The Shame Movement in the Context of Georgia’s 30 years of Transformation: A Gramscian Analysis of Civil Society

In this paper, we analyze one of the most recent civil society movements in Georgia, the Shame Movement. We choose this movement as it enables us to discuss some of the aspects of Georgia’s 30 years of post-socialist transformation from today’s perspective. Our key thesis is that the movement has been reinforcing the hegemonic neoliberal order in Georgia. To develop this argument, we apply the political economy perspective of Gramscian analyses of the state and civil society and speak from the position of Georgia’s newly emerging left-wing academic criticism. From that standpoint, this is one of the very first attempts to evaluate Georgia’s post-socialist state-society-economy relations. We hope that this attempt will be followed by further explorations of the emancipatory potential of civil society in Georgia.