Museums which revive history and construct national identity in Kazakhstan

Nowadays museums are not places where only valuable works of art are exhibited but also places where the history of societies are rewritten and national identities are constructed. Thus, social history museums became a field of research for social scientists. This article analyses the construction of Kazakh national identity and the rewriting of the history of Kazakhstan based on two museums established in Almati and Chimkent after the independence. The article also studies the relationship between museology, nation-state and ideology both from institutional and symbolic perspectives. Reprinted by permission of Ahmet Yesevi University