Carving out the nation with the enemy's kin: double strategy of boundary‐making in Transnistria and Abkhazia

The 1992–1993 civil wars in Moldova and in Georgia ended with a de facto separation of Transnistria and Abkhazia, respectively. These de facto states are both inhabited by the kin to the ‘enemy’ across the administrative border: Moldovans and Georgians/Mingrelians. How do the de facto authorities foster a collective identity in support of their claim for legitimacy and statehood? Engaging with Wimmer's taxonomy of boundary‐making, this article argues that nation‐building involves not only expansion but also, simultaneously, contraction. Transnistria constructs a higher‐level identity category and co‐opts and contracts the Moldovan category, separating it into ‘our’ and Bessarabian Moldovans in order to incorporate the former into the Transnistrian people. In Abkhazia, the nation‐building project establishes the Abkhazs as the titular nation allowing, however, for the construction of an Abkhazian people that would include minorities, with Gal/i Georgians said to be Mingrelians, distinct from Georgians. These cases show that elites combine different ethnic boundary‐making strategies in order to implement their favoured identity project and to legitimize the claimed statehood.     

Separatist states and post–Soviet conflicts

This article examines why the conflicts in Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan in the former Soviet Union have not been resolved in the last ten years, whereas a peace agreement has been reached in Tajikistan. The analysis centres on the role of the self–declared separatist states that have emerged in the midst of the post–Soviet states: the Pridnestrovyan Moldovan Republic inside Moldovan borders, the Republic of South Ossetia and the republic of Abkhazia within Georgian borders, and the Nagorno–Karabakh Republic of Azerbaijan. The argument is divided into four parts, starting first with a brief discussion of the reasons that allowed a fragile peace to arise in Tajikistan. The article then defines the concept of a de facto state, that is, a state without international recognition but with empirical existence. The main part of the article examines the range of forces, internal to the de facto states as well as external to them, that weave together to sustain the current status quo of non–resolution.     

Russian-occupied Crimea and the state of exception: repression,persecution, and human rights violations

ABSTRACT

Since annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Russian authorities there have introduced harsh repressive measures to silence opposition to the ongoing occupation, chiefly targeting the indigenous Crimean Tatars and others pro-Ukrainian individuals. From the legally subversive methods it employed to orchestrate the annexation to the rhetoric of anti-extremism with which it has continually justified its occupation, the Kremlin has inaugurated a new “state of exception” in Crimea, invoking the prerogative to circumvent normative legal and juridical procedures in response to a perceived emergency. While Crimea’s state of exception resembles those initiated elsewhere by some Western states and Russia itself as part of the global War on Terror, the state of exception has provided the pretext for a particularly severe degree of repression, persecution, and human rights violations in occupied Crimea. In conjunction with the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, this article discusses the theoretical groundings of the state of exception, its broader applications within the Russian Federation, and its troubling repercussions for residents of Crimea. Casting the Kremlin’s actions as belonging to a state of exception helps draw attention to its alarming human rights violations, and may bolster resistance to the creeping normalization of the Russian occupation of Crimea.     

The morality police are coming! Muslims in Norway's media discourses (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In early 2010, a series of reports appeared in the influential liberal‐conservative Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten drawing attention to what appeared to reporters to be a self‐appointed, de facto Muslim ‘morality police’ attempting to use harassment to exert social control over non‐hijab‐wearing women of immigrant background and gay men in the district of Grønland in the inner city of Oslo. What came to be known in Norway as the ‘morality‐police debate’ demonstrated the extent to which the figure of the Muslim male as an embodied threat to Norway's presumed relative gender equality and lack of homophobia had come to be embedded in the country's media and political discourse. This article suggests that the debate can tell us much about why certain tropes central to Norway's anti‐Muslim discourses have gained such currency across the Norwegian political board in recent years.     

The Kosovo—and Montenegro—effect

The post‐communist space continues to generate new internationally recognized states while incubating unrecognized but de facto states. Recent movement in the Balkans—the independence of Montenegro and the arduous deliberations over Kosovo's future —have variously encouraged other secessionist people and would‐be states, particularly in the former Soviet Union. This article analyses the impact of developments in Montenegro and Kosovo on several levels, including: their usage by de facto states; the reactions to them by central governments; Russian policy; and western and intergovernmental responses to these challenges. The article further argues that the Russian position on Kosovo and on the so‐called ‘frozen’ or unsettled conflicts neighbouring Russia could ultimately backfire on it. Western policy towards both Kosovo and on the post‐Soviet frozen conflicts will be best served by signalling to Russia, irrespective of the exact form of Kosovo's independence, that neither its own interests nor broader western‐Russian relations are served by using or reacting to any Kosovo ‘precedent’.     

Cartoon epic heroes in indigenous Siberian revival: The meaning of ethnicity in Putin's Russia (Respond to this article at https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-today/debate)

This article outlines a motivation for the Russian Federation's incursion into the Crimea, which concerns the Putin administration's relationship with Russia's citizens, rather than the outside world. I use a case study from Siberia – the Sakha people's revival of their national epic, the Olongkho – to explore the possibility that Putin's behaviour during the Ukrainian crisis serves to legitimate his authority within Russia, by appealing to conceptions of ethnicity that have their roots in Soviet‐era social engineering. Rather than deducing the Putin administration's motives from the events and relationships they immediately concern, I explore motivations emerging from the configuration of values, perceptions, and conventions that shapes and reproduces social difference in Russia. The Sakha Olongkho revival shows how the perceptions of ethnicity fostered during the Soviet era have become powerful indexes of morality and authority. Individual Sakha citizens now demonstrate their identities and values through adopting a stance towards a reified conception of Sakha ethnicity expressed in their choices of recreation, fashion and consumption. Sakha ethnicity has become integrated into the process whereby hierarchical social groupings emerge within Sakha society according to their avowal of specific tastes and norms. The relatively small size of the Sakha population – which is nevertheless the dominant ethnic group in their republic, Sakha (Yakutia) – enables us to see trends affecting the rest of Russia in microcosm. Thus, I suggest that former Soviet ethnicity has become so closely woven into Russia's morality that Putin's invasions of foreign states, in the name of the ethnic Russian community, bolster his claim to be a moral person and a legitimate and authoritative national leader.     

Who identifies with the “Russian World”? Geopolitical attitudes in southeastern Ukraine,Crimea, Abkhazia,South Ossetia,and Transnistria

Abstract

The concept of the Russian world (Russkii mir) re-entered geopolitical discourse after the end of the Soviet Union. Though it has long historical roots, the practical definition and geopolitical framing of the term has been debated and refined in Russian political and cultural circles during the years of the Putin presidency. Having both linguistic-cultural and geopolitical meanings, the concept of the Russian world remains controversial, and outside Russia it is often associated with Russian foreign policy actions. Examination of official texts from Vladimir Putin and articles from three Russian newspapers indicate complicated and multifaceted views of the significance and usage of the Russkii mir concept. Surveys in December 2014 in five sites on the fringes of Russia – in southeastern Ukraine, Crimea, and three Russian-supported de facto states (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria) – show significant differences between the Ukrainian sample points and the other locations about whether respondents believe that they live in the Russian world. In Ukraine, nationality (Russian vs. Ukrainian) is aligned with the answers, while overall, attitudes toward Russian foreign policy, level of trust in the Russian president, trust of Vladimir Putin, and liking Russians are positively related to beliefs about living in the Russian world. In Ukraine, the negative reactions to geopolitical speech acts and suspicions about Russian government actions overlap with and confuse historical linguistic-cultural linkages with Russia, but in the other settings, close security and economic ties reinforce a sense of being in the Russian “world.”     

De facto,displaced, tacit: The sovereign articulations of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile

Based on ethnographic research on exiled Tibetan political institutions and practices in India, this paper investigates sovereignty in exile. The Tibetan Government-in-Exile (TGiE) remains internationally unrecognised and lacks de jure sovereignty over territory in both Tibet and in exile. However, this exiled administration claims legitimacy as the official representative of the Tibetan population, performs a number of state-like functions in relation to its diasporic ‘citizenry’ and attempts to make its voice heard within the international community. Rejecting arguments that such entities should be viewed merely as discrepant forms of political practice, this paper asserts that the state, sovereignty, and territory can be conceptually disentangled, opening up the theoretical possibility of entities other than territorial states claiming sovereignty. In teasing apart and problematising constituent elements of sovereignty, this paper focuses on three aspects of the TGiE's articulations of sovereignty: its claims to and production of legitimacy, authority and de facto sovereignty; its displaced sovereignty and strategies of territorial governance over non-contiguous spaces in exile; and the mediation of its ambiguous relationship with the host state India through practices of tacit sovereignty.     

The Inside Story of China's High-Tech Industry: Making Silicon Valley in Beijing. Yu Zhou

Two noted political geographers examine the results of surveys in the "de facto" states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia conducted in 2010. They assess the migration intentions of their residents, the likely destinations and motivations for planned departures, as well as the dramatic population decline due to emigration and expulsion of Georgian residents after wars in the early 1990s. Discussed are economic dislocations, the breakaway republics' uncertain geographical status, as well as improvements in security and economic conditions due to Russian military guarantees and massive economic aid that followed the 2008 wars with Georgia. The authors utilize key predictors derived from hypotheses about the push and pull forces affecting the decision to migrate (socio-demographic, war experiences, and attitudes about the "de facto" state prospects) to develop explanatory models of migration for each territory before deriving a pooled set of explanations. Both surveys suggest the likelihood that the majority of potential migrants have already left. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F220, F510, I300, J110, O150. 1 figure, 7 tables, 59 references.     

Policing the near abroad: Russian foreign policy in the South Caucasus

This article tries to understand Russia's policies towards the South Caucasus and answer the question of whether there is a tension between Russia's interests and policies. An attempt is made to identify Russia's strategic interests in the region and the crucial factors that shape Russian policies. Based on the assumption that today's Russia gives de facto support to the secessionist regimes in Georgia, the author attempts to explain what the Kremlin's motives are in supporting the secessionist regimes. The author investigates whether Russian support for the separatist regimes in the South Caucasus is a reaction to the foreign policy orientation of the parent states or a part of Russia's security political interests. On the one hand, supporting instability in the South Caucasus cannot be a part of the Kremlin's strategic interests, because that can pose a threat to the North Caucasus. On the other hand, however, Russian policies are not designed to achieve long-term stability in the South Caucasus, and controlled instability seems to suit the Kremlin. Why Russia vies for coercive hegemony and supports secessionism are the central questions of this article.     

Three Forgotten Accessions: Gilgit,Hunza and Nagar

The August 1947 transfer of power in India brought to the fore questions regarding the future of the areas which had long been leased by the government of India from certain princely states. Focusing on the Gilgit Agency, parts of which were leased from the state of Jammu and Kashmir, this article traces the nature of the agency and the manner in which it ultimately became a de facto part of Pakistan while Kashmir acceded to India. Conflicting accounts exist as to who was actually responsible for the revolution in Gilgit which led it towards Pakistan. This article uses all available sources to relate clearly and analyse the actual course of events during the tumultuous months of October and November 1947. The article also assesses the status and then formal accession of the two small states of Hunza and Nagar, adjacent to Gilgit, which had been erroneously treated as being under the complete suzerainty of Kashmir.     

Building identities in post-Soviet “de facto states”: cultural and political icons in Nagorno-Karabakh,South Ossetia,Transdniestria, and Abkhazia

Abstract

For states that have recently declared their independence but remained unrecognized “de facto states,” building a national identity is critical in the face of international rejection of their political status. Key elements of this new or re-animated national identity are political and cultural icons symbolizing the new political entity but with historical antecedents. Following Anthony Smith’s ethno-symbolism approach to the study of nationalism and motivated by Jean Gottmann’s research on iconographies in political geography, the article reports the results of nationally representative samples in four post-Soviet de facto states, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Transdniestria, and Abkhazia. Respondents were asked to name up to five political and cultural figures that they admired. The collated results show a great array of local and Russian names in the four republics. Categorizing the names by historical era and by provenance allows a clarification of the extent to which nation building can rely on local heroes. Among the four republics, Nagorno-Karabakh stands out for its ethno-symbolic local character, while Transdniestrian respondents identified few iconic figures. South Ossetia shows a mix of local and Russian names while the respondents in Abkhazia were divided by nationality in their choices.     

The ‘invisible scars’ of breast cancer treatments (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Drawing on 38 fieldwork interviews with women living with breast cancer conducted in Spain between 2006 and 2008, I draw attention to the significance of what Ludica (2013) refers to as the “invisible scars of cancer” for a holistic understanding of women's experiences. I highlight two under acknowledged thematic concerns that emerged during our conversations: (1) the impact of treatments on women's ability to experience sexual pleasure; (2) the pain caused by axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) or armpit surgery. The present article is a timely reminder of the fact that for a shockingly high number of women diagnosed, the experience of breast cancer is emotionally and physically painful and quite often disabling. An understanding of women's experiences is essential to provide resources more sensitive to women's needs.     

Becoming the State in Northern Australia: Urbanisation,Intra‐Indigenous Relatedness,and the State Effect

In Australia's Northern Territory, the Larrakia have been involved in a decades‐long effort to gain recognition as traditional owners through Land Rights and Native Title legislation. From one perspective, their claims have failed to achieve the entitlement and recognition grounded in these governmental regimes (Scambary 2007; Povinelli 2002). However, over the past decade the Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation (LNAC) and the Larrakia Development Corporation (LDC) have emerged as locally powerful corporate bodies that pursue programs and exercise forms of power on behalf of the Larrakia that can be understood in terms of state and governmental practice. Through suburban development, a night patrol, educational and vocational training, a radio station, and through forms of policy research and statistical enumeration, the Larrakia nation have emerged in the eyes of many as a de facto Aboriginal ‘state’ in the Darwin region. This paper explores the intra‐Indigenous relations through which these practices have emerged, and analyses the extent to which the LNAC might be understood as a kind of ‘state’ within a state, responsible for world‐shaping activities of knowledge production, housing and health outreach, vocational training and education, and policing. Focussing on the forms of ‘stateness’ that accrue to the Larrakia Nation in Darwin through its policing, knowledge production, and outreach programs for Aboriginal campers, the article explores the differential articulation of Aboriginal groups with the state. It concludes by asking how such differences matter in contexts of planned urbanisation in the Northern Territory.     

Engagement without recognition: the limits of diplomatic interaction with contested states

This article examines the extent to which states are able to interact at an official level with a contested or de facto state—a state that has unilaterally declared independence but is not a member of the United Nations—without being understood to have recognized it. This is an area of increasing interest and relevance to policy‐makers as the number of contested states has grown in recent years. In many cases, interaction may be important for ongoing peace efforts. However, there are also instances when a state is prevented from recognizing the territory in question for specific domestic or foreign policy reasons and so has to find alternative means by which to cooperate. Drawing on several key examples, notably Kosovo and the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’, but also with reference to Abkhazia, the article explores the limits of interaction across various different forms of bilateral and multilateral diplomatic activity. As is shown, albeit with some significant provisos, legal theory and historic practice suggest that diplomatic engagement does not constitute recognition if there is no underlying intent to recognize. This means that there is in fact a very high degree of latitude regarding the limits of diplomatic engagement with contested states. This is especially the case in bilateral contexts. Indeed, in some circumstances, the level of engagement can even amount to recognition in all but name.     

Functions of sovereign violence: Contesting and establishing order in Darjeeling,India

This paper explores the relationship between de facto sovereign violence and order in spaces of contested authority. Here, so-called “informal sovereigns” imbued with the power to kill and punish with impunity can act either as rebels against, or as chosen mediators for, a weak government. This paper takes this ambivalent relationship between informal sovereigns and the state as a starting point to explore the different functions of sovereign violence drawing on a case study from Darjeeling, India. Here, informal sovereigns appear in the form of regional leaders of an autonomy movement that has, at times, violently challenged the government's authority over the region. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's distinction between law-making and law-preserving violence, the paper argues that sovereign violence performed by such informal sovereigns has different functions. It can either stabilize or challenge existing power relations and legal orders. To differentiate these functions and to account for the ambivalent relations between informal sovereigns and the state, the category of informal sovereigns needs to be disentangled. To do so, this paper establishes a distinction between ‘petty sovereigns‘, whose sovereignty is outsourced from the state, and ‘autonomous sovereigns’, whose authority is mainly grounded in actors' capacity to perform excessive violent acts. While petty sovereigns' violence is law-preserving and strengthens existing power relations, autonomous sovereigns engage in law-making activities and aspire to affect changed orders and to benefit from that change. The case study concludes that a sovereign's efficacy in effecting order is not only grounded in violence. Rather, its authority emerges from the grey zone of the negotiated boundaries between itself and the state, and its recognition by its respective constituents.     

Urban Transition and Interstate Relations in a Dynamic Post-Soviet Borderland: The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China

Two noted American geographers examine transition in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (a de facto Soviet protectorate in the 1930s and early 1940s) within the context of that region's strategic position. The paper, based on field work exploring urbanization in the People's Republic of China, investigates the area's role as a bridgehead and corridor for emerging economic relations between China and the neighboring republics of Central Asia. The focus is on the demographic dimensions of urban growth and the underlying geopolitical and economic factors. Considerable attention also is given to the implications of increased trade and improvements in transportation links with the newly independent Central Asian states. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F14, F15, O15, O18. 4 figures, 6 tables, 51 references.     

The geography of the Atlantic peace: NATO 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall

This article examines NATO's transformation from the Cold War to the present and offers a framework of interpretation. Transformation has entailed a downgrading of territorial defence and an upgrading of out‐of‐area crisis management, as well as diplomatic engagement and partnership. NATO has thus become a more diversified and globalized alliance. The article traces the evolution post‐1989 of the principled policy areas for the alliance—defence, crisis management and partnership—and explains difficulties of development within each area. It also enters into the controversy of interpreting NATO. It explains NATO as an outcome of America's enduring need to engage in the management of Eurasia's rim and Europe's equally enduring need for outside assistance in organizing a concert of power inside Europe. NATO has historically been strong when Europe's and North America's power capabilities and concepts of order are in equilibrium and thus when NATO governments have defined the geography of the Atlantic peace in such a way that both pillars can contribute to it in substantial ways. The article puts this perspective in opposition to two mainstream frameworks of thinking—liberal idealism and retrenchment realism—and applies it in a critique of the diversified and globalized profile that the alliance has developed. The article finally offers a moderately positive assessment of NATO's September 2014 Wales summit as a contribution to renewed geopolitical equilibrium, and it suggests how this contribution could be further strengthened.     

Du Rutabaga et Encore du Rutabaga: Daily Life in Vichy France

‘Amerindians’ represent only a small proportion—currently estimated at 3–4%—of the sparse but rapidly growing population of France's South American département d'outre-mer. Yet the existence of ‘autochthonous’ communities in Guyane presents legal, political, cultural and environmental challenges to the concepts of republican universalism ostensibly established in 1946 alongside its status as an overseas department of France. Using an Amerindian cultural centre as a case study, this article seeks to explain how representations of ‘Amerindian’ identities in Guyane are constructed both alongside and against a traditional framework of opposition between universal commonality and cultural particularism. Through engagement with museum ethnography and analysis of personal narrative and collective action, the article traces conflicts and compromises surrounding ‘indigeneity’ and citizenship in the face of state non-recognition of ethnicity. It argues that the politics of Amerindian identity, from citizenship rights to ecotourism, has increasingly been characterised by an emphasis on ‘ecological’ relationships.

Les « Amérindiens » ne constituent que 3 à 4 % de la population de la Guyane – seul département d'outre-mer de France en Amérique du Sud – une population relativement faible et dispersée mais qui connaît une croissance rapide. Cependant, l'existence de communautés « autochtones » dans ce département présente des défis juridiques, politiques, culturels et environnementaux face à l’universalisme républicain établi au moment où la Guyane est devenue département, en 1946. Cet article s'appuie sur le cas d'un centre culturel amérindien pour exposer comment les représentations de l'identité « amérindienne » en Guyane se construisent à la fois avec et contre l'opposition traditionnelle entre les communalités universellement partagées et le particularisme culturel. S'appuyant sur l'ethnographie muséologique et sur l'analyse des récits individuels et de l'action collective, l'article reconstitue les conflits et les compromis autour de « l'autochtonie » et de la citoyenneté face à l'aveuglement officiel de l'État par rapport à l'idée de l'ethnicité. L'article suggère que, des droits citoyens à l'écotourisme, la politique identitaire « amérindienne » se caractérise de plus en plus par une emphase sur les relations sociales « écologiques »; c'est-à-dire entre hommes, femmes et environnement.