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theses

Borderland communities unequally and disproportionately suffer at the altar of geopolitics. Rather than the periphery, borderlands are the epicenter of territorial conflict and contests over sovereignty. This is evident in the Republic of Georgia after the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, where the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation began incrementally and unilaterally demarcating sections of the boundary line to the disputed and unrecognized territory of South Ossetia. This dissertation uses a feminist geopolitics approach to critically examine the violent geography of this borderization process. In addition to performing de facto sovereignty, borderization is theorized as a biopolitical tool of leverage. Qualitative mixed methods and multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in a series of “conflict-affected villages” adjacent to the South Ossetian Administrative Boundary Line reveal how the uncertainties of the elastic border impacts the in/security of rural populations, whose pasturelands, homes, and social worlds are now bifurcated by the hardening of this dividing line. Two in-depth empirical chapters illustrate the embodied and emotional experiences of border violence. The first chapter shows how borderization transforms borderland villages into a "neitherland," which is a type of zone of abandonment. Through an emphasis on gendered mobilities, the second chapter demonstrates how ambiguously demarcated sections of the boundary imperil men vis-à-vis women, putting them at risk of arbitrary detention by the Russian-backed security regime. Attention to the issue of restricted freedom of movement and how men confront the border regime exposes an emerging form of traumatic masculinity, reinforcing an understanding of border violence as a gendered phenomenon.

ETD_10288

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-jx20-8f46

ETD doctoral

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