by Andrea Peinhopf, University Northumbria, Newcastle

In collaboration with Phisoc, CEVIPOL, Ghent University, UNU CRIS and EUREAST Platform

Looking at the redistribution of property in the aftermath of the Georgian-Abkhaz war, this presentation is concerned with the social and political dynamics and internal conflicts that developed within Abkhazia since its de facto secession from Georgia. After the end of the war in 1993, the often-precarious status of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) – ethnic Georgians who fled or were forced to flee Abkhazia – has received significant academic attention. This research engages with the consequences of displacement and war from a different perspective, focusing on how it has affected the places and people staying behind. It asks: What does de- and repopulation do to a place and the people taking over evacuated property?

Drawing on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork, it shows that while the experience of war and military victory has generated a high degree of cohesion against an external Georgian ‘enemy’, the unequal access to property and its legacy produced significant intra-ethnic fragmentation. Directing the gaze away from an exclusive focus on inter-communal relations towards social dynamics more broadly, this research hence complicates the common idea that war, mass displacement and unresolved conflict create unambiguous identities. It argues that ambiguity is in fact a key characteristic of life in a post-war, contested polity, where relations between co-ethnics can seem simultaneously close and distanced.

Andrea Peinhopf is an ethnographer and interdisciplinary peace and conflict scholar with a regional specialisation in the post-Soviet Caucasus. Her fieldwork-intensive research explores the long-lasting and complex effects of war, mass displacement and international isolation on people’s identities in the context of unresolved conflict and contested statehood. Parts of her work have been published in Ethnopolitics, Nationalities Papers, the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies and The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality. Andrea currently works as a Lecturer in International Relations and Politics at Northumbria University in Newcastle. Before joining Northumbria University, she was an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of York’s Politics Department. She holds a PhD in Sociology and Anthropology from the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

Wednesday 3rd April 2024, 10am - 12pm.

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