A critical assessment of informal practices as resistance: the case of birzha in Georgia. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Curro, Costanza
• Is Part Of: Caucasus survey. Volume 5:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 65
• Page End: 84
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: Informal practices -- resistance -- Georgia -- youth -- social exclusion -- ambivalence; Caucasus -- Periodicals; 947.5
• DOI: 10.1080/23761199.2017.1280949
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2376-1202

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the form of male street socialization known as birzha as an informal practice which upholds norms opposed to those emanating from official institutions. Repressed by state power, birzha falls into the conceptual framework which regards informal practices as forms of resistance generating counterhegemonic narratives vis-à-vis the official system. The paper questions this framework's appropriateness for understanding informality, analysing birzha as an ambivalent practice which does not fit the notion of resistance. Drawing upon fieldwork data, literary and media sources, the relation between birzha and state power in late Soviet years, in the 1990s, and under Saakashvili's rule (2003–2012) is analysed. The paper indicates that the relation between birzha and official power has been alternatively underpinned by toleration, mutual dependence, or repression. Yet, birzha has a hierarchical and conservative structure which thwarts its potential as a source of social and political change. The conceptualization of informal practices as resistance is critically assessed along two lines. Firstly, the "romanticisation" of informality denies the impact that certain practices may have on wider social and political debates. Secondly, a perspective on informal practices as counterhegemonic overlooks these practices' ambivalence between openness and selectivity, equality and hierarchy, and change and conservation.