Strangers in a Strange Land

Manning examines the formation of nineteenth-century intelligentsia print publics in the former Soviet republic of Georgia both anthropologically and historically. At once somehow part of “Europe,” at least aspirationally, and yet rarely recognized by others as such, Georgia attempted to forge European style publics as a strong claim to European identity. These attempts also produced a crisis of self-defi nition, as European Georgia sent newspaper correspondents into newly reconquered Oriental Georgia, only to discover that the people of these lands were strangers. In this encounter, the community of “strangers” of European Georgian publics proved unable to assimilate the people of the “strange land” of Oriental Georgia. This crisis produced both notions of Georgian public life and European identity which this book explores.

Paul Manning (PhD University of Chicago) is an associate professor of Anthropology at Trent University. His recent publications include “The Epoch of Magna: Capitalist Brands and Postsocialist Revolutions in Georgia” (Slavic Review), “Rose-Colored Glasses? Color Revolutions and Cartoon Chaos in Postsocialist Georgia” (Cultural Anthropology), “Materiality and Cosmology: Old Georgian Churches as Sacred, Sublime, and Secular Objects” (Ethnos).