What Does It Mean to Be a Political Scientist in a Transitional Society? Reflections from Kazakhstan

Abstract

As a young discipline, political science in Kazakhstan could be regarded a poster child of collective intellectual offspring that reflects well all political and socioeconomic transformations that an emerging community of political scientists has had to go through for the last three decades to thrive and promote the field. In this regard, the key purpose of the article is to share an interesting insightful story of developments in the discipline in this transitional nation. The research is mostly based on a retrospective analysis of key periods in introducing new agendas in university curricula and review of the latest trends, practices, and challenges in research and classroom from the perspective of professional communities in the field. This inherently ethnographic narrative, which is based on the analysis of rich empirical data, could be interesting for researchers who seek to understand the development of political science as a liberating phenomenon in a typical transitional context.