Browsing by Author "Karaia, Tamar"
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Item “Let's Defend My, Your, Our Batumi" - Social Movement to Save the Historic Look of Batumi(Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi state university, Faculty of social and political sciences, 2021-06) Dundua, Salome; Karaia, TamarIn the history of independent Georgia civic activism has gone through an interesting path of development. Recently, the given activism has developed largely in the urban space. The preconditions for this have been accumulating for decades. Due to the difficult socio-economic situation, care for urban historical, cultural heritage and ecological health was less on the agenda. The re-urbanization of cities and the widespread idea of adapting to modern standards, which, among other factors, meant attracting investors and making significant investments in the development of the city, has led to the distortion of the historical monuments or entire historic districts in the urban space. These processes brought about a virtually complete depreciation of the urban fabric, which is historically, culturally and ecologically remarkable, and, on the other hand, resulted in civic activism. The cases of regional urban activism stand out, which we plan to discuss in this presentation on the example of the current civic movements in Batumi. Civic activism is developing around three locations in Batumi. These are Technological University, Batumi Boulevard and Batumi Riviera. All three projects are accompanied by the request for approval of the historical and cultural zone of Batumi. Batumi urban space has undergone many interventions recently, but in the report, we will review three main ones, which we think can be analyzed in a single context. These projects have several common features. In all of them, the interests of the developers are reflected and the government supports the implementation of the project (the first and third of which are supported by the people in power in the country, while in the case of Batumi Boulevard, developers cannot exceed the level of support of local authorities); All of them are opposed by civil activists and specialists in the field; And, most importantly, despite periodic successes, the issue of all of them is still unclear. All three cases selected for the study were developed in the same city, in the same period, and the actors involved were virtually the same, nevertheless, the results of these movements were different. Therefore, the research question can be formulated as follows: What were the main factors that contributed to the success/failure of the given movements? By using qualitative research methods (namely, in 2020-2021, 16 in-depth interviews were conducted with civic activists involved in the process, representatives of local government, academia and the media) we study the issue in the context of political mediation theory. This model, acting as a mediator between 'action and outcomes' (Amenta, E. et al. 1992), focuses on both the internal characteristics of the movement and the social and political environment outside the movement, as it believes that the combination of these factors influences on the success or failure of the movement.Item Peculiarities of Social Protest Formation in Georgia(Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi state university, Faculty of social and political sciences, 2019-06) Karaia, Tamar; ქარაია, თამარIn post-Soviet Georgia government and society experienced a long way of confrontation. The Lack of legitimacy of the government, the weakness of political institutions, as well as social-economic and political problems were the main factors, that provoked a protest lead by the politicians - aimed to resign the government and gain power. In this protest citizens where part of decoration. Nowadays we face an upraise of various social groups and transformation of the protest repertoire from resigning government to policy change. This process can be observed from 2012, since a change of the government launched new windows for opportunities. Contentious movements including ecological, labor, LGBT, marihuana decriminalization make their voice heard, collect followers, close protest stage for politicians from opposition political parties, confront or collaborate with the decision makers and trying to reach their goals using different kind of strategies. Alongside to this process, the floor for the anti-governmental political pretest has disappeared. Above mentioned changes mostly influenced the demands and the topics of protest movements. If previous movements reach their goals through a change of government, contemporary protest movements aim to change policies. This process, from our point of view can be discussed as an indicator of positive changes toward the attitude to the political institutes. We will analyze the dynamics of the protest movements in 2003-2018. This timeframe includes a period of mass protest (2003-2010); appearing social groups and launching their protest (2010-2012; 2015-2018) and a perod of silence (2013-2014). Within the research, we rely on the theory of structural functionalism, so called “windows of opportunities” (Tilly, Tarrow) that attempts to explain that movements are conditioned by the social and political situation, while the uprising of movements can be explained by the decrease of trust and influence of political parties. The main aims of this research are to analyze: factors of protest transformation; how and why developments of various social groups where provoked how these social groups are trying to transform themselves to the political elite, to influence on the solution of the issue.