This dissertation studies the development of relations between Kazakhs and Siberian Cossacks in the period between the inclusion of the Kazakh Middle and Younger Hordes in the Russian Empire in the 1730s and the beginning of the twentieth century. The research is based on primar…
The literature in development economics and labor economics includes many studies of the importance of and rewards to training and education of workers, for both employers and employees. This dissertation develops a graph showing the occupational educational requirement levels f…
This study combines the economic and the political transition literature in order to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the reform processes of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan from 1991–2003. Information from interviews conducted with economists from the financial institutions as w…
This dissertation offers a local study of the Soviet Union's vast system of forced labor concentration camps and internal exile, the Gulag, in the Karaganda region of central Kazakhstan from the early 1930s when the Gulag arose as a mass social institution to the post-Stalin era…
The problem. The purpose of this study was to examine characteristics of and intercultural relationships among major cultural groups in formerly Soviet Central Asia, culturally integrating and differentiating processes in the context of the Soviet Union's breakup and possible co…
The central focus of this dissertation is an examination of the new regional character of the five post-Soviet Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. In the first three post-Soviet years, 1992-1994, the five states gradually …
The opening of the oil-rich Caspian Sea region after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, presents major opportunities for the future development of world energy supplies. Development of mineral resources in the Caspian will also strengthen the economies of the three new…
Background. The effect of labor migration on HIV risk is well documented. Many studies show that domestic and international labor migration increases sexual risk behavior. However, little is known about the role of gender on HIV risk among labor migrants. This study examines and…
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan allowed the Kazakh language to become a state language. However, the media space in Kazakhstan is divided into two major language groups: Kazakh speaking and Russian speaking journalists. While the Kazakhstan government tries to…
In a world filled with competing multinational corporations, a rising and falling global political economy, progressive advancements in technology and communication and immense inequality of wealth, globalization has become a buzzword often surrounded with expectations and misco…
This dissertation explores the fate of ethnic groups internally deported by the Soviet leadership during the Second World War. Known collectively in the literature as "The Punished Peoples", the Russian Germans, Karachays, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, and Crimean Tatars w…
Objective:This study investigates the occurrence of depressive symptoms among persons living with HIV, and the relationship between depressive symptoms and HIV treatment initiation and adherence. Design: Cross-sectional. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among patie…
This thesis examines the effects of foreign direct investment on Kazakhstan's political growth. Kazakhstan's transition to a market economy was plagued by corruption, and heavy investment in the oil industry generated resource dependency concerns. The regime later began to exert…
Drawing on sixteen months of fieldwork in the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site region in Kazakhstan, this ethnography is an account of the local understandings of health, livelihood, and suffering among rural Kazakh communities. Using the 1949-1989 Soviet atomic testing program a…
This dissertation examines botanical resources as components of Central Asian economies in the Bronze (ca. 2500 - 800 B.C.) and Iron Ages (ca. 800 B.C. - A.D. 500) using a paleoethnobotanical data set from four archaeological sites, Begash, Mukri, Tasbas, and Tuzusai. These site…
I divide political opportunity as a theme into two distinct parts that are both important factors and that influence ethnic mobilization in different ways. The first of these factors is opportunity in the sense of political space, or the idea that elites who would instrumentaliz…
Following the collapse of the USSR in 1991 the concept of a "Soviet" identity fell into decline and general academic disdain. The disintegration of the Soviet state and the subsequent rise in "ethno-national" violence across its former territory was said to belie the coming-toge…
Kazakhstan's higher education system is based on the Soviet governance structure, limited academic freedom and no autonomy from the state. In such a system faculties are contract employees delivering predesigned courses with no incentive to bring new ideas and methods. But emplo…
The countries of post-Soviet Central Asia share remarkable similarities: they came into existence at the same time, have since undergone similar processes and challenges in establishing statehood, are culturally related to each other, share similar historical paths, and have nea…