Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe Lezgin irredentist movement is one of the less-studied national movements in the post-Soviet space, despite affecting the strategically important Russian-Azerbaijani borderlands and the bordering process between the two post-Soviet states. This article aims to fill this gap and to examine the impact of the Lezgin national movement on the development of territorial nationalism in early post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Based on the analysis of media publications in three Azerbaijani newspapers between 1992 and 1996, I argue that the movement contributed to consolidating the territorial vision of the Azerbaijani nation as incorporating groups historically settled in this territory. While media coverage stressed friendship between ethnic Azerbaijanis and Lezgins, the responsibility for secessionist claims was placed on external forces, particularly Russia and Armenia. In the long term, this framing led to the securitization of ethnic minority activism as a major threat to Azerbaijani statehood.

This article discusses the use of informal practices in negotiating welfare with state institutions in Azerbaijan. One of the effects of transition to market economies in the post-socialist countries has been the partial withdrawal of the state from welfare provision and residualization of welfare. Recent research has shown that informal practices play an important role in "structuring welfare from below" (Morris & Polese, 2014b) across post-socialist realm. Based on in-depth interviews with engineers at different periods of their careers, namely mid-career, working pensioners, and engineering students, this article demonstrates how formal and informal institutions and practices are strategically used by individuals, families, and low level bureaucrats to achieve desired career and welfare goals. Rather than compensating for the deficiencies of formal rules and institutions, formal and informal are intertwined and merged and are actively employed both by the citizens and state institutions.

This article examines the evolution of Baku's Alley of Martyrs. As different authorities came to power over the course of the last one hundred years, they have transformed the site to serve a variety of purposes.

This article examines the changes in the engineering profession in Azerbaijan after the inflow of foreign investment into Azerbaijan's oil industry since 1990s. The integration of Azerbaijan's oil industry into global economy has led to a significant reshaping of the engineering profession, both within and outside of the oil industry. Multinational companies, which have been the main agents of this integration, have introduced advanced technologies and helped many Azerbaijani engineers to gain access to the international labor market, often serving as credentializing institutions. At the same time, the presence of these multinational companies have also opened the way for new inequalities. They have indirectly created an important division within the engineering profession—a division between internationally mobile engineers from the oil industry and engineers in other industries. Outside of the oil industry, engineering work has in many cases been reduced to routine tasks of assembly and operations, while research, design, and manufacturing were made redundant in the context of the oil-driven development promoted by Azerbaijan's government.