Project Details
Projekt
Prostitution in Tbilisi. Processes of Marginalization and Empowerment in Moral Discourses and Urban Practices in the 20th and Early 21st Century
Applicant
Professor Dr. Guido Hausmann
Subject Area
Modern and Contemporary History
Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
Term
from 2015 to 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 240207984
The research proposal on prostitutes and prostitution in Tbilisi aims at exploring moral discourses and the production of urban space in two distinctive periods of time: one is the time period from around 1900 until the 1920s; the other is the time period from the late 1980s to the present time. In the understanding of this subproject proposal, practices and ideas shaped moral discourses and the production of urban space, discourses on re-criminalization and de-criminalization and legalization the two selected time periods. Local urban activism has supported prostitutes in their struggle for defending their human rights since prostitution has reemerged in the late 1980s. However, a de-criminalization or legalization of prostitution has so far not been achieved.The historical perspective of the research proposal allows to study in more detail the conditions of conjunctures of moral discourses as well as continuities, historical change and specific constellations of emerging techniques of governing, social mobilization and processes of ethical subjectivation in their local and regional settings and dynamics. Of particular importance for the current debate is the analysis of global discourses on Tbilisi which so far have influenced in particular those social forces which spoke out in favor of a de-criminalizatzion or legalization of prostitution. Both discourses which defend prostitutes and their rights and discourses which denigrate or criminalize them are ethically "loaded". The project investigates not only discourses on and practices against prostitutes but also of prostitutes. By doing this it explores the chanigng urban social order and urban social space.The city of Tbilisi is, like Bucharest, the city of the previous project, shaped by the Soviet order. But in contrast to Bucharest it has been part of the Soviet Union since its beginning in 1922. In both cities state order dominated the population which, in turn, tended to have a negative attitude towards the state. Weak new statehood in the immediate post-Soviet time period was followed in both countries since the 2000s by a strengthening of statehood. The research proposal aims at exploring in more depth how these conditions shaped emerging new techniques of governing, social creativity and processes of ethical subjectivation. In this regard, research questions take into consideration the illegality of prostitution and the marginality of the social group of prostitutes: How do an ethical discourse and social creativity come into being in this context? How did the illegality of prostitution impact on new institutional arrangements? What effect did the tabooing of prostitution have on new processes of subjectivation?
DFG Programme
Research Units
