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On the other hand, economic activities are not seen as a continuum,
but are juxtaposed in conceptual terms as the ones regulated
by the state and the ones not regulated. The latter phenomenon
is usually termed with different, though partly overlapping
terms like 'shadow economy' (Schneider and Enste 2002) or
'informal economy' (Hardt 1992). In the first version the
state becomes a colonized object, a victim of powerful elites,
and in the second one the state appears as a potent regulator,
who controls the economy but does not manage to control some
minor economic spheres and therefore denies their existence.
How can we get a picture of these relations and the state
in them, while at the same time avoid to blurring all possible
distinguishing lines between mechanisms like survival, favours,
corruption, and embezzlement? At the same time how can we
avoid reifying dichotomies between the economy and the state
or the state and society, or inside and outside the state?
Georgia seems to offer a particular good case to study these
questions, as in rankings it occupies the highest, or one
of the highest, rates of shadow economic activity among the
post-socialist states (Schneider and Enste 2002) and traces
of this situation point back to the importance of the so-called
'second economy' in the Georgian Socialist Soviet Republic
(Mars and Altman 1983). In the Georgian region of Mingrelia,
clientelist networks have been the object of historical study
on the example of Lavrenti Beria's powerbase, who was a very
important figure around Stalin (Fairbanks 1996). Mingrelia
offers an additional fantastic opportunity for two reasons:
first, its location at the edge of the territory controlled
by the Georgian state reveals a quality of “marginality”,
even though it is a special kind of borderland, which I see
as a 'demilitarized zone' because the ceasefire line still
implies the presence of other, foreign state actors (Rabinowitz
and Khawalde 2000). Second, although Mingrelians consider
themselves to be Georgians, their ethnicity, in the first
place constructed upon language difference, may be decisive
as a bases for the construction of networks; thus, ethnicity
markers may create an interesting situation, making the link
between nation and state-building more salient and obvious,
a feature that most other Georgian regions cannot offer to
such an extent.
Consequently, in my project I will explore the mutually constitutive
relationship between the state, consisting of the state apparatus
and the state as ideological construct, and vertical “grey”
networks, which I term clientelist for simplicity reasons.
Further, I will investigate the strategic use or non-use of
ethnicity within these networks and vis-a-vis the state, in
other words how networks are mobilized vis-a-vis the state,
using ethnicity or not-using ethnicity. Main stream political
scientists are very quick in asserting the importance of such
networks, but prove unable to explain underlying relationships,
concentrating purely on statistical data and secondary sources
centred on elite networks, and they resort to quick conclusions
about the weak nature of the state. But what do these networks
entail on a smaller scale? My aim is to find out, using the
classical anthropological tools: a long-term stay with participant
observation supplemented by other more formal methods.
The primary question I wish to investigate is the following:
• What role does ethnicity, and more specifically Mingrelian-ness,
play in the mutual constitution of clientelist networks and
the state?
This question is actually best dealt with by splitting it
up into a set of three sub-questions:
• When is the notion of Mingrelian-ness used? What does
it refer to? What are its current and past dynamics?
• What are the mechanisms of clientelist networks in
Mingrelia?
• How can (the “nature” of) the Georgian
state be grasped between attempting to control manifestations
of ethnicity in a borderland economy and being dominated by
clientelist networks?
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