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

奖学金的主要目的是把我的博士论文变成一本专著。在我的论文中，我追溯了阿布哈兹的种族融合过程，阿布哈兹是南高加索的一个有争议的地区，在20世纪90年代的一场战争后，它实际上从格鲁吉亚独立出来。特别是，我专注于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了有限的关注。本文采用了一种对生活经验敏感的方法，偏离了普遍认为暴力是对抗性身份的结果的观点。它认为，尽管存在紧张局势，但阿布哈兹仍然存在一个跨族裔社区。自1980年代以来，社会日益分裂，大规模暴力最终由军事干预引发。暴行一旦爆发，就引发了一个敌对的集体分类过程，为格鲁吉亚人的流离失所铺平了道路。但在战争事件之外，它也说明了一个社区在战争结束和冲突冻结后所面临的挑战，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，不仅是暴力的经验，塑造战后关系，而且战后的变化经验。把论文变成一本书，使我能够进一步探讨该地区的复杂性，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的独立）对人民身份的影响。在其目前的形式，论文的重点是矛盾和模糊性所造成的悬而未决的战争和大规模流离失所，从而作出了原创性的贡献，文学的战后身份。在本书中，我打算更加强调国际孤立和有限承认的作用。特别是，我想进一步发展我对“种族幽闭恐惧症”和种族内不信任的现象作为种族亲密关系的另一面的思考，重点是国际孤立不仅助长了所谓的“围攻心态”，而且还反复出现了“休息”和“逃跑”的愿望。在这样做的时候，我希望产生一个手稿，使强大的贡献，不仅对民族主义，种族冲突和政治暴力的奖学金，但也对事实上的国家的文献。虽然这份手稿将主要基于我的博士期间收集的数据，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。由于我以前的大部分实地考察都是在阿布哈兹中部和东部进行的，这将确保本书中提出的调查结果是基于地理上不同的数据。第三个目标是制定一项供资提案，使我能够更深入地探讨冻结冲突中族裔混合家庭的现象，我在阿布哈兹实地工作期间对此产生了兴趣，在那里，我的一些被认定为阿布哈兹人的参与者实际上，研究金的第四个目标是组织一个由格鲁吉亚母亲组成的研究金项目，该讲习班汇集了学者、决策者和建设和平工作者。讲习班借鉴日常和平的概念（Mac Ginty，2014年），目的是更好地了解普通行为体用于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信息。该奖学金的第五个目标是写三个简短的，非学术性的文章，针对更广泛的公众受众。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-阿布哈兹混合家庭的命运的出版物，以及一篇关于负责任地前往一个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.