This presentation was given for the course "Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology" at History faculty of Karaganda State University (Kazakhstan)

1. Complexity and
Change
Nazgul Mingisheva
Class of the Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology
Karaganda State University, History faculty
April 18, 2014

2. • Urban Anthropology and Change
• Complexity and Encounters
•Medical Anthropology
• Orientalism, Decentralization and
Modernization
• Globalization and Construction of Kazakh
Hybridity (Mimicry)

3. Urban Anthropology and Change
Causes of urbanization and changing:
•Labour migration to cities;
•Industrialization;
•Changes in value orientation
Anthropological focus on change:
•Godfrey Wilson (1941-1942) – de-tribalization in Africa
•J. Clyde Mitchell (1956) – “The Kalela Dance” (change and
continuity, ethnic symbolism, and group identity)
•Abner Cohen (1969) and David Lan (1985) – moving from
traditional to modern context of change; change of research
methodology

4. Complexity and Encounters: Differentiation and
Growing of Modern Societies
Postcoloniality and translocality of Siaya (Western Kenya)
Research of D.W. Cohen and E.S. Atieno Odhiambo, 1989:
•Labour migration called social and cultural changes locally;
•Creation of the middle class and new form of social
differentiation by the national educational system, the growing
of society and the new working opportunities;
•Development of political organizations;
•Social integration and nation-state;
•Border migration, political changes, illegal border trade with
Uganda and growing prosperity in Kenya

5. Conceptualizing encounters
Economic and cultural postcolonialism/neocolonialism and
processes of globalization:
•Frantz Fanon (1956)
•Edward Said (1978)
•Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988)
•Homi K. Bhabha (1990)
Encounters between systems of knowledge and cultural
practices

6. Social encounters between
knowledge systems
Olivia Harris on cultural complexity in Latin America, the
Andean area, 1995:
•Model of mixing (creolization, syncretism, hybridity, mestizaje);
•Model of colonization (enforced introduction of Christianity
and Spanish language);
•Model of borrowing;
•Model of juxtaposition (parallel knowledge systems of Indians
and Europeans);
•Model of “imitation, assimilation or direct identification”
•Model of “innovation and creativity” (it is completely new,
does not tie with origins)

7. Medical Anthropology
Medical Anthropology, or Anthropology of body, is a growing
sub-discipline dealing with cultural knowledge and practices
about the body, health and illness
•Creation of “cultural body”
•“Western medicine” and “indigenous medical systems”
Research of Robert Welsh (1983) – Ningerum of the New
Guinea highlands: interrelationship of traditional and Western
medicine
•Medical Anthropology and development represent cultural
dynamics in poliethnic societies

8. Orientalism, Decentralization
and Modernization
Edward Said, his book “Orientalism” (1978) and an image of
“the Other” as mystical and irrational:
•Orientalism is the classic European vision of the East in
literature and history
•Western scholars have produces stereotypes of “the Oriental”
in their production of myth about themselves, about the
“Western World” as the cradle of progress, rationality and
science

9. Decolonization and
modernization
• Eric Wolf (1982)
• Marshall Sahlins (1985)
• Tzvetan Todorov (1989)
• Jean-Claude Galey (1992)
• Ronald Inden (1990)
• Veena Das (1994)
• “modernity” and “tradition”
• the paradoxical result of modernization is the emergence of
traditionalist movements and reinterpretation of the ancestral
culture (New Age movements in the West and Tengri in
Eurasia); creation of new mythology

10. Globalization and Construction of Kazakh Hybridity
(Mimicry)
Nazgul Mingisheva. Globalization and Youth Culture in
Kazakhstan: Postcolonial and Gender Aspects, 2013 (available
at: http://icglobalidea.com). Global and local through media,
television and popular culture in Kazakhstan:
•Internet, television, and popular culture influence on gender
identity of the surveyed young people
•Regional (Russian) content has leading positions in the Internet,
media and television among students’ preferences
•Globalization is prevailed in popular culture although Russian
content is significant too in music preferences of the students
•Regional and local diversity in television and popular culture is
not very high; there is some Asian content (Turkish and Indian)
in television and popular culture
•The local (Kazakhstan) content presents in all three parts of the
research but it is minimal presently

11. Construction of Kazakh
Hybridity and Mimicry in
MusicGalymzhan Moldanazar (Aka Hipsterzhan)

12. Who Is Hipster?
Hipster is a term popularly used to denote a contemporary
subculture in North America, South America, Australia, and
Europe primarily consisting of Millennials (Generation Y, 1980-
2000s) living in urban areas (Grief, 2010).
The subculture has been described as a “mutating, trans-
Atlantic melting pot of styles, testes and behaviors” (Haddow,
2008) and is broadly associated with indie and alternative music,
a varied non-mainstream fashion sensibility (including vintage
and thrift store-bought clothes), progressive, independent, or
far-left political views, organic or artisanal foods, and alternative
lifestyles (Wallace, 2012) (Wikipedia)

13. Images of Hipster

14. Female hipster

15. Male hipster

16. Aka Hipsterzhan and Kazakh
“Michael Jackson”
Ethnic music in modern Kazakhstan: Ulytau, Assylbek Yensepov,
Saz Otau
Interview for Hush.kz: “Galymzhan Moldanazar: ‘Aqpen birge’ is
the song about condition after drug overdose” at
http://hush.kz/blog/post/hipsterzhan_moldanazar
•Discourses of Synthpop, Funk, Britpop, cinema, language, city,
creativity, popularity, development, drug, religion
Galymzhan is also a producer of Aibek Bainazarov who is Kazakh
“Michael Jackson” (mimicry)

17. Conclusion:
• Cultural change has been becoming one of the most
important point to study modern development and can
do possible to re-interpret human history
• Cultural and Social Anthropology is also changed and
developed alongside its various studies to find new
research objects and try to give answers to present
challenges