This workshop is focused on the studies of rapid urban transformations in three South Caucasian capital cities by considering continuities and discontinuities in the process of reconfiguration of public spaces, representations and city images after the post-socialist change. This workshop aims to start a comparative discussion on research approaches of urban cultures in these cities as national and transnational cities from the anthropological perspective, to encompass different ways of imagining and representing three cities within the nation, in the Caucasian region and in the global context. After economic decline and political uncertainty postsocialist capitals once again build a space for celebrating new national regimes. Some cities undergo a remarkable process of city reconstruction and the emergence of new social groups that create new city symbols. At the same time urban landscapes in this area present a merge of declining Soviet planed infrastructure and of a new body of confusing architecture and sacred places that are not necessarily associated with the revitalization of the urban life attractive for both local and international inhabitants


22.-23.09.2009 in Tbilisi