Journal article

Publication year: 2020

Pages: 316-333

Journal: Ethnography and Education

Volume number: 15

Issue number: 3

ISSN: 1745-7823

eISSN: 1745-7831

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2020.1722953

Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group

Abstract: 
This study focuses on the spa town of Tsqaltubo in western Georgia. Since 2010, Tsqaltubo has been seeing a gradual rise in tourism. The town's history as a spa resort in the Soviet period has given it a repository of tourist experience to fall back on. An ongoing complication in this development arises from the occupation of the now-decaying Soviet-era former sanatoria by internally displaced Georgians. From its past as a site of state-driven collective educational practices aiming at the production of the 'new Soviet man', Tsqaltubo has evolved into the present-day location of conflict around the interpretation of that past between IDPs, tourists and tourism industry stakeholders. This article's principal focus in exploring these instances of conflict is educational processes in the context of life experience, within which subjects engage and interact with Tsqaltubo's materiality.

Harvard Citation style: Applis, S. and Tserediani, N. (2020) Poorism and taking the waters: a praxeological analysis of educational work in the context of tourism in the spa town of Tsqaltubo, Georgia*, Ethnography and Education, 15(3), pp. 316-333. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2020.1722953

APA Citation style: Applis, S., & Tserediani, N. (2020). Poorism and taking the waters: a praxeological analysis of educational work in the context of tourism in the spa town of Tsqaltubo, Georgia*. Ethnography and Education. 15(3), 316-333. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2020.1722953