Arsen Hakobyan and Marcello Mollica, ed. Conflict, Space and Transnationalism: An Ethnography of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War

The book provides an up-to-date narrative on the centuries-old Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict. It deserves particular attention from those interested in the Caucasus region and bloody transnational encounters. While a lot has been written in the past about the Karabakh conflict and the authors dwell on the relevant secondary sources, their work is original for two reasons: 1) It links recent events related to the second Karabakh war and the complete dismantling of the Karabakh/Artsakh unrecognized republic with a historical trajectory from the eighteenth century onward, providing rich material for a historical-institutional approach, and 2) it provides a relatively rare urban anthropology perspective on the complex sociopolitical developments, combining micro- and macro-level analysis of the conflict through emotionally charged pictures of everyday life in war situations.The book is yet another systematic account of humans in times of conflict when the lives of individuals are defined not only by the struggle for physical safety but also by the defense of collective identity embedded in communal symbolic spaces. It is impossible to read without emotion how, for instance, in 2020, shelters and basements became the markers of social transformation, turning for the inhabitants of Stepanakert into private homes. They were protected from bombshells but were unsuitable for the COVID-19 pandemic raging at that time (pp. 174–5). No less touching are the stories about Armenian churches and tombstones devastated in the war. Among the examples of cultural violence are attacks on Ghazanchetots Cathedral in the town of Shushi; the shape and size of its dome were especially contested by the Azerbaijani part of the population. By the way, for Azerbaijanis, the name of the town is Shusha. The authors quote the well-known British researcher of Caucasus politics, Tom de Waal, pointing to the particular vulnerability of Armenians living in Shushi/Shusha, since in Soviet times it was largely an Azerbaijani-dominated urban space located in an Armenian province, which in itself was situated inside Azerbaijan (p. 209).The authors follow memory lines that formed the attitudes of Armenians toward Azerbaijan, as well as Turkey in Karabakh, Armenia, and throughout diaspora networks. While these memory clusters are by and large codified in century-old genocide memorials and narratives, Hakobian and Mollica enrich our knowledge of how family stories shape contemporary conflicts. The authors see the memories of pogroms at the beginning of the twentieth century, the mass killings of Armenians during World War I, and the Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes that erupted at the end of the 1980s as a continuity and a cementing factor of the transnational character of the Karabakh war.Hakobian and Mollica indicate that their work aims at 1) showing transnationalism as a substantial variable in the analysis of the conflict generally and its impact on urban settings particularly and 2) focusing on the influence of the conflict on Armenians locally as well as worldwide (pp. 1–2). However, while these are legitimate academic aims in themselves, they ultimately contribute to certain insufficiencies in the research. The transnational, as a concept, is popular in the community of anthropologists, but the authors do not provide a thorough interpretation of it. Henceforth, it remains unanswered why, for instance, Israeli military-technological assistance to Azerbaijan can be seen as a transnational process and not as international or bilateral security cooperation. As for the aim to show the impact of war only on the Armenian community, it is not academically irrelevant, though it indicates that the overall conflict assessment—whether anthropological, historical, or policy-oriented—is incomplete. The reader of the book would probably have gained if the authors had given space to Azerbaijani perspectives on the conflict. In its current form, the Azerbaijani side is shown as responsible for overall direct, cultural, and structural violence ongoing in the area for decades, if not centuries, while the Armenian side is portrayed as a perpetual victim. This is not to question any account or explanation of the events given by the authors; it may be reiterated that even a one-sided picture of the complex happenings is worthwhile in itself and may be later enriched by other accounts. However, the book would have gained if, for instance, the authors had attempted to show examples of Azerbaijani–Armenian coexistence, which was taking place between the waves of their generational confrontation. There is interesting research into such coexistence between the two communities in neighboring Georgia: Vadim Romashov provided an everyday diplomacy perspective on Armenian–Azerbaijani encounters on Georgian soil.1 I think that in the future, Arsen Hakobyan and Marcello Mollica can also concentrate on such aspects of the lives of the two neighboring nations, notwithstanding the bitterness of the recent and more distant war memories, which will not fade away.