Modernising Security: Vernacular (In)securities in the Public Space of Tbilisi after the Rose Revolution

Abstract

This article explores the perceptions of personal (in)security in the public space of Tbilisi, Georgia following the Rose Revolution in 2003. Based on the concept of vernacular security, I suggest a bottom-up approach to the subject, focusing on its culturally and socially specific character and observing the production of the discourses of (in)security at the intersecting notions of modernisation/backwardness, formality/informality, criminality/lawfulness, and the West/Russia, reflecting post-revolutionary political, social, and cultural transformations. While the government of the Rose Revolution introduced full-scale reforms formalising security in Georgia, the article reveals that citizens’ perceptions of personal (in)security in the public space are often ambiguous and even self-contradicting, as they waver between the notions of formality and informality, often interpreting the same phenomenon as a source of both their security and insecurity.