Book Description
While the demographic make up of some former soviet republics, such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, allows for the use of ethno-nationalism in the pursuit of legitimacy, Kazakhstan's ethnic makeup requires a "more difficult process of developing civil society, political penetration, and patriotic loyalty amidst a population with highly divergent conceptions of personal identity and territorial belonging," according to Diener (geography, Pepperdine U.). He examines the ways this process plays out in relation to the actions of the state towards the "non-titular" German and Korean communities of Kazakhstan (forcibly resettled there in the 1930s and 40s). He analyzes their divergent reactions to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the possibility of reestablishing their ethnic identities in an effort to understand the relationship between place, power, and identity. Annotation : 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
