FACULTY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY | Seminar
Disciplining Labour: Authoritarian Neoliberalism in Georgia
Tuesday 2 December, 15:30 - 17:00
Hybrid meeting, join on Zoom
Niagara, C0933, 9th floor seminar room, Nordenskiöldsgatan 1, or Zoom
Welcome to RUCARR seminar 2 December!
Speaker
Dr Konstantine Eristavi.
Abstract
Most accounts interpret recent developments in Georgia as “democratic backsliding” and a qualitative break from an earlier phase of democratisation. I contend instead that Georgia’s trajectory is better understood as the ongoing consolidation of an authoritarian neoliberal model.
In contrast to prevailing approaches that separate the analysis of authoritarianism in former Soviet states from questions of political economy, this presentation argues that authoritarian governance in Georgia is constitutive of its development model and inseparable from strategies pursued by capitalist elites.
In particular, the talk traces (dis)continuities in the configuration of state power since independence and discusses mechanisms through which successive governments have disciplined working and poor classes and depoliticised social conflict in order to entrench the neoliberal regime of capital accumulation.
