Peter Kabachnik

To choose, fix, or ignore culture? The cultural politics of Gypsy and Traveler mobility in England

Historically, states have sought to repress the nomadic way of life, as evidenced by various policies that seek to displace, criminalize, or assimilate them. This practice continues today, as the situation of Gypsies and Travelers in Ireland and Britain attests to. This paper examines how Gypsies and Travelers are repeatedly denied the right to practice a nomadic way of life. This occurs through various measures, each corresponding to a particular understanding of how culture operates. I identify two dominant discourses: ‘culture as choice’ and ‘culture as nature.’ The former seeks to assimilate and sedentarize while the latter wishes to prevent Gypsies and Travelers from ‘settling down’ as it does not see any option but for nomadism to continue. Both are similar, however, in that they misunderstand nomadic practices and wish to erase Gypsy and Traveler ways of life. I then delineate how a cultural politics of mobility avoids the pitfalls of seeing culture as a choice or as essential and unchanging, as well as not ignoring culture as acultural approaches do, but instead recognizes how Gypsies and Travelers themselves utilize cultural discourses to navigate through legal constraints and discrimination.

PLACE INVADERS: CONSTRUCTING THE NOMADIC THREAT IN ENGLAND*

Over the centuries, the image of nomads threatening sedentary ways of life has been a common pejorative representation. In order to understand what geographies underpin narratives about nomads, I examine how social theory and media representations invoke the image of nomads. Both media and academic representations are buttressed by limited understandings of place and space, framing nomads as the quintessential “place invaders.” Focusing on nomadic Gypsies and Travelers in England provides a contemporary example of this process. British media representations construct nomadic Gypsies and Travelers in England as out‐of‐place and threatening. Deconstructing essentialist geographical conceptions allows us to avoid reproducing the common image of placeless nomads, reveals how people utilize place to render others inferior, and highlights the fact that conflicts between nomadic and sedentary ways of life are not intractable and natural. Adopting a more nuanced understanding of place can challenge the dominant trope of nomads as place invaders.

Nomads and mobile places: disentangling place, space and mobility

Though there is a danger that ‘place’ may become subsumed or ignored in research as attention now shifts to questions of ‘mobility,’ discussion of place has burgeoned throughout academia. Many texts declare that place is important, or proclaim the power of place. While place has been shown to be a fundamental part of human existence, what does this then mean for those who are characterized as not being interested in places? Examining nomadic Gypsies and Travelers in Britain, who are often constructed as placeless, highlights that this is not simply a representational concern, but has a tangible empirical affect, impinging on their everyday practices as well as influencing policies and laws that actively deny them their right to place. By exploring various definitions of place and how this impacts the understanding of mobilities, I demonstrate that the meaning ascribed to nomads is dependent upon a spatialized definition of place which is underpinned by the space-place binary. It is this aspect of the discourse that allows for nomads to be constructed as out-of-place wherever they are, and by recognizing this we can avoid framing placelessness as a natural characteristic of nomadism. Reconceptualizing place allows for more nuanced understandings of nomadism, as our identities are constructed in relation to both place and mobility, not just one or the other.

Stalin is dead, long live Stalin? Testing socialization, structural, ideological, nationalist, and gender hypotheses

Recently, there has been a renewed focus on analyzing post-Soviet memory, including the rekindling of debate on contemporary perspectives of Josef Stalin. Most notably, the publication of The Stalin Puzzle has helped bring attention to the persistence of positive accounts and admiration, along with ambivalent and contested images, of the former dictator of the Soviet Union. Using survey data and multivariate statistical methods, we test five broad hypotheses – socialization, structural, ideological, nationalist, and gender – to ascertain what factors might shape peoples attitudes toward Stalin in Georgia. Our analysis reveals that elderly, poor men from rural areas have the most positive associations of Stalin, whereas young, wealthier women from cities, those who are open to privatization, and perceive Russia as Georgias biggest threat judge Stalin negatively. Counterintuitively, non-Georgian minorities show higher esteem for Stalin than Georgians. We envision that the effects of cohort replacement, economic development, and urbanization will decrease positive perceptions of Stalin in years to come.

Unconditional love? Exploring hometown effect in Stalin's birthplace

This article explores the impact of spatial location – place – on peoples attitudes by examining whether support for Stalin is concentrated in his birthplace: Gori, Georgia. Using a variety of multivariate statistical methods, including propensity score-matching, we examine a recent survey indicating high levels of admiration for Stalin in his home country. We explore two main questions: First, is there a “hometown effect” – do people in Gori love Stalin unconditionally because they came from the same place? Second, is Gori so exceptional from the rest of Georgia? We conclude that there is indeed a stronger level of support for Stalin in Gori, but when shifting scales and looking within the category, we find that the highest admiration stems from the towns rural outskirts.

Shaping Abkhazia: Cartographic Anxieties and the Making and Remaking of the Abkhazian Geobody

This paper explores Abkhazias quest for a national state by examining ‘national maps’, which do not depict the typical physical and political features that maps normally portray. The recent proliferation of Abkhazian national maps reveals the attention given to Abkhazias ‘shape’. In order to legitimize the national map, Abkhazia must claim control over the entire territory within Abkhazias borders. Attempts at the nationalization of all Abkhazian space have encountered difficulties in two problematic regions, the Gal/i district and Kodor/i Gorge. I will illustrate how borderland regions are negotiated, made part of a nationalist discourse and are territorialized within a nationalist project.

Collective memory and reputational politics of national heroes and villains

The politics of memory plays an important role in the ways certain figures are evaluated and remembered, as they can be rehabilitated or vilified, or both, as these processes are contested. We explore these issues using a transition society, Georgia, as a case study. Who are the heroes and villains in Georgian collective memory? What factors influence who is seen as a hero or a villain and why? How do these selections correlate with Georgian national identity? We attempt to answer these research questions using a newly generated data set of contemporary Georgian perspectives on recent history. Our survey results show that according to a representative sample of the Georgian population, the main heroes from the beginning of the twentieth century include Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Ilia Chavchavadze, and Patriarch Ilia II. Eduard Shevardnadze, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and Vladimir Putin represent the main villains, and those that appear on both lists are Mikheil Saakashvili and Joseph Stalin. We highlight two clusters of attitudes that are indicative of how people think about Georgian national identity, mirroring civic and ethnic conceptions of nationalism. How Georgians understand national identity impacts not only who they choose as heroes or villains, but also whether they provide an answer at all.

Displacing Blame: Georgian Internally Displaced Person Perspectives of the Georgia–Abkhazia Conflict

This article analyzes the views of Georgians, focusing primarily on those displaced from Abkhazia, and examines who they blame for the Georgia–Abkhazia conflict and what they think about Abkhazians. How groups assign blame affects the potential for reconciliation. Very different justifications are offered by those affected by conflict. These discourses of legitimation help to explain the conflict, and provide a narrative for the hostilities/war. For Georgian internally displaced persons, the blame for the conflict falls on Russia. For Abkhazians, the blame is placed on Georgians. Although both discourses are different, they each displace blame from themselves and their own agency and actions that played a significant role in the conflict, as well as in some of the atrocities that have been documented to have taken place on both sides.

The power of place, or powerless places? Hybrid attitudes towards Soviet symbols in post-Soviet Georgia

ABSTRACT This article explores the hybridity of commemoration by analysing people’s attitudes to three types of contested Soviet symbols in post-Soviet Georgia. I draw on 62 in-depth qualitative interviews conducted in 2012–2013 with Georgians in Tbilisi, Georgia. These interviews focused on what people thought about places of memory, Soviet symbols in public space, and memory politics and policies in contemporary Georgia. I examine their opinions of three different types of reminders of the Soviet past in public space: general Soviet symbols; street names; and the Stalin monument in Gori. This analysis reveals their diverse understandings of place and highlights the hybridity of their responses to the different elements of Soviet symbolism. This not only prevents one from creating ideal typologies when considering places of memory, but also highlights the impact of the form and location of the symbol. I also identify two ways that people conceptualize place, one that recognizes the power of place, and the other that perceives place as powerless.

Prison, Nuisance, or Spectacle? The 2009 “Cell” Protests in Tbilisi, Georgia

For over three months in 2009 demonstrations took place in front of the Georgian Parliament on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia. The protest involved a unique production of urban space as makeshift prison “cells” were placed in the landscape. The cells emerged following calls by the host of a popular reality television show, Cell #5. In order to illustrate the multiple meanings that people have of terrains of resistance, I highlight three dominant associations that people attributed to the cells: the prison metaphor; a public nuisance; and a spectacle. This case clearly exemplifies how popular culture will not only impact peoples geopolitical understandings of the world but can directly alter the landscape and transform and encourage oppositional politics in a direct and immediate manner.