Unsettling Prejudices and Overcoming Divisions: Forms of Dialogue in the Context of Unresolved Ethnopolitical Conflicts in Georgia

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel brings together three papers on dialogue in unresolved, protracted conflicts and unpacks the context of Georgia and its two breakaway regions. The panel focuses on the multifaceted and complex concept of dialogue in unresolved and enduring ethno-political conflict environment. Malkhaz Toria will address the notion of “historical dialogue” drawing on the perspectives of critical historical studies, memory studies, and oral history. In his paper, he aims to scrutinize the conceptual repertoire of historical dialogue that is designed to challenge and unsettle reductive, divisive, and conflicting narratives in the context of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. Susan Allen will discuss Georgian-South Ossetian interactive peacemaking and range of ways that unofficial dialogue can make a difference in the changing contexts over time. The panel will be concluded by Natia Chankvetadze’s paper that focuses on experiences of Georgian peacebuilding practitioners who engage in cross-conflict-divide dialogue for last three decades. The paper demonstrates contradictory outcomes of people-to-people dialogue in conflict-torn societies. The panel’s central topic closely aligns with ASEEES’s theme on Liberation as it offers critical reexamination of dialogue as a of emancipatory means of challenging the deeply rooted conflicting epistemological foundations (contested historical narratives) and practices (politics, inter-communal relationships) in divided societies.

Sub Unit

• Politics/Law

Chair

• Stephen Francis Jones, Harvard U

Papers

• Bridging Academic and Public Scholarship: Promoting Historical Dialogue in Conflict-Torn Societies (the Case of the Georgian-Abkhaz Conflict) - Malkhaz Toria, Ilia State U (Georgia)

• What Can Unofficial Cross-Conflict Dialogue Do?: Contributions of Georgian-South Ossetian Interactive Peacemaking - Susan H. Allen, George Mason U

• How Cross-Conflict Divide Dialogue Dismantles One Type of Division but Reinforces Others - Natia Chankvetadze, Harvard U

Discussant

• Julie George, CUNY Queens College