FACULTY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY | Dissertation defence
Dissertation defence – Nick Baigent
Friday 4 April, 10:15 - 15:00
Niagara, auditorium C (NI:C0E11), Nordenskiöldsgatan 1
Welcome to Nick Baigent's dissertation defence. Nick is a doctoral student at the Department of Global Political Studies at the Faculty of Culture and Society.
Title of the dissertation
The Sound of Money: Hydropower Development and Local Resistance in the Republic of Georgia.
Faculty opponent
Professor Nutsa Batiashvili, Free University of Tbilisi, Georgia.
Examining committee
• Professor Oliver Reisner, Ilia State University, Georgia
• Associate Professor Sofie Bedford, Uppsala University, Sweden
• Associate Professor Christofer Berglund, Malmö University, Sweden
• Associate Professor Martin Demant Frederiksen, Aarhus University, Denmark (reserve member)
• Professor Karina Vamling, Malmö University (reserve member)
Public defence chairperson
• Professor Derek Stanford Hutcheson, Malmö University, Sweden.
Livestream
This page will be updated on the day of the defence to include a live stream video of the event.
Questions
Questions for the public defence can be emailed to Michel Anderlini: michel-vincent.anderlini@mau.se
The dissertation defence will be held in English. The defence is open to all, and no registration is required. Welcome!
This work details how it has been possible for small, rural communities in Georgia to successfully oppose the development of large-scale hydropower development. The work looks at the Namakhvani, Khudoni, and Nenskra hydropower plants (HPPs) in Svaneti and Racha/Imereti and details the international, national, and local politics that have shapped efforts to build and oppose these projects.
Resiliant local communities
These projects are internationally funded and have been supported by multiple governments. This should, in theory, create a significant power imbalance between those who want the development of the HPPs and those who do not. However, local communities have proved resilant to the development in numerous ways.
In taking a multi-tiered approach to explaining events insight is gained into the institutional and social elements of conceptulisations of ‘power’. In mapping the insitutional machinations of development and the political justifications for the projects the limitations of these frameworks are exposed. Thus, this manuscript employees ethnographic research in conjuction with interviews at the local, national, and international level to examine how it has been possible for small village communities to obstruct and stall the development.
The agency and power of local communities is highlighted.
The work operationalises concepts such as collective memory, sense of place, and local social structures to explain community success. This, in a broader context, is illustrative of limitations within Political writings on Georgia (and countries similar to Georgia) that rely on grand narratives and easily accessible information to explain events and geo-political power. In taking a bottom-up approach the agency and power of local communities, even in the face of a significant imbalance in resource based power, is highlighted. Raising questions around the capacity of existing paradigms to understand poltical conceptulisations of power in a global context.
