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Territory, Politics, Governance, 2019
Foreign analysts often consider the Republic of Georgia’s territorial borders through geopolitica... more Foreign analysts often consider the Republic of Georgia’s territorial borders through geopolitical imaginations of great powers, foreign occupations and democratic reforms. However, the Georgian government’s push to decentralize and deregulate all economic sectors has also produced a new licence-based resource governance system that generates informal, yet similarly dynamic, territorial struggles. This paper considers the case of a gold and copper mining complex in southern Georgia, assessed through a range of mixed empirics collected during the summers of 2015–17. In doing so, it proposes viewing extractive industries’ political geographies as sets of embedded and often informal bordering practices. In Georgia, these borderings produce a political ‘island’ within a broader extractive ‘archipelago’: simultaneously bound from and connected to their surrounding environments, yet also linked with other similar corporate-owned extractive jurisdictions across disparate governing contexts. Such borderings produce shifting power geometries that citizens must navigate daily. Understanding mining’s diverse effects, especially in post-Soviet environments, requires connecting and contextualizing these extractive practices. The paper therefore illustrates how Georgian resource extraction offers a window onto broader shifts in corporate and state political geographies across Eurasia.
Eurasian Geography and Economics, 2019
Post-Soviet Georgia’s Sakdrisi-Madneuli gold and copper mining complex dominates the political ec... more Post-Soviet Georgia’s Sakdrisi-Madneuli gold and copper mining complex dominates the political economy of the Mashavera Valley, alongside a series of toxic ecological consequences. In this paper I argue that, within these environmental politics, a set of transformations exist in the broader political imaginations of local citizens – visions of a nation and homeland in transition. I analyze scripts of Georgian nationhood and homeland as they circulate throughout the localized, everyday contexts of the Sakdrisi-Madneuli mining complex, exploring how one small group of communities in southern Georgia experiences intersections of resource extraction and national identification. I demonstrate how contrasting imaginations of Georgia’s homeland, typically envisioned as lived territory filled with resources, emerge in the local context of resource extraction projects increasingly imbued with political significance by local citizens. In doing so I advance scholarship related to the political construction and legitimation of territorial and governmental arrangements in the former Soviet Union, moving toward an understanding of how experiences and imaginations of resource governance shape these formations.
Geoforum, 2019
On 17 June 2015, an unprecedented series of rain events caused a wall of water to tear through an... more On 17 June 2015, an unprecedented series of rain events caused a wall of water to tear through an affluent urban neighborhood in the Georgian capital Tbilisi. The flood damaged 700 homes, displaced 67 families, killed 19 people, left 3 more unaccounted for – while also leaving nearly 300 animals either drowned or killed as the flood destroyed the Soviet-era Tbilisi Zoo. Deadly and headline grabbing interactions among humans and non-humans continued surprising those in Tbilisi as diverse actors tried to control the precarious situation unfolding in this post-Soviet urban landscape, and survivors of all sorts roamed the streets. I illustrate these relationships by analyzing news coverage, government statements, technical reports, archival resources, and my own experiences as a participant observer within the events surrounding the flood. In doing so I extend arguments by Foucault and his interlocuters to present a case of more-than-human government, requiring the arrangement of non-human elements to maintain the life of a political population such as the Tbilisi citizenry. As I demonstrate, such governmental practices require not only calculations of what life to protect and what to destroy via sovereignty, discipline, and biopolitics, but also a constellation of other powers, including historically embedded regimes of truth and authority. From this perspective, the security of a human population may at times rely on its imbrication with the government of animals and infrastructure alike, and vice versa – by securing, disciplining, knowing, and at times destroying our material environments and companion species, however we may be related.
Human Geography of Post-Socialist Mountain Regions
While many states at the periphery of the former Soviet Union have pursued decentralization in ne... more While many states at the periphery of the former Soviet Union have pursued decentralization in nearly all areas of governance, this trend is perhaps most notable in natural resource sectors and the effects these reforms have on society. I explore these scalar political, economic, and environmental connections through a qualitative case study of alpine forest governance in the mountains of Georgia. Analyzing a series of thirty-five semi-structured interviews conducted during the summers of 2012 and 2013, I investigate the ways in which state power operates through governance of Georgia’s alpine forests. Like all democracies, the Georgian government oscillates between poles of centralization and decentralization. However, the practices of the Georgian government, as it currently exists through alpine forestry, produces a distinctly fractured (gatekhili in Georgian) form of democracy. The dynamics of the emerging Georgian state as seen through alpine forest governance are informative for understanding the political transition of mountainous post-Soviet states in the 21st century, and contemporary state formation more generally.
Si de nombreux États satellites de l’ancienne Union soviétique ont procédé à la décentralisation de quasiment tous leurs domaines de gouvernance, cette tendance est particulièrement flagrante dans le secteur des ressources naturelles et dans les effets sociétaux des réformes menées. Dans cette contribution, je vais examiner ces liens scalaires politiques, économiques et environnementaux à l’aune d’une étude qualitative de la gestion forestière des milieux alpins en Géorgie. En analysant une série de trente-cinq interviews semi-dirigées menées durant les étés 2012 et 2013, j’explorerai la manière dont le pouvoir public agit à travers la gestion des forêts alpines géorgiennes. Comme c’est le cas dans toute démocratie, le gouvernement géorgien oscille entre centralisation et décentralisation. Les pratiques du gouvernement géorgien, à l’image de sa gestion de la forêt alpine, produisent une forme de démocratie ostensiblement fracturée ( gatekhili en géorgien). Analyser les dynamiques de l’État géorgien émergeant sous l’angle de la gestion forestière en milieu alpin peut être utile à la compréhension de la transition politique des pays de montagne post-soviétiques au fil du XIXe siècle et de la formation contemporaine des États en général.
Book Reviews by Jesse Swann-Quinn
Thesis Chapters by Jesse Swann-Quinn
On December 13, 2014, the Republic of Georgia’s central government made a rapid series of decisio... more On December 13, 2014, the Republic of Georgia’s central government made a rapid series of decisions behind closed doors. These legislative moves allowed RMG Gold, the Russian-owned mining company operating in Georgia’s southern Mashavera Valley, to destroy the archaeological site at Sakdrisi-Kachgariani – the oldest gold mine ever discovered and a national cultural heritage site. The government’s decision followed more than a year of contentious struggle among competing political factions, yet in the end the mining work moved forward and continues expanding today. RMG’s destruction of Sakdrisi was just one event within Georgia’s broader political transition, de-centralizing resource governance toward corporate interests through a territorially based system of extraction licenses. This dissertation investigates the political geographies of Georgia’s resource governance transition, analyzing the politics and effects of mining governance in this post-Soviet market-oriented democracy. I analyze this topic using a mixed methods approach, combining semi-structured interviews, discourse and textual analysis, and a spatial database of mining sites throughout the former Soviet Union. My analysis illustrates how these political practices contribute to the broader geopolitical shifts within the country and across the region, occurring in part through the narratives and embodied experiences of people living near the Sakdrisi-Madneuli mining complex. Through this investigation I argue that the Mashavera Valley’s “malleable territories” – my phrase for this territory’s flexible and governable nature, especially as it relates to mineral governance, mining, and the government of people and things – emerge from a range of political practices, geopolitical imaginations, and material experiences to reshape the political spaces of Georgia and the South Caucasus. Together these findings illustrate how environmental struggles and practices of resource governance contribute to broader shifting power geometries and a lived vision of geopolitics.
Territory, Politics, Governance, 2019
Foreign analysts often consider the Republic of Georgia’s territorial borders through geopolitica... more Foreign analysts often consider the Republic of Georgia’s territorial borders through geopolitical imaginations of great powers, foreign occupations and democratic reforms. However, the Georgian government’s push to decentralize and deregulate all economic sectors has also produced a new licence-based resource governance system that generates informal, yet similarly dynamic, territorial struggles. This paper considers the case of a gold and copper mining complex in southern Georgia, assessed through a range of mixed empirics collected during the summers of 2015–17. In doing so, it proposes viewing extractive industries’ political geographies as sets of embedded and often informal bordering practices. In Georgia, these borderings produce a political ‘island’ within a broader extractive ‘archipelago’: simultaneously bound from and connected to their surrounding environments, yet also linked with other similar corporate-owned extractive jurisdictions across disparate governing contexts. Such borderings produce shifting power geometries that citizens must navigate daily. Understanding mining’s diverse effects, especially in post-Soviet environments, requires connecting and contextualizing these extractive practices. The paper therefore illustrates how Georgian resource extraction offers a window onto broader shifts in corporate and state political geographies across Eurasia.
Eurasian Geography and Economics, 2019
Post-Soviet Georgia’s Sakdrisi-Madneuli gold and copper mining complex dominates the political ec... more Post-Soviet Georgia’s Sakdrisi-Madneuli gold and copper mining complex dominates the political economy of the Mashavera Valley, alongside a series of toxic ecological consequences. In this paper I argue that, within these environmental politics, a set of transformations exist in the broader political imaginations of local citizens – visions of a nation and homeland in transition. I analyze scripts of Georgian nationhood and homeland as they circulate throughout the localized, everyday contexts of the Sakdrisi-Madneuli mining complex, exploring how one small group of communities in southern Georgia experiences intersections of resource extraction and national identification. I demonstrate how contrasting imaginations of Georgia’s homeland, typically envisioned as lived territory filled with resources, emerge in the local context of resource extraction projects increasingly imbued with political significance by local citizens. In doing so I advance scholarship related to the political construction and legitimation of territorial and governmental arrangements in the former Soviet Union, moving toward an understanding of how experiences and imaginations of resource governance shape these formations.
Geoforum, 2019
On 17 June 2015, an unprecedented series of rain events caused a wall of water to tear through an... more On 17 June 2015, an unprecedented series of rain events caused a wall of water to tear through an affluent urban neighborhood in the Georgian capital Tbilisi. The flood damaged 700 homes, displaced 67 families, killed 19 people, left 3 more unaccounted for – while also leaving nearly 300 animals either drowned or killed as the flood destroyed the Soviet-era Tbilisi Zoo. Deadly and headline grabbing interactions among humans and non-humans continued surprising those in Tbilisi as diverse actors tried to control the precarious situation unfolding in this post-Soviet urban landscape, and survivors of all sorts roamed the streets. I illustrate these relationships by analyzing news coverage, government statements, technical reports, archival resources, and my own experiences as a participant observer within the events surrounding the flood. In doing so I extend arguments by Foucault and his interlocuters to present a case of more-than-human government, requiring the arrangement of non-human elements to maintain the life of a political population such as the Tbilisi citizenry. As I demonstrate, such governmental practices require not only calculations of what life to protect and what to destroy via sovereignty, discipline, and biopolitics, but also a constellation of other powers, including historically embedded regimes of truth and authority. From this perspective, the security of a human population may at times rely on its imbrication with the government of animals and infrastructure alike, and vice versa – by securing, disciplining, knowing, and at times destroying our material environments and companion species, however we may be related.
Human Geography of Post-Socialist Mountain Regions
While many states at the periphery of the former Soviet Union have pursued decentralization in ne... more While many states at the periphery of the former Soviet Union have pursued decentralization in nearly all areas of governance, this trend is perhaps most notable in natural resource sectors and the effects these reforms have on society. I explore these scalar political, economic, and environmental connections through a qualitative case study of alpine forest governance in the mountains of Georgia. Analyzing a series of thirty-five semi-structured interviews conducted during the summers of 2012 and 2013, I investigate the ways in which state power operates through governance of Georgia’s alpine forests. Like all democracies, the Georgian government oscillates between poles of centralization and decentralization. However, the practices of the Georgian government, as it currently exists through alpine forestry, produces a distinctly fractured (gatekhili in Georgian) form of democracy. The dynamics of the emerging Georgian state as seen through alpine forest governance are informative for understanding the political transition of mountainous post-Soviet states in the 21st century, and contemporary state formation more generally.
Si de nombreux États satellites de l’ancienne Union soviétique ont procédé à la décentralisation de quasiment tous leurs domaines de gouvernance, cette tendance est particulièrement flagrante dans le secteur des ressources naturelles et dans les effets sociétaux des réformes menées. Dans cette contribution, je vais examiner ces liens scalaires politiques, économiques et environnementaux à l’aune d’une étude qualitative de la gestion forestière des milieux alpins en Géorgie. En analysant une série de trente-cinq interviews semi-dirigées menées durant les étés 2012 et 2013, j’explorerai la manière dont le pouvoir public agit à travers la gestion des forêts alpines géorgiennes. Comme c’est le cas dans toute démocratie, le gouvernement géorgien oscille entre centralisation et décentralisation. Les pratiques du gouvernement géorgien, à l’image de sa gestion de la forêt alpine, produisent une forme de démocratie ostensiblement fracturée ( gatekhili en géorgien). Analyser les dynamiques de l’État géorgien émergeant sous l’angle de la gestion forestière en milieu alpin peut être utile à la compréhension de la transition politique des pays de montagne post-soviétiques au fil du XIXe siècle et de la formation contemporaine des États en général.
On December 13, 2014, the Republic of Georgia’s central government made a rapid series of decisio... more On December 13, 2014, the Republic of Georgia’s central government made a rapid series of decisions behind closed doors. These legislative moves allowed RMG Gold, the Russian-owned mining company operating in Georgia’s southern Mashavera Valley, to destroy the archaeological site at Sakdrisi-Kachgariani – the oldest gold mine ever discovered and a national cultural heritage site. The government’s decision followed more than a year of contentious struggle among competing political factions, yet in the end the mining work moved forward and continues expanding today. RMG’s destruction of Sakdrisi was just one event within Georgia’s broader political transition, de-centralizing resource governance toward corporate interests through a territorially based system of extraction licenses. This dissertation investigates the political geographies of Georgia’s resource governance transition, analyzing the politics and effects of mining governance in this post-Soviet market-oriented democracy. I analyze this topic using a mixed methods approach, combining semi-structured interviews, discourse and textual analysis, and a spatial database of mining sites throughout the former Soviet Union. My analysis illustrates how these political practices contribute to the broader geopolitical shifts within the country and across the region, occurring in part through the narratives and embodied experiences of people living near the Sakdrisi-Madneuli mining complex. Through this investigation I argue that the Mashavera Valley’s “malleable territories” – my phrase for this territory’s flexible and governable nature, especially as it relates to mineral governance, mining, and the government of people and things – emerge from a range of political practices, geopolitical imaginations, and material experiences to reshape the political spaces of Georgia and the South Caucasus. Together these findings illustrate how environmental struggles and practices of resource governance contribute to broader shifting power geometries and a lived vision of geopolitics.