Shaping Abkhazia: Cartographic Anxieties and the Making and Remaking of the Abkhazian Geobody

Kabachnik, Peter

doi:10.1080/19448953.2012.736219

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Feelings of loss invoked over seemingly unjust and forced contractions of the geo-body's historical borders are easily utilized for elite political gain and make mutually agreeable solutions to territorial conflicts appear to be out of reach. Both "cartographic anxieties" (Kabachnik, 2012;Krishna, 1994) and "cartographic exhibitionisms" (Broers, Toal, 2013) are symbolized in maps and written texts outlining the contemporary and/or historical borders and boundaries of the South Caucasian nation-states. What are frequently termed "lost historic territories" by titular publics in Georgia and Azerbaijan are framed here as phantom territories, the perceived loss of which continues to produce psychosomatic ripples of pain within both societies.…”

Section: Lost "Phantom" Territories and The Georgian And Azerbaijani ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The ‘ultimate toponym’ and national imaginaries in Georgia and Azerbaijan: Constraining Imaginaries of Borchali among Georgian Azeri-Turks

Storm

2020

JGPS

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A central component of any national imaginary is the extent to which it is or can be made marketable and consumable by audiences within and outside of the borders of the territorial state. Physical and symbolic delimitation of the “homeland” – in 2- and 3-D, on the ground and on maps, in speech and in individual thought processes - facilitates a certain degree of intra-group solidarity and out-group wariness. After expanding upon the theoretical utility of the concept of the national imaginary, the author examines the role played by the “ultimate toponym”, that of the bounded and institutionalized nation-state, in reifying dominant national imaginaries in Georgia and Azerbaijan. A further aim of this article is to demonstrate the ways that popular and elite-centric conceptions of Azerbaijani and/or Georgian nation-hood stymie Georgian Azeri-Turks’ abilities to imagine alternate forms of identification and belonging, using the phantom territory of “Borchali” as a key example.

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Section: Lost "Phantom" Territories and The Georgian And Azerbaijani ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The ‘ultimate toponym’ and national imaginaries in Georgia and Azerbaijan: Constraining Imaginaries of Borchali among Georgian Azeri-Turks

Storm

2020

JGPS

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“…In the case of Abkhazia, the country has retained its formal independence since 1993 (Kabachnik 2012). In the Soviet era, this resource-poor country was a tourist destination for Russians thanks to its semi-tropical climate.…”

Section: The Changing Geopolitical Economy Of Georgia Under Multipola...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Changing Geopolitical Economy of Transcaucasia under Multipolarity

Gürcan¹

2020

World Review of Political Economy

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This article sheds light on the changing character of the Transcaucasian geopolitical economy based on the question of how the multipolarization of world politics has shaped the course of regional conflicts and the balance of forces in the region. In this framework, the article proposes transcending static labels such as Georgia / Azerbaijan as a “Western post,” Iran and Azerbaijan as “arch enemies,” and Armenia as a “traditional Russian ally” by reference to recent developments such as the peaceful rise of China in the region, Putin's Eurasianist geostrategic leanings, and the reorientation of Turkey's foreign policy since 2016. Georgian and Armenian color revolution dynamics are likely to be suppressed thanks to the recent foreign policy shift of Turkey as a strategic ally of Georgia, Georgia's inclusion in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the Russo-Turkish rapprochement. Amidst deteriorating relations with the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the 2010s, moreover, Azerbaijan's foreign policy gives increasingly greater weight to relations with Russia, which can be further deepened under the influence of Turkey's foreign policy. A similar situation goes for Azerbaijan's involvement in the Non-Aligned Movement and BRI, as well as Iranian acknowledgment of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity despite unresolved tensions in bilateral relations.

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“…While Georgians are ready to reconcile with Abkhazians, the latter do not welcome the possibility of the return of the internally displaced, and they clearly blame Georgians for the conflict. However, this dominant opinion of Abkhazians reflected in surveys is typically overlooked by Georgian society, including the internally displaced (Grono 2011; Jones 2009; Kabachnik et al 2010; Kabachnik 2012a; O’Loughlin, Kolossov, and Toal 2011). It is difficult to decide how to designate this “powerful tendency” in the recollections of those who are internally displaced toward ignorance of basic problems or “bias,” one of the “sins”—errors and illusions—of memory, as Daniel Schacter (2015) puts it.…”

Section: Contested Historical Narratives and Cultural Memory In Displmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trapped in the Past: Memories of Georgian Internally Displaced Persons on the Margins of Society

Toria

Pirtskhalava

Kekelia

et al. 2019

Nationalities Papers

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From the early 1990s through the 2008 “Russo-Georgian war,” waves of armed conflicts in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia/Tskhinvali regions of Georgia forced thousands of residents, mainly ethnic Georgians, to leave their homes. More than two decades of protracted internal displacement, marked by tough economic and social problems, led this vulnerable community to a common trap in reckoning with the past: an overwhelming sense of the fundamental ruptures between the idealized past and current, miserable reality. Failures of the displacement policy and “side effects” of numerous humanitarian aid projects hinder internally displaced persons’ social integration and leave them on the margins of Georgian society with almost a singular option: to constantly recall meaningful life in the lost homeland, which they remember as free of ethnic phobias and economic problems. In this article, we suggest that for persons who are internally displaced, memories are defined not only by their past lived experiences and present hardships, but also by the official historical narratives that argue that Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Ossetian “endemic” unity and cohabitation was destroyed by Russian imperial politics. Living in constant pain also narrows the future expectations of the internally displaced persons. However, it is the past and the memories that are supposed to be useful in achieving the utopian dream of a return.

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Shaping Abkhazia: Cartographic Anxieties and the Making and Remaking of the Abkhazian Geobody

Cited by 7 publications

References 13 publications

The ‘ultimate toponym’ and national imaginaries in Georgia and Azerbaijan: Constraining Imaginaries of Borchali among Georgian Azeri-Turks

The ‘ultimate toponym’ and national imaginaries in Georgia and Azerbaijan: Constraining Imaginaries of Borchali among Georgian Azeri-Turks

The Changing Geopolitical Economy of Transcaucasia under Multipolarity

Trapped in the Past: Memories of Georgian Internally Displaced Persons on the Margins of Society

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