Caucasus SurveyPub Date : 2022-11-18DOI: 10.30965/23761202-20220015
Ketevan Epadze
{"title":"Reconstructing a National Hero in the Post-colonial Memory Politics of Abkhazia: Debates over Kelesh Bey Shervashidze","authors":"Ketevan Epadze","doi":"10.30965/23761202-20220015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23761202-20220015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article analyzes the reconstruction of the image of Prince Kelesh Bey Shervashidze (b. 1747) in the memory politics of Abkhazia through the prism of cultural resistance, from the perestroika period up to the present day. It argues that Abkhaz politicians use a dual approach to constructing the figure of Kelesh Bey. On the one hand, an anti-colonial narrative of the prince in opposition to the Russian and Soviet colonial system is created, and on the other hand, a more traditional colonial narrative aligned with Russia’s patronage of Abkhazia’s unrecognised statehood is also encouraged. However, the controversy over these discourses is formal in nature. The only real purpose of reviving the Russian and Soviet readings of Kelesh Bey is to hide Abkhaz cultural resistance from Russia, owing to the latter’s own dualistic status as embodying both Abkhazia’s former imperial center and its modern patron.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45477381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Caucasus SurveyPub Date : 2022-07-06DOI: 10.30965/23761202-20220011
J. Sarkin
{"title":"Law and State Practice in Armenia: Dealing with the Issues Concerning the Search, Exhumation and Identification of Missing Persons in Conflict Zones","authors":"J. Sarkin","doi":"10.30965/23761202-20220011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23761202-20220011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article deals with missing persons in Armenia. So far around 5,000 people from all sides in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have been reported as having gone missing. This article contextualises the democratic and human rights situation in Armenia and argues that if progress is to occur, there needs to be a coordinating mechanism involving all conflict parties to search, recover, and identify the missing. One sign of progress is that a new Commission – the Inter-Agency Commission on POWs, Hostages and Missing Persons – was established in Armenia in 2019, and a new decree adopted. However, it needs to be reformed to allow it to be better suited to achieve the necessary goals. The study examines the law on the missing and finds that there is much confusion about the legislation, as it is scattered and often vague and unclear. The laws are aimed at, and applicable to, criminal cases, and not the humanitarian nature of such instances. It therefore argues that a new law ought to be adopted. A variety of recommendations are made in the article such as the need to enhance information collection, to find potential burial sites, and to systematically map and protect possible burial sites to ensure that future recovery and identification processes are not hindered.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44359444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Caucasus SurveyPub Date : 2022-07-06DOI: 10.30965/23761202-20220010
J. Sarkin
{"title":"Introduction: Understanding How the Historical, Democratic and Human Rights Contexts of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia Affect the Search, Exhumation, and Identification of Conflict-Related Missing Persons in the South Caucasus","authors":"J. Sarkin","doi":"10.30965/23761202-20220010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23761202-20220010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article introduces the Special Section dealing with conflict related missing persons in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. It examines the context to the conflicts in the region and brings to the fore the fact that the breakup of the Soviet Union has had a massive legacy in terms of the conflicts it spawned, over identity matters and various territorial claims, and how that vestige lingers today. The article examines why the three countries are useful to analyse comparatively, what we can learn from them and how these issues are also reflective of the democratic and human rights status in each. This article ends by discussing the general problems relating to missing persons in the three countries, and why the law and the processes to deal with missing persons in these and many other countries around the world need to be reformed. The focus of each of the three country articles is then more inward-looking. They explore the situation in each country concerning missing persons, the institutions that have been established to deal with those matters, the laws that deal with missing persons, and what is needed to make progress on all the issues relating to missing persons.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43826563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Caucasus SurveyPub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.30965/23761202-20220002
A. Jürgenson
{"title":"Events of the Russian Civil War in Abkhazia 1918–1921 in the Manuscript Sources of the Estonians from Abkhazia","authors":"A. Jürgenson","doi":"10.30965/23761202-20220002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23761202-20220002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000A number of Estonian settlements were formed in Abkhazia in the 1880s. This article uses archival sources, written memoirs, diaries and secondary literature to focus on the experiences of Estonians in Abkhazia during the Russian Civil War until the establishment of Soviet power in 1921. The article discusses what role the proclamation of the Republic of Estonia played for the settlers, and what the change of status from an internal migrant to an emigrant meant for the Estonian community in Abkhazia, but also the political opportunities that the establishment of Estonia as an independent republic brought to compatriots living in the diaspora.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43721788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Caucasus SurveyPub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.30965/23761202-20220009
K. Wielecki
{"title":"Filling in the Urban Space: The “Port-Petrovsk” Fishery and Elemental Urbanization in Makhachkala","authors":"K. Wielecki","doi":"10.30965/23761202-20220009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23761202-20220009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The paper is a case study of “Port-Petrovsk”, a large fishing and fish processing company in Makhachkala (Dagestan, Russia) that was purposefully driven to bankruptcy in 2007, leading some 5,300 people to lose their workplaces as well as access to many social services. The factory was bankrupted as there existed a small group willing to get rich on its assets. A considerable portion of the company’s former premises has already been sold and new apartment buildings have been erected there. Former workers and shareholders have been trying to reclaim their property and save the remaining company premises from being sold to developers. The case is presented against the background of what has been called elemental urbanization: a dynamic, chaotic and informal way of development of urban space in Makhachkala, one of the fastest growing cities in Russia. The whole process of conflict and negotiations around the company assets shows how property rights in Dagestan challenge the Western-set dichotomy of the individual versus the collective. Moreover, it presents property rights as a bundle that consist of legal, economic, and moral dimensions.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48271380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Caucasus SurveyPub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.30965/23761202-20220005
Tinatin Khomeriki
{"title":"Modernising Security: Vernacular (In)securities in the Public Space of Tbilisi after the Rose Revolution","authors":"Tinatin Khomeriki","doi":"10.30965/23761202-20220005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23761202-20220005","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the perceptions of personal (in)security in the public space of Tbilisi, Georgia following the Rose Revolution in 2003. Based on the concept of vernacular security, I suggest a bottom-up approach to the subject, focusing on its culturally and socially specific character and observing the production of the discourses of (in)security at the intersecting notions of modernisation/backwardness, formality/informality, criminality/lawfulness, and the West/Russia, reflecting post-revolutionary political, social, and cultural transformations. While the government of the Rose Revolution introduced full-scale reforms formalising security in Georgia, the article reveals that citizens’ perceptions of personal (in)security in the public space are often ambiguous and even self-contradicting, as they waver between the notions of formality and informality, often interpreting the same phenomenon as a source of both their security and insecurity.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45832990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Caucasus SurveyPub Date : 2022-03-22DOI: 10.30965/23761202-20220004
Alexander Kavtaradze
{"title":"On the Edge of Time and Space: The Udis of Oghuz","authors":"Alexander Kavtaradze","doi":"10.30965/23761202-20220004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23761202-20220004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper looks at the role of anthropological notions of time and space in the rituals, everyday life, discourse and the notable spaces of the Udi community in Oghuz (former Vartashen, Azerbaijan). This particular Udi community is examined through and studied within the context of the above-mentioned concepts. The text focuses on the local sacred plane tree, several chapels and narratives of the locals in relation to the concept of spacetime. This paper looks at how the idea of spacetime shapes the Udi community of Oghuz and its symbolic role in performing the identity within this community. Relying on ethnographic fieldwork in Oghuz and accompanying historical research, the paper shows the complex entanglement of spacetime narrative in the lives of the local Udis.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43507321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Caucasus SurveyPub Date : 2022-03-22DOI: 10.30965/23761202-20220007
Tamar Qeburia
{"title":"Europe in the Caucasus, Caucasus in Europe: Perspectives on the Construction of a Region, edited by Thomas Kruessmann and Andrey Makarychev","authors":"Tamar Qeburia","doi":"10.30965/23761202-20220007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23761202-20220007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42901718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Caucasus SurveyPub Date : 2022-03-22DOI: 10.30965/23761202-20220003
Iwona Kaliszewska, Jagoda Schmidt
{"title":"‘Nobody Will Marry You If You Don’t Have a Pension’. Female Bribing Practices in Dagestan, North Caucasus","authors":"Iwona Kaliszewska, Jagoda Schmidt","doi":"10.30965/23761202-20220003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23761202-20220003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Gendered dimensions of informality have been only briefly studied by anthropologists. Therefore, while engaging in the debate on informality it is important to ask how women engage in informal practices, and whether these practices are gendered. In this paper we analyse female bribing practices in the Republic of Dagestan and take a closer look at the arrangements of state welfare benefits, particularly the disability allowance and the old age pensions. How do Dagestani women engage in bribing? Why is it mostly women who ‘arrange’ state welfare benefits? What are the implications of this engagement for them? Based on case studies from fieldwork in the Republic of Dagestan carried out between 2014–2019 we show that bribing practices are gendered. We also reveal that having the resources to outsmart the state by buying benefits empowers women in a society where patriarchal arrangements are predominant. More broadly, we discuss how resistance at one level may lead to unexpected empowerment at another. By emphasizing the female perspective, this paper makes a contribution to post-Soviet area studies and anthropological studies of corruption and informality more generally.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42735806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Caucasus SurveyPub Date : 2022-03-22DOI: 10.30965/23761202-20220006
Florian Mühlfried
{"title":"Ungovernance and Spiritual Feudalism in Northeast Highland Georgia","authors":"Florian Mühlfried","doi":"10.30965/23761202-20220006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/23761202-20220006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000It seems a paradox that on the one hand, the communities of northeast highland Georgia have often been represented as somewhat egalitarian in respect to their political organisation while on the other hand, their religious worlds are highly hierarchical and ordered by the principles of feudality. One very probable explanation for this seeming paradox points to the compatibility of the feudal norms with the patriarchal and clan-based social organisation of these communities. This article is the attempt to introduce another interpretation, namely that the religious system in northeast highland Georgia reflects the pain of being governed by a coercive power that is associated with the hierarchical political system of the lowland. The political system, I argue, is constructed as a counter-image of the religious system, delegating coercive power to the realm of the exceptional and tabooing its usage in the organisation of political life. In this juxtaposition, coercive power becomes internalised, albeit as a negative pole. The politics of ungovernance, in this sense, aims towards the neutralisation of coercive power, a power that people know all too well through “religious” experiences. The latter argument contradicts the dictum that anti-state societies experience coercive power as exterior.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45680899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}