About the project:

Sailors spend most of their lives outside their family and home, working beyond national borders (Sampson 2003), however, they maintain close ties with their families and culture (Borovnik 2009; Kremakova 2019). According to the present study, despite their cosmopolitan occupation, sailors are “locals” who are associated with land regarding their plans and hopes, sadness, and joy. This study aims to analyze how the sociocultural background determines the work and family life of Georgian sailors. Many sailors live on the Black Sea coast, but despite the number of sailors, there are few papers that study the perspective of modern Georgian sailors and their families. The number of sailors is especially large in the regional center of Adjara, Batumi, which will be the main field of my research. The main methodological approach of the project is ethnographic research, which allows identifying the sociocultural characteristics of a specific study environment. The study will use the in-depth interviewing  “life history” method, which allows the researcher to discover the respondent’s experiences, attitudes, and behaviors in the context of a specific time and spatial perspective. It is interesting for the researcher to study both the seafarer’s land life and the absence, which fills the lives of sailors’ family members with different emotions and practices. The study of absence is even more interesting given that in the wake of technological development, physical absence is increasingly filled with virtual presence. This research project will contribute to the creation of anthropological knowledge about Georgian sailors and will show the work and family life experienced by the sailors themselves. The results obtained under this project will significantly increase information about sailors and provide an incentive to study their profession and life experiences.