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Speakers and Abstracts
LEVON ABRAHAMIAN (Head of Department of Contemporary Anthropological Studies, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Armenian Academy of Sciences) has written widely on Armenian traditional and contemporary culture, comparative mythology, and political anthropology. He has held teaching positions at Yerevan State University, the University of Pittsburgh, Columbia University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Among his most recent works are Conversations Near a Tree [Besedy u dereva] (Moscow, 2005); and Armenian Folk Arts, Culture, and Identity [co-edited with Nancy Sweezy] (Indiana, 2001).
Abstract: Dancing Around the Mountain: Armenian identity through rites of solidarity In this paper, I look to examine the “Round Dance of Unity” that took place on 28 May 2005, in-volving as many as 250,000 people. (For more information, see: http://www.iwpr.net/in-dex.pl?archive/cau/cau_200506_289_3_eng.txt ). I plan to analyze the event for its implications for national, ethnic, anthropological, political, and related understandings of contemporary Armenian culture.
SERGEI ARUTIUNOV (Head of the Caucasus Sector, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, and Corresponding-Member, Russian Academy of Sciences) is the author of 15 books and numerous papers on Japan, the Caucasus, and cultural history, and has done major fieldwork in Siberia, Japan, Vietnam, India, Uzbekistan, Armenia, and Georgia. He has taught at the Universities of Bern, Cambridge, Pittsburgh, Arizona State, Stanford, Georgetown, Fairbanks-Alaska, Hokkaido, and Berkeley. Among his many publications, he is editor of the forthcoming volume of Races and Peoples [Rasy i narody] (Moscow) dedicated to religion in the Caucasus.
Abstract: Religious Mosaics of the Caucasus: past, present, and future (if any) Adolf Dirr once wrote, "In the study of Caucasus mythology and belief systems, it is impossible to deny that there once existed in the Caucasus a single religion that was initially overshadowed and, later, overwhelmed by the better known world-historical religious traditions. But that [origi-nal] religious system lives on today among many peoples of the Caucasus, in the form of sur-vivals, superstitions, and folklore." In this paper, Sergei Arutiunov traces the long-ago outlines of a "united Caucasus civilization," and the ways in which subsequent splinterings of culture and religion have made homes in major traditions of the Caucasus that now prefer to identify them-selves as part of a mosaic.
EVA-MARIA AUCH (PD East European History, University of Bonn) has studied history, Oriental studies, Russian, Arabic, and educational sciences at the universities of Baku, Leipzig, Greifswald, and St. Petersburg; and has taught at the universities of Greifswald, Bonn, Basel, Muenster, Hamburg, Baku, and Tashkent. She has held many scholarships and carried out research in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, focusing on colonialism; nationalism; the development of Islam in the Caucasus and Central Asia; modernization movements in the Middle East, the Russian empire, and the former Soviet Union; elites; and environmental protection. Her works on the Caucasus include, Öl und Wein am Kaukasus. Deutsche Forscher, Kolonisten und Unternehmer im vorrevolutionären Aserbaidschan [Oil and wine in the Caucasus: German re-searchers, colonists, and entrepreneurs in pre-revolutionary Azerbaijan] (Reichert 2001); and Muslim – Untertan - Bürger. Identitätswandel in gesellschaftlichen Transformationsprozessen der muslimischen Ostprovinzen Südkaukasiens (Ende 18. – Anfang 20. Jh.). Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Nationalismusforschung [Muslim – Subject – Citizen. Identity shifts through so-cial transformations among Muslims of the eastern provinces of the South Caucasus (from the end of the 18th until the beginning of the 20th centuries): A contribution to comparative studies of nationalism] (Reichert 2004). She is also co-editor of the book series, Kaukasische Studien [Caucasus Studies] (Reichert-Verlag). (Web: http://www/ansprechpartner/index.htm ). Abstract: On Death in Postsocialist Societies: coping with dying in the Caucasus Despite the great amount of scholarship paid to death and dying in the social sciences since the 1960s, there has been less study on the subject from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet bloc. This paper is devoted to public discourses on and ritual practices concerning dying and death in the Caucasus, with particular attention to the social contexts in which they are marked, such as the overlapping of traditional, religious, and state institutions and norms. By comparing Georgia and Azerbaijan, in particular, I look to examine two population groups, one primarily Christian, the other Muslim. Among the questions I look to cover are religious modes of thought, the politicization of death, and the popular understandings of death in these societies where in-creased violence and skyrocketing mortality rates have become the norm since the onset of struggles for independence.
GEORGI DERLUGUIAN (Associate Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University) holds a doctoral degree in Modern African History from Moscow State University, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from SUNY-Binghamton. Having once served as an advisor to Gosplan in Mozambique, he went on to hold fellowships at Cornell, the University of Michigan, and the US Institute of Peace; as well as grants from the SSRC, NCEEER, the Soros Foundation, and IREX. In 2001 he was named a Carnegie Scholar of Vision. (Web: http://www.cas.northwestern.edu/sociology/fac-ulty/derlug.html ).
Among his recent writings on the Caucasus are Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography (Chicago, 2005); and “How Soviet Bureaucracy Produced Nationalism, and What Came of It in Azerbaijan,” in Colin Leys and Leo Panitch, eds., Fighting Identities (Merlin, 2002), 93-113. Dr. Derluguian also writes commentaries for leading Russian newspapers such as Izvestiia, Vremia novostei, and Ekspert weekly magazine.
Abstract: The Codes of Dissertation Titles: towards a taxonomy of Homo Academicus Sovieticus (Caucasiensis) Using personal data for almost two hundred intellectuals from the former USSR, mainly from Russia and the Caucasus, who became political figures after 1989, I attempt to sketch how the symbolic capitals and career strategies embedded in Sovietera academic and artistic fields became translated into the emergent field of politics. In particular, I examine how patterned cultural codes in the titles of Sovietera dissertations turn out to be a robust predictor of subsequent political paths.
BRUCE GRANT (Associate Professor of Anthropology, New York University) received his Ph.D. from Rice University and began work in the former Soviet Union as a scholar of indigenous cultural politics in the Russian Far East, as well as Moscow monuments, and Soviet cinema. He has held grants from the NSF, NEH, SSRC, and recently, NCEEER for new fieldwork in Azerbaijan. (Web: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/anthro/faculty/grant.html ). His work on the Caucasus includes, “The Good Russian Prisoner: Naturalizing Violence in the Caucasus Mountains,” Cultural Anthropology 20, no. 1 (2005): 39-67; and “An Average Azeri Village (1930),” Slavic Review 63, no. 4 (2004): 705-731.
Abstract: Cultural Histories of Kidnapping in the Caucasus For approximately 200 years, a remarkable variety of Russian publics have come to understand the Caucasus as a zone of brigandage where the capture of male and female bodies constitutes a central preoccupation of fear, fascination, and romance. In my presentation, I look to explore the political roots of this longstanding popular archetype, and match it to existing ethnographic and historical documents concerning bride capture, amanat, abreks, and so forth. By exploring what might be called a “ritual exchange of bodies” across perceived cultural, religious, mercantile, and kin lines in both the North and South Caucasus, the goal is not only to dispel problematic stereotype, but to consider how popular and scholarly traditions of Caucasology have contributed to these deeply patterned idioms.
ERIN KOCH (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Middlebury College) received her Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research. She is the recipient of grants from the SSRC, the NSF, and most recently a postdoctoral fellowship from the Harriman Institute of Columbia University. Her work in medical anthropology addresses public health and prison populations in both the United States and the former Soviet Union, and she is currently at work on a book manuscript entitled, Governing Tuberculosis: Competing Cultures of Disease and Medicine in Postsocialist Georgia. Her recent publications on the Caucasus include, “Beyond Suspicion: Evidence, (Un-) Certainty, and Tuberculosis in Georgian Prisons,” in press at American Ethnologist.
Abstract: Market-Based Medicine in Georgia: “optimization” and health reforms In this essay I investigate the displacement of the Soviet model of tuberculosis control and tran-sitions to primary health care in contemporary Georgia. In particular, I analyze the impact of new diagnostic procedures and emergent categories of patients on daily medical practices; changes in physicians’ expertise; and the unintended consequences of “rationalization” in the health care and TB sectors. I argue that the growing trends in market-based medicine force patients to by-pass clinical services and self-medicate in readily available pharmacies, which promotes the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis. This analysis provides a much-needed ethnographic ac-count of tuberculosis as a public health crisis and responses to this crisis by local and international officials in Georgia and the Caucasus. Particular attention is given to changing forms of (disease) governance, and political and moral economies of health, medicine, and science along the fissures of formerly Soviet bodies.
PAUL MANNING (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Trent University) received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, based on extensive ethno-linguistic research in both Wales and the former Soviet republic of Georgia. He has received grants from the Spencer Foundation and NCEEER, and currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals, Language and Communication, Amirani, and Enis Saxli. His recent work on the Caucasus includes, “Disciplines and Nations: Niko Marr vs. his Georgian Students” [with Marcello Cherchi], Carl Beck Papers (2002); and “Describing Dialect and Defining Civilization in an Early Georgian Nationalist Manifesto: Ilia Chavchavadze’s ‘Letters of a Traveler,” Russian Review 63, no. 1 (2004): 26-47. (Web: http://www.trentu.ca/anthropology/pmanning.html ).
Abstract: Mountaineer Romances: Georgian intelligentsia and Georgian landscape Georgian mountaineers—Khevsurs and Pshavs—have been noted for the presence of what Tu-ite has called “anti-marriage” practices, a sort of endogamous romantic dalliance in the years before marriage (which is exogamous). Anti-marriage practices formed a kind of special intermediate relation between sibling relations and spousal forms. A source of fascination for Georgians on the plains, such practices and the cycles of love, praise, and insult poetry associated with them made these remote corners of Georgia into a “romantic” locale. The Georgian intelligentsia's own ethnographic engagements with these mountaineers and their traditions of romance will be explored using three vignettes: a film from the 1960s, Khevsur Ballad; a set of travel letters from the nineteenth century; and an ethnography of these practices written by a Khevsur woman who was herself banished from Khevsureti for violating the norms of these practices.
SHAHIN MUSTAFAYEV (Deputy Director, Institute of Oriental Studies, Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences) holds a Candidate’s Degree from the Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow, and has received grants from the Soros Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and, for 2005-2006, at Indiana University through the offices of Fulbright. His work on the Caucasus includes, “The Diaries of Yusif Vezir Chemenzeminli: An Azerbaijani Intellectual in the Process of Acculturation,” in Beate Eschment and Hans Harder, eds., Looking at the Colonizer: Cross-Cultural Perceptions in Central Asia and the Caucasus, Bengal, and Related Areas (Ergon 2004), 31-45; and “The Interaction of Religious Traditions of Central Asia, Anatolia, and Azerbaijan,” in Proceedings of the UNESCO Forum ‘Culture and Religion in Central Asia’ (Bishkek 2001), 114-121.
Abstract: The History of Sovereignty in Azerbaijan For most newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, the ideological dimensions of sovereignty far outstrip scholarly considerations. It is more a matter of political prestige and historical legitimacy, frequently drawing on perceived roots going back to ancient times. This paper will analyze competing understandings of Azeri sovereignty, variously traced back to the state of Mannai in the 9th century BC; ancient Huns; the Great Turkic Khaganate; the Seljuks; the Atabeks of the 12th century; and the most recent attentions being paid to the Democratic Republic of Azerbijan (1918-1920), so important for current political practices.
NONA SHAHNAZARIAN (Associate Researcher, Center for Pontic and Caucasian Studies; and Lecturer, Kuban’ State University ) received her Candidate’s Degree from the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, and has conducted fieldwork in Russia, Armenia, Georgia, and Nagorno-Karabagh, through grants from Memorial, the Soros Foundation, and MacArthur. Her recent articles on the Caucasus include, “Our Mountains Shall Feed Us: Structures of Everyday Survival in Post-Soviet Karabagh,” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies (2005); and “The Virtual Widows of Migrant Husbands in War-Torn Mountainous Karabagh,” in H. Haukanes and Frances Pine, eds., Women After Communism (Bergen, 2005).
Abstract: Fields of Social Networks: informal local economies in Ponto-Caucasian communities In this paper, I look to explore questions of traditional economic structures across the South Caucasus and the Hemshin community of the Krasnodar region. Among the themes I will analyze are: i) the influence of kinship roles and obligations, specifically gender, namus, honor, and reciprocity; ii) patronage and clientelism in the post-Soviet period, and the formation of new el-ites; and iii) discourses of survival under circumstances of poverty and corruption.
SETENEY SHAMI (Director of the Middle East, North Africa, and Eurasia Programs, Social Science Research Council) is an anthropologist from Jordan with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D.). After establishing the first graduate department of anthropology in Jordan at Yarmouk University, she moved in 1996 to the regional office of the Population Council in Cairo as Director of the Middle East Awards in Population and the Social Sciences. In 1999, she moved to her current position at the SSRC in New York. She has additionally taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Georgetown University, the University of Chicago, Stockholm University, and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. Her recent publications on the Caucasus include, “Prehistories of Globalization: Circassian Identity in Motion,” Public Culture 12, no. 1 (2000): 177-204; and “Engendering Social Memory: Domestic Rituals, Resistance and Identity in the North Caucasus,” in Feride Acar and Ayse Gunes-Ayata, eds., Gender and Identity Construction: Women of Central Asia, the Caucasus and Turkey (Brill, 2000), 305-331.
Abstract: North and South: rethinking margins through Circassian ethnography This paper will reflect on what long-term ethnographic research reveals about a central paradox in Caucasian Studies: identities that are somehow entrenched yet shifting, fixed in one place, and yet tied to many. This suggests a fundamental rethinking of the conceptual languages of marginality that have long been used to characterize the Caucasus. I plan to explore these ten-sions between north and south, place and personhood, and marginality and centrality as they have played out for Circassians identifying along multiple and shifting geographic and political axes – Moscow, Mecca, Nalchik, Istanbul, Maikop, Amman, Patterson (New Jersey), Pinarbasi, Tbilisi and so on.
ZAZA SHATIRISHVILI (Associate Professor, Shota Rustaveli Institute of Georgian Literature) holds a Doctoral Degree in Philosophy from Tbilisi State University. He has taught widely in Tbilisi, and at the University of California, Berkeley. (Web: http://www.eurozine.com/authors/shati-rishvili.html ). Among his books and articles, his recent writings on the Caucasus include, “Fictional Narrative and Allegorical Discourse: The Reception of Rustaveli in 16th-18th Century Georgian Culture and King Vakhtang VI’s Commentaries,” in Der Kommentar in Antike and Mittelalter (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 179-183; and “Romantic Topography and Dilemmas of Empire” [with Harsha Ram], Russian Review 1 (2004): 1-25.
Abstract: “Old” and “New” Georgian National Narratives In this essay, I look to explore: the genesis of Georgian national narratives; Rustaveli’s epic poem, “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin”; narratologies of nationalist movements; and the ef-fects of Eastern Christianity as well as the Rose Revolution on recent understandings of Georgian nationalist politics.
LALE YALÇIN-HECKMANN (Head of Research Group, “Caucasian Boundaries and Citizenship from Below,” Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology) received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics, and has taught at Middle East Technical University, the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, the University of Bamberg, and the Free University in Berlin. She has held grants from the Turkish Ministry of Education, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Volkswagen Foundation, in support of fieldwork and research among Kurds in Turkey, on land tenure in Azerbaijan, and her extensive public advocacy work for migrants. (Web: http://www.eth.mpg.de/ ). Among her recent publications on the Caucasus are: “Retreat to the Cooperative or the Household? Agricultural Privatisation in Ukraine and Azerbaijan” [with Deema Kaneff], in The Postsocialist Agrarian Question, compiled by Chris Hann and the Property Relations Group (LIT, 2003), 219-255; and “Zwischen Assimilation und Akkomodation: Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart der Kurden in Aserbaidschan,” in S. Conermann and G. Haig, eds., Die Kurden (EB-Verlag, 2004), 151-206.
Abstract: Citizenship Regimes and Borders in the Caucasus after Socialism: closures and openings State borders in the Caucasus of the post-Soviet era have been subject to two contradictory constraints: On the one hand, they have been nationalised after declaring independence from the former Soviet Union, and also as a result of wars and conflicts within the new states and between them. On the other hand, transition economies and the emergence of new markets urge the borders to be literally or symbolically permissive and even differently drawn. This paper looks at the scope of this tension, and how various social actors perceive and react to this double bind. Whether the agency of social actors leads to notions and practices of citizenship from below will be a key question in this overview and analysis, taking Azerbaijan as a case study.
Quelle: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.de
Member of the Max Planck Society
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