Understanding Economic Justice Attitudes in Two Countries: Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Working Class Subjectivities and Neoliberalisation in Kyrgyzstan: Developing Alternative Moral Selves

“…Sayer (2005) notes that the power to shame and legitimate advantages is disproportionately concentrated in the dominant social group. Junisbai's (2010) study shows that in Kyrgyzstan, educated urban residents with a high household income are associated with less egalitarian beliefs. The de-valuing of working class actors has become commonplace, especially in cities and major towns.…”

“…Praised by international financial institutions for the pace of economic reforms, the government has carried out a vast range of donor-funded programmes that advanced the ideals and values of entrepreneurship, self-governance and self-help (Babajanian 2009). People in rural areas bore the brunt of economic restructuring (see Kuehnast and Dudwick 2004;Spoor 2004;Junisbai 2010;Steimann 2011). In 2012, 38 % of the population was classified as poor, of whom 75 % lived in rural areas and were predominantly ethnic Kyrgyz.…”

“…Rasul assigns moral worth to wealthy traders and depicts working class people as lacking worth and being deficient because they have not internalised the principles of market justice. In his study of social justice attitudes in Central Asia, Junisbai (2010) notes that 70 % of Kyrgyzstanis display high levels of support for redistribution. But Rasul believes that such attitudes and beliefs towards care and justice should be corrected by individualising economic prosperity.…”

“…There are inadequate institutional safeguards to protect working class people from market volatility and injustices. Junisbai (2010) notes that a majority of the country shares Anara's perception that luck and inequality, and not meritocracy, shape people's life chances.…”

Privileged Exclusion in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan: Ethnic Return Migration, Citizenship, and the Politics of (Not) Belonging

“…Beginning in the early 1990s, the state privatised stateowned enterprises, such as state farms and state-owned factories, and reduced government subsidies for housing, health care and transportation (Olcott 2002, p. 146). These changes brought high rates of inflation and unemployment, and otherwise disrupted the daily lives of Kazakhstani citizens in the early 1990s (Nazpary 2001;Junisbai 2010). The second major task was the development of a more liberalised political landscape to replace the one-party system controlled by the Communist Party and guided by Marxist-Leninist ideology.…”