Author:Nino Chikovani

Page number, Format:116, A4.

Financing:The book is prepared and published by the Center for Social Sciences, with the financial support of OSI – Zug Foundation, Higher Education Support Program (HESP) of Open Society Institute in Budapest.

© Center for Social Sciences, 2006

Short Description:The book includes the geographic environment and population of the Caucasus, religions and ethnos in Southern Caucasus, main confessions and their territorial and ethnic localization; geographic, political and cultural foundations of the division of Northern and Southern Caucasus, definitions of cultural and civilization notions. Besides, the author discusses the topics like Caucasus – communication zone of cultures and civilizations, connecting types of culture, notion of common cultural space, its relativity to Southern Caucasus and common identity problem of being Southern Caucasian. The book also implies the general idea of the Caucasus on its historic background, forecast of civilizations’ conflict and its religious grounds, cultural identity problem of Georgians against the historic background, actualization of cultural and religious identity problems in post soviet era as well as ideologization and politication of ethnicity and religion. The book is concluded by the issue of religious factors in modern conflicts of the Caucasus.