Mining the homeland: imagining resources, nation, and territory in the Republic of Georgia

Abstract

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.