Blum, Douglas W. The Social Process of Globalization: Return Migration and Cultural Change in Kazakhstan Molchanov, Mikhail A Eurasian Regionalisms and Russian Foreign Policy (review)

Abstract

SEER, 94, 3, july 2016 584 Blum, Douglas W. The Social Process of Globalization: Return Migration and Cultural Change in Kazakhstan. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2016. vii + 214 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £64.99: $99.99. Molchanov, Mikhail A. Eurasian Regionalisms and Russian Foreign Policy. The International Political Economy of New Regionalisms Series. Ashgate, Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2015. xiii + 190. Map. Tables. Bibliography. Index. £60.00. These authors share a geographical focus on Russia’s main neighbours and partners in the post-Soviet region (Kazakhstan and for Molchanov also Ukraine and Belarus) and a thematic focus on the process of transnational integration. That said, it is remarkable that there should be no perceptible links between their analyses. In large part, of course, that is because Douglas Blum (Providence College, RI) is concerned with the diffusion of cultural values while Mikhail Molchanov (St Thomas University, Canada) writes about political economy and geopolitics. But there is more to it than that. What Blum has produced is an account of the experience of young Kazakhs who study in the United States, are influenced to a greater or lesser extent by American cultural values and practices such as self-sufficiency and informality, and then have to ‘negotiate cultural difference’ after returning home. This is a worthy and interesting topic in its own right. What I would question is how much it really tells us about ‘the social process of globalization’ (which is, after all, the title of the book). Nowhere does the author assess the importance of returning students relative to other carriers of cultural change. And by listening exclusively to people who studied in the United States while ignoring those who studied in Russia, Turkey and especially China, he equates globalization with Americanization. (A rapidly increasing proportion of the members of Kazakh and other Central Asian elites obtained their higher education in China.) ‘Globalization’ here is no more than a fashionable label attached to a study of cultural contact between two national societies. Kazakhstan,astheEurasianstateparexcellence(Molchanov,p.85),isapivotal and committed participant in efforts at Eurasian integration. Molchanov has provided a useful and balanced assessment of the various evolving and overlapping regional integration projects in Eurasia (defined as the former Soviet Union plus China). His approach is refreshing in several respects. First, he differs from many commentators in not viewing these projects solely or primarily as vehicles of Russian (or Chinese) hegemonic ambitions, although he acknowledges the centrality of Russian (and Chinese) foreign and energy policies. ‘The regionalist turn in Russia’s foreign policy’, he concludes, ‘suggests flexibility and adaptation, not neoimperialism, hegemonism or reassertion of spheres of influence’ (p. 157). REVIEWS 585 Second, he does not, as do many Eurocentric theorists of regional integration, adopt the model of the European Union as a universal benchmark for comparison. Finally, he is to be commended simply for taking Eurasian integration projects seriously and not assuming that they are impractical and doomed to failure. Molchanov’s analysis of Ukraine’s ‘multivectorism’, although already overtaken by events, remains essentially relevant. He attributes the tragedy in Ukraine not to regionalism as such but to ‘the contamination of [regional] economics by geopolitics’ (p. 157) — a distortion for which the West bears much of the responsibility. Where then does this leave ‘globalization’? Is it just a fancy and misleading name for a specific class of regional integration processes — those centred in Europe, the United States and Japan? Would it not then be more honest to make regionalism our central concept and recognize that we still live in a divided world? Providence, RI Stephen D. Shenfield Wilson, Andrew. Ukraine Crisis: What It Means for the West. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 2014. ix + 236 pp. Maps. Tables. Notes. Index. £12.99 (paperback). One of the first of many books to come off the presses following the tumultuous events in Ukraine that began in early 2014 was Andrew Wilson’s latest study of a country he has written on extensively and about which he is a respected expert. The book can be divided into three parts. The first three chapters provide context and background to the crisis. The following four lay out a chronology...