PLACE RENAMING PRACTICES IN POST-WAR KARABAKH/ARTSAKH
PLACE RENAMING PRACTICES IN POST-WAR KARABAKH/ARTSAKH
Author(s): Artak DabaghyanSubject(s): History, Anthropology, Geography, Regional studies, Military history, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Studies in violence and power, Politics and Identity, Peace and Conflict Studies
Published by: Akadémiai Kiadó
Keywords: Nagorno-Karabakh; history and ethnography of Armenia; place renaming; contesting symbols; anthropology of war; conflict studies; toponymy studies;
Summary/Abstract: The article touches a “flammable” cultural component in the conflict over NagornoKarabakh, explaining the value added to names for places as an effect of modernization, a legacy of the region’s imperial past and as a long-term impact on local human knowledge and humanities. Approaching the ethnographically recorded materials, mapping and renaming practices in the conflict area from a historical anthropological perspective, this author argues for the need for a more layered investigation and further comparative studies of the cases of “confronting symbolism”. The cascading character of such topographical measures as place (re)naming, overrides the current instrumentalist revitalizations as a belated form of Orientalism and gives opportunities for merging the unfairly diverged viewpoints in modern socialcultural anthropology.
Journal: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica
- Issue Year: 56/2011
- Issue No: 2
- Page Range: 403-427
- Page Count: 25
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF