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Paper short abstract

Based on ethnographic research in Ch’iatura, Georgia, this contribution reflects on coexistence with debris in mining-eroded landscapes, where rubble enters domestic spaces, producing material and social ruins, and becomes a set of co-ordinated references within a space–time entanglement.

Paper long abstract

Shukruti village is located on top of an extractive manganese mine, within Ch’iatura Municipality, a former Soviet mining centre in the western Georgian region of Imereti. The deregulated extraction of manganese causes severe structural damage to the village, encompassing destroyed households and buildings, unproductive fields, emptied water wells, and collapsed cemeteries.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2021 in Ch’iatura, this paper aims to analyse the materiality, temporality, and spatiality of debris and the ongoing process of rubble domestication performed by the local population.

Material remains emerge in response to destruction; in Shukruti, partially collapsed houses continue to be inhabited even after their material integrity has been compromised. As a result, debris cannot be understood as inert residues of the past. Building on Gordillo’s notion of “rubble” (2014), I conceptualise material debris and ruined landscapes as evidence of the structural violence produced by the extractive system.

The ongoing process of ruination (Stoler, 2008) produces social relations characterised by abandonment and reveals new forms of experiencing the area’s geography, such as choosing the only functioning water well, monitoring a split tree to trace landslide movements, and locating relatives’ graves in different areas of the cemetery.

People dwell in partially destroyed houses, engaging with rubble as part of their domestic space. Simultaneously, the gradual deterioration of walls, roofs, and rooms, along with the continuous transformation of the familiar landscape, marks the passage of time. Rubble thus becomes a tool through which the community interprets and experiences changing temporalities and spatialities.