The papers and abstracts in this volume were originally presented at a two-day conference, “Towards a New Generation of Scholarship on the Caucasus,” held in Sukhum, Abkhazia, on October 30–31, 2007. The conference was coorganized by the SSRC, Circassianacademia (a scholarly listserv), and the Center for Strategic Studies (Sukhum).
The overall purpose of the conference was to explore the themes and issues that are emerging in recent scholarship, especially by younger scholars, and the ways in which they speak to contemporary challenges faced by the various small republics and states of the region. A range of academic discplines—and regional traditions within these general disciplines—were represented, including sociology, demography, linguistics, anthropology, political science, and history, as well as specialists working with NGOs and with government research agencies.