Drawing heavily on Georgian sources, the author offers readers a unique opportunity to appreciate why the Abkhazians and South Ossetians have seen no alternative to resisting the threats emanating ...from Tbilisi by refusing to join an independent Georgia.
This book, one of the first in English about everyday life in the Republic of Georgia, describes how people construct identity in a rapidly changing border region. Based on extensive ethnographic ...research, it illuminates the myriad ways residents of the Caucasus have rethought who they are since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Through an exploration of three towns in the southwest corner of Georgia, all of which are situated close to the Turkish frontier, Mathijs Pelkmans shows how social and cultural boundaries took on greater importance in the years of transition, when such divisions were expected to vanish. By tracing the fears, longings, and disillusionment that border dwellers projected on the Iron Curtain, Pelkmans demonstrates how elements of culture formed along and in response to territorial divisions, and how these elements became crucial in attempts to rethink the border after its physical rigidities dissolved in the 1990s.
The new boundary-drawing activities had the effect of grounding and reinforcing Soviet constructions of identity, even though they were part of the process of overcoming and dismissing the past. Ultimately, Pelkmans finds that the opening of the border paradoxically inspired a newfound appreciation for the previously despised Iron Curtain as something that had provided protection and was still worth defending.
Reporting on a foreign war or a crisis is a challenging activity, a true professional test for a journalist. Media is often criticized for promoting violence by its conflict reporting: either by ...staying detached or by being biased. Peace, or conflict-sensitive, journalism was created for improvement of conflict coverage: it emphasizes the active role of journalists in de-escalation of conflict and encourages them to report on peaceful solutions. This relatively novel approach might be met with skepticism, as it appears too idealistic and demanding to be followed by journalists. In order to verify the applicability of peace journalism, this book presents a comparative analysis of six US, UK and German newspapers on how conflict-sensitive, or at least balanced, they were in their reporting on the Russia-Georgia war of 2008. The content analysis of those six media has demonstrated that the peace journalism approach is not easy to implement into practice due to some imperfections of its models; its parameters need to become more feasible and more specific. The case study has showed that those particular western media were neither conflict-sensitive nor war-oriented in their coverage of the Russia-Georgia war, and thus they kept the in-between stance. Overall, the reporting was balanced, particularly in its negative attitude towards all parties involved in the conflict. Amalia Oganjanyan wurde 1984 in Tiflis, Georgien, geboren. Als Stipendiatin des DAAD und der Deutschen Welle Akademie erhielt sie in 2011 ihren Master in International Master Studies an der Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg. Die erste journalistische Ausbildung schloss sie in Georgien ab. Außerdem studierte sie ein Jahr in Armenien. Seit 2003 schreibt Amalia Oganjanyan für zahlreiche Medien Deutschlands, Georgiens, Russlands sowie Armeniens und der Ukraine. Während des Sammelns ihrer beruflichen und akademischen Erfahrungen hat sie sich mit politischen Themen beschäftigt, insbesondere mit den komplexen Beziehungen zwischen Russland und Georgien. Während des Kaukasuskrieges 2008 und eines Seminars bei der DW-Akademie zum Thema Friedensjournalismus entwickelte die Autorin ein besonderes Interesse an der Konfliktsensitivität der Auslandsberichterstattung über den Russland-Georgien-Krieg.
This book challenges our most basic ideas about slavery and freedom in America. Instead of seeing emancipation as the beginning or the ending of the story, as most histories do, O'Donovan explores ...the perilous transition between these two conditions, offering a unique vision of both the enormous changes and the profound continuities in black life before and after the Civil War.
In November of 2003, a stolen election in the former Soviet republic of Georgia led to protests and the eventual resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze was replaced by a ...democratically elected government led by President Mikheil Saakashvili, who pledged to rebuild Georgia, orient it toward the West, and develop a European-style democracy. Known as the Rose Revolution, this early twenty-first-century democratic movement was only one of the so-called color revolutions (Orange in Ukraine, Tulip in Kyrgyzstan, and Cedar in Lebanon). What made democratic revolution in Georgia thrive when so many similar movements in the early part of the decade dissolved?
Lincoln A. Mitchell witnessed the Rose Revolution firsthand, even playing a role in its manifestation by working closely with key Georgian actors who brought about change. InUncertain Democracy, Mitchell recounts the events that led to the overthrow of Shevardnadze and analyzes the factors that contributed to the staying power of the new regime. The book also explores the modest but indispensable role of the United States in contributing to theRose Revolutionand Georgia's failure to live up to its democratic promise.
Uncertain Democracyis the first scholarly examination of Georgia's recent political past. Drawing upon primary sources, secondary documents, and his own NGO experience, Mitchell presents a compelling case study of the effect of U.S. policy of promoting democracy abroad.
This book examines the theory and practice of interactive peacemaking, centering the role of people in making peace. The book presents the theory and practice of peacemaking as found in contemporary ...processes globally. By putting people at the center of the analysis, it outlines the possibilities of peacemaking by and for the people whose lives are touched by ongoing conflicts. While considering examples from around the world, this book specifically focuses on peacemaking in the Georgian-South Ossetian context. It tells the stories of individuals on both sides of the conflict, and explores why people choose to make peace, and how they work within their societies to encourage this. This book emphasizes theory built from practice and offers methodological guidance on learning from practice in the conflict resolution field. This book will be of much interest to students and practitioners of peacemaking, conflict resolution, South Caucasus politics and International Relations.
The Guns of August 2008 Cornell, Svante E; Starr, S. Frederick
2009, 20150128, 2009-12-01, 2015-01-28
eBook
In the summer of 2008, a conflict that appeared to have begun in the breakaway Georgian territory of South Ossetia rapidly escalated to become the most significant crisis in European security in a ...decade. The implications of the Russian-Georgian war will be understood differently depending on one's narrative of what transpired and perspective on the broader context. This book is designed to present the facts about the events of August 2008 along with comprehensive coverage of the background to those events. It brings together a wealth of expertise on the South Caucasus and Russian foreign policy, with contributions by Russian, Georgian, European, and American experts on the region.
The highland 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.
"No Path Homeis an extremely interesting, engaging, and well-written book. Elizabeth Cullen Dunn's fluid and clear prose paints a very evocative picture of life for internally displaced persons as ...well as presenting a clear theoretical account."-Laura Hammond, SOAS University of London, author ofThis Place Will Become Home
For more than 60 million displaced people around the world, humanitarian aid has become a chronic condition.No Path Homedescribes its symptoms in detail. Elizabeth Cullen Dunn shows how war creates a deeply damaged world in which the structures that allow people to occupy social roles, constitute economic value, preserve bodily integrity, and engage in meaningful daily practice have been blown apart.After the Georgian war with Russia in 2008, Dunn spent sixteen months immersed in the everyday lives of the 28,000 people placed in thirty-six resettlement camps by official and nongovernmental organizations acting in concert with the Georgian government. She reached the conclusion that the humanitarian condition poses a survival problem that is not only biological but also existential. InNo Path Home, she paints a moving picture of the ways in which humanitarianism leaves displaced people in limbo, neither in a state of emergency nor able to act as normal citizens in the country where they reside.
From about seven children per woman in 1960, the fertility rate in Mexico has dropped to about 2.6. Such changes are part of a larger transformation explored in this book, a richly detailed ...ethnographic study of generational and migration-related redefinitions of gender, marriage, and sexuality in rural Mexico and among Mexicans in Atlanta.
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