Religion, Nation and Democracy in the South Caucasus

✍ Scribed by Alexander Agadjanian, Ansgar Jödicke, Evert van der Zweerde

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 296
• Series: Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book explores developments in the three major societies of the South Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – focusing especially on religion, historical traditions, national consciousness, and political culture, and on how these factors interact. It outlines how, despite close geographical interlacement, common historical memories and inherited structures, the three countries have deep differences; and it discusses how development in all three nations has differed significantly from the countries’ declared commitments to democratic orientation and European norms and values. The book also considers how external factors and international relations continue to impact on the three countries.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of figures
List of tables
Notes on contributors
Editors’ introduction
PART I Conceptual frames
1 General trends in the interaction of religion and politics as applied to the South Caucasus
2 Ethnicity, nation and religion: current debates and the South Caucasian reality
3 Democratic repertoires: the South Caucasus case(s)
PART II Religion and politics
Introduction
4 Secularization and desecularization in Georgia: state and church under the Saakashvili government (2003–2012)
5 Political power and church construction in Armenia
6 Islam in Azerbaijan: revival and political involvement
PART III Religion, nationalism and education
Introduction
7 Building Georgian national identity: a comparison of two turning points in history
8 Challenges for women’s education in independent Azerbaijan
9 Constructing national identities through general education: religion in Armenian schools
PART IV Cultural values, ideology and democracy
Introduction
10 An analysis of counter-hegemony: challenges of political opposition in Azerbaijan
11 Myths and politics: “Old” beliefs and “New” aspirations in independent Armenia
12 Collectivism/individualism in the South Caucasus: implications for democracy
PART V International context and external impacts
Introduction
13 Shi‘a politics, “strategic culture” and Iran’s relations with the South Caucasus
14 Russia’s soft power in the South Caucasus: discourses, communication, hegemony
15 Between ambition and realism: Turkey’s engagement in the South Caucasus
Index