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 …
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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…
The dissertation examines the economic and behavioral factors influencing 'sector-switching' in Kazakhstan's health care industry. Sector-switching involves doctors moving from the national to the private system, which is not well established, thereby raising questions about why…
This dissertation is a study of imperial epistemology—the Russian Empire's attempts to produce useful knowledge about the Kazakh steppe, and the complex interrelationships between geographic, ethnographic, and statistical accounts of the region and imperial power. The dissertati…
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Western governments and international donor agencies have invested in the development of civil society, in order to promote the growth of democratic ideology in the newly independent, post-Soviet Central Asian states. After nineteen years the …
This study investigates differences in the public discourse regarding national identity and language policy issues in the Kazakh-language and Russian-language realms, by analyzing newspaper coverage of these issues. I illustrate how the usage of two languages in the country's me…
Studies of territorial cohesion combine aspects of effective national territory and spatial inequalities, focusing on better integration of regions through balanced economic growth, reducing regional disparities, and inclusive policies toward all citizens. Lack of cohesion and i…