In May 2021, the famous Dutch scientific publishing house "Elsevier" published a scientific article entitled "Ecclesiastical Geopolitics of the territorial integrity of Georgia". Dr. Gela Merabishvili, a guest lecturer at the School of Social Sciences of the University of Georgia, will answer our questions regarding this article.

1. What effect can the result of this research have on human existence?

I don't think this research will have any influence on people's existence, but it may be interesting for the general public in Georgia because the work describes the geopolitical role of the Georgian Orthodox Church and critically analyzes how the church's territorial policy and geopolitical views coincide with the policy of Georgia's territorial integrity.

2. How exactly is the subject of research related to these issues?

The work shows that the Church sees the issue of Georgia's territorial integrity and separatist/ occupied regions from its own, narrow-organized perspective. The issue of primary importance for the church is the unity of its canonical territory, which implies the possibility of the church exercising its own canonical jurisdiction (to rule the monasteries, to provide church services to the population). Representatives of the church - the patriarch and other high priests - rarely use the term "occupation". One of the reasons for this may be that the church's geopolitical situation is different from the secular geopolitics. Unlike the government of the Russian Federation, the Russian Orthodox Church recognizes Apkhazet and South Ossetia/ Tskhinvali region as part of the jurisdiction of the Georgian Church.

3. How can students get involved in this field of research and why would you advise them to do so?

The issue of the territorial integrity of Georgia has long been an area of interest for many researchers, but the role of the church has been little studied. The church plays a big role in the formation of public opinion in Georgia, including on issues that go beyond religious and religious topics, for example, domestic and foreign political issues. Therefore, the study of the church as a (geo) political actor is a fruitful research direction in order to have a better idea of how hegemonic ideas about the state, territory, nationality (national identity), and foreign policy are formed in Georgia. In some cases, despite its large-scale influence, the church may be a more dissident (i.e. hegemonic, widely established opposition) actor than the provider and shaping of hegemony.  

In my opinion, the most valuable research direction and form in this field that students can engage in is the study of specific dioceses, or even lower levels, of a specific temple and its parishioners. Such research can include interviews with priests and parishioners, participation (participation observation), and similar ethnographic methods when the researcher spends some time with research subjects and deeply studies their views, rules, actions, and activities, in which answers to issues of interest to the research can be revealed. In a word, it is the study of geopolitics at the micro level, where hegemonic ideas and confrontations with existing politics are formed and/ or revealed. For example, with regard to the question of occupation, it is interesting what connections (or what attempts at connection) exist between the churches on the edge of the dividing line and the churches beyond the line and the population living there; Or how the processes and views at this micro level coincide with the state policy of territorial integrity. 

4. What were the main challenges and skills associated with this research?

The main challenge is to obtain and analyze the research material, that is, the text or other kind of material on which we should study the issue and draw a conclusion, that is, answer the research question. In this case, my co-author (Tornike Metreveli, Lund University) and I decided to study the geopolitical thinking of the Georgian Orthodox Church based on the epistles of the head of this institute, Patriarch Ilia II, because these epistles were public and accessible. For more complete research, we could also conduct interviews with church officials, but this required additional time and financial funds from us, and we limited ourselves largely to the analysis of epistles. However, for more information, we used media material (articles, interviews) about the geopolitical role of the church.  

5. Why are you interested in researching this issue?  

The idea of researching this issue and writing an article came to me and my co-author, Tornike Metreveli, during the Facebook discussion. The topic was about the perception of threats by the Georgian Orthodox Church. The initial "puzzle" that arose during the discussion was what type of threats the Church considers harmful to Georgia: theological and moral issues ( e.g. homosexual relations ), which he presents as "danger", or material and territorial types of issues that belong to the field of geopolitics ( eg. the issue of Russian occupation ), which church representatives rarely talk about in public. This topic was interesting for us, because it connected our professional and research fields: "Sociology" and investigates the role of Orthodox churches in the formation of nationalism in Georgia, Serbia, Ukraine, and Russia; The field of my interest is the geopolitics of territories and borders, which belongs to the discipline of political geography. 

     6. What additional funding and support did this research have?

This article did not have external financial support. Since the research mainly included working with texts and did not require any special expenses.