Title: Youth in the Post-Soviet Space: Is the Central Asian Case Really So Different?
Abstract: Most investigations of post-Soviet youth concentrate on specific countries, periods of time and groups of youth. This is understandable not only because researchers tend to have limited time and resources for completing fieldwork at their disposal but also because much research on young people in the post-Soviet space is carried out by social anthropologists and area specialists, who both tend to emphasise the specificity of their regions and respondents. Indeed, case studies are important and necessary because the trajectories of youth are specific to particular times, places, and social and cultural contexts. Some may consider the very term 'post-Soviet youth' to be an unacceptable essentialisation since it lumps together too many people whose lives have developed in very different ways. Significantly, there may also be political resistance against comparisons within the former Eastern bloc. Which countries do you choose to compare and on what grounds? To some, comparability may sound too much like similarity and, since many states now seek to distance themselves from their socialist pasts, suggestions of similarity are unwelcome. Scholars and policy-makers from Central Asia and parts of the Caucasus, for example, now often prefer to discuss their regions as part of a wider Islamic world, whereas the Baltic and other new Eastern European states emphasise their European identity and seek to avoid juxtaposition to anything Soviet or post-Soviet.
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 3
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