Anastasia Shesterinina’s Mobilizing in Uncertainty: Collective Identities and War in Abkhazia

Abstract

‘ What drives people ’ s choices in civil wars: why do some people join war efforts, while other escape the fi ghting? This is the focus of Anastasia Shesterinina ’ s impressive new book, Mobilizing in Uncertainty: Collective Identities and War in Abkhazia (2021). Through a detailed analysis of the mobilisation of the Abkhaz population against the Georgian military intervention in 1992, the book examines how people navigate uncertainty to make mobilisation decisions in civil wars. the of Abkhazia, and makes clever of subnational variation in micro-comparative In a increasingly dominated by quantitative analysis, is much-needed of t of for the study of It demonstrates the value of political ethnography and the importance of analysing the micro-dynamics of civil wars.