Nana Kobidze

The research project tackles the question of how rights and responsibilities over specific property are negotiated between the state and citizens in a post-disaster context. Following a large-scale landslide in the western highlands of Georgia in 1989, the Soviet government initiated the resettlement and housing provision for families whose houses got destroyed due to the landslide. While the disaster-affected population got temporarily resettled to the empty houses left by the emigrated Greek communities in southern Georgia, the question of state housing provision had become more and more ambiguous after 1991. Building on historical ethnography of changing property regimes, state-citizen relation and privatization vis-à-vis environmental disasters, the research explores the moral claims and informal property regime emerged among people as a response to the absent landlord state. Moreover, based on extensive archival and ethnographic material, the project showcases how labor, as a means of generating claims to property, is a crucial analytical concept for understanding the transformation of the social contract.