov (Almaty: Sotsinvest, 1995). Masanov has pointed out that critics of his work had accused him of “geographical determinism” (personal communication).Google Scholar

54. Masanov, Nurbulat, “Kazakhskaia politicheskaia i intellektual'naia elita: klanovaia prinadlezhnost' i vnutrietnicheskoe sopernichestvo,” Vestnik Evrazii, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1996, pp. 4661.Google Scholar

55. Ibid, p. 59.Google Scholar

56. Kazakhstanskaia pravda , 18 March 1998, p. 1. The Russian term natsional'nyi (an adjective) is the equivalent of “ethnic,” although it might also be translated (more awkwardly) as “nationality-related.”Google Scholar

57. This direct quotation comes from the tape recording of the event that a journalist, who prefers to remain anonymous, provided.Google Scholar

58. See, for examples, Ana tili , 26 March 1998, p. 2; Egemen Qazaqstan, 22 July 1998, p. 4; and Qazaq eli, 28 March 1998, p. 3.Google Scholar

59. Karavan, 17 July 1998, p. 10.Google Scholar

60. Amrekulov, Nurlan, Puti k ustoichivomu razvitiiu: razmyshleniia o glavnom (Almaty), p. 128.Google Scholar

61. Interview, Akezhan Qozhaakhmet, 26 March 1998.Google Scholar

62. These conclusions corroborate the intensive ethnographic work in Werner.Google Scholar

63. Karavan, 20 March 1998, p. 37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64. Konstitutsiia, article 20, line 3.Google Scholar

65. Kazhegeldin, Akezhan, Kazakhstan: pravo vybora (Almaty: Qarzhy-Qarazhat, 1998), p. 55.Google Scholar

66. See Khliupin, V. N., Imperskii sbornik No. 1: Respublika Kazakhstan—geopoliticheskie ocherki (Moscow: Russkii Komitet pri Predsedatele Liberal'no-Demokraticheskoi partii Rossii, 1997).Google Scholar

67. Khliupin, , Imperskii, p. 122.Google Scholar

68. This metaphor comes from Gawande, Atul, “The Cancer-Cluster Myth,” The New Yorker , 8 February 1999, p. 37.Google Scholar

69. Anonymous local journalists in Shymkent provided these subethnic backgrounds.Google Scholar

70. Horowitz, Donald L., Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).Google Scholar

71. Thanks to Dennis Galvan (personal communication) for suggesting this line of questioning.Google Scholar

72. Widner, Jennifer A., The Rise of a Party-State in Kenya: From “Harambee!” to “Nyayo!” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).Google Scholar

73. Klopp, Jacqueline M., “Can Moral Ethnicity Trump Political Tribalism? The Struggle for Land and Nation in Kenya,” African Studies, Vol. 61, No. 2, pp. 269294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar