1. Partial exceptions include Laitin, David D., Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change Among the Yoruba (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1986) and I. Schapera, Government and Politics in Tribal Societies (New York: Schocken Books, 1967). On loosely defined “informal politics” across Africa, see Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works, Disorder as Political Instrument (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). On rent-seeking networks and other opaque politics in East Europe, see Anna Gryzmala-Busse, “Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East Central Europe,” Comparative Political Studies, December 2003; and David Stark and Laszlo Bruszt, Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

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4. On the role of social communication, see Deutsch, Karl. Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (New York: Wiley, 1953), and “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 55, 1961, pp. 493–514. On print-capitalism, see Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).Google Scholar

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26. I elaborate on these issues in Schatz, Modern Clan Politics .Google Scholar

27. This discussion of clan and umbrella clan does not exhaust the store of identity categories that were relevant in the pre-Soviet steppe, but ethnic and social class categories (for examples) were far less central to political and social life in the region than were kinship-based divisions. For a broader discussion of various identity categories, see Martha Brill Olcott, The Kazakhs: Second Edition (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1995); and, Schatz, , Modern Clan Politics, Chapter 2.Google Scholar

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36. Jones Luong argues that regional (oblast) identities and interests were promoted during the Soviet period. See her Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). What I consider here is different. Each umbrella clan encompasses several regions, and many regions have several different umbrella clans.Google Scholar

37. Non-Kazakhs and urban-born Kazakhs were not coded, since the former do not have clan backgrounds and the latter's clan background cannot be discerned with accuracy. There is no reason to suspect that this creates a selection effect.Google Scholar

38. Estimates are from Tynyshpaev, “Genealogiia,” as reported in Werner, Cynthia, “The Significance of Tribal Identities in the Daily Life of Rural Kazaks in South Kazakhstan,” presented at Association for the Study of Nationalities convention, 24–26 April 1997, p. 13. Given the lack of census data on umbrella clan backgrounds, estimates are rough, a point to which I return below.Google Scholar

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41. By the late 1990s, the context for umbrella clan politics had changed, with the immediate threat of separatism diminished, and therefore the need for an Elder–Middle alliance no longer strong. In such a context, an Elder–Younger alliance began to emerge. It remains to be seen whether this too will trickle down into the broader elite. On the diminished threat of ethnic Russian separatism, see Commercio, Michele E., “The ‘Pugachev Rebellion’ in the Context of Post-Soviet Kazakh Nationalization,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2004, pp. 87–113 and Schatz, Edward, “Framing Strategies and Non-Conflict in Multi-Ethnic Kazakhstan,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2000, pp. 70–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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43. On fiscal decentralization, see Luong, Pauline Jones, “Economic Decentralization in Kazakhstan: Causes and Consequences” (working paper, Yale University).Google Scholar

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52. Professor Masanov was more than willing to have his story told as an illustration of the political threat posed by subethnicity-based analyses.Google Scholar

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57. This direct quotation comes from the tape recording of the event that a journalist, who prefers to remain anonymous, provided.Google Scholar

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69. Anonymous local journalists in Shymkent provided these subethnic backgrounds.Google Scholar

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