ECONOMIC AND LEGISLATIVE TRANSFORMATIONS: LAND PRACTICES AND MORALITIES IN VILLAGES OF DUSHETI

Abstract

Villages of the Dusheti region face a common issue of diminishing grazing areas. Residents of villages are selling their cattle, resulting in a threefold reduction in the local livestock population. The sight of shepherds and cows has become a fleeting presence in the vicinity of recently constructed infrastructure, which once used to be expansive grazing land for the villages. My primary focus is on examining the impact of economic and legislative transformations on the local economies and moralities. I am particularly interested in investigating land practices and moralities. Transformations brought new concepts and ideas about the land; the land became privatized and commoditized; however, the previous approaches continued. Though old and new concepts of land can be contradictory, in everyday life, they may coexist. In this research, I want to approach land from the perspective of legal pluralism in the anthropological sense. Legal pluralism is the analytical concept for situations where people can draw upon several legal systems in their interaction. The research is primarily based on ethnographic methods, observations, and conversations with indigenous communities of Dusheti villages.