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How can infrastructure be criminal? How does a road, a prison, a suburban neighbourhood or a dam become a perpetrator of violence and insecurity? Material Crimes answers these questions. Each episode investigates a different piece of infrastructure, tracing its global, colonial connections across time and space. The series shows us how physical sites of everyday life are linked to networks of private and public actors who profit from violence inflicted on spaces and communities on the margins. The series also shines a spotlight on the people-powered movements exposing and challenging the many crimes of infrastructure.

Season 1
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Ghosts of a Military Road





There is a road that crosses the Caucasus Mountains at an altitude of 2,379 metres. This road connects Georgia's capital Tbilisi to Vladikavkaz in the Russian Federation. Built in the 18th century, it pushed the Russian Empire’s boundaries southward. Over two centuries, it has been endlessly remade: extended, widened, cut and diverted. Today it forms a key artery of the North-South Corridor linking Iran to Russia. But beneath its geopolitical function lies something more intimate. This road has haunted the lives of everyone who lives and works along it, weaving together warfare and trade, hope and fear, and in some cases, death. In this episode, Evelina Gambino and Elisabed Gedevanishvili delve into the hauntings along this road by speaking with workers, residents, activists and researchers. The episode features conversations with Manana Kochladze, chair of environmental NGO Green Alternative, Irine Burduli, and academics Paul Manning, Hannah Knox and Manuel Moser.
Useful Links
Green Alternative:
www.greenalt.org

Mautskebeli:
www.mautskebeli.ge

JamNews Video on the Military Road:
www.youtube.com

Protests in Independent Georgia.
www.geoprotests.org
Further Reading
Penny Harvey & Hannah Knox. Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise (Cornell UP, 2015).

Paul Manning. Imperial and Colonial Sublime: The Aesthetics of Infrastructure. In Strangers in a Strange Land (Academic Studies Press, 2012).

Manuel Moser. “East to West to South to North—and Back,” Transfers, 12:1 (2022), pp. 20-32.

Lela Rekhviashvili, Luka Nakhutsrishvili, Konstantine Eristavi, Alexandra Aroshvili & Ia Eradze. “There’s more at stake in the fight against the Foreign Agents Law than liberal NGOs: Why the left should show solidarity with the protests in Georgia,” Lefteast, 28 May 2024.

Evelina Gambino is Margaret Tyler Research Fellow, College Lecturer and Director of Studies at Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her research is concerned with a situated analysis of global logistics. Studying large infrastructures in the Republic of Georgia and the South Caucasus, she works with feminist critiques of capitalism to map how planetary projects of circulation, like the Belt and Road Initiative, are translated into local contexts.
Elisabed Gedevanishvili is a PhD researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London. Her interests and experience include queer theory, infrastructure, and climate change, as well as prefigurative politics in the South Caucasus. Elisabed works in academic and wider-than-academic media, mixing visual, written, collaborative, and experimental forms.
Additional voice-work: Simone Coroma, Misho Gedevanishvili,  Sophie Harman, Rosie Jackman, Colm Murphy, Ksenia Northmore-Ball  and Charlie Thomas.

Special thanks to Jay Bernard for reading excerpts from "The Elder of Khevi" by Aleksandre Kazbegi and "Notes from a Traveler" by Urbneli"