On Hidden Power of Trees: Urban Resistance in Tbilisi

This paper analyzes the creative use of state regulations to counter the rapidly diminishing public spaces in Tbilisi, Georgia. People try to retake the urban space by creatively maneuvering different regulations. One such tactic is to plant trees of special value in areas marked as state property to avoid privatization of the place. The paper focuses on how the citizens of Tbilisi manipulate the laws governing the green spaces in the urban area and use gaps in different regulations for their ‘hidden transcript’ – to retake the public space by making it environmentally more valuable. By using these tactics, they exercise their right to the city. Plants that are inherently territory classifying beings, can be used to classify territory (Besky, S., & Padwe, J. 2016. Placing plants in the territory. Environment and Society, 7(1), 9-28., Dove, M. 2011. The Banana Tree at the Gate: A History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in Borneo.). Green spaces have the potential of marking and reclaiming the territory, embody resistance, and control.  
Relying on observation and in-depth interviews, the paper looks at “Greening” as a complex tactic. It particularly focuses on different purposes this practice serves, on the dynamic relationship between the main actors by looking at them beyond the established binaries of “strong” and „weak”, “human” and “non-human”. By using the genealogical approach, the paper also looks at how the tactics used against the Soviet state to maintain control over the land, still inform the tactics of urban resistance today (comp. Scott, J. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.). The more general question the paper tries to answer is how and if the use of tactics can be translated into the strategy, the hidden resistance into a social movement.

Speakers :

Ketevan Gurchiani is a professor of anthropology at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. She is particularly interested in the domesticated and non-domesticated nature of the city, materiality, and informal practices of resistance. Ketevan Gurchiani is also involved in research projects that focus on diversity, migration, and peace practices.

Since 2020, Ketevan Gurchiani has been leading the project: "Tbilisi as an Urban Assemblage".