The Nazarbayev Generation

Reviews / Votes

What Marlene Laruelle's book does is to help us make sense of this and think critically about Kazakhstan and the reception of globalised norms and liberal values in non-Western societies. Such an intervention is not only informative, but also necessary for anyone trying to make sense of underlying forces shaping our world today. * Middle East Monitor * In this timely volume edited by Marlene Laruelle, various aspects of Nazarbayev's legacy are examined in fifteen separate chapters engaged with understanding Kazakhstani youth attitudes, behaviors, and experiences. Through its multifaceted perspectives on the 50 percent of the country's population that was born during Nazarbayev's reign, the book offers keen insights into the cultural, social, and political context of the current transitional moment. Collectively, the chapters in this book delineate the attitudinal differences between the younger and older generations in Kazakhstan, while also tempering the expectation that the youth will uniformly push for more political liberalization as they gain political and social power in the coming years. * The Russian Review * This impressive and timely volume provides us with survey data and cross-disciplinary analysis of Kazakhstan's independence generations. Its focus on social transformations of the last three decades is an important contribution to breaking with established, and increasingly irrelevant, narratives about the region of Central Asia. -- Nargis Kassenova, Harvard University