Memories of Water, Land, and Belonging in Georgia

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores the symbolic value of historical memory in current-day Georgian socio-cultural realities. We see the role of memory as permeating and molding Georgians’ understandings and relationships with land and belonging, especially as articulated in current tensions between local conceptions of identity and engagement with place. Centering territory, in this discussion, we ask how historical memory and political oppression shape localized politics and reconfigure enactments of identity and belonging. In this panel, we take a political lens to unpack local or ordinary people’s lived experiences; we contrast this with that of the state. We place emphasis on this relationship by illustrating how historical memory and state control continue to define the ways in which people relate to the land and how they conceptualize their current identities. Through inquiries into water, wine, and territorial violence, we examine how land and identity are negotiated between state actors and local populations. We tie these questions into larger understandings of how the politics of populism drive common sense narratives in the Georgian socio-political landscape and how communities respond to the state and political historical narratives in the current day. Considerations of the impact of historical memory in contemporary politics illustrate how these narratives continue to permeate political discourse, both by the state and also in how local populations respond to and/or resist the state.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Stephen Francis Jones, Harvard U

Papers

• Wine, Heritage Building, and Collective Memory in Georgia’s National Identity - Rikki Brown, UC Santa Cruz

• Land, Water, and Everyday Peace: Human-Nonhuman Entanglements in Rural Georgia - Mariam Darchiashvili, Ilia State U (Georgia)

• Populism, Common Sense, and the Memory of Difficult Heritages in Georgia and Croatia - Laura Mafizzoli, Inst of Ethnology CAS (Czech Republic)

• Political Elite Discourse on Dams, Energy, and Identity in Georgia (2004-2024) - Alex Bezahler, U of Iowa

Discussant

• Jeff Sahadeo, Carleton U (Canada)

Session Manager

• Benedict Edward DeDominicis, Catholic U of Korea (South Korea)