son that she has asked him to make lemonade. “Come on, Emir, the lemonade!” She disappears back into the kitchen. The month of Ramadan represents a festive time in the lives of Bosnian Muslims, during which people often visit one another or eat
Achieving the Ordinary
Everyday Peace and the Other in Bosnian Mixed-Ethnicity Families
Keziah Conrad
Federica Tarabusi
etic understandings of Bosnia-Herzegovina 1 provides a foretaste of the relations between “internationals” and “locals” 2 that constitute a running theme throughout this article. First, it indicates how deeply the settlement of international
Grave Matters and the Good Life
On a Finite Economy in Bosnia
Larisa Jasarevic
This article outlines how the good life and a decent death in contemporary Bosnia are underwritten and undermined by informal forms of debt. Such debts finance pursuit of a pleasurable life in a post-conflict, post-socialist economy but inspire daily anxieties, not least about dying indebted. The article runs through household budgeting, everyday splurges, bodily discomforts, ordinary death and a funeral marketplace, suggesting a 'finite economy' of vernacular practice incited and limited by an habitual fixation on existential finitude.
In The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2012
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 25–39
Have You Ever Been in Bosnia?
British Military Travelers in the Balkans since 1992
Catherine Baker
Tens of thousands of British military personnel traveled in former Yugoslavia as peacekeepers between 1992 and 2007. The settlements where British forces established their military presence and supply chain were conceptually far from former Yugoslavia's tourist sites, but military travelers made sense of them by drawing on the commonplaces of previous travel accounts and the lessons of pre-deployment training. British military travelers constructed themselves as often frustrated helpers in Bosnia who struggled with political limitations on their activities but found satisfaction in improving socio-economic relations at the level of the immediate community. For troops, long otiose periods in a stabilizing and startlingly cheap country engendered a touristic sensibility. This article draws on published memoirs and more than fifty new oral history interviews with British peacekeepers and their Bosnian employees to illustrate how British military travelers drew on, perpetuated, and changed the patterns and representation of British travel to the Balkans.
Rory Conces
Political realism remains a powerful theoretical framework for thinking about international relations, including the war on terrorism. For Morgenthau and other realists, foreign policy is a matter of national interest defined in terms of power. Some writers view this tenet as weakening, if not severing, realism's link with morality. I take up the contrary view that morality is embedded in realist thought, as well as the possibility of realism being thinly and thickly moralised depending on the moral psychology of the agents. I argue that a prima facie case can be made within a thinly moralised realism for a relatively weak ally like Bosnia to enter the war on terrorism. An inflationary model of morality, however, explains how the moral horror of genocide in an ally's past may lead to a thickened moralised realism such that allied policy-makers question their country's entry into the war.
From individual grief to a shared history of the Bosnian war
Voice, audience, and the political in psychotherapeutic practices with refugees
Laura Huttunen
This article explores the relationship between psychotherapeutic practices with people with refugee backgrounds and “the political”. The relationship between voice and audience in psychotherapeutic practices is explored; through such an analysis the relationship between psychotherapy, history, and the political is considered. The theoretical questions are approached through a case study, a Bosnian man with refugee background living in Finland and attending psychotherapy there who invited the anthropologist to attend his therapy sessions. The analysis of the single case is situated within long-term ethnographic research on the Bosnian diaspora. Situating the personal in historical and moral plots, as well as seeking larger audiences beyond the confines of the therapeutic relationship, is seen as crucial in producing therapeutic effects. Simultaneously, the case enables a theoretical discussion about the relationships between voice, audience, and the political.
Zilka Spahić Šiljak
Andrea Feldman wrote a review of the book Bosanski labirint: Kultura, rod i liderstvo (The Bosnian labyrinth: Culture, gender, and leadership), which I edited and coauthored with my colleagues, Suada Penava and Jasna Kovačević. She decided to
Conjuring “the people”
The 2013 Babylution protests and desire for political transformation in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina
Larisa Kurtović
In June 2013, after years of mounting political discontent and periodic expectation of a large-scale civic 1 insurrection, the sleepy streets of Bosnian-Herzegovinian cities and towns suddenly filled with protesters. This wave of demonstrations
Prayer as a History
Of Witnesses, Martyrs, and Plural Pasts in Post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina
David Henig
“And at the end, one more prayer for Ottoman martyrs and for Bosniak martyrs,” said the imam to the assembly of male Muslims who had gathered for one of the annual outdoor rain prayer feasts in the Central Bosnian highlands in the summer of 2009
Liminality and Missing Persons
Encountering the Missing in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina
Laura Huttunen
has happened to him. I never heard about him again . —Bosniak woman, born in 1965 in Prijedor, Bosnia-Herzegovina In many armed conflicts, forced disappearances and hiding the bodies of victims of mass atrocities are used strategically to create