berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

List of Figures

Introduction: Transience and the Sea
Martin Demant Frederiksen and Tamta Khalvashi

Part I: Transience and Poetics

Tide 1. Taking the Cure at the Black Sea
Katherine Verdery

Chapter 1. The Black Sea ‘Moments’ and ‘Coexistence on the Move’ in Transit
Vera Skvirskaja

Chapter 2. Transient Love in Batumi: Being a Sailor’s Wife
Elene Gavashelishvili

Chapter 3. Complex Intimacies: Sex Work, Human Trafficking and Romance between Italy and the Black Sea Coast of Romania
Trine Mygind Korsby

Tide 2. Batumi (Prayer to the Sea)
Giorgi Maisuradze

Part II. Transience and Politics

Tide 3. The Black Sea from Crimea: Transience and Dyschronicity
Greta Lynn Uehling

Chapter 4. Making Revolutionary Consciousness Transient: Altering Political Identities in Turkey’s Black Sea Towns
Christopher Houston

Chapter 5. Transient In-betweenness: Conflicting Present and Futures in the De Facto Republic of Abkhazia
Mikel J.H. Venhovens

Part III. Transience and Aesthetics

Tide 4. Boat with a Single Square Sail
Anna Dziapshipa

Chapter 6. Makeshift Boats: Transience, Turbulence and the Sea of Mourning
Tamta Khalvashi

Chapter 7. Fishers, Sea Snails and Dolphins: The Changing Context of Transient Inter-Species Relations in the Black Sea
Caroline Humphrey

Chapter 8. Svetlana by the Shore: Stones, Dys/Appearances and Un/Common Grounds in a City of Transience
Martin Demant Frederiksen

Tide 5. The Refugees
Stephanos Papadopoulos

Conclusion: Black Sea Matters: Transience and Phanta-sea
Tamta Khalvashi and Martin Demant Frederiksen

Index

A Sea of Transience

Poetics, Politics and Aesthetics along the Black Sea Coast

Edited by Tamta Khalvashi and Martin Demant Frederiksen

216 pages, 15 illus., bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-80073-786-0 Hb Published (February 2023)

eISBN 978-1-80073-787-7 eBook

Details

“The book is one of a kind, beautifully written and curated, and moreover original in its theoretical and empirical insights.” • Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa, Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT)

Transience is found in every meeting and form of coexistence between people and things that live and exist by, or move across or along, the Black Sea. It may come in various forms and guises, from de facto states, tourism, migration, trafficking or military troops, and it needs to be written and captured in sensuous, affective and imaginative ways. With particular attention to poetics, politics and aesthetics, this volume focuses on the scales of transient moments and histories, and enables readers to see and sense the many forms of transience that occur in a given landscape, sea or space.

TAMTA KHALVASHI is Professor of Anthropology at Ilia State University in Georgia. She is also the Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University (2022-2023).

Martin Demant Frederiksen is Associate Professor in anthropology at the Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University. He is the author of An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular (Zero Books, 2018).

Subject: Anthropology (General) Sociology Environmental Studies (General)

Area: Central/Eastern Europe Asia

LC: DJK75 .S43 2023

BL: DRT ELD.DS.765557

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; SOC026020 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Sociology/Rural; SOC053000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Regional Studies