NEW PUBLICATION: Caucasus Conflict Culture: Anthropological Perspectives on Times of Crisis. Voell, Stéphane and Ketevan Khutsishvili (eds.) 2013 (caucasusconflict.wordpress.com)

(caucasusconflict.wordpress.com) Voell, Stéphane and Ketevan Khutsishvili (eds.) 2013. Caucasus Conflict Culture: Anthropological Perspectives on Times of Crisis (Curupira Workshop, 18). Marburg: Curupira. 296 pp.

“At beginning there was a conference in Tbilisi. At the end there is this book. The latter is closely related to the former. The book would not have been possible without the initial conference. But the conference and the book are very different from each other. In November 2011 the Institute of Ethnology of the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University hosted the conference ‘Caucasus, Conflict, Culture: First Symposium on Anthropology and the Prevention of Conflicts in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia‘ (CCC1). The event was organised together with the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology of the Philipps-Universität Marburg. It was probably the first purely anthropological conference (just three years after the Georgian-Russian War in August 2008) to deal with conflictual relations in the South Caucasus, focussing on the perspective ›from below‹ and including numerous local scholars. Many papers given at CCC1 referred explicitly or implicitly to the conflict-torn Caucasian present. The presenters touched a wide variety of topics, from mass protest rallies in Yerevan preceding the Nagorno-Karabakh war to staged skirmishes between prominent chefs in local restaurants, enacting a culture war on which nation supposedly invented which dish.” (Khutsishvili/Voell in the Preface of the book).

The cover image for this book is a detail of a collage by the artist and film maker Sergey Parajanov (1924-1990). It is taken from collage from the series ‘Several Episodes from Gioconda’s Life’ (1989). The same image was used for the programme booklet of the conference CCC1. We used to call it ‘Mona Lisa in Conflict’. We can use this picture for the cover with the kind permission of the ›Sergey Parajanov Museum‹ in Yerevan.

(note: Even though the books has been officially published in 2013 for some ‘technical’ reason it will only be available in the next days to come).

The edited volume contains the following chapters:

• Ketevan Khutsishvili and Stéphane Voell. Preface
• Stéphane Voell. Going Beyond Essentialism: Introduction
• Mkhitar Gabrielyan and Artak Dabaghyan. At Borders as in Islands: Steps of Anthropology into the Field
• Levon Abrahamian and Gayane Shagoyan. Rallies as Festival and the Festival as a Model for Rallies
• Philipp Naucke. Gene Sharp: Nonviolent Action and the Rose Revolution – On the Confusion of Political and Scholarly Success
• Sergey Rumyansev and Sevil Huseynova. Peaceful Interethnic Cooperation during the Nagorno-Karabakh Crisis: a Criticism of Attempts to Essentialise Conflicts
• Arsen Hakobyan. New Life in a New Space: the Appropriation of ‘Alien’ Space Armenian Refugees in the Village of Dzyunashogh
• Ilham Abbasov. From ›Friendship of Peoples‹ to a Discourse of ‘Tolerance’: Constructing Ethnic Boundaries in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan
• Sascha Roth. The Making of Home, the Making of Nation: Cultural Notions of Conflict and Displacement in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan
• Yulia Antonyan. Reminiscences of the Future: the Social Life of Monuments in Refugee-Villages
• Tea Kamushadze. Conceptualisation of the Past: the Place of the Socialist City in Georgian National History
• Melanie Krebs. Negotiating Cosmopolitanism in Baku
• Sevil Huseynova. Ethno-cultural Diversity in the Imperial and Post-Imperial City: Communal Violence, Nationalist Conflicts and Interethnic Cooperation in Baku in the 19th-21st Centuries
• Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne. Ingiloy – Ingiloi: the Ethnicity and Identity of a Minority in Azerbaijan
• Natia Jalabadze and Lavrenti Janiashvili. Perspectives for the Integration of Ethnic Minorities in a 
  Multicultural Region: the Example of Kvemo Kartli
• Giorgi Cheishvili and Natalie Wahnsiedler. Student’s Report on ‘Caucasus, Conflict, Culture 1′

SCIENCE: Being A State and States Of Being in Highland Georgia. By Florian Mühlfried (berghahnbooks.com)

“It is an important contribution to the anthropology of the state, the Caucasus and it especially helps to conceptualise a group of people without falling in the trap of ethnic ‘groupism’, so present in many writings on the Caucasus.”  ·  Stephane Voell, Philipps University Marburg

“This is an exceptionally ambitious study… it is highly original – no one else has written about these mountains before!”  ·  Chris Hann, Max Planck Institute Halle

“I found this to be a delightful manuscript on a badly needed subject.”  ·  Bruce Grant, New York University

“This book … will point the way to promising avenues for future research on the cultural and religious practices of the peoples of the Caucasus (and doubtless elsewhere).”  ·  Kevin Tuite, University of Montréal

(berghahnbooks.com) The highlands region of the republic of Georgia, one of the former Soviet Socialist Republics, has long been legendary for its beauty. It is often assumed that the state has only made partial inroads into this region, and is mostly perceived as alien. Taking a fresh look at the Georgian highlands allows the author to consider perennial questions of citizenship, belonging, and mobility in a context that has otherwise been known only for its folkloric dimensions. Scrutinizing forms of identification with the state at its margins, as well as local encounters with the erratic Soviet and post-Soviet state, the author argues that citizenship is both a sought-after means of entitlement and a way of guarding against the state. This book not only challenges theories in the study of citizenship but also the axioms of integration in Western social sciences in general.

Florian Mühlfried teaches in the Caucasus Studies Program at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. Previously, he was a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and a visiting professor at the University of Campinas, Brazil. He is he author of Post-Soviet Feasting: The Georgian Banquet in Transition (2006, in German) and co-edited Exploring the Edge of Empire: Soviet Era Anthropology in the Caucasus and Central Asia with Sergey Sokolovskiy (2012).

Series: Volume 24, EASA Series

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Contents

Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Of a Mobile Field
Chapter 2. Of Hidden Treasures in the Mountains and a State that Comes and Goes
Chapter 3. Of Reborn Citizens in a Post-Soviet Landscape
Chapter 4. Of Three Ways to Be a State
Chapter 5. Of Triple Winning and Simple Losing

Conclusion

Appendix
Bibliography
Index