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Accepted Paper:

Youth, gender and nationalism in contemporary Kazakhstan  
Ulan Bigozhin (Nazarbayev University)

Paper long abstract:

This papers aims to study how young Western educated generation of Kazakhs percept and what do they feel toward official or state run ideology of nationalism and gender. Kazakhstan started from 2017 program of reforms, which is officially recognized as "Third Wave of Modernization" and program of "Spiritual Renovation" (Rukhani Zhaghy) is part of this modernization reform. Third Wave of Modernization according tot he the Presidential speech should touch all areas of society from economics to national identity. Special focus is given to the spread of sense of belonging to the Motherland means Kazakhstan, development of patriotism. President of the country, Nursultan Nazarbaeyv in his official announcement of this reform program underlined in the paragraph number there idea of of "saving national identity" and "our national traditions and customs, language, music, literature and marriage rituals, - by other word, national spirit should stay forever with us (http://www.akorda.kz/ru/events/akorda_news/press_conferences/statya-glavy-gosudarstva-vzglyad-v-budushchee-modernizaciya-obshchestvennogo-soznaniya).

In my future article I argue: first, Kazakhstani youth, who is in the process or already have western style, international education is going through ideological and identity search (if not a crisis), where they (youth) want to be global and cosmopolitan, but at the same time they feel quite hard nationalistic pressure in terms of gender roles. Second, gender roles, projected by state and large part of society idealistic vision (which is often based on romanticized and imagined past in ac accordance B. Anderson`s concept of imagined community ) of the Kazakh woman is one of the central, if not the major field of conflicts between youth and male-centric nationalism. Nationalistic vison of gender roles, where women expected to be "modest" and "obedient" does not attract and even get a resistance from part of internationally educated Kazakh youth.

Third, I argue that even by identifying themselves as pro-Western, cosmopolitan and globalist, this part of Kazakh youth is also have deep nationalistic sentiments. Senses of belonging to the Kazakh nation and Kazakh culture are wide spread among them. I follow Craig Calhoun`s points (Calhoun 2004:250) that "…it is impossible not to belong to social groups, relations, or culture. The idea of individuals abstract enough to be able to choose all their "identifications" is deeply misleading. Versions of this idea are, however, widespread in liberal cosmopolitanism" By other words, this it hard to find "pure" cosmopolitans or nationalist among pro-Western educated and oriented Kazakh youth today.

Panel GEN-02
New Directions in Gender Studies in Central Asia, part II
  Session 1