Almaty Hipsters Will Not Save Kazakhstan: Critical Assessment of the “Oyan, Qazaqstan” Political Movement

Abstract

"Oyan Qazaqstan" is a self-organized political movement that was launched in Almaty in the summer of 2019, just ahead of the early presidential elections. The departure from office of Kazakhstan's first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, sparked the formation of the movement, as well as an overall surge in political activity throughout the country. The art banner, which was hung by members of the "Oyan Qazaqstan" movement during the Almaty Marathon on April 21st, 2019, was the key event that led to the movement's official establishment. As a result, Asiya Tulesova and Beibarys Tolymbekov were detained for fifteen days. Later, the declaration of "Oyan Qazaqstan" was presented. They have no plans to register it as an official party and instead seek to use Almaty as a model for other cities by expanding social movement activity. This master thesis contains analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews with seven active members of the movement who were involved in its formation, participant observation during the movement's peaceful walk and demonstration activities, and a study of the statistics from the movement's official Instagram account. The information gathered during the interviews was analyzed using micro variables from the theory of collective action and resource mobilization theory to answer the question of diminishing levels of engagement in the movement. Furthermore, existing sociological research on the topic of youth political participation in Kazakhstan was used to investigate the general attitudes of the younger generation toward politics. Possible explanations of low levels of participation include current absence of political opportunity and interest of younger generation in politics, inability of the movement to efficiently mobilize human and material resources, absence of incentives for participants and solidarity among them, together with high costs of participation.