Reconfigurations Of Political Space In The Caucasus

In order to analyse configurations of power that transcend the territorial trap, the Caucasus is an excellent case in point. Its past and present exhibit an extraordinary richness in power practices of diverse forms that intersect on various scales. This comprehensive volume offers an innovative procedural perspective on the actual workings of power not necessarily tied to the nation-state. Its focus goes well beyond national scales to tackle the manifold impacts of transboundary flows. The authors, from a wide range of academic disciplines, provide original empirical data from this intriguing but largely untapped region, with respect to the critical study of statehood. They also shed light on the diversity of political space and the ongoing process of spatial re-alignment. The chapters in this collection focus on: land governance practice in the North Caucasus; practices of local administration in Georgia; Shia influence from Iran in Azerbaijan; and trajectories of Ottoman influence in Adjara and Abkhazia respectively. They cover the South as well as North Caucasus, examining configurations of power that entangle smaller and larger scales, and providing perspectives on transboundary flows between the area and both Turkey and Iran. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Eurasian Geography and Economics.

In order to analyse configurations of power that transcend the territorial trap, the Caucasus is an excellent case in point. Its past and present exhibit an extraordinary richness in power practices of diverse forms that intersect on various scales. This comprehensive volume offers an innovative procedural perspective on the actual workings of power not necessarily tied to the nation-state. Its focus goes well beyond national scales to tackle the manifold impacts of transboundary flows. The authors, from a wide range of academic disciplines, provide original empirical data from this intriguing but largely untapped region, with respect to the critical study of statehood. They also shed light on the diversity of political space and the ongoing process of spatial re-alignment. The chapters in this collection focus on: land governance practice in the North Caucasus; practices of local administration in Georgia; Shia influence from Iran in Azerbaijan; and trajectories of Ottoman influence in Adjara and Abkhazia respectively. They cover the South as well as North Caucasus, examining configurations of power that entangle smaller and larger scales, and providing perspectives on transboundary flows between the area and both Turkey and Iran. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Eurasian Geography and Economics.

After the final collapse of the Soviet Union, the so-called 'last empire', in 1991, the countries of Central Asia - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan - and of the Caucasus - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia - became independent nations. These countries, previously production centres under the socialist planning system of the Soviet Union, have made enormous economic adjustments in order to develop - or attempt to develop - along capitalist lines. As this study will show, however, inequality in Central Asia and the Caucasus is widening, as the Soviet systems of healthcare and state provisions disappear. Rejecting the Cold War-era East/West paradigm often used to analyse the development of these nations, this study analyses development along the North-South lines which characterise the migration patterns and poverty levels of much of the rest of the developed world. This opens up new avenues of research, and helps us understand why it is, for instance, that this region is better characterised as a 'new South' - as skilled workers flood out of the territories and into Russia and Western Europe. Development in Central Asia and the Caucasus draws together detailed analyses of the development of migration economics as the region's oil wealth further enhances its strategic and economic importance to Russia, the US, the Middle East and to the EU.

This book analyzes how de facto states—including Nagorno Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Kosovo, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Somaliland, and Taiwan—have developed without recognition of sovereignty from the international community.

Like other majority Muslim regions of the former Soviet Union, the republic of Dagestan, on Russia's southern frontier, has become contested territory in a hegemonic competition between Moscow and resurgent Islam. In this authoritative book the leading experts on Dagestan provide a pathbreaking study of this volatile state far from the world's gaze. The largest and most populous of the North Caucasian republics, bordered on the west by Chechnya and on the east by the Caspian Sea, Dagestan is almost completely mountainous. With no majority nationality, the republic developed a distinctive system of calibrated power relations among ethnic groups and with Moscow, a system that has been undermined by the spillover of the wars in Chechnya, Wahhabi and Islamist recruiting efforts targeting youth, and Moscow's reassertion of the power vertical. Underdevelopment, high birthrates, transiting pipelines, and the rising incidence of terrorist violence and assassinations add to the explosive potential of the region. Authors Ware and Kisriev combine analysis of the dynamics of domination and resistance, and the distinctive forms of social organization characteristic of mountain societies that may be applicable to other areas such as Afghanistan. They draw on decades of field research, interviews, and data to offer unique perspective on the civilizational collision course under way in the Caucasus today.

The theory and concept of multi-level governance (MLG) is a fairly recent one, emerging from the deepening integration of the European Union in the early 1990s and the development of free trade agreements around the world. MLG enlarges the traditional approaches, namely those of neo-institutionalism and multinational federalism, by offering a better understanding of the role of the state, regions and provinces. The book analyses the changes that have taken place as well as those that might take place in the future.

Through ethnographical cases, this book examines the ways in which social groups position themselves between cultures, states, moralities, and local/state authorities, creating opportunities for agency. Alternative spaces designate in-between spaces rather than oppositional structures and are both inside and outside their constituent elements.

"In sum, by showing how and why local regional disputes quickly develop into global crises through the paired power of historical memory and time-space compression, Near Abroad reshapes our understanding of the current conflict raging in the center of the Eurasian landmass and international politics as a whole"--