Ungovernance and Spiritual Feudalism in Northeast Highland Georgia

Abstract It seems a paradox that on the one hand, the communities of northeast highland Georgia have often been represented as somewhat egalitarian in respect to their political organisation while on the other hand, their religious worlds are highly hierarchical and ordered by the principles of feudality. One very probable explanation for this seeming paradox points to the compatibility of the feudal norms with the patriarchal and clan-based social organisation of these communities. This article is the attempt to introduce another interpretation, namely that the religious system in northeast highland Georgia reflects the pain of being governed by a coercive power that is associated with the hierarchical political system of the lowland. The political system, I argue, is constructed as a counter-image of the religious system, delegating coercive power to the realm of the exceptional and tabooing its usage in the organisation of political life. In this juxtaposition, coercive power becomes internalised, albeit as a negative pole. The politics of ungovernance, in this sense, aims towards the neutralisation of coercive power, a power that people know all too well through “religious” experiences. The latter argument contradicts the dictum that anti-state societies experience coercive power as exterior.