Architectural rumors: unrealized megaprojects in Baku,Azerbaijan and their politico-economic uses

This article examines the agency of unrealized megaprojects in bolstering economic activity, legitimizing political regimes, and expanding designer’s portfolios. It argues that such proposals serve as a form of “Architectural Rumor,” providing politico-economic agency despite ultimate project infeasibility. Specifically, it looks at two case studies of proposed yet unrealized island megaprojects in the city of Baku, Azerbaijan: the 2009 Zira Island Master Plan and the 2010 Khazar Islands Plan. Spectacular urban design and architecture have long served as catalysts for development, investment attraction, and real estate speculation. As cities compete with one another to lure capital and boost their global status, many design proposals have become increasingly expensive, ostentatious, and technologically sophisticated. The high-risk financial nature of grand urban design proposals and their frequent associations with displacement or environmental destruction suggests that the megaproject model is becoming flawed. At the same time, there remain advantages for clients and politicians to proposing designs that are more spectacular than feasible. Using a mixed-methods approach, four key arenas in which unrealized proposals circulate are described. The various benefits and detriments of such an approach to architectural commodification are also discussed, foregrounding the broader societal costs.     

Azerbaijan between Two Empires: A Contested Borderland in the Early Modern Period (Sixteenth‒Eighteenth Centuries)

The first part of the paper examines the evolution and transformation of Safavid ideology in the context of confessional changes and the role of Turkoman tribes in the Safavid social movement in the Ottoman?Iranian borderland. The second part examines the impact of Ottoman?Safavid wars and religious rivalry on the society and economy of Azerbaijan from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.     

Affective nationalism: Banalities of belonging in Azerbaijan

While Michael Billig’s ‘banal nationalism’ points to the significance of the trivial reproduction of national representations in everyday routines, feminist political geographers have highlighted how the nation is brought into being through embodied and emotional practices. Building upon and extending these notions of the nation as represented and embodied, the paper argues that the nation also takes shape through bodily encounters and joyful as well as painful affections. In what we call ‘affective nationalism’, the nation emerges in moments of encounter between different bodies and objects through embodying, sharing, enjoying or disliking what feels national. We combine a Deleuzian reading of affect that discloses the mechanisms of material becomings with feminist scholarship sensitive to how bodies affect and are affected differently by materially produced nationalisms. Based on ethnographic field research in Azerbaijan, which we present in three vignettes, we untangle the affective becoming of national bodies, objects and places during a publicly staged ceremony of the collective remembrance of martyr and the celebration of a national holiday within the realm of a family. The paper makes two contributions to researching affective nationalism. First, it enquires into how people identify with Azerbaijan through their capacities to affect and to be affected by what feels national and, second, it explores how affective nationalism can be captured through vignettes of affective writing.     

Shia groups and Iranian religious influence in Azerbaijan: the impact of trans-boundary religious ties on national religious policy

Abstract

The Azerbaijani Government’s struggle against external influence from Iran has played a significant role in consolidating its secular self-identification since independence in 1991. Though strong, direct Iranian influence on Azerbaijani Shia groups belongs to the past, its effects are sustained. This article examines the religious transborder flows from Iran to Azerbaijan and their impact on Azerbaijani domestic religious policy. The analysis includes religion as a factor in the debate about transnationalism and about how transnational actors challenge nation states’ exclusive authority over their territory. The analysis uses data from government documents, newspaper articles, social media, and interviews with politicians and religious actors. As a result, the article shows that the Iranian intervention in Azerbaijan has effectively initiated the building of a more specific Shia identity among a small but growing number of Shia groups. This has led to the reconfiguration both of the religious field and of Azerbaijani political secularism.     

Population Trends in a Contested Pseudo-State: The Case of Nagorno-Karabakh

A U.S. population geographer specializing in the former Soviet Union surveys the results of an October 2005 census conducted in a contested pseudo-state known as the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR). Data from the enumeration provide the first credible information about recent population characteristics, including nationality composition and migration from the war-torn republic. The data make it possible to ascertain the crude magnitudes of population losses in the republic's constituent rayons as well as changes resulting from deaths and expulsion of ethnic Armenians and/or Azerbaijanis. Changes documented since the last (1989) Soviet census in the region indicate that the current republic's population differs quite dramatically from that of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of Azerbaijan, complicating efforts to broker a lasting peace agreement between the pseudostate's two neighbors. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: J11, O18, R23, 1 figure, 1 table, 36 references.