The aim of thesis is to analyze the relationship between language planning policies and nation building process in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. The language planning policies in Kazakhstan aim to raise the status and role of Kazakh language in political and social contexts (status planning), develop Kazakh language as the medium of administration, education, media and science (corpus planning), and spread the use of Kazakh language (acquisition planning). However, given the demographic conditions, heterogeneous and multilingual ethnic composition of Kazakhstan, the desired progress has not been achieved. The main argument of the thesis is that so long as Kazakhstan cannot develop comprehensive, well-integrated language planning policies with suitable short-, medium- and long-term targets it cannot be expected to have success in their desire to make Kazakh the state language. The reason lies in the fact that Kazakhstan consist of a sizeable Russian minority and an ethnic nation building process takes place in the country. Thus, the existing language planning policies cannot respond to the needs of the society. The thesis examines factors and reasons affecting this process. To this end, the thesis shall cover an analysis language policies and nation building policies within a historical context.

ABSTRACT THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN THE FORMATION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY IN POST-SOVIET KAZAKHSTAN DOgANAKSOY, ipek M.Sc., Department of Eurasian Studies Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. AySeg&uuml / l Ayding&uuml / n September 2008, 114 Pages The aim of the thesis is to analyze the relationship between language and the formation of national identity in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. The launch of language policies in the Republic of Kazakhstan right after the break up of the Soviet Union aim to promote the status of Kazakh language as well as to support its use in state and public life spheres as a means of communication and to foster the national consciousness among the public. Although, official efforts combined with the discourses of the political elites aim to promote the status of the Kazakh language, various factors such as, the demographic structure, the quality of the Kazakh language and the rural and urban dichotomy, hindered the effective enforcement of these policies. The main argument of the thesis is that due to the existing factors which are mentioned above the usage of Kazakh language by the people of Kazakhstan as a means of communication in the short-run does not seem to be attainable. The Kazakh language, within the process of national identity formation, acts and would remain to act as a symbolic tool.

The thesis aims to discuss the process of nation-building and discourse of Russian nationalism of the Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2000 - 2008. It focuses on the rise of the nationalism in Russia since 2000 and analyzes discourse of nationalism at the state level, in culture and religious sphere, as well as its representation in various ultra right-wing political movements. The thesis argues that despite the ethnic elements in Vladimir Putin&rsquo / s discourse of Russian nationalism, his version of nationalism is not ethnic, but rather multiethnic and inclusive that seeks to promote loyalty to the Russian state among the Russian citizens without eliminating their ethnic identities. In fact, Putin&rsquo / s version of nationalism is multidimensional. Unlike ethnicity, religion and other cultural elements, the loyalty to the state constitute the core of this nationalism. The thesis comprises of four main chapters. After the introduction chapter, the second chapter examines the main projects of the Russian nation-building and identity construction that emerged after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, and explains which of them were chosen by the leadership of the republic. The third chapter focuses on the discussion of the nation-building under Boris Yeltsin. The fourth chapter is the analysis of Vladimir Putin&rsquo / s nation-building policy and his discourse of nationalism. The fifth chapter analyses the foreign policy of Vladimir Putin, paying attention to policy towards compatriots in the near abroad, countries of the CIS and West. The concluding chapter discusses the main findings of the thesis.

This thesis attempts to analyze the continuity of nationality policies of Kazakhstan between Soviet and post-Soviet periods. As for the Soviet past the Soviet template of nationality policies was deeply rooted in Kazakhstan. Considering the Soviet template of nationality policies, this study conceptualizes the structure of it as first among equals under Russian hegemony. With regard to post-Soviet period, this thesis claims that the nation building policies were not born out of its ashes contrary to the mainstream arguments. This study aims to reveal how the post-Soviet nation building in Kazakhstan is still proceeding along with the Soviet template. Evaluating nation building process of independent Kazakhstan, this study emphasizes the rising titular hegemony of Kazakhs. In other words, this study attempts to analyze the transformation of first among equals taking into account the ethnic and civic aspects of nation-building oscillations

This dissertation compares nation-building practices of post-Soviet Uzbekistan and post-Ottoman Turkey. In both cases the legitimacy principle of collapsed imperial polities which was largely based on universal ideologies or on the dynastic and religious principles, had to be replaced by the nationality principle. The politics of nation-building thus served first and foremost to reinstitute the legitimacy. The dissertation analyzes three aspects of nation-building / ideology, history and language. The general argument in the dissertation is that the policies of nation-building are among the ingredients of constructing a novel legitimation base for the elites. For this purpose Uzbekistan and Turkey constituted perfect cases to analyze the nation-building practices such as rewriting histories, creating and molding languages, religious policies in order to clarify the relationship between the nation-building and the construction of an overall legitimation principle. Secondly Uzbekistan in 1920s and 1920s and then after 1991, Turkey in the first fifteen years after the declaration of the republic used nation-building policies primarily to satisfy the political needs of the ruling elites.

This dissertation examines the political regime during the single party rule in Turkey between the years of 1923-1950 in relation to the concept of tutelage. The main argument supported in this work is that tutelary tendencies, contrary to the assumptions of Kemalist historicization, do not serve as segue to democracy, but rather make consolidation of democracy difficult, even impossible. In support, this dissertation provides a close examination of the Kemalist nation building process beginning from the Ottoman modernization process extending to the demographic engineering projects of the Republic. The examination reveals that tutelary tendencies are a reflection of the savior mission undertaken by the elite during the Ottoman-Republican modernization process. The political elite, in their mission to save and build the nation, not only ignored the political and social fabric of the time, but they insisted on radical interventions to the demographic fabric of the society in order to transform it to the nation they envisioned. During the execution of the nation-building project increasingly more authoritarian measures were legitimized by declared target of democracy. The social resistance to the radical interventions was suppressed by more authoritarian measures that were perceived as the cost of achieving democracy. The elite perceived themselves uniquely fit for deciding what is in the best interest of the people. Whether the aim of democratization was reached or not was also decided by the tutelary elite. Not wanting to let go of the power, they continuously invented new prerequisites to democracy. This cycle resulted in the persistence of the authoritarian regime. In the final analysis, this dissertation reveals that the tutelary tendencies of the avant-garde elite are the biggest obstacle on the path to democracy.

Political contention has entered a new age. Over the past three years unprecedented large-scale movements have challenged states across the globe, and social media has been an important component in their development and articulation. With the advent of social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, ordinary people have the technological ability to instantaneously transcend space, time and resources (Aouraugh and Alexander 2011; Castells 2012; Earl and Kimport 2009, 2011; Eltantawy, Nahed and Wiest 2011; Gerbaudo 2012; Hands 2011; Holmes 2012; Mason 2012). Are we currently living in a historical moment where a new repertoire of contention is emerging? If so, how is social media changing the way we collectively contest for our interests? The theoretical framework I propose in this paper advances and elaborates a social geographic approach in the framing of political contention that emphasizes the importance of the spatiality and temporality created by the hashtag (#) in the development and articulation of today's social movements. In addition to secondary sources about the protests in Brazil (#VemPraRua), I draw on participant observations to analyze a new modular form of protest I call the "hashtag movement." I claim that the hashtag (#) creates a new space/time (Massey 1992, 2007; Soja 1996) that fundamentally shifts the process of nation-ness (Anderson 2006) and marks a new phase in the mediazation of modern culture (Thompson 1991); two fundamental shifts that I argue are comparable to the structural and cultural shifts that formed the modern repertoire of contention (Anderson 2006; Della Porta and Diani 1999; McAdam 1999; McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001; Sewell 1990, 1996; Swidler 1986; Tarrow 1993, 1994; Tilly 1986, 1995a, 1995b; Young 2002). / text

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This dissertation is a qualitative investigation into Navajo citizen opinion on the need and form of a federal-tribal co-management model for sacred lands held in federal stewardship. The central question in this inquiry is, are co-management agreements appropriate for sacred landscapes management, and if so, how would they work? In other words, what are the issues, fundamental elements and core values of a "best-practices" sacred lands co-management model? This question is important because Native sacred lands protection and access are essential to reinforcing cultural identity and well-being, and revitalizing tribal communities. Across the United States, these places are being desecrated or destroyed at an alarming rate by commercial enterprise, public recreation, and political indifference. Native Peoples are also denied access to sacred sites for traditional subsistence or ceremonial purposes. This neglect of traditional Native cultural values in sacred lands management is referred to in this analysis as the "Indigenous values gap." Navajo response is focused on three Diné sacred landscapes, the Dinétah in northwest New Mexico, and the San Francisco Peaks and Canyon de Chelly, both located in northeast Arizona. These are large, multi-jurisdictional resources that are critical to Navajo culture and religion, and are currently under physical or legal threat. Navajo citizens in this inquiry generally agree that sacred lands co-management agreements between the Navajo Nation and federal agencies are desirable as instruments that can formalize the "practice" of genuine power-sharing relative to the management of cultural property. They also agree that co-management is not yet practical as a governance structure and philosophy until the Federal Government changes its perspective toward sharing management decisions with a Native nation. Navajo citizens also argue that comanagement is not practical until the Navajo Nation builds the capable institutions and sacred lands management vision on which to base co-management agreement development and implementation. The community development concepts of the Harvard Nation-Building model are central to building effective sacred lands management plans and co-management regimes. A "best-practices" model of sacred lands co-management blends the sacred principles of the Navajo doctrine of hozho with the secular principles of property rights, protected areas, and nation-building.

This research investigates language use in Linguistic Landscapes (LLs) of an urban center of post-Soviet eastern Ukraine The major focus is on how the signs represent linguistic, social and ideological phenomena in the context of competing local, national, and global language ideologies with Ukrainian, Russian and English in Cyrillic and Roman scripts. More than 100 pictures of public signs were selected and analyzed, from more than one thousand photographs.Detailed analyses of the signs show that the `one state - one language' official language policy is not effective in the predominantly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine: the signs frequently use Russian, and blend in Ukrainian. There were revealing differences between establishment categories. Bank signs were almost all in Ukrainian, because they are government regulated. In contrast, local clothing store signs used Russian, along with English and European languages to convey `modernity', `prestige' and `high fashion'; other establishment (casinos and electronics stores) mixed Russian and Ukrainian with some English. English and European languages with Roman script were also frequently used to `smooth over' the conflict between Ukrainian and Russian.The genetic closeness of Ukrainian and Russian allows a linguistic phenomenon that reconciles the languages, `bivalency'. Bivalency refers to shared linguistic elements between the languages, allowing the signs to appeal to the local population, while complying with the official Ukrainian language policy. This work analyzes and documents bivalency at phonological, morphological, and lexical levels, introducing a new sensitive tool for quantifying language dominance in signs.The overall conclusion is that signs in the LLs reveal that despite the official language policy, both Ukrainian and Russian appear in signs. In this way, Linguistic Landscapes may predict a future Ukraine in which both Russian and Ukrainian are accepted as official languages.This work contributes several new perspectives to the analyses of LLs. It demonstrates that LLs are multimodal, multilayered and multidimensional to be studied from a multidisciplinary perspective; the methodology integrates Critical Discourse Analysis and grounded theory; LLs are considered as texts analyzed on multiple discourse levels. The work invents and applies continua of bivalency as a multilevel phenomenon. The research focuses on LLs in eastern Ukraine.