https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9974-1049
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ABSTRACT
Focusing on the domestication and undomestication of nature around the River Vere in Tbilisi, Georgia, this article analyses how modernization projects seemingly overcoming nature simultaneously reinforced the complex entanglement between nature and infrastructure, the material and immaterial, the human and non-human. The article centres around a flooding event in 2015, shedding light on the entanglement of different approaches and temporalities. The river and its infrastructure are caught up with ideas, beliefs and materialities. The paper analyses how the crisis gave rise to questions about ‘morality’ of materiality, ‘proper’ and ‘improper’ handling of nature. Based on ethnography and archival work, it shows how the infrastructural developments conceived as projects of Soviet atheist modernity emerged as sites where nature, technologies and religion meet. Rather than looking at Soviet and post-Soviet as two different modernities, the article shows them as continuities.
Acknowledgements
I thank Mariam Darchiashvili, Tamta Khalvashi, Tinatin Khomeriki and Nari Shelepkaev for reading and commenting on the article. Thank you to Levan Kherkheulidze for his kind permission to use their photograph; and Irakli Khvadagiani and Shmagi Liparteliani for locating some archival materials. Special thanks also to Paul Manning and Jeff Sahadeo for evoking my interest in the rivers of the city, reading, and commenting on my article. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Correction Statement
This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2022.2121488).
Notes
1 For a map of the ghost rivers, see CENN (Citation2019, map 1).
2 During my fieldwork, I encountered how the entanglement of the river with infrastructure caused confusion. When after a traditional house blessing ritual a friend of mine embarked on a mission to find a river near her house to perform the elaborate ritual in full, she was perplexed. There was the Vere, she could hear the murmur, but it came from a collector under the ground. Was it more a river or was it more sewage? It was very hard to say.
3 As the focus of the study is to show the complex entanglements of infrastructure and nature, of the scientific and religious, it adopts an actor–network theory-informed view with a sensibility towards the role of non-human actants and associations between things that create the social (Farías, Citation2012; Law, Citation1992).
4 The article continues and adds to the research conducted on modernization projects in the Soviet Union, and particularly in Georgia. Important studies have been written to uncover the ideologies of mastering nature (Jones, Citation2014; Suny, Citation1989) with less emphasis on the entanglement (Weiner, Citation2014). The writings of historians usually pay even less attention to the non-human as a possible actant. Most of recent research on urban space has been focused on the macro-level: the ideology behind the form of the city, the power relationships shaping the geography of the city (Van Assche & Salukvadze, Citation2013). Different aspects of Tbilisi have been the focus of research for historians and anthropologists. Urban historians placed the entanglement in the past (Anchabadze, Volkova, & Arutiunov, Citation1990; Chkhetia, Citation1940; Gersamia, Citation1984) in line with ideological expectations. This article stands more in line with the works capturing different layers of the city, such as Manning (Citation2009, Citation2019) for Tbilisi, or Zeisler-Vralsted (Citation2014) on the Volga and Mississippi. The present article adds to the research on human–non-human entanglement as an ongoing process, not reducible to ideologies. The experience of Soviet and post-Soviet Georgia can be fruitful to reconsider the one-dimensional view of the Soviet modernization project and of Soviet atheism. The ethnographies of infrastructure could enable us to also better understand local reactions to climate change.
5 Beso Gulashvili’s pictures for Reuters went around world; see https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/zoo-animals-on-the-loose-idINRTX1GK3I/.
6 With climate change, studies on floods increasingly look at how the narratives of ‘mastering nature, leaving no loose ends’ (Bubandt & Tsing Citation2018, p. 1) changed into the sense of humility and capitulation (Koslov, Citation2016).
7 His words were widely published and discussed; see http://iverioni.com.ge/qarthuli/siakhletha-arqivi/sazogadoeba/page/29/.
8 Rivers have also been used to purify (bless) work tools, as the construction work has been regarded as a sacred endeavour (Koshoridze, Citation2015, pp. 54–55). The idea of the purity of materials involved in construction revived after the disaster in 2015, as alluded in the speech of the Patriarch.
9 Satirical master plans were pictured in Literaturuli Gazeti (1934), N23.
10 This way the unmapped territories became part of the city. Usually, the old cartographers would mark uncharted territories with the inscription, Hic sunt Leones (or hic sunt Dracones) – encompassing the fascination and fear of the wild and unknown. At the entrance to the zoo, some impressive statues of naturalistic lions were erected after taming the Vere River.
11 The literature on the entanglement between infrastructure and religion has lately become interested in the new animism debates. The rise of the debates is indebted to the writings of Descola (Citation1996) and De Castro (Citation1998), who offer a way to categorize human and non-human in locally sensitive ontologies. Jensen and Blok (Citation2013) efficiently use theoretical discussions to engage in studying the complex relations between Shinto, nationalism, nature and politics (Jensen & Blok, Citation2013). Current anthropological debates often focus on infrastructure and its animism (Rest & Rippa, Citation2019). They particularly specify the concept of techno-animism (pp. 88–89).
12 Cf. the documentary based on archival footage by Sergey Loznitsa, The Trial, 2018.
13 Drosha (1930), No. 5.
14 Rector of St. Andrew University of the Patriarchate in Tbilisi, Sergo Vardosanidze said in an interview with the newspaper Resonance with the headline, ‘What buildings are built with the property confiscated from the church in Tbilisi / Sergo Vardosanidze’: ‘Now what I tell you may lead to a mixed reaction.’ Other media sources have widely published archival material supporting this claim; see the news post of 25 July 2015 at https://old.newposts.ge/?newsid=79529-%E1%83%94%E1%83%99%E1%83%9A%E1%83%94%E1%83%A1%E1%83%98%E1%83%90,%20%E1%83%96%E1%83%90%E1%83%A0%E1%83%94%E1%83%91%E1%83%98,%20%E1%83%93%E1%83%9D%E1%83%99%E1%83%A3%E1%83%9B%E1%83%94%E1%83%9C%E1%83%A2%E1%83%98/.
15 The Georgian grassroots movements opposing the larger infrastructural projects also often subscribe to this view. One can often see protests of big environmental projects with ethnic and religious undertones. In times of crisis, the Georgian Orthodox Church, playing the role of guardian of the national identity, sees nature as its instrument for revenge.
16 In recent years another wilderness emerged: that of the abandoned factories and recreational sites. Many buildings of the old silk factory and the largest swimming pool have been left for nature to reclaim. When the zoo animals escaped, they found shelter in the wilderness of the former swimming pool. In 2015 it felt like the stone statues at the entrance of the zoo, marking the boundary between humans and tamed nature, became alive and stepped down from their bases. I will explore this wilderness in a different paper.
17 See https://netgazeti.ge/news/577858/. Ritual sacrifice is not uncommon in lived religion in Georgia, but mostly at certain celebrations and very rarely in urban settings. Rituals of blessing before construction are reminiscent of what Ishii describes as ‘to smooth the flow and navigation of natural as well as spiritual forces’ (Ishii, Citation2017, p. 704).
18 For a discussion and statistics, see https://socialjustice.org.ge/ka/products/ras-vitkhovt-rodesats-vsaubrobt-shromis-usafrtkhoebaze/.
19 The infrastructure becomes an actant. This infrastructure, a product of an ideology, stands there as a ‘disturbance in a causal milieu, the material entity which motivates interferences, responses, or interpretations’ (Humphrey, Citation2005, p. 43; also cf. Harvey & Knox, Citation2012, p. 524). The perception of modernization projects as new saviours is to the same extent characteristic for the modern Georgian state as it was during the Bolshevik industrialization projects. Often the opposition between nature and infrastructure is perceived as a struggle where evil nature should be tamed.