Borderland into Cornerstone

Abstract

This chapter homes in on the disputed territory of Nagorny Karabakh, and its role in post-Soviet Armenian and Azerbaijani geopolitical cultures. It shows how Nagorny Karabakh has been an unstable territorial referent, with distinct understandings evolving from 1988 to the present. Drawing on field observations, interviews and popular geopolitical culture, the chapter charts the movement of this contested territory from the geographic periphery to the conceptual centre of both Armenian and Azerbaijani geopolitical cultures from the late 1980s to the present day.