Abstract
This chapter explores the everyday challenges of widows in Nagorny Karabakh. Widowhood is an under-recognized, albeit significant aspect of life in every region and in every country. However, the scant literature dealing with contemporary narratives of widowhood among women as a consequence of conflicts indicates that this aspect of lived experience remains underexplored. Although loss is integral to life in Nagorny Karabakh, it is often overlooked because of the unsettled politics in the region. The long-standing conflict over Nagorny Karabakh has generated and continues to generate severe consequences for society—sporadic clashes along the border with Azerbaijan remain common to this day. Thus, for women married to soldiers, confronting death is part of life. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the everyday experiences of women in the region, understanding and reworking the concepts of widowhood. In this way, this chapter is intended to stimulate discussion on the relatively neglected subject of widowhood, both in the region and in broader comparative terms.
This chapter is a revised version of Shahnazarian and Ziemer. 2018. ‘Women Confronting Death: War Widows’ Experiences in the South Caucasus’. Journal of International Women’s Studies.
As explained in the introduction to this edited volume (Note 2), this chapter uses the more common ‘Nagorny Karabakh’. Following the constitutional referendum in February 2017, the unrecognized Nagorny Karabakh Republic was renamed the Republic of Artsakh.
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Shahnazarian, N., Ziemer, U. (2020). The Politics of Widowhood in Nagorny Karabakh. In: Ziemer, U. (eds) Women's Everyday Lives in War and Peace in the South Caucasus. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25517-6_8
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