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Georgia in-between: religion in public schools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ketevan Gurchiani
Ketevan Gurchiani*
Affiliation:
Institute of Philosophy, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
*
* Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Georgian village and supplemented by a range of interviews and observations from different parts of Georgia, this paper explores the creative presence of religion in public schools. In 2005 and in line with the strong secularization and modernization discourse, the Georgian parliament passed a new law on education, restricting the teaching of religion in public schools and separating religious organizations and public schools; nevertheless, mainstream Orthodox Christianity is widely practiced in schools. The paper aims to show how Georgians use religious spaces in secular institutions to practice their identity, to perform being “true Georgians.” At the same time, they are adopting a strong secularization and modernization discourse. By doing so they create a new space, a third space, marked by in-betweenness. The study uses the theoretical lens of Thirdspace for analyzing the hybridity, the in-betweenness of practices and attitudes inherent for politics, religion, and everyday life of Georgians.

Keywords

religionThirdspacehybridityGeorgiaCaucasus
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 45 , Issue 6 , November 2017 , pp. 1100 - 1117
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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