Ambiguous nationhood: Identity and belonging in the unrecognised state of Abkhazia

该奖学金的主要目的是将我的博士论文转化为专著。在我的论文中，我追溯了阿布哈兹民族融合的过程，阿布哈兹是南高加索地区一个有争议的地区，在20世纪90年代的一场战争后实际上从格鲁吉亚独立出来。我特别关注了暴力对人们身份的影响，这一现象在后苏联战争的研究中受到的关注有限。这篇论文采用了一种对生活经验敏感的方法，背离了暴力是对立身份的结果的流行观点。它认为，尽管局势紧张，但阿布哈兹仍然存在一个跨种族的社区。虽然从20世纪80年代开始，社会变得越来越分裂，但大规模暴力最终是由军事干预引发的。一旦被释放，暴行就会引发一个敌对的集体分类过程，为格鲁吉亚人的流离失所铺平道路。但从战争事件的角度来看，它也说明了一旦战争结束，冲突冻结，一个社区面临的挑战，在这一时期，外部敌人继续团结人民，但由于物理和时间上的距离，也变得遥远。因此，本文认为，不仅是暴力的经历塑造了战后关系，而且战后变化的经历也是如此。将这一主题变成一本书，使我能够进一步探索该地区的复杂性，并扩大冻结冲突和不断变化的冲突动态(如俄罗斯承认阿布哈兹独立)对人们身份认同的影响。在目前的形式下，本文聚焦于尚未解决的战争和大规模流离失所所造成的矛盾和歧义，从而对战后身份文学做出了独到的贡献。在这本书中，我打算更多地强调国际孤立和有限承认的作用。特别是，我想进一步思考种族幽闭恐惧症和种族内部不信任现象，认为这是种族亲密的另一面，重点是国际孤立不仅滋生了所谓的“围困心态”，而且反复出现想要“休息”和“逃离”的愿望。通过这样做，我希望产生一份手稿，不仅对关于民族主义、种族冲突和政治暴力的学术研究，而且对关于事实上的国家的文献做出重大贡献。虽然这份手稿将主要基于我在博士期间收集的数据，但该奖学金的第二个目标是在阿布哈兹西部进行有限的额外实地考察。由于我之前的许多实地考察都是在阿布哈兹中部和东部进行的，这将确保书中提出的调查结果是以不同地理位置的数据为基础的。第三个目标是制定一项筹资提案，使我能够更深入地探讨冻结冲突中族裔混杂家庭的现象，我在阿布哈兹实地考察时对这一现象很感兴趣，在那里，我的一些被确认为阿布哈兹人的参与者实际上是格鲁吉亚母亲的孩子，她们在战后能够留在阿布哈兹，因为她们与阿布哈兹人结婚。利用日常和平的概念(Mac Ginty，2014)，讲习班的目的是更好地了解普通行为者用来驾驭和规避未解决冲突的战略，以及这些战略和做法如何为正式的建设和平举措提供指导。该奖学金的第五个目标是写三篇针对更广泛的公众受众的非学术短文。这将包括关于暴力在格鲁吉亚-阿布哈兹冲突中的作用、生活在阿布哈兹的格鲁吉亚-阿布哈兹混血家庭的命运的出版物，以及一篇关于负责任地前往事实上的国家的文章。

The primary aim of the fellowship is to turn my PhD thesis into a monograph. In my thesis, I traced the process of ethnic un-mixing in Abkhazia, a contested region in the South Caucasus that became de facto independent from Georgia after a war in the 1990s. In particular, I focused on the impact of violence on people's identities, a phenomenon which has received limited attention in the study of the post-Soviet wars. Adopting an approach that is sensitive to lived experience, the thesis departs from the prevalent view that violence is a result of antagonistic identities. It argues that although there were tensions, a cross-ethnic community nevertheless existed in Abkhazia. While society became increasingly divided from the 1980s, large-scale violence was ultimately provoked by military intervention. Once unleashed, atrocities triggered a process of antagonistic collective categorisation that paved the way for the displacement of Georgians. But looking beyond the event of war, it also illustrates the challenges a community faces once war is over and the conflict becomes frozen, a period in which an external enemy continues to unite people but, due to physical and temporal distance, also becomes distant. The thesis thus argues that it is not just the experience of violence that shapes post-war relations, but also the experience of post-war changes. Turning the thesis into a book allows me to further explore the region's complexity and expand on the impact of frozen conflict and the changing conflict dynamics (such as Russia's recognition of Abkhazia's independence) on people's identities. In its current form, the thesis focuses on the contradictions and ambiguities resulting from unresolved war and mass displacement and hence makes an original contribution to the literature on post-war identity. For the book, I intend to place greater emphasis on the role of international isolation and limited recognition. In particular, I want to further develop my reflections on the phenomena of 'ethnic claustrophobia' and intra-ethnic mistrust as the flipside of ethnic intimacy, focusing on the ways in which international isolation not only fosters a so-called 'siege mentality' but also a recurring desire to 'take a break' and 'escape'. In doing so, I hope to produce a manuscript that makes a strong contribution not only to the scholarships on nationalism, ethnic conflict and political violence, but also to the literature on de facto states.While this manuscript will be largely based on data collected during my PhD, the second aim of the fellowship is to conduct limited additional fieldwork in western Abkhazia. As much of my previous fieldwork took place in central and eastern Abkhazia, this will ensure that the findings presented in the book are grounded in geographically varied data. The third aim is to develop a funding proposal that will allow me to explore more deeply the phenomenon of ethnically mixed families in frozen conflict, which I became intrigued by during my fieldwork in Abkhazia, where some of my participants who identified as ethnic Abkhazians were, in fact, children of Georgian mothers who were able to stay in Abkhazia after the war because they were married to Abkhaz men.The fourth aim of the fellowship is to organise a workshop that brings together academics, policy-makers and peacebuilding practitioners. Drawing on the concept of everyday peace (Mac Ginty, 2014), the purpose of the workshop is to gain a better understanding of the strategies that ordinary actors use to navigate and circumvent unresolved conflict and how those strategies and practices can inform formal peacebuilding initiatives. The fifth aim of the fellowship is to write three short, non-academic articles targeted at a wider public audience. This will include publications on the role of violence in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, the fate of Georgian-Abkhaz mixed families living in Abkhazia, and an essay about responsible travel to a de facto state.