Lela RekhviashviliLeibniz Institute for Regional Geography | IfL · Multiple Geographies of Regional and Local Development
Lela Rekhviashvili
Doctor of Philosophy
About
35
Publications
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
September 2010 - June 2016
Publications
Publications (35)
Starting from the observation that the notion of “multiple geographies” has gained considerable traction in geographical research in the past years while its theoretical foundations have often remained abstract, in this paper we contribute toward elaboration of multiple geographies as a research perspective, recognizing its potential as a valuable...
Drawing on an analysis of major infrastructure projects in Georgia, we propose a reconceptualization of infrastructure-led development as constituted by multi-scalar contesta-tions. We illustrate that actors associated with different great powers more often pursue similar rather than significantly different strategies and tend to collaborate when f...
In this brief article I try to reintroduce suspiciously forgotten topic of class and more broadly social difference when discussing resistance. I develop three brief arguments drawing on an over a decade long research on various urban and rural resistances to neoliberal marketisation and accompanying authoritarian politics in a small Caucasian stat...
Who can resist capitalism today and how? Who can resist capitalism in Georgia or in other peripheral countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, where the supposed central agent of the resistance – civil society – according to mainstream/liberal or critical evaluators, is weak, divided, and alienated from local social concerns (Foa and Ekiert, 2017; H...
This article points out the need to talk about the political society, or
the politics and resistances, of subaltern groups in Eastern Europe
and Eurasia. Existing literature frames diversity marginalized
struggles as civil society struggles or decries the weakness of
donor-driven, disembedded civil societies, reproducing the
understanding of politi...
This editorial introduces and contextualises the Special Issue on informalities in urban transport and mobility in cities across the Global South, East and North. It identifies a mutual misrecognition between the urban studies literature on informality and research on transport and mobilities, and proposes that urban mobility be understood as a cri...
The concept of informality has been largely dismissed in discussions about urban mobility in the global North. To address this, we explore the case of the navettes, informal vans that operate in the unlikely and unfriendly formal transport landscape of Brussels. Relying on qualitative fieldwork, we examine their economic model, low profitability, l...
This paper builds upon recent post-structuralist writings on informal economic practices, using most importantly a Polanyian institutionalist framework, to discuss formal/informal and market/non-market practices in the transport sector. The article proposes a critical reading of the literary canon of informal transport, which largely assumes a natu...
It is hard to study marshrutkas. They are elusive; there are no clear criteria on what a marshrutka is or on what a marshrutka is not. They differ by color, size and shape. They differ in whom they serve, who drives them, who owns them, who governs them. They differ in the ways they operate, the way routes are laid out, the way they are standardise...
Transport workers are conspicuously absent from both mobilities and urban studies literature. This paper therefore starts out with a double critique. First, transport workers, primarily drivers, are largely disregarded in mobilities and urban transport research. Second, the literature we find on transport workers—mostly based in empirical settings...
This article offers a first comparative discussion about ride-sharing (ride-sourcing) practices and informal transport. It focuses primarily on Uber, and marshrutkas-a socially and economically crucial mobility offer prevailing in many post-Soviet cities. The absence or evasion of state regulations, low labour standards of transport workers, and hi...
Existing literature tends to see informality in Soviet times as a rational response to deficient socialist institutions. In contrast, informality in post-socialist times is explained by the stickiness of culturally embedded norms. This chapter examines the reasons and implications for these inconsistent interpretations of Soviet and post-Soviet inf...
This article looks at the informal governance practice of Georgia’s post-revolution (2003-2012) reformers. Empirically, we argue that the deployment of informal governance strategies became necessary for the Georgian government precisely because its official liberal reform course was politically constraining and incapacitated it from coping with th...
Introducing this special issue of Caucasus Survey, this article emphasizes the dual importance of studying informality in the South Caucasus: to reveal processes previously dismissed from the purview of academic enquiry, and to elaborate the informality concept as an innovative prism through which to understand norms and regulations structuring soc...
Discussing the case of institutional change and its discontents in the Georgian context, this article critically engages with one of the most influential perspectives on informal economic practices, namely the new institutionalist perspective. The examination of the responses to the new-institutionalist remedies reveals counterintuitive outcomes to...
Drawing on evidence from the competition for public spaces between street vendors and the authorities in Georgia our contribution through this article is two-fold. First, we provide empirical evidence showing the diverse role of informality in a series of settings, and its capacity to influence decision and policy making. Second, we explore the rel...
Drawing on evidence from the competition for public spaces between street vendors and the authorities in Georgia our contribution through this article is twofold. First, we provide empirical evidence showing the diverse role of informality in a series of settings, and its capacity to influence decision and policy making. Second, we explore the rela...
Abstract
Georgia has one of the largest shares of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the world, amounting to nearly 6 per
cent of the population. A significant portion of Georgia’s IDPs are persons who were forced to flee their homes
during a series of armed tensions in the 1990s, while the 2008 war with Russia created a new wave of displaced
p...
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the reasons behind a decade long contestations between the Georgian government and the petty traders over the access to the public space for commercial use.
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper relies on the repeated ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tbilisi in 2012 and 2013. The et...
The current research asks what was the developmental trajectory communicated by the Georgian
government since 2003 to domestic and international audiences? What kind of role did the Georgian
government project in social and economic development? The paper looks at the evolution of the political
narrative of development in Georgia throughout the yea...