Negotiating Social Relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Semiperipheral Entanglements (Southeast European Studies) [1 ed.] 9781472454386, 9781315597690, 1472454383

Citation preview

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Negotiating Social Relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Exploring recent configurations of social relations in post-socialist, postwar, post-Yugoslav Bosnia and Herzegovina this collection of ethnographic research turns an analytical lens on questions of sociality. Contributions based on long-term, in-depth research projects explore how people in different parts of BiH make and remake social relations and outline how their practices of sociality relate to donor-set priorities and formal human rights provisions. The book explores the socio-political concerns which have emerged within BiH, incites interdisciplinary conversations and sheds critical light on ways of engaging with these concerns and discusses forms of sociality, politics and agency which remain largely absent from the official political discourse and practice of local and foreign actors. Explicitly focusing on social relations in BiH against the historical background of both war and Yugoslav socialism, and directly placing these in relation to authoritative discourses and policies regarding BiH today brings the different strands together while the commentaries of specialists who have studied BiH in different ways explicitly situates the contribution of ethnographic work in the country. Dr Stef Jansen is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester (UK). Based on ethnographic research in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, he has published widely on transformations of home and hope with regard to statecraft, place, nation and post-Cold War reconfigurations. Dr Čarna Brković is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Central European University (Hungary). She is the editor of the Anthropology Matters journal for postgraduate and early career scholars and author of several articles and book chapters on healthcare, social security, and humanitarianism in Bosnia and Herzegovina and on nationalism and publics in Montenegro. Dr Vanja Čelebičić is Post-Doctoral Research Associate on the project Youth and Citizenship in Divided Societies at the University of Durham. Her research interests include topics such as borders, locality, temporality, age, visual anthropology and sensory media.

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Southeast European Studies Series Editor: Florian Bieber

The Balkans are a region of Europe widely associated over the past decades with violence and war. Beyond this violence, the region has experienced rapid change in recent times though, including democratization, economic and social transformation. New scholarship is emerging which seeks to move away from the focus on violence alone to an understanding of the region in a broader context drawing on new empirical research. The Southeast European Studies Series seeks to provide a forum for this new scholarship. Publishing cutting-edge, original research and contributing to a more profound understanding of Southeastern Europe while focusing on contemporary perspectives the series aims to explain the past and seeks to examine how it shapes the present. Focusing on original empirical research and innovative theoretical perspectives on the region the series includes original monographs and edited collections. It is interdisciplinary in scope, publishing high-level research in political science, history, anthropology, sociology, law and economics and accessible to readers interested in Southeast Europe and beyond. Titles in the Series: Croatia and the European Union: Changes and Development Edited by Pero Maldini and Davor Paukovic Citizenship in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro: Effects of Statehood and Identity Challenges Jelena Džankic Austerity and the Third Sector in Greece: Civil Society at the European Frontline Edited by Jennifer Clarke and Asteris Huliaras State-Building and Democratization in Bosnia and Herzegovina Edited by Soeren Keil and Valery Perry

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Negotiating Social Relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina Semiperipheral Entanglements Edited by Stef Jansen, Čarna Brković and Vanja Čelebičić

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First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Stef Jansen, Čarna Brković and Vanja Čelebičić The right of Stef Jansen, Čarna Brković and Vanja Čelebičić to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Names: Jansen, Stef, editor. | Brković, Čarna, editor. | Čelebičić, Vanja, editor. Title: Negotiating social relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina: semiperipheral entanglements / edited by Stef Jansen, Čarna Brković and Vanja Čelebičić. Description: New York: Routledge, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016002735 | ISBN 9781472454386 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315597690 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Bosnia and Herzegovina – Social conditions. | Bosnia and Herzegovina – Social life and customs. | Bosnia and Herzegovina – Social policy. Classification: LCC HN639.A8.N44 2016 | DDC 306.0949742–dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016002735 ISBN: 9781472454386 (hbk) ISBN: 9781315597690 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Out of House Publishing

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Contents

Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements

Introduction: New Ethnographic Perspectives on Mature Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina

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ST E F JAN SE N, ČA R NA BR KOV IĆ A N D VA N JA ČE L E B IČ IĆ

PART I

Whose Voice? Post-War Articulations of Political Subjectivities

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1 The Discretion of Witnesses: War Camp Memories Between Politicisation and Civility

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C É C I L E J OU H A N N EAU

2 Fragments of Village Life and the Rough Ground of the Political in Post-War BiH

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DAV I D   H E N I G

3 Integrating ‘During the War’ in ‘After the War’: Narrative Positionings in Post-War Sarajevo

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N E J RA N U NA ČEN G IĆ

Commentary ARMI NA G ALI JA Š A N D H RVO JE PA IĆ

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vi Contents PART II

Whose Flexibility? Informality in Practice 4 Affective Labour: Work, Love and Care for the Elderly in Bihać

77 79

AZ RA H RO MA D ŽIĆ

5 Flexibility of Veze / Štele: Negotiating Social Protection in Bijeljina

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ČARNA B RKOV IĆ

6 ‘The King is Naked’: Internationality, Informality and Ko Fol State-building

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K ARL A KO U TKOVÁ

Commentary

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PAU L   S T U BBS

PART III

Whose Vote? Engagements with Representative Democracy 7 Beyond to Vote or Not to Vote: How Youth Engage with Politics

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VAN JA ČE LEBIČI Ć

8 Future Conditional: Precarious Lives, Strange Loyalties and Ambivalent Subjects of Dayton BiH

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L ARI SA K URTOV IĆ

Commentary

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F LORI AN   BI EBER

PART IV

Who are ‘We’ in the First Place? 9 Raja: The Ironic Subject of Everyday Life in Sarajevo

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N E B OJ ŠA ŠAV I JA - VA LH A

10 Excavating the Common Ground: Bosnian Pyramids and Post-National Communities L ARI SA JAŠA R EV IĆ

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Contents vii

Commentary

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SV J E T L ANA N ED I MOV IĆ

Afterword: Afterwards: Beyond Regionally Based Theoretical Metonyms

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MI C H E L L E OBEI D

References Index

203 221

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Notes on Contributors

Florian Bieber is Director of the Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz (Austria). Čarna Brković is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg (Germany). Vanja Čelebičić is Postdoctoral Research Associate at Durham University (UK). Nejra Nuna Čengić is an independent social researcher with a PhD in the Anthropology of Everyday Life at Alma Mater Europaea  – Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis (Slovenia). Armina Galijaš is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz (Austria). David Henig is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent (UK). Azra Hromadžić is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Syracuse University (USA). Stef Jansen is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester (UK). Larisa Jašarević is Senior Lecturer in the International Studies Program at the University of Chicago (USA). Cécile Jouhanneau is Lecturer in Political Science at the University Paul Valéry Montpellier (France). Karla Koutková is a PhD Candidate in Public Policy at the Central European University (Hungary). Larisa Kurtović is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Ottawa (Canada). Svjetlana Nedimović is a political worker in Sarajevo (BiH), with a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence (Italy).

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Notes on Contributors ix Michelle Obeid is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester (UK). Hrvoje Paić is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz (Austria). Nebojša Šavija-Valha is Programme Development Manager/Researcher at the Nansen Dialogue Centre, Sarajevo (BiH), with a PhD in the Anthropology of Everyday Life from the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis (Slovenia). Paul Stubbs is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economics, Zagreb (Croatia).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz (Austria) for its financial and logistical support for the organisation of the October 2014 Workshop that served as the editorial event for this volume. Our gratitude also goes to the staff at Ashgate and Routledge, and to the peer reviewer of the manuscript. The editors also gratefully acknowledge institutional support during their work on this book by the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg (Čarna Brković), by the European Research Council Grant Project 295392 (Vanja Čelebičić), and by Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester (Stef Jansen). Stef Jansen Čarna Brković Vanja Čelebičić

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Introduction New Ethnographic Perspectives on Mature Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina Stef Jansen, Čarna Brković and Vanja Čelebičić A Bosnian finds a job. His new boss tells him: ‘Your salary is 300 marks, and later it will rise to 500’. Says the Bosnian: ‘In that case I’ll come back later’. A vast number of jokes about Bosnians circulate in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)1 itself and in neighbouring states. One motif that runs through this body of humorous grassroots social commentary is the stereotypical notion of Bosnians as simple. The Bosnian, in these jokes, is a little person, toyed with by history and by the people around him or her. Simplicity emerges as key, not only in terms of limited intellectual capacity, especially for abstract thought, but also in terms of aspirations and standards. Yet in many cases the story does not end there: ultimately, the simplicity of the proverbial Bosnian simpleton is then put to work as stubbornness, even shrewdness. The Bosnian protagonist is portrayed as cunning precisely because he or she (and more often ‘he’) does not entertain complicated categories or abstract reasonings: it is simplicity that allows him or her to act cannily, sometimes even without being aware of it. Hence, rather than representing the proverbial Bosnian straightforwardly as a gullible victim, the jokes often turn his or her simplicity into a virtue  – or at least also a virtue. It becomes a likable characteristic that can be integrated into representations of both subversion and complicity. Since such jokes about Bosnians are told with great frequency in BiH itself, by Bosnians themselves, they thus often chart an ambiguous course between exasperation and exhilaration, built around ironic self-deprecation. Whenever some public event, anywhere on the continuum from domestic to global resonance, invites commentary, new jokes appear with astonishing speed in social traffic.2 An example arose when destructive floods hit the region in May 2014. In BiH, especially the north-eastern part of the country was affected. Immediately a story broke that, now that the northern border with Croatia had been erased (as the River Sava, which forms that border, burst through its banks), BiH had finally become part of the European Union (EU). Bosnians have long played a key role in such humour, both as protagonists and as perceived experts for inventing and telling them. In everyday interactions, the ability to tell a good joke in the right manner, self-deprecating but with a

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2  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić twist, attracts a good deal of appreciation. We could therefore treat them as a relatively stable, and strongly gendered, element of cultural intimacy in BiH through time (Herzfeld 1996). Yet, due to the value attached to speedy responsiveness to current events, this valuation of humour also bears the traces of particular historical moments. Could the joke with which we open this introduction have been told 30 years ago? Most probably it could, although it would likely involve higher salaries. Moreover, perhaps this joke is told and enjoyed elsewhere in the world, too. We do not know if it first appeared in BiH. In any case, it is not our objective in this introduction to launch a discussion on humour in the country. Instead, the point of using this joke here is that its circulation in BiH renders a particular experience of being caught in dynamics beyond one’s control and particular ways of dealing with this predicament. It rides the ambiguity between lack of comprehension and cunning tactics from a subordinate position on a multiplicity of scales. And, most crucially for our purposes here, this joke speaks of the passage of time: for if the Bosnian protagonist needs a salary to secure a livelihood, but decides that, given the circumstances, it is best to ‘come back later’, what will he or she do in the meantime? Such practices in a specific ‘meantime’ (Jansen 2015), and the social relations in which they are embedded, are a core object of analysis in this volume. The ten chapters in this book are based on long-term in-depth research projects conducted in BiH between 2008 and 2014. The volume itself is the product of a collaborative effort channelled through a workshop co-organised with, and supported by, the Centre for South-Eastern European Studies at the University in Graz (Austria). Building on earlier ethnographic studies, it turns the analytical lens on questions of sociality as it is lived in BiH. The book also aims to open up an interdisciplinary dialogue between ethnographic and non-ethnographic perspectives on BiH. It does so through an original feature: each set of chapters is followed by a short commentary situating ethnographic contributions against the background of broader interdisciplinary concerns regarding BiH. Our commentators – Florian Bieber, Armina Galijaš and Hrvoje Paić, and Svjetlana Nedimović and Paul Stubbs – are experts on BiH with primary interests in history, political science, political philosophy and social policy. Four of them also served as discussants in the workshop at the Centre for South-Eastern European Studies. This volume thus seeks to provide evidence of, and reflection on, the value of ethnography for scholarly analysis of BiH. Moreover, we hope to provide useful analytical tools for studying lives elsewhere and at other times, as well as for building comparative insights. On the basis of her ethnographic expertise in the Middle East, Michelle Obeid’s afterword suggests important routes of investigation in this respect; for example, in terms of the temporalities of post-war ‘normalisation’, the reproduction of identitarianism, the pathologisation of informality and the attendant infantilisation of ‘young democracies’. The chapters in this book explore how people in different BiH locations make and remake social relations and, among other things, outline how their

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Introduction 3 everyday practices relate to categories, procedures and priorities deployed by local and global agencies that seek to reform and/or consolidate particular forms of government, social organisation, legitimacy and subjectivity. They show that this relationship between what people do and what they should be doing (according to particular actors) ranges from compliance and complicity to contestation and challenge. Sometimes it is tenuous and some mundane practices remain oblivious to most of the authoritative discourses and policies governing BiH. Unsurprisingly, we find many discrepancies and contradictions across the board. All chapters in this volume share a concern with lives that unfold in a spatiotemporal constellation that we shall refer to as ‘mature Dayton BiH’. ‘Mature’ is our imperfect translation of the term punoljetno proposed on the workshop by Larisa Kurtović. A legal term of age categorisation, punoljetno refers to the ‘age of majority’. Yet this translation is not widely employed in English and using its adjectival form would be confusing, so after much deliberation we settled on ‘mature’ instead. There are two interrelated reasons for this. First, we wish explicitly to distinguish BiH in the period during which the research projects for this book were conducted (2008–2014) from the immediate post-war years. We take this passage of time – and the changes on different scales that marked it – seriously. Second, we seek to resist understandings of BiH as immature, that is, as suffering from childhood maladies for which it is entirely unaccountable and that justify continued guardianship as a matter of principle. In a pattern familiar from studies of ‘development’, ‘modernisation’ and ‘transition’ in non-Western contexts, BiH’s problems are all too often conceived of as growing pains that will disappear under supervised ‘normalisation’, and thereby insertion into history. Against this paradoxically ahistorical view, this book demonstrates that BiH must be understood as no less ‘in history’ than any other country: its conditions shape up in a particular global historical conjuncture. ‘Mature Dayton BiH’ is a spatiotemporal label. We argue that an insight into the interplay of temporal and spatial conditions – and into emic reflexive engagements with it – is crucial to understand how people in the country go about their lives and how they try to make sense of them. The ‘where’ of lives in BiH today can only be grasped when we also account for its temporal coordinates – its ‘when’ – and vice versa. Of course it is impossible to describe fully this spatiotemporal condition. Yet people in BiH, as well as others concerned with it, can evoke this ‘where’ and ‘when’ through condensed, widely shared representations circling around particular metaphors. One way to think about this is provided by Bakhtin’s notion of ‘chronotope’ (‘time-space’).3 Bakhtin borrowed this term from mathematics to analyse ‘literary artistic’ works, foregrounding the ‘inseparability of space and time’ (Bakhtin 1981: 84). He argued that a chronotope is a ‘formally constitutive category of literature’ to the extent that it ‘defines genre and generic distinctions’ (Bakhtin 1981: 84). It does this through a deliberate process of fusion of spatial and temporal indicators: ‘Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh,

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4  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history’ (Bakhtin 1981: 84). Bakhtin provides a number of examples, including the chronotope of the castle, of the parlour or the salon, of the threshold and of the road. In literature, each of these is associated with particular kinds of characters and plots, which facilitates recognition by the reader. While the applicability of such an analysis of artistic production is necessarily limited for a book that does not deal with fictions that are ‘carefully thought-out’ (Bakhtin 1981:  84), we nonetheless find this notion of chronotope useful in order to frame our volume. People in BiH themselves can deploy particular chronotopes as communicable images of the ‘when’ and the ‘where’ in which their lives unfold, and second-order discourses by policy-makers, scholars and artists – both inside and outside the country – can use them, too. Following Bakhtin, we will treat such chronotopes as a constitutive and genre-defining category, condensing certain reasonings about and affective engagements with the ‘when’ and the ‘where’ of Dayton BiH. Fusing ‘spatial and temporal indicators’, it is also in that way that both the characters and the plot of the joke with which we opened this introduction can expect to meet with a specific form of broad recognition in contemporary BiH. This introduction has two main aims. First, we identify and critically reflect on some prevalent chronotopes in emic and etic interpretations of lives in mature Dayton BiH in order to locate this book’s intended empirical and analytical contribution in relation to existing studies. Second, we reflect on the volume’s epistemological positioning to clarify its intended contribution in a wider contemporary landscape of ethnographic knowledge production and critique.

Identitarianism and Dayton BiH as a Post-War Setting: A Round Table for Negotiations? At this point in time, English-speaking readers are likely to associate BiH first of all with war and ethnonationalist conflict. This is the dominant trope through which the country appears in foreign media reporting – even if ever less frequently. Take the two occasions on which BiH made (some) global headlines in 2014: first, there was the winter revolt in which people took to the streets and organised in citizens’ plenums (Arsenijević 2014). Unsurprisingly, foreign commentary placed this against the background of the 1992–1995 war, which is indeed an important factor for understanding the events. Yet what was striking was that most sympathetic accounts tried to read it as an example of trans-ethnonational solidarity, whereas others disputed its legitimacy and potential by dismissing it as an exclusively Bosniak uprising.4 Both, then, evaluated the events on the same identitarian grounds. The second example occurred when the BiH football team entered the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, its debut in a major tournament. Again post-war, ethnonational categories dominated foreign reporting, here on the whole packaged as a ‘good news’

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Introduction 5 story of healing and recovery, with few dissenting voices. Ethnonational identitarianism – and a normative trajectory from violence to reconciliation – thus continue to provide the parameters along which events in BiH seem to become discussable globally. Scholarly literature over the last 20 years has also tended to determine the ‘when’ of lives in BiH overwhelmingly in terms of them unfolding after a war that lasted from 1992 to 1995 and that was framed, to a large extent, in identitarian terms. And it would be foolish to ignore this dimension. One important way in which to situate the object of analysis of this book is therefore to say that all its chapters investigate practices and relations that unfold about a decade and a half after the end of a war. This war, on and over the territory of BiH, was part of a set of inter-related armed conflicts, revolving around the statehood of federal units that had for some 45  years after the Second World War made up the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). In the case of BiH, the violence pitted centrifugal anti-BiH state-making projects, with strong involvement from neighbouring Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, against a centripetal pro-BiH one. It was also conditioned by foreign forces from further afield, in political, economic, military and humanitarian terms. Over 100,000 people were killed, of which around 8,000 died in violence in Srebrenica that the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) qualified as genocide of Bosniaks by Serbian forces (Duijzings 2002; Delpla et al. 2012). More than two million persons – half of the population – were displaced. Pre-war patterns of residence and conviviality – in which ethnonational difference had been situationally articulated to varying degrees among other differences5  – were thus overturned, to a large extent in targeted operations of ‘ethnic cleansing’.6 In the process, a ‘Yugoslav chronotope’ (Spaskovska 2014), framing experiences of life in socialist Yugoslavia and BiH within it, was destabilised for good. This post-war ‘when’ of BiH remains highly relevant as we write this, not only because of its experiential reverberations but also due to its enduring institutionalised effects. The agreement that ended the military violence was signed on a US Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio. Its Annex 4 stipulated a constitution for BiH in a complicated compromise that consolidated a sovereign yet supervised, unified yet divided, polity of BiH (Bieber 2006a). It also established a large military presence of peacekeepers and supervision by the ‘international community’ (in the framework first of the UN, later of the EU) tasked with guaranteeing the agreement and with facilitating ‘transition’ to a liberal-democratic parliamentary democracy with a capitalist market economy. ‘Dayton BiH’ was born. In terms of territorial anatomy and institutional representation, the Dayton constitution reaffirmed BiH claims to statehood but also cemented sub-polities. These had been produced by wartime processes of homogenisation of ethnonationally defined populations within certain territories – with different degrees of violence. These sub-polities were, and remain to this day, on the whole politically-economically dominated by political parties claiming

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6  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić to represent one of the three ‘constituent peoples’ of the country: Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. Dayton BiH consists of two ‘entities’ – Republika Srpska and the Federation of BiH  – as well as the small district of Brčko. The Federation is made up of ten cantons. No post-war population census data are available at the time of writing, but all of those territorial units contain populations that are considered to be either largely ethnonationally homogenous or to reflect, on a smaller scale, the pattern of ethnonational ‘consociation’ that characterises formal politics in the country. This is true regardless of people’s subjective sense of belonging, for however they may value ethnonational identification (or not), and to whichever degree they may attach significance to it (or not), others, including domestic and foreign policy-makers, will often impose its categories on them. Over time, the extreme levels of segregation of the immediate post-war period abated, mostly under considerable pressure from foreign ‘supervisors’. Particularly in the early 2000s, campaigns to support country-wide mobility and so-called ‘minority return’ of displaced persons and refugees somewhat diminished ethnonational segregation. However, as numerous studies have shown, this did not constitute a reversal to pre-war patterns of common life and co-existence, nor in terms of residence, nor in terms of the relative salience of ethnonational categories in social relations (see e.g. Bougarel et al. 2007). One reason for this, detected in all critical analyses, is the institutional Dayton set-up itself and particularly the centrality of the three ‘constituent peoples’ in it. Although 2002 constitutional reforms extended the ‘constituent peoplehood’ of Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats from one particular entity to the whole of BiH, the logic of representation at the heart of the Dayton configuration entrenches notions of discrete categories along ethnonational identitarian lines, effectively turning BiH into an ‘ethnopolis’ (Mujkić 2007).7 Against this background, many scholarly studies of BiH since the mid-1990s – mainly in political science and in related, sometimes multidisciplinary fields – have constituted their object of analysis in the identitarian terms of the Dayton constitution itself. Partly this tendency can be explained with reference to the scale of wartime devastation and suffering, and the desire to facilitate pragmatic routes to improvement. Partly this also reflects funding priorities and the grip of supervision agencies on research agendas. Especially in the early years, studies tended to focus on normative concerns arising from foreign-designed and funded programmes of conflict resolution, reconciliation, humanitarian intervention, state-building, civil society promotion, the return of refugees and displaced persons, democratisation, human rights protection (especially of ethnonationally defined minorities) and so on. An entire industry of ‘transitional justice’ mushroomed around such concerns and produced evaluative reports measuring ‘progress’, and usually failing to find much of it. More recently, issues related to corruption and policy reform as part of EU accession have become more prominent, but the identitarian matrix remains dominant. As a chronotope that condenses this mode of representation, we could think of a round table for negotiations. This table is imagined as surrounded

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Introduction 7 by a precise set of chairs, set out to be occupied by persons who are postulated as representatives of the three ethnonationally defined ‘constituent peoples’ of BiH: Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. Sometimes a place is reserved at the table for a person identified as ‘other’ too, but this does not substantially modify the chronotope. Nor does the addition of a foreign emissary, who is invariably considered to be present in the capacity of an arbiter, standing above the ‘local’ identitarian mêlée. The defining characteristic of this chronotope is that the Bosnians around the table are considered to be representatives of their respective ethnonational collectives, engaged in impassioned debate about how to diagnose and overcome their post-war predicament. They are imagined to operate with a tendency to get mired in diametrically opposed interpretations of history and claims to justice and to end up routinely in stalemates. In that way, the figure of a round table for negotiations, we suggest, captures a representation that defines a genre of commentary on lives in BiH. This image permeates a good part of scholarly analysis and policy intervention, but also of mundane emic understandings. Importantly, its ‘groupist’ analytic (Brubaker 2002) is not limited to Balkanist depictions of atavistic hatreds between nations.8 The chronotope allows different assessments of the relative hostility between them, and of prospects for reducing it, and it can be incorporated in vigorous criticism of the Western-led intervention.9 What unites such different assessments is the identitarian logic according to which the chairs around the table are reserved. How does this chronotope channel particular forms of scholarly work? On the whole, the Dayton configuration itself has set the paradigm, guiding researchers to ask particular normative questions, developed from a particular position and framed in a particular manner. In scenarios where BiH is one of a series of country case studies, research designed in this image facilitates comparative analysis of a range of normative agendas. It can also produce relevant data for scholarly understandings of contemporary BiH and for certain types of policy-making. Informed policies, surely, should be preferred over uninformed ones. Yet, it seems fair to say that levels of ‘informedness’ of studies in this paradigm vary greatly, with much work relying on English language documents produced in the agencies ‘supervising’ Dayton BiH and, sometimes, on interviews with their representatives. More adventurous work also includes results of quantitative surveys and interviews with BiH inhabitants, often English-speaking activists in non-governmental organisations (NGOs). As ethnographers, we are predictably worried about the threshold at which certain data from BiH are considered to be valid and valuable in such studies, yet here we will not pursue this line of methodological criticism concerning quality of evidence. Later in this introduction we shall elaborate on the epistemological issues involved and on the specific contribution that ethnographic research can make in this respect. Here we note that we are not arguing that it is problematic per se to analyse ethnonational identification in BiH or to evaluate change according to the parameters of policy programmes conceived of in identitarian terms. Our concern is that, paradoxically, the

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8  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić value of such studies  – even if they criticise dominant understandings  – is limited by an a priori preoccupation with ethnonational ‘identity’ in terms of its own categories, as well as with normative questions, often formulated outside of BiH. Such approaches put the cart before the horse: they start with postulating the salience of certain categories, rather than analysing it. We therefore contend that the contribution of such studies to knowledge production is relative to the degree to which they explicitly acknowledge their postulates. Such acknowledgements allow critical reflection on the part of the authors, or, at least, on the part of readers. Conversely, the risk of unquestioning uses of the round table chronotope is not only that the ethnonational identitarian matrix enshrined in the Dayton constitution is reproduced, but also that it is, through mere inertia, further entrenched as a priori providing the most relevant analytical categories for the study of BiH (see Bougarel et al. 2007: 11–14).

Contextualising Ethnonational Categories in Social Practices It is here that ethnographic studies have made their first important intervention in knowledge production about BiH. Aiming to subvert dominant representations of lives in the country, many of them contributed to the deconstruction of the ethnonational identitarian matrix as the primary one through which to understand all things Bosnian. To us, the quality of such ethnographic studies lies in how they did this: by putting ethnonational categories in their place. This means investigating their relative salience as constituted and negotiated in lived practices in Dayton BiH and analysing the degree to which they intersect with other categories, such as those based on class, gender, education, residential status, urban/rural divisions, age and so on. One line of ethnographic investigation has focused on questions of gender, showing how particular essentialisations of gender can be deployed in self-positionings with regard to ethnonationalism, ‘politics’ and reconciliation initiatives (Helms 2003, 2007, 2008, 2010a; Jansen 2010), as well as in the dynamics of activism (Čengić 2013; Helms 2013) and institutional reforms (Helms 2006). Whether making claims in the name of an innocent and victimised nation, calling for peace in the aftermath of violent conflict, or promoting a secular and antinationalist BiH, people often hold ultimately similar ideas about men, women, and how their mutual relationships ought to be organised in normative kinship formations (Helms 2010b, 2013). The relationship between nationalism and feminism, then, depends on whether ethnonationality and gender are understood as essential possessions or as products of unequal power relations in practice (Cockburn 2000). Ethnographers have also elucidated the articulation of particular valuations of ethnonational belonging with urban self-positionings (Bartulović 2010, 2013; Hromadžić 2012; Markowitz 2010; Palmberger 2013a; Sorabji 2006; Stefansson 2004, 2007). They have shown that posited differences between rural and urban lifestyles and values, often embedded in logics of Balkanism, distinction and

9

Introduction 9 modernisation, form a discursive reservoir for the articulation of cleavages that work outside or against the ethnonationalist paradigm. Yet, questioning commonly held assumptions, not least among self-proclaimed urbanites themselves, that such positionings per definition contain transformative political potential, studies have laid bare their entanglements with shifting social inequalities and the ways in which they may end up as depoliticising or even as compatible with ethnonationalism (see e.g. Armakolas 2007). A considerable body of ethnographic work has focused on the return of refugees and displaced persons, again interrogating widespread assumptions, particularly those of foreign-enforced policy frameworks. Taking into account those who fled and those who stayed behind, those who returned and those who resettled, such studies have sought to place the role of ethnonational belonging within a broader rubric of home-making as it occurs through transgenerational household struggles over material and moral resources and political strategies on different scales (Delpla 2014; Jansen 2003, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011; Kolind 2008; Lofranco 2012; Toal (Ó Tuathail) and Dahlman 2011; Stefansson 2004, 2006, 2007, 2010). A similar complexity has been detected beneath the simultaneous electoral support for and everyday criticism of ethnonationalist elites in BiH, where monopolies over material resources and clientelism play at least as big a role as identitarian arguments in generating mass support for particular political parties (Grandits 2007; Kurtović 2011a). Researchers have also unpacked notions of homogenously ethnonational collective memories of war, tracing instead how remembering and forgetting is shaped in social practices. Such studies throw critical light on the ways in which commemoration, witnessing, establishment of the facts of war and a concern with livelihoods and transgenerational futures unfold in relation to broader political processes (Bougarel 2007; Duijzings 2002, 2007; Helms 2013; Jansen 2007; Jouhanneau 2007, 2010, 2012, 2013; Kurtović 2011b; Palmberger 2008, 2010, 2013a, 2013b; Sorabji 2006). Focussing on the fraught dynamics of memory work as it proceeds, they show that it is infused with present and future-oriented contestations and often imbricated in the mutual (re)constitution of local and international norms and institutions of justice (Delpla 2007, 2010, 2014; Jouhanneau 2008; Wagner 2008). One lesson that can be drawn from all these ethnographic writings is that any understanding of post-war ethnonational belonging in BiH must address its relative salience and its actual operation in webs of social relations of which it is part. In doing so, ethnographers have insisted, time and again, on raising questions that emerged as significant from lived social practices and from peoples’ own interpretations of them. In other words, they have formulated questions ‘from within’. Clearly, this inside/outside distinction cannot be treated as an absolute one between two discrete spheres, and as Delpla (2014) has pointed out, ethnographers are sometimes guilty of overemphasising it.10 Given the embeddedness of most ethnographic research in everyday practice and the degree to which knowledge production about BiH is dominated by studies based on minimal familiarity with how lives are lived in the country,

10

10  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić perhaps it is not surprising that ethnographers have insisted so strongly on the value of what would once have been called ‘the native’s point of view’ – even if thoroughly pluralised and de-essentialised. It is against that background that the first, and up to now only, volume of ethnographic studies in Dayton BiH emphasised the value of its contribution under the heading ‘Bosnia from below’ (Bougarel et al. 2007: 19). That volume is organised in three parts, entitled ‘beyond ethnicity’, ‘beyond ancient hatreds’ and ‘beyond protectorate’. Seeking to go beyond the ‘lens’ of Dayton (Bougarel et al. 2007: 11), it claimed better, deeper empirical insight that allowed better, deeper critical analysis precisely on the basis of long-term ethnographic research of the immersive kind. Capitalising on these methodological strengths, we believe that ethnographic studies have demonstrated the value of forging insights about BiH inductively, focusing on peoples’ concerns as they emerge in particular social settings. As always, this has entailed a focus on the embeddedness of practices in social relations, rather than on individuals, institutions or discourses per se. In this way, ethnographic research on BiH has produced insights and analytical perspectives that both learn from and contribute to the comparative study of settings marked by recent violence framed in ethnonationalist terms, by mass displacement, war crimes and genocide, and by humanitarian interventions and supervised programmes of return and post-war state formation. The present volume takes these earlier ethnographic contributions as a starting point. We believe it has now been established that we need to go ‘beyond’ the Dayton lens, and particularly its identitarian matrix, as condensed in the chronotope of the round table for negotiations. Of course, in terms of the ‘when’, our understanding of lives in mature Dayton BiH must include attention to the fact that they are strongly felt to unfold after war. This book is about a social setting that continues not only to bare the scars of military violence visibly,11 but also to be permeated by contested mobilisations of them. Yet, if earlier ethnographic studies often focused on specific populations demarcated in terms of that war (e.g. returnees, activists for particular war-related causes, victims of particular crimes, etc.), this volume also introduces insights gained from work with people who are less directly identifiable as such. And where chapters do focus on people with particular war experiences, they too detect more ‘generic’ perspectives and concerns shared among others in mature Dayton BiH. Given inevitable scalar demarcations of ethnographic research, this book is not, of course, representative of all lives in BiH in 2008–2014. Apart from noting a strong urban bias in our book (thematised and counteracted by Henig, this volume), let us make a last concession to Daytonist questioning and comment on this in ethnonational terms. Eight out of the ten chapters rely on research conducted in parts of the Federation inhabited mainly by people who could, by name, be identified as Bosniaks. This reflects a broader pattern in ethnographic studies in BiH, with little research in Republika Srpska, inhabited mainly by people identified as Serbs, and even less in Western Herzegovina, inhabited mainly by people identified as Croats.12 Yet even if

11

Introduction 11 geographically concentrating on certain areas in the Federation, it does not follow that this book focuses ‘on Bosniaks’. Some of the protagonists in the chapters may feel a sense of belonging to that group, and that sense may be more or less intense. Others clearly do not. The more important point is that, unlike in the case of pre-war ethnographies, only one of the projects reported on here (Henig) involved a categorical decision to focus on the experience of (certain) Bosniaks, in this case following from an interest in rural religious practices. Yet, like most recent ethnographic studies, this contribution too rejects a groupist analytic, instead flagging the relevance of ethnonational categories if, as and when they emerge contextually (e.g. Henig 2012a, 2012b; see also Sorabji 2008). Overall, then, while we do not claim representativity of our insights across the BiH population as a whole, we do believe that most of the country’s inhabitants would recognise some of their core concerns in this book. Moreover, we have no reason to assume that differences with regard to those concerns would emerge predominantly along ethnonational lines. We thus argue that the chronotope of the round table for negotiations does condense one particular mode of representation of lives in mature Dayton BiH – both emically and etically – and that it is in that capacity that it mostly deserves our attention. Yet, we resist the tendency to let it ‘define the genre’ of studies of BiH. Taking seriously the concerns we encounter among people in BiH, we can discern the contours of alternative chronotopes beyond the post-war identitarian one. We now turn to some of those.

Keeping One’s Head Above Water: A Semiperipheral Swamp? In terms of symbolic geography, BiH has a long-standing reputation of being ‘in-between’. The country has long been subject to a Balkanist gaze from the European centre (Bjelić and Savić 2002; Fleming 2000; Todorova 1997) and, to different degrees, we find compatible discourses among some of its own inhabitants (Bakić-Hayden 1995; Bartulović 2013; Helms 2008; Kolind 2008; Stefansson 2007). For centuries, BiH has been seen to belong to white modern European civilisation, but not quite:  in Todorova’s terms, it is perceived as ‘disheveled’ Europe (Todorova 1997: 14). Both emic and etic representations have tended to situate the country between East and West, between religious spheres and empires, and, as part of Titoist Yugoslavia, between the two Cold War blocs. Today, it is again conceived of geopolitically as an in-between place:  although not in terms of its exact topographical coordinates, it is now said to be situated between the EU and its constitutive non-European outside. Congruent with the discourse of Balkanism, this conception contains a temporal dimension too:  unlike many other countries on other continents, BiH is not considered to be totally and essentially non-European and therefore inherently unfit for EU membership. As part of the Balkans, it is a ‘semiperipheral’ (Blagojević 2009) outside that, following a normative, progressively staged ‘road into Europe’, is supposed to become an inside over time (Jansen 2009, 2015). This is the official line of EU functionaries and

12

12  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić shapes the practices of supervision agencies (Coles 2007), as well as much of government policy (Bieber 2013). Moreover, survey and focus group research (e.g. Foreign Policy Initiative 2012) find support for EU accession among a large – if recently decreasing – majority of BiH’s inhabitants.13 From this perspective, the country is only temporarily outside. It is therefore considered ‘in-between’ both in spatial and in temporal terms. Supervised Dayton BiH is being incorporated into a neoliberalising post-Cold War order in particular ways, structured largely around projected EU accession and, possibly, NATO membership. And as part of this, the ‘when’ of this book can be determined in terms of its specific condition not only as post-war but also as post-socialist, or perhaps better: post-Cold War and post-Fordist. Moreover, at least from normative perspectives, it can be and is considered pre-accession to the EU. Dayton BiH was between 13 and 19 years old when the research for this book was conducted and reached its twentieth anniversary around the time of publication. The consolidation of identitarian politics of representation went hand in hand with socio-economic transformations from pre-war Yugoslav socialist self-management, over a predatory war economy to its legitimisation in a peculiar post-war order. These changes, in turn, are increasingly conceived of as part of a long, gradual, encompassing process of EU accession (see Bieber 2013). Until relatively recently, the socio-economic dimension of these transformations has received much less scholarly attention than questions of representation, return and reconciliation that were, as we saw, predominantly captured in the identitarian matrix of ‘transitional justice’. Yet important work has been done on the ways in which members of ethnonationalist elites, and some others, have successfully installed themselves at the profit-making end of campaigns of dispossession and (upward) redistribution that started during the war (e.g. Andreas 2004, 2008; Bojičić-Dželilović 2013; Divjak and Pugh 2008; Donais 2005; Papić 2001; Pugh 2005), or before it (Anđelić 2003; Schierup 1999; Woodward 1995). Such work shows that Dayton BiH’s transformations are not a textbook case of neoliberalising ‘transition’ through privatisation, deregulation, tax reduction and the creation of favourable conditions for investment by global capital. Some of this did occur, for example in the foreign-enforced privatisation of the financial sector. Yet, as studies from across the globe show (Dunn 2004, 2008; Ferguson 2006, 2015; Muehlebach 2012; Tsing 2005), a country’s incorporation in global processes of neoliberalisation always takes a specific shape. In the case of BiH, the country maintains a vast ‘public sector’, with large parts of the population dependent on its salaries and allowances. This involves a class project of accumulation (Harvey 2005; Kalb 2012), involving both domestic elites and representatives of foreign capital, and a redeployment and rescaling of the governmental apparatus (Collier 2011; Wacquant 2012). Political parties occupy a central position in this process in BiH, and this is where the entanglement with the Dayton institutional configuration is most visible. Social property was converted into state property, some of which was then privatised, often through webs of connections (see Grandits 2007; Pugh

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Introduction 13 2002). Yet much of it was retained as state property and effectively divided up between political parties to run as their own little empires. In this way, multi-tentacled clientelist machines facilitate the cooptation of electorates, while control over judicial institutions guarantees almost total impunity. This particular ‘transition’ thus underpins the reproduction of parallel privileged elites in BiH’s ethnonational fiefdoms, each with their own connections to specific streams of global capital and sometimes competing, yet ultimately compatible, interests to maintain the Dayton institutional configuration. On average, living standards in BiH have dropped dramatically compared to pre-war levels and inequality has risen exponentially (Bisogno and Chong 2002). Yugoslav socialist self-management structures  – organised largely through workplaces  – have been dismantled and welfare mechanisms have been reduced in size and in reach to be reassembled as part of multi-scale global developments (e.g. Brković 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b; Stubbs 2001, 2002, 2004; Deacon and Stubbs 1998; Lendvai and Stubbs 2009). Their emphasis has also been reconfigured in terms of war-related categories, such as former combatants (Bougarel 2006). Unemployment is rampant and, in comparative European terms, average wages, pensions and other allowances are extremely low in relation to retail prices.14 Even so, while it would be hard to find a citizen of BiH who would not deplore the situation in the country, open and coordinated contestation has been limited.15 Somehow, and sometimes to their own disbelief, people make do; they survive and they strive – and in certain ways many succeed – to partake of what they consider to be the ‘good life’ (Jašarević 2012a). Recent ethnographic work has increasingly sought to foreground such livelihood pursuits, initiating a much-needed dialogue with anthropological studies of post-socialist and post-Fordist transformations elsewhere (Gilbert et al. 2008). Some writings trace vibrant and creative negotiations of work (Jašarević 2007) and especially of health practices and their ontological grounds (Jašarević 2011, 2012b). Others have ethnographically disentangled the ubiquitous emic notion of a ‘normal life’ as an object of past and future-oriented yearning in a variety of practices (Bartulović 2013; Helms 2010a; Jansen 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2014a, 2014b, 2015; Jansen and Helms 2009; Kurtović 2012b; Maček 2009; Robertson 2010; Stefansson 2010; see also Povrzanović Frykman 2012). Depending on their empirical focus and their theoretical aims, but perhaps also reflecting dispositions of the researcher, such writings display differential spreads of emphasis across the continuum from anxiety and despair to hopefulness and joy. Yet, in line with much of the ethnographic work on post-socialist and post-Fordist transformations from which they draw and to which they contribute, more often than not their tone is largely in tune with the above-mentioned socio-economic indicators. Building on such work, a key domain of interest in this book is how people in mature Dayton BiH go about their attempts to secure livelihoods and ‘normal’ or even ‘good’ lives beyond that, especially as the time of mass foreign humanitarian aid has passed. Credit, nothing new to many people in the

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14  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić post-Yugoslav states, is a central mechanism (Jašarević 2012a) and, in situations of need, locally organised humanitarian actions are sometimes remarkably successful where institutionalised social protection and health care fails (Brković 2014a, 2014b). Remittances from the vast numbers of Bosnians abroad are an important, if decreasing, source of help (Pula 2014). Yet, we should also note that the parallel clientelist machines of Dayton BiH and the centrality of informal channels (Brković 2012, 2015a, 2015b; Kurtović 2011a, Vetters 2014) are a key resource for a good proportion of people to get by, if often only just. This, and the related ethnonationalist dispersion of institutional representation, allows deflection of attempts to coordinate mass dissatisfaction (Jansen 2015:  189–219). Still, as Dayton BiH matured, concerns with livelihoods and existential mobility, as well as with the formal and informal relations that regulate access to them, have become ever more prevalent themes in everyday conversation, media reporting and, lately, in some action research (Nedimović 2014). To a degree, such concerns are also being incorporated in speeches – if not usually in actual policies – by domestic and ‘supervising’ politicians. In Bakhtinian terms, we can detect the contours of an alternative chronotope here, setting the tone of much emic commentary on lives in mature Dayton BiH and, to a lesser extent, in etic portrayals too: that of a swamp in the semiperiphery of Europe. Ethnonationality matters in this swamp, but under certain specific conditions rather than as an all-encompassing context-blind matrix, as suggested by the unquestioned use of the chronotope of the round table for negotiations. A disadvantage of this figure is that it resonates with Balkanist stereotypes of mud, dirt and contagion, so often deployed to define, in contrast, European asphalt, cleanliness and hygiene. Yet when it is deployed as a chronotope, combining spatial and temporal determination, the figure of the swamp does not necessarily imply such stereotypes of timeless inferiority. In fact, it can then thematise the temporal dimension, rather than neutralise it in ahistorical Balkanism. It can be used to evoke the sense of most people in BiH that in the early 1990s, they suddenly slid from relatively solid ground into risky, non-transparent and uncertain surroundings. A  brief period of post-war optimism in BiH did not yield hoped-for results for most, and in mature Dayton BiH many people feel they are still struggling to keep their heads above water. A commonly used term in BiH to convey this continuous effort to reproduce lives is preživljavanje (literally ‘surviving’). As an image of a ‘where’ and a ‘when’, the figure of the swamp captures harsh socio-economic conditions in a murky environment and an experience, and more importantly, an ever-present threat, of sinking. This swamp is semiperipheral with regard to a projected centre that is seen, and sees itself, as offering more solid ground. Depending on the opportunities available to them, some count at least partially on lifelines to such a centre, through remittances, plans for or dreams of emigration, and so forth. Yet, this is a semiperipheral location, marked by spatiotemporal ambiguity. Spatially,

15

Introduction 15 its boundaries cannot be determined on clear-cut topographical coordinates. Temporally speaking, swamps can be drained. Indeed, such drainage is one of the central promises held out to people in BiH by domestic and foreign politicians. These promises elicit a degree of scepticism, for they remind people that some of the other swamp dwellers are doing pretty well at their expense, and that some are only partially submerged in the swamp in the first place. In that way, the well-known song Paranoja, by the Sarajevo-based band Letu štuke, follows the local idiom to define Dayton BiH as ‘a little swamp full with crocodiles’ (mala bara puna krokodila). People are thus represented as condemned to a continuous struggle to keep their heads above water while navigating between ‘crocodiles’ – politicians, tycoons and others who thrive in such a biotope.

A Lasting Sense of Being Stuck: A Waiting Room and a Labyrinth? At this point, we should mention that the years in which the studies making up this volume were conducted were also the ones readers may associate with a ‘global financial crisis’ that started in 2007–2008. These events, however defined and circumscribed, affected lives in BiH too, and virtually all socio-economic indicators in the country took a major turn for the worse (Mujanović 2013; Pula 2014). Yet this crisis was striking in its absence from emic interpretations in BiH itself. In the period under study in this book, it was rare for people in BiH to speak of any crisis other than the one they had become used to already. If the ‘global crisis’ was mentioned at all, it was the longevity of the Dayton BiH predicament that was emphasised, as in the Facebook group called ‘It is not that we are in recession, it is just that now the rest of the world knows how we have been for the past twenty years’.16 The screws might be tightened further, precariousness might be intensified, but, qualitatively, nothing was felt to be markedly different from before. In comparative perspective, such findings are not unusual in themselves. Ethnographic studies among marginalised people across the globe have highlighted a similar pattern. Yet, there is a major difference. Studies of the very poor  – particularly, but not only, in certain non-European settings  – often emphasise that they have never known anything but precariousness and do not expect it to end either (e.g. on Brazil, Millar 2014). In contrast, we find that many people in BiH do both remember and yearn for a degree of stability and predictable routes to improvement (Jansen 2015; Kurtović 2011b; Palmberger 2008). Those old enough recall them from pre-war times, usually editing out the precariousness that did actually characterise at least some of their lives in late Yugoslav socialism. Our point here is that, for them, any ‘crisis’ they might be experiencing started long before 2007–2008, with the war and the collapse of conditions for ‘normal lives’. It was then that they slid into the swamp.

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16  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić Again, this feeds into a diffuse representation of lives in Dayton BiH as in-between not only in terms of symbolic and political geography (its ‘where’), but also in terms of its imposed and lived temporalities (its ‘when’). Crucially, we find a shared experience of being stuck in space, but also in time. The sense of temporal entrapment operates simultaneously on two scales. First, geopolitically, whereby a prevalent emic and etic understanding of BiH as a polity revolves around its lack of progress, however defined (see Bartulović 2012; Čelebičić 2013; Jansen 2015; Kurtović 2012a). Second, concerns with being stuck also permeate many everyday pursuits in BiH, as evidenced, for example, in studies of negotiations of precariousness in displacement and return (Delpla 2014; Jansen 2003, 2008, 2011; Kolind 2008; Stefansson 2006, 2010), of the suspense of those awaiting news about missing family members (Wagner 2008) and war-crime judiciary proceedings (Delpla 2014), of the uncertainties of accessing health care (Brković 2012), and of the project-driven contracts of employees of intervention and supervision agencies and of NGOs (Baker 2012, 2014). We propose that such modes or representation of the ‘when’ and the ‘where’ of lives in mature Dayton BiH can be condensed in the interplay of two chronotopes. The first one is that of a labyrinth. This conveys an experience of a complex and confusing environment in which the tensions between different forms of knowledge and understanding play out in practice. Normative models of ‘transition’ and EU accession rely on the classical, straightforward image of a labyrinth, in which only one correct route exists to reach the exit. People in BiH are then exhorted to leave behind the wars. In terms of the 1992–1995 war in BiH, this means abandoning excessive ethnonational identification and ‘civilising’ any concerns with belonging in (no less identitarian) liberal-multiculturalist forms. According to this model, people in BiH should also leave behind the Cold War, that is, Yugoslav socialist self-management and everything associated with it: its authoritarianism, its ideals, its working habits, its secularism and, perhaps most of all, the entitlements it projected for secure and comfortable futures. Again, temporal and spatial dimensions are intertwined here. To get through the labyrinth, to move forward in space and time, people in BiH are required to become new persons, with new habits, expectations and aspirations. The chronotope of the labyrinth allows an acknowledgement that such demands are challenging and people in BiH itself, in this understanding, are not well placed to judge where they should be heading. Hence the lack of ‘progress’. After all, in a labyrinth you do not know where you are and you cannot glance over the walls to get a better view of the correct road ahead. Only the supervisors (literally: ‘overviewers’) have the overview that can guide Bosnians to the exit, which will at once be the entry, now as part of a ‘proper’ democratic and capitalist state, into the EU. The chronotope of the labyrinth captures this normative mode of representation and its real political importance in the world today. And let us be clear: patronising as it is, it is not absent from the understandings of some people in BiH itself.

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Introduction 17 Yet this chronotope also allows us to engage in critical interrogation of the same models of ‘transition’ and EU accession built on alternative local reasonings and non-teleological notions of transformation exposing the inadequate postulates of its normative use. Unlike a labyrinth, namely, the predicament in which Bosnians find themselves does not have a fixed entry point and exit point, with one particular route, relevant for all, leading from one to the other. Such a teleological model of collective movement, in which all are in the same boat, is of course central to the mythology of EU accession (and, globally speaking, of many policies of development, post-war state formation and reform), but it should be analysed for what it is: a normative model articulated in a specific historical conjuncture. Still, to a degree, the image of the labyrinth does condense how many people in BiH themselves conceive of the ‘when’ and the ‘where’ of their lives in other ways: insofar as it evokes a sense of limited visibility, of structural unpredictability (as in the ubiquitous emic term neizvjesnost), of multiple decisions to be made, the results of which are deeply uncertain, and of a complex network of enclosed corridors, ultimately circumscribed by a set of firm walls. In a labyrinth, one sees only one path (in two directions), knowing that there is much more to it, but not knowing quite what, and with no certain grounds on which to assess whether that path does indeed lead anywhere ‘ahead’, however that is defined. We suggest that the evocative capacity of the chronotope of the labyrinth for contemporary BiH is improved when it is brought into dialogue with another image that complicates it. For while prevalent modes of representation of the predicaments of lives in mature Dayton BiH rely heavily on the notion of the need to move forward to an exit, they also contain much that disturbs this idea. Enter the chronotope of the waiting room. This term [čekaonica] is very prominent in commentary on current affairs in BiH – in everyday conversations, media coverage and political speeches, for ­example – and it also condenses certain understandings in progress reports and scholarly analysis of the normative kind. It is used in a relatively neutral, descriptive manner, as well as, perhaps more commonly, to evoke a sense of exasperation. Again the spatiotemporal logic of EU accession looms large here. The chronotope of the waiting room projects an enclosed space, often crowded, in which a variety of people are thrown together. What brings them together is the fact that they are waiting for something, and that their progress towards that something is determined by others, who are running the offices behind the closed doors surrounding the waiting room. Yet in the case of mature Dayton BiH, this mode of representation entails a very particular type of waiting room. The people in it, namely, have not been called forward for two decades and they can only be granted what they are waiting for in a collective manner. And while occasional announcements are made about future progress, or even about progress presumably made but largely intangible in everyday experiences, most do not feel they are anywhere near approaching whatever it is they are waiting for. Calls for patience are therefore resented. Of course, people in the BiH waiting room may not in fact all be waiting for the

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18  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić same thing, yet they do share an awareness that they have spent an awful long time waiting already. Unlike the person in the joke at the start of this introduction, this is not necessarily a result of a defiant, or indeed any, decision on their part. Yet, like the job-seeker who decides to come back later, they have to make do in the meantime.

Chronotopes and Mature Dayton BiH Forms of Affect Clearly, our identification of chronotopes in emic and etic understandings of lives in mature Dayton BiH is not meant to be exhaustive. Nor do we propose to select a single one that would most accurately reflect the ‘actual situation’ in the country. The chronotopes we tentatively identify  – a round table for negotiations, a swamp, a waiting room and a labyrinth – do a particular job for us:  they draw the contours of some prevalent bodies of knowledge on contemporary lives in BiH, encountered in fragmented ways and on different scales, and suggesting particular avenues of possible action. These bodies of knowledge co-exist, intersect and overlap in local and global, academic and political, as well as in everyday imaginations and practices. None of the chronotopes  – none of the modes of knowledge they evoke  – is inherently ‘true’ or sufficient to understand experiences of living in mature Dayton BiH. Rather than seeking such single, stable standpoints, an ethnographic sensitivity suggests that more reliable and politically more responsible accounts of such experiences can be forged by tracing social practices and processes in which different – often contradictory – perspectives come to be entangled. In that sense, our discussion of those chronotopes, we hope, helps to situate the contributions of the book’s individual chapters, all of which analyse people’s engagements in practices that knot together not only different knowledges but also different actors in multi-layered social configurations. In short, our ethnographic perspective suggests that efforts to comprehend experiences of life in mature Dayton BiH, and beyond, are best served by foregrounding verbs rather than nouns. Importantly, the chronotopes also allow us to render some important affective dimensions of lives in mature Dayton BiH. Most people in BiH, and many of those concerned with events in the country, would not look upon the chronotopes we have discerned here as merely detached descriptions of a ‘situation’. Instead, each one of them evokes particular subjectivities, socialities, yearnings and atmospheres. Each one also facilitates the projection of certain potentialities while it closes others. In mature Dayton BiH itself, this is rarely spelled out in analytical terms. There is no need for this, precisely, we believe, because the patterns we aim to grasp with these chronotopes constitute largely implicitly shared ‘constitutive categories’ of interaction, interpretation and feeling in this particular spatiotemporal constellation. In understandings we have condensed in the chronotope of the round table, our attention is drawn away from any temporal dimension. While activities here are supposedly focused on finding a way forward, this is left subdued

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Introduction 19 in a rather static, even timeless picture. The round table is surrounded by an exact number of seats, reserved for people who are not only exclusively (and once and for all) conceived of in ethnonational terms, but also as singularly invested in identitarian concerns. The tense, volatile and supervised negotiations they are engaged in are supposed to be about those concerns, and only those. And the only positive outcome that such understandings can register is compromise in those particular terms too. We have therefore proposed that the chronotope of the round table of negotiations – dominant and unreflectively reproduced in much scholarly writing on Dayton BiH – should be reduced to its proper size and significance. Through our tentative formulation of three other chronotopes – the swamp, the waiting room and the labyrinth – we hope to alert readers to the simultaneous prevalence and salience of at least some other understandings, constructed around different categories and entailing different affective dynamics, as well as opportunities for compliant or resistant, lamenting or celebratory, serious or humorous engagements. The chronotope of the swamp foregrounds struggles for livelihoods, internal competition, hierarchy, solidarity and making do. Resilience in the face of the threat of sinking further is crucial here. And all this takes shape against the background of what is remembered as a downwards slide from relative security into a murky and uncertain environment in which it is hard to find a foothold, let  alone to rise up. The chronotope of the labyrinth, in turn, evokes confusion and disorientation, lack of reliable information and entrapment, relentless activity offset by a sense of lack of achievement. This is cast against a normative model of a correct path towards an exit that is also an entry into something else. The chronotope of the waiting room, finally, draws attention to affective dimensions of lives in suspension, such as boredom and exasperation, against the background of the regimented management of collective movement. Our identification of these chronotopes thus gives expression to one of the key interventions of this book: to investigate how people engage with what they consider their predicament in Dayton BiH as it lasts over time. But let us pause and reflect on this point for a moment. If a sense of being stuck was such a common experience in BiH when the research for this book was conducted, is there any need for new studies? Surely, if it is a sense of lack of change, of stagnation, that is so overwhelming, we could just extend findings of earlier work? While it is true that much of the ethnographic studies conducted in the first decade after the war in BiH remain depressingly recognisable at the time of writing, there is something qualitatively new about this experience of stagnation in the more recent period. What is new, of course, is precisely that it has lasted so long. ‘Mature Dayton BiH’, and the sense of being stuck associated with it, now have a history of their own. Ethnographic studies of lives in the country can therefore enter into productive dialogue with research on the affective afterlives of modernist temporal reasonings elsewhere (Ferguson 1999; Guyer 2007; Muehlebach and Shoshan 2012). In contemporary BiH, the sheer passage of time becomes a

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20  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić variable in its own right and this raises fresh questions: what happens when a political configuration is experienced as ‘permanently temporary’? how are everyday concerns of different people embedded in social relations in a ‘where’ and a ‘when’ that is experienced as such? how do people mobilise relations in their pursuit of livelihoods two decades into Dayton BiH? how, in the routines of their everyday lives, do they position themselves, through the practice of social relations, with regard to policies and authoritative discourses of movement through time and space formulated domestically and from abroad? With such questions in mind, some chapters in this volume explore how precariousness shapes peoples’ engagements with their presents and futures through ‘strange’ political loyalties and choices that ultimately reproduce their sense of being stuck (Larisa Kurtović on the fraught relationship between livelihood strategies and ethnonationalist parties in Jajce; Vanja Čelebičić on how young people engage with elections in Bihać). Other chapters turn to the uncertainties of access to care to illustrate paradoxes of lives in a ‘state’ that is felt to be inconsistently present, or even absent, in the ways it cares for its citizens (Azra Hromadžić on the management of a private care home in Bihać; Čarna Brković on how parents in Bijeljina mobilise connections to support their children with developmental difficulties). Some contributions shed light on the ways in which a feeling of being owed is shaped by several intertwined ways of knowing: knowledge embedded in the experience of how life used to be, of how life is, and of uncertain futures (Nejra Nuna Čengić on how people who lived through the siege of Sarajevo integrate this experience in their post-war self-positionings; David Henig on how villagers reconfigure sociality in the transforming Central Bosnian highlands). Other chapters point to the gaps that open up between formal discourses and intense personal experiences (Cécile Jouhanneau on how former camp detainees in Brčko negotiate exhortations to witness in public; Larisa Jašarević on how volunteers in a public science project in Visoko form a short-lived ‘inoperative’ community). These gaps, as all chapters in this volume suggest, are shaped by local and global processes making mature Dayton BiH into a specific ‘where’ and ‘when’ in the first place. These processes also inform negotiations of the modalities of ‘locals’ and ‘internationals’ in supervision agencies, and their differential valuations in terms of merit and legitimacy (as explored in the chapter by Karla Koutková) and politically impermeable yet ultimately impotent strategies of ironic de-subjectivation in particular forms of social interaction (as dissected in Nebojša Šavija-Valha’s contribution). Analysing social relations in mature Dayton BiH, this book thus provides diagnostic perspectives on much broader concerns of, for example, political subjectivity, liberal representative democracy and globalising neoliberalising capitalism. Opening up avenues for comparative work, we believe that the value of such contributions directly corresponds to the degree to which we are prepared to locate them in understandings of the ‘where’ and ‘when’ in which they unfold.

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Introduction 21

Ethnography in the Semiperiphery: Shades In this final part of the introduction, we delve deeper into such comparative issues to address a second main-intended intervention of this book. In what follows, we discern a particular ethnographic sensitivity that can be cultivated in mature Dayton BiH. We reflect on the epistemological conditions that afford our specific positioning with regard to knowledge production, entailing particular forms of situated critique. If, in the case of this book, this requires us to foreground knowledge production from the perspective of the European semiperiphery (Blagojević 2009), this is not an exceptionalist claim. In fact, we believe that such a reflexive exercise could be usefully deployed in analogous terms in all spatiotemporal configurations around the globe, identifying particular potentials and challenges in each instance. Alongside ‘Theory From the South’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2012), we thus reflect on the value of theorisation from the world’s differentially positioned (semi) peripheries. In our case, this is the European semiperiphery. As briefly mentioned above, we believe that the specific contribution of ethnographic research in mature Dayton BiH does not simply lie in its methods of data collection. Sure, long-term research, command of the language of the people one writes about and intimacy with their ways of life, livelihoods and concerns are important for quality knowledge production in the social sciences and humanities. And, yes, we believe that most ethnographers invest more effort in this than many, if certainly not all, other researchers in BiH, at least many of those coming from abroad. The particular depth of insights that can be constructed in that way is, we would not hesitate to confirm, a major plus. Yet we seek to go beyond such ultimately rather-mechanical claims to superior insight in quantitative terms (more, longer, deeper). Except for those positivists who maintain that in-depth research through close engagement fatally contaminates one’s objectivity – and they do still exist – few others would argue with this. In an interdisciplinary landscape, ethnographers are therefore all too easily drawn into a game of competitive data collection, which they are always likely to ‘win’, only to find that it reconfirms their position as expert hunters and gatherers of more data – and nothing much beyond that. Rather than berries, roots, game or fish, they then provide data about what ‘the locals really think’. Crucially, from this perspective, such data should concern what these locals think about specific, pre-defined issues: in post-war BiH, for example, about the ‘distance’ between ethnonational groups, about reconciliation, and more recently, also about EU accession. Ethnographic work is valued here insofar as it hunts and gathers in the pool of ‘local knowledge’ about certain questions grounded in the normative concerns of others, formulated elsewhere and in advance. These others then use (or, if it is inconvenient, ignore) such particular knowledge from a specific locale for the underpinning of what is claimed to be non-particular theorisation. Against this background, this volume seeks to initiate a dialogue on more epistemological grounds, focusing on questions asked, rather than on answers

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22  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić found. We contend that ethnography, with all its limitations in terms of reach and representativity, is particularly well placed to contribute to the formulation of good questions that reflexively entangle more ‘particular’ and more ‘universal’ modalities of knowledge production. While every research project necessarily starts out with certain initial questions, ethnography thrives on a peculiar sensitivity that continually recasts questions as it proceeds. Its questions, and the way it asks them, are inflected by its very own process of learning  – it works from the more particular to the more universal, rather than registering the particular only insofar as it is compatible with a presumably ‘universal’ programme articulated in a centre denying its own particularity. The latter positioning operates with what we consider deeply problematic presumptions of neutral universality, as if speaking from an unmarked and precisely therefore superior position. Such a view from nowhere is in fact always a view from somewhere, and the positionality of any approach, we argue, should be made explicit. We thus call for explicit reflection on the ways in which researchers decide what to look at, what to look for, where to look for it, and which categories to use for rendering it. Our attempt to discern chronotopes in this introduction is a way to channel such reflection for mature Dayton BiH and the contours of our position have been woven throughout the pages of this introduction. Here we turn to it in detail. What is the specific potential of ethnographic knowledge production formulated from, and inflected by, work in the European semiperiphery? What are the implications for the possibility of critique? When conducting ethnography in a place perceived as belonging to white modern European civilisation, but not quite, and presumed to be on the ‘road into Europe’, but not quite, it is only to be expected that one is confronted with numerous contradictions. Take the chronotopes we identified to condense widespread understandings of the ‘when’ and ‘where’ of contemporary lives in mature Dayton BiH: a round table for negotiations, a swamp, a labyrinth and a waiting room. How could one spatiotemporal constellation possibly be captured in such diverging images? As we said, we can discern these chronotopes in both emic and etic understandings of lives in BiH, available to and deployed by the same people. Even if we only consider the image of the swamp, and that of the waiting room, they seem to be direct opposites for most intents and purposes. Swamps are dirty, shapeless, messy, with too many things touching one another. Their murkiness makes it impossible to see what is going on below the surface, but one knows the general pattern: one of sinking deeper. Waiting rooms, on the other hand, are bounded and relatively ordered spaces – or at least there is often pretence of order imposed – in which one is assumed to dwell as a pragmatic step in a particular endeavour. These two chronotopes evoke different possibilities of movement and action, different affective dispositions and subjectivities. So how can we suggest that both of them could work to capture some widely shared understandings of what it means to live in mature Dayton BiH?

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Introduction 23 Rather than trying to undo this contradiction, we deploy it as a provocation: we ask the reader to reflect on the terms in which we may or may not conceive of it as a contradiction. Namely, in order to identify a ‘contradiction’, we must rely on an implicit assumption of its opposite: a ‘harmonious’ or ‘non-contradictory’ arrangement. From the point of view of most people living in BiH, we submit, such notions of ‘harmonious’ arrangements would be informed by (projected) modernist, Western European ones in which there is a vast arena of experience between the intricate relationality of a shapeless swamp and a neatly bounded waiting room. From the perspective of such an arrangement, swamps and waiting rooms include features that are opposed to one another, and thus, when used to describe the same context and the same place, this constitutes a contradiction. The chapters in this volume make a classic ethnographic intervention by demonstrating that, from points of view situated within mature Dayton BiH, the simultaneous use of these two chronotopes is not necessarily contradictory. Many people whose voices appear on the pages of this volume experience life in BiH as both a struggle to keep their heads above water in a swamp and as an awfully long time spent in a waiting room. And they feel they have been doing both simultaneously, something ethnographic research must try to understand as the outcome of a set of entangled multi-scaled processes. Up to this point, then, the intervention we propose is in line with the classic conception of anthropology as cultural critique. According to this model, ethnographic research allows us to get to know intimately something unfamiliar and to deploy our findings to challenge the universalist or ethnocentric assumptions of our audiences, with whom we are presumed to share a cultural background. The intention, then, is to familiarise oneself with the unfamiliar in order to defamiliarise the familiar. It goes something like this: (a) oh look, people in X have notions of, say, shame or masculinity or success that are different from ‘ours’; (b) so, ‘we’ may now want to think critically about ‘our own’ notions of shame or masculinity or success, as they have been shown to be non-universal at the very least. Yet, this book cannot and does not want to inscribe itself completely and exclusively into this approach built on cultural relativism and the strategic use of difference. And while this may partly be related to the epistemological and political preferences of the scholars in question, it is also a direct function of the particular ‘when’ and ‘where’ in which the ethnographic research reported on here was conducted:  in a European semiperiphery in 2008–2014. This brings us to the peculiar way in which critique emerges as an important dimension of this volume. We emphasise that, although the tension between the figure of the swamp and that of the waiting room may not elicit a sense of much contradiction from the perspective of people living in mature Dayton BiH, they do see this situation as unfortunate. Taking into account widespread dissatisfaction and exasperation, this volume therefore attempts to make another contribution beyond the classic one of cultural critique. This is a move that is somewhat less frequent in ethnographic studies. Many of the

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24  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić chapters gathered here, namely, strive to engage critically not only with more ‘global’ (read: often Western, pretend-universalist) dimensions of knowledge and practice (see Verdery 1997), but also with more ‘local’ ones. We aim to re-describe – and thus to intervene conceptually into – not just ‘modernist’, ‘developmentalist’ ‘Western’, ‘universalist’ ideas about politics, the good life, and about harmonious and contradictory arrangements, but also those of the actors in question, situated in BiH. As we have seen, forms of knowledge and practice that are not usually recognised as part of white modern European civilisation ‘proper’ are commonly used as grounds for cultural critique of the ethnocentric universalism of the ‘centre’ (see also Rogers 2010: 13, on how this has been conducted in postsocialist studies). Cultural critique thus relies on the difference of the periphery but, ultimately and paradoxically, it is mostly led from the centre (cf. Blagojević and Yair 2010). In this volume, we do seek to question universalisms in the ‘centre’, but we also engage in a less common ethnographically grounded critique of globally entangled realities in mature Dayton BiH itself (and not just of their purported origin in the ‘centre’). The contributions in this volume critically engage with forms of knowledge and practice from mature Dayton BiH in their different aspects and modalities. Some of the chapters do juxtapose occurrences in BiH to critically assess dominant Western understandings of science or politics (Jašarević; Henig). Yet, some chapters critically discuss the efforts of people in BiH themselves to depoliticise their everyday life and social relationships  – thereby leaving intact prevalent identitarian, ethnonational understandings of politics (Jouhanneau). Other chapters, again critically, explore vernacular forms of relatedness, knowledge and subjectivity that are firmly grounded in local BiH socio-historical contexts, outlining their productive as well as oppressive aspects (Šavija-Valha, Čengić). Some chapters attempt to combine the critiques, suggesting that practices and relationships that may seem parochial can be understood as a way of enacting forms of knowledge and practice usually regarded as Western (Koutková, Hromadžić, Brković), or that a large portion of outsiders’ expectations of how people in BiH ought to make political and other choices is based on misapprehensions (Kurtović, Čelebičić). Most importantly, none of the chapters works on the assumption that a stable, locatable and definable difference exists between ‘our’ and ‘their’ terms (whereby, in a book written in English, ‘ours’ would presumably be ‘the centre’/‘the West’). Instead, they all seek to capture, learn from, understand and translate gradual and unstable differences (often embedded in categorical inequalities) between various shades in which ‘we’ and ‘they’, and ‘our’ and ‘their’ terms, are sometimes more separated out and sometimes less so. This is partly the consequence of the pre-existing intimacy with the setting of research of many of the authors in this volume, but that should not lead us to think of it as ‘native’ anthropology. In fact, many of the chapters in this volume present what Strathern (1987) calls ‘auto-anthropology’, in the sense that they attempt to defamiliarise the research setting – to illuminate the awkward and the unusual within the familiar and to use knowledge practices generated from BiH as

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Introduction 25 explanatory tools, rather than merely as objects of study or sources to critique Western conceptual apparatuses. That the ‘auto’ in this ‘auto-anthropology’ refers, in our volume, to the semiperiphery at least as much as to the ‘centre’ colours our approach as a whole with different shades.17 Eastern Europe is frequently linked with greyness – not only with respect to socialist-style architecture or a buoyant informal economy, but also through the notions of shadow elites (Wedel 2009), grey zones of welfare (Harboe Knudsen 2015) and grey arenas of social life generally (Ledeneva 2011). If we conceive of such greyness as a sign not of uniformity but of the limited value of assumed black and white binaries, we can think of social life as displaying vast differentiations of ‘shades’ that can never be discerned in pure terms of colour schemes but only in shifting entanglements. Such an understanding underpins our reflections on the scales of knowledge production. Critically approaching more ‘local’, as well as more ‘global’, forms of knowledge and practice within BiH, this volume does not offer a translation, a straightforward cultural critique (Marcus and Fisher 1986) or political critique (Biehl and McKay 2012) of ‘our’ ways of doing things on the basis of ‘their’ worlds. Instead, it aims to show by example that critical ethnography of the semiperiphery requires time and patience to discern and understand the play of different shades as they are formed and undone in social practice. This means we unravel the anthropological knots (Green 2014) of who did what, when, to whom and in what way, and on what scale. Only on this basis, we argue, is it possible to articulate nuanced and contextually grounded critiques of particular actors, notions, practices, modes of thought and relations both within mature Dayton BiH and in the presumed ‘centres’ of white modern European civilisation ‘proper’. These two formations can never be separated out entirely and our analytical perspective  – articulated from a semiperipheral vantage point – seeks to turn that impossibility into a sensitivity that informs knowledge production combining compassion and critique.

Notes 1 Throughout this book we use the acronym BiH to refer to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the term ‘Bosnian’ as an adjective meaning ‘pertaining to BiH’, regardless of any attributed or felt ethnonational belonging. 2 On the contents and the functioning of jokes in BiH see, e.g. Vučetić 2004. On the role of irony in particular forms of sociality in BiH see Šavija-Valha 2013 and this volume. 3 Our use of this Bakhtinian category is inspired by Gilbert (2013). Any precise meaning of the term ‘chronotope’ is notoriously difficult to pin down in the literature (including in Bakhtin’s own work). In Bemong and Borghart’s instructive identification of five levels of abstraction in applications of the concept, our use of the term falls largely in the category of ‘minor chronotopes’ (Bemong and Borghart 2010: 6). 4 Since 1993 ‘Bosniak’ is the official term for Bosnians with Muslim socioreligious heritage, known in late socialist Yugoslavia  – and still to a degree today  – as ‘Bosnian Muslims’.

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26  Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić 5 On the relative historical depth of politicised ethnonational divisions in BiH’s successive polity formations, see Bougarel (1996b). Available ethnographic insights on their everyday dimensions in pre-war BiH are valuable here if we take into account their built-in selectivity (see Bougarel et al. 2007: 18–19; on studies in the ethnological tradition see Kurtović 2014). All three book-length studies based on long-term ethnographic immersion in Yugoslav BiH we know of were driven by an interest specifically in Bosnian Muslims as Bosnian Muslims. Interested in the integrative potential of economic exchange, Lockwood (1975) followed Muslim villagers to market in a ‘mixed’ town in Central Bosnia in the 1960s. Two decades later, Sorabji (1989) investigated faith, religious practice and identification in the lives of self-identified Islamic believers in a Sarajevo mahala and Bringa (1995) studied what it meant ‘to be Muslim’ in a village in Central Bosnia. All three demarcated their research populations in ethnonational terms and then proceeded to include interactions of their interlocutors with ‘others’. We refer to more recent ethnographic work below. 6 For a concise analysis of the ‘very modern’ logic of ‘ethnic cleansing’, see Sorabji 1995. Maček (2009) ethnographically studied life in besieged Sarajevo, and retrospective accounts of war-time dynamics in this city can be found in, for example, Jansen (2013, 2014b) and Kurtović (2012b). Based on oral and written history, Galijaš (2011) provides an in-depth study of everyday life in war-time Banja Luka. Some informative overviews of war-time events in BiH, and of their constitutional, political and military dynamics, are provided by Bougarel (1996a), Burg and Shoup (1999), Hayden (1999), and Magaš and Žanić (2001). 7 For a comprehensive, book-length analysis of the institutional configuration of Dayton BiH, including its changes over time, see Bieber 2006a. See also Bieber 2006b; Bougarel 2005; Ćurak 2004. A very short sketch of political developments during the war and during the first post-war decade, usefully organised around different ‘phases’, can be found in Bougarel et al. (2007: 2–11). 8 See Jansen (2005a) for a critical analysis of the work of the ‘mosaic’ model in ethnonationalist and liberal-multiculturalist projects. 9 Indeed, some interesting work on ethnonational questions in fact explores the challenges met by attempts to launch non-ethnonationalist political projects in BiH, and some studies that could be said to ‘evaluate’ BiH political forms do question the dominant parameters by which this is measured (for writings that include insights derived from qualitative research, see, for example, Armakolas 2011; Jeffrey 2012; Jones 2012; Nettelfield 2012; Pickering 2007; Touquet 2011, 2012). Some focus entirely on deconstructing the prominence of ethnonational categories, particularly in foreign interventions, perhaps to the point of overcompensation (e.g. Campbell 1998). 10 Thankfully, they increasingly account for the inseparable entanglements of, say, ‘the local’ and ‘the global’ (Brković 2014a, 2014b; Coles 2007; Gilbert 2012; Helms 2013, 2014; Jansen 2009, 2015). Here we should also flag very interesting interview-based work on local employees of foreign intervention agencies (Baker 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014; see also Koutková, this volume). 11 Included in the material is the threatening form of landmines (Henig 2012c). 12 No doubt this is partly due to the fact that people identified as Bosniaks were proportionally the most victimised during the war (see Tokača 2013). But see Belaj (2012) and Claverie (2003) on pilgrimage to Međugorje and work on Mostar that also includes its ‘Western’ side (e.g. Hromadžić 2011, 2012, 2013; Palmberger 2013a, 2013b; Vetters 2007). We leave aside Bax’s work on Međugorje, subject to longstanding controversy and judged, in a 2013 investigation, to be based on ‘unethical scientific behaviour’ and ‘unsound scientific method’ (Baud et  al. 2013: 39).

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Introduction 27 13 Such polls are invariably conducted by organisations with pro-EU profiles. Note also that people in Republika Srpska are less likely to express support for EU accession. Yet, the general patterns stands: all surveys return a majority in favour of membership across all major sociological categories. This is also reflected in the widespread use of ‘progress on the road into Europe’ as a measure of evaluation in mainstream media and political rhetoric. 14 Due to institutional dispersion, the importance of informal economic flows and the lack of census results, statistical data for BiH are notoriously unreliable. The figures that are available make for depressing reading and feature regularly in domestic media. For example, in 2010 the average monthly net wage of the small minority of Bosnians in registered employment was 798 KM (€408) and the average pension was 333 KM (€170) (www.bhas.ba). At that time, the consumer basket for a four-member household as calculated by the trade unions was well over 1,500 KM (€767). In absolute terms, this average salary was some 30 per cent higher than the average in 1990 Yugoslav BiH. In real terms, this represents a gigantic drop in living standards compared to 20 years ago. A comprehensive report using available official data and survey results shows that in 2012, BiH had one of the lowest activity rates of the working age population in Europe (47.4 per cent) and an unemployment rate of 25.6 per cent according to ILO methodology (Mujanović 2013: 11). The registered unemployment rate – including those who are not considered to be looking for jobs – was 44.3 per cent, while a 2012 Labour Force Survey found that the youth unemployment rate was 54.3 per cent – the highest in Europe (Mujanović 2013:  12). The proportion of persons living on 2.5–5 dollars a day was 26 per cent (Mujanović 2013: 16). All these figures display sharp shifts for the worse during the period in which the studies for this volume were conducted. The latest World Bank figure for BiH’s Gini coefficient measuring income inequality is 0.33 (2006), well above the European average and up dramatically from the 1990 figure of 0.26 (data.worldbank.org). BiH is also one of the lowest-ranked countries on the European continent according to the UNDP Human Development Index (hdr.undp.org). 15 In this context, we can understand that the 2014 winter revolt, which occurred after most of the research projects on which this book is based were completed, came as a surprise to most (Arsenijević 2014; on earlier protest, see Armakolas and Maksimović 2013; Jansen 2015: 189–91, 225–232; Kurtović 2012b). 16 Nismo mi u recesiji, sada samo cijeli svijet zna kako je nama posljednjih 20 godina. [Facebook group meanwhile removed]. 17 Strathern (1987) differentiates ‘anthropology abroad’ from ‘auto-anthropology’ on epistemological grounds, suggesting that ‘anthropology abroad’ tries to learn from the apparent difference between anthropological conceptual apparatuses and those belonging to the research setting (which means that ‘anthropology abroad’ can also refer to research conducted by ‘native’ anthropologists). ‘Auto-anthropology’, on the other hand, is carried out in social contexts that share much of these apparatuses – indeed, they produced them. As an ethnography of the semiperiphery, much of this volume fits with Strathern’s definition of auto-anthropology insofar as it attempts to identify contrivance and difference in intimately familiar research settings and to formulate a critique of the semiperiphery itself too.

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Part I

Whose Voice? Post-War Articulations of Political Subjectivities

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1 The Discretion of Witnesses War Camp Memories Between Politicisation and Civility Cécile Jouhanneau In Brčko, every 4 May since the early 2000s, the association of families of missing, violently abducted and killed Bosniaks of the district1 organises a public commemoration in tribute to the victims of spring 1992. On 4 May 2010, the association of camp detainees of the district co-organised the commemoration.2 Several hundred people gathered in the city centre, in front of Grand Hotel Posavina, on the small square where the busts of three ‘national heroes’ of the Second World War had once stood but where now only their pedestals remained. Among them were relatives of the victims, members of war-related associations, political party representatives and inhabitants of the city. The cortege set into motion and made stops to lay flowers in front of the places where most of the killings had been committed in May 1992: the police station, the sports centre Partizan and the port facilities (‘Luka’). There, the president of the association of camp detainees of the district, a man in his mid-sixties, gave a speech. He had worked as a mechanic in a public textile factory and had served as a reserve officer in the Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslovenska narodna armija) before being detained in Luka and Batković camps in the spring and summer of 1992. At the time of the commemoration, he had been leading the local 400-member association of former camp detainees for 5 months. Behind him, on the façade of the Luka hangar, like in public commemorations organised by associations of families of missing persons, dozens of A4 colour ID photographs were on display – pictures given by individuals willing to register as former camp detainees. For about 10 minutes, the association leader described his personal experience of detention in Luka, tortures that fellow inmates had suffered, and his subsequent work obligations in the town: They brought us here in Luka. In Luka, here, around 2:30 pm, a man in a blue uniform was awaiting us. Later, I learned that it was Kosta Kole Simonović.… On 9 March 1994, after spending two years here [in the city of Brčko], I was exchanged and I went to Tuzla where I met my family at 9:30 pm. Following the deposition that I gave to the police there, the Hague investigators came and I went to The Hague. I spent about 21 days in The Hague. Every day, they interrogated me and in the end they saw that I was really telling the truth, just like I’m telling it here. On 14 June 1996… I witnessed and my testimony was fully broadcasted. In my view,

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32 Jouhanneau for everything that has happened in this town, I do hope that these people, like I once said at a press conference, will have to answer for all the crimes that happened in this city…3 In front of the cameras and microphones of local journalists, the association’s president thus recounted his personal wartime experience, evoked victims and perpetrators of tortures with their full names, and expressed discontent with the number of individuals who had been judged for the war crimes committed in Brčko so far. Through his deposition-like precision in the use of dates and times, and via the international judicial certification of his truthfulness, the association’s president clearly presented himself as an authentic witness. Moreover, while giving his speech in the first person, he was also speaking in the name of the dozens of individuals whose pictures were displayed on the wall behind him. He thus seemed eager to embrace the role of the former camp detainee as the witness par excellence of a collective suffering, whose public testimony was meant to achieve justice. Shortly after the local association leader, the president of the Sarajevo-based alliance of camp detainees of BiH took the microphone, and reminded the audience of such a role. After evoking the alliance’s efforts to bring those guilty to justice, he finished his speech with the following injunction to the participants: I hope that this day will give you an impetus, even though I know it is hard to remember these times, so that in the future you do so nonetheless. It is your duty towards yourself, towards your family and towards future generations.4 It would be misleading, however, to assume that all Brčko camp inmates association’s members were willing to testify publicly about their detention, or even to grant the president the role of spokesperson for their experiences. Indeed, the scenic arrangement of the public commemoration at Luka in 2010 did not go without generating considerable friction within the local association itself. The association president had not consulted its members before scotch-taping their ID photographs on the Luka façade, and afterwards many of them harshly reproached him for doing so, as he himself recalled.5 Such friction warrants close attention because it raises several questions: Did members of the association wish to present themselves as logoraši [camp detainees] in the local public space? and, if not, how can one account for their associative commitment, as well as for their reluctance to make it public? Based on ethnographic engagement with former camp detainees in Brčko district from 2008 to 2012 and on a wide corpus of written archives, this chapter deals with relationships between foreign and domestic, political and militant prescriptions concerning how the logoraši should deal with their memories of detention, and the latter’s actual communication practices. It thereby engages with a growing body of works dealing with communication

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The Discretion of Witnesses 33 in the aftermath of mass atrocity, and especially with silence. Even though silence remains largely disqualified in mainstream ‘transitional justice’ literature that grants intrinsic value to speaking out about painful pasts (for instance, Cohen 2001), and even though silence has also been pathologised in psychological trauma theory (for a critique, see Kidron 2009), more attention is currently being paid to silence in the aftermath of conflict in the case of BiH (Stefansson 2010, Eastmond and Mannergren Selimović 2012) and beyond (Das et  al. 2001; Shaw 2007; Kidron 2009; Connerton 2011). However, culturalist undertones sometimes permeate these works when they identify ‘cultures of silence’ in East Timor and Cambodia (Eastmond and Mannergren Selimović 2012: 505) or oppose ‘Asian cultures, [where] silence is valued’ and ‘the Western world … [where] another person’s silence, far from being reassuring, is felt to be alarming, or possibly even dangerous’ (Connerton 2011: 51). More inspirational is the interactionist approach developed by Erving Goffman who considered silence as a form of communication that is always socially situated. Studying interaction rituals among the inhabitants of Brčko shall reveal a set of everyday tactics of avoidance of polemical topics that do not point to the existence of a so-called Bosnian ‘culture of silence’. As Goffman wrote, drawing on his investigations in the Shetland Islands and at a psychiatric hospital on the east coast of the United States, ‘any society could be profitably studied as a system of deferential stand-off arrangements’ (Goffman 2005:  63). Adopting an interactionist approach when studying silences also requires not assigning them any particular moral value, contrary to certain anthropologists who, in times now remote, asserted that ‘in reading history we must learn how to read silences, for the victim rarely gets an opportunity to record his or her point of view’, and that ‘the speech of the victim must occupy the central place in the narrative of the anthropologist’ (Das 1987: 13). Without a priori considering that ‘the victim’ is reduced to silence by the victor of history, or immured in the absolute ineffability of a supposedly incommunicable experience, this chapter shall envisage Brčko former camp detainees’ silences as ‘conjunctural’ ones (Pollak 1993:  22), that is, modes of communication that individuals adopt depending on social conditions in concrete interactions. More importantly, it will highlight the practices of ‘discretion’ (Goffman 2005: 16), whereby former detainees avoid certain topics when interacting with certain publics – and not others. Since 1992, various interrelated public actors have constructed former camp detainees as the epitome of the war witness. However, ethnographic insights gained among Brčko former camp detainees, both inside a local association and outside its office, reveal that despite being expected to speak publicly about their camp experience, former detainees entertained interaction rituals based on ‘discretion’. By investigating former camp detainees’ actual communication practices and everyday socialities, this chapter hopes to shed light on the (re)working of war-affected norms of civility in present-day BiH.

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34 Jouhanneau

‘The Living Witnesses of the Genocide’: How the Recounting of Camp Detention was Converted into a Political Matter in Bosnia and Herzegovina To make sense of ethnographic findings, it is important to unfold the temporalities of the Bosnian war and post-war (see Introduction, this volume) and delineate the processes that led to the construction of the role of the logoraš as the ultimate witness with a moral duty to testify to the character of the war – ‘genocide’ or ‘civil war’. A Nationalist Duty to Testify Already during wartime, political authorities in Sarajevo collected camp detainees’ testimonies so as to support their demands for international military intervention in the conflict. Upon decrees of the presidency of the republic of BiH, several agencies were created in 1992 to this end. Rival parties’ labelling of the camps  – concentration camps (koncentracioni logori) or detention centres (sabirni centri)  – and the different interpretations of the war they reflected  – genocide or civil war  – were deeply linked to political strategies of (non)internationalisation of the conflict. In February 1993, international diplomacies opted for a judiciary (instead of military) intervention in the war, which culminated in the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) whose first steps would only further support the interpretation of the camps as instruments of ethnic cleansing and genocide. From then on, to convey their public interpretations of the camps, Pale (RS) and Belgrade (Serbia) authorities favoured the voice of victims’ organisations. Thus, on 22 May 1995 the first Serb camp detainees organisation was created in Belgrade under the auspices of the Republika Srpska Documentation Centre for Research on War Crimes and the Republic of Serbia’s Documentation Centre of the Commissariat for Refugees. In Sarajevo too, on 19 May 1996, former camp detainees created an organisation originally named the association of camp detainees, political prisoners and war prisoners. After the Party of Democratic Action (Stranka demokratske akcije, SDA) won the general elections of September 1996, its members took long-lasting control and Irfan Ajanović, a prominent party member, became the president of the renamed alliance of camp detainees of BiH. Henceforth, he promoted a vision of former camp detainees as ‘the most significant (najizrazitije) victims of war crimes and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina’ (Ajanović et al. 1999: 471). Leaders of the Serb and Bosniak organisations of camp detainees alike exhorted former camp detainees to testify because the narration of individual suffering was allegorically presented as the narration of the national suffering. Testimonies published by organisations of camp detainees were thus assigned the nationalist political aim to denounce the camps as instruments of a genocide – and warn their co-nationals against the possible repetition thereof.

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The Discretion of Witnesses 35 ‘The First Voices of the Victims to Atrocities in the Former Yugoslavia’ In the 1990s, not only did former camp detainees association leaders contribute to the construction of former camp detainees as the epitome of the war witness, but so too did political representatives and international judicial actors. For instance, in the second meeting of the main committee of the alliance of camp detainees of BiH, then president of the Federation of BiH, Ejup Ganić, declared:  ‘The persons who have lived through the horrors of the camp have understood the gravity of the aggression against BiH.… Nowadays, the truth is often manipulated, but you do know it’.6 The director of the Research Institute on the Crimes against Humanity and the International Law in Sarajevo added, on that occasion, that former camp detainees were ‘the living witnesses of the genocide committed in BiH’.7 Bosnian political and activist actors saw in the ICTY an arena where they could testify to the nature of the crimes committed during the war (see also Delpla 2014). In doing so, their expectations met the ones that the ICTY judicial actors entertained towards the victim witnesses. Indeed, the first indictments and trials held in The Hague concerned crimes committed in camps. During that first period, even though Karadžić and Mladić8 had been indicted, the Office of the Prosecutor targeted ‘small fry’ rather than ‘big fish’, that is, locally well-known executioners rather than political and military higher-level commanders. Therefore, former camp detainees who could testify against the camp commanders played an important role in the prosecutor’s strategy. In 1995, during the trial of the former Sušica camp commander, prosecutor Richard J. Goldstone paid tribute to the ten victim witnesses, namely former camp detainees: ‘Theirs will be the first voices of the victims to atrocities in the former Yugoslavia to testify before this International Criminal Tribunal and by so doing their voices will echo throughout the world’.9 By granting such importance to the public testimony of former Sušica camp detainees, the first prosecutor of the ICTY, volens nolens, echoed the activists’ construction of logoraši as war victims and witnesses par excellence, which Irfan Ajanović made clear during the 1998 day of the camp detainees: ‘The suffering and the victimhood of BiH were shown in the most eloquent way by the camp detainees, by their suffering.… The camp detainees are the most numerous HAGUE WITNESSES’ (quoted in Abaza et al. 1998: 18, capitals in original). However, even though former camp detainees were co-constructed by Bosnian politicians and activists, as well as by international justice actors, as the epitome of the war witness, ethnographic research reveals that very few of them readily embraced such a role in their local worlds.

The Scarcity of Public Witnesses This chapter opened with what could appear, at first glance, to be a paradox:  although they were members of an organisation that aimed at

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36 Jouhanneau speaking publicly about war camp detention, many logoraši from Brčko protested against their ID pictures being displayed on the Luka façade during the 2010 commemoration. Such a reaction seems less paradoxical when one pays heed to the meanings the district former camp detainees ascribed to their associative membership: while few of them presented it as an endeavour to bear witness to the nature of the war, most avoided publicity and even denied that their associative engagement had any ‘political’ dimension. So few Simon Wiesenthals Ethnographic fieldwork among the district logoraši invites one to reconsider the topos according to which ‘the victim’ has a ‘need to speak out’. Indeed, very few district former camp detainees would be willing to evoke their experience of wartime detention in public, that is ‘in a space of anonymous circulation that requires “accepting the undetermination of the audience” ’ (Cardon et al. 1995: 6). These were mainly those who did show many social dispositions to engage in public life. For instance, when he was appointed to the presidency of the district association in December 2009, the second president multiplied press conferences, media releases and public speeches where he exposed his personal recollections of detention. Comparing himself to Simon Wiesenthal, he justified his associative engagement with the idea that ‘all the proofs must get out, so that people know that in this city genocide was committed’.10 When I  was invited to his home in November 2010, I  discovered what he called his ‘small tribunal’. In his office, one wall was covered with pictures of Brcčko war crimes commemorations, newspaper articles about Brčko camps, and more generally about war crimes committed against non-Serbs in the former municipality; while another wall displayed letters of thanks (zahvalnice) which he had received as a former player of the Brčko soccer team, and pictures of the public exhibit he organised in November 2008 about noteworthy sportspersons in Brčko from 1919 to 2005. Significantly, he named that exhibit ‘Memory to break away from oblivion’. Whether focusing on sports or war crimes, he acted as a public chronicler and as a local upholder of justice. Although he was not a member of any political party, he did not shy away from public use of politicised terms such as ‘genocide’, nor from public appearances next to the president of the Sarajevo-based, long-time SDA political client alliance of camp detainees BiH. Avoiding Public Speech in an ‘Office’ However, not all district former camp detainees were disposed to express their wartime experiences publicly. Even the most active association members, such as the members of the executive committee, were very concerned with their ‘information preserve’ (Goffman 1973: 52). They were often reluctant to evoke their personal stories in public interactions, that is, in front of a socially undetermined audience, a fortiori when they did not exert ‘control’

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The Discretion of Witnesses 37 over the way they were doing so (Goffman 1973:  53). Jasmina, a woman in her forties, was an active member of the association and would present herself publicly as a former camp detainee by openly frequenting the association office, by participating in the organisation’s general assemblies and by including her testimony in a local war chronicle. However, she deeply resented any uncontrolled public use of the personal deposition (izjava) she had made when registering as an association member. She did not mince her words about a former association secretary who had been suspected of using member depositions without consent for a book he was writing: [The deposition I gave the association] is a secret that must not go out because, as far as I am concerned, if somebody used my deposition without asking, I would press charges against them. For nobody has the right to prolong the story of my life.11 For ordinary members too, the reasons for joining rarely included the wish to give a public testimony about the nature of the war. During my main ethnographic fieldwork in 2008, the type of interactions at the association evoked a para-administrative kind of sociability rather than the atmosphere of an activist group or that of an empathic club of peers. The first association president himself made it clear during a conversation with his secretary and me: ‘Some people would just like to sit, smoke and talk. However, I have not opened a club (klub) but an office (kancelarija)’.12 At the time, the district former camp detainees’ association did not help its most destitute members materially, contrary to other local or cantonal organisations. However, it did provide the members with all the necessary information on applying for the status of civilna žrtva rata [civilian war victim] with the district authorities.13 Moreover, by granting the registered members a certificate (uvjerenje) on their status of camp detainee, the association helped some of them to obtain material reparations from the district authorities. Not only would the association’s first president frequently act as an expert in the indirect service of the district administration’s medical commission, distinguishing between (what he felt were) real and fake logoraši, plausible and false detention patterns;14 some association members also visibly considered the organisation as an annex of the district’s bureaucracy, evident in the following ethnographic scene: When I  arrived at the office, the association’s president had already started registering a man in his late seventies. The man looked nervous and continuously fidgeted with his hands. He was holding a folded piece of paper  – the certificate that he had received from the International Committee of the Red Cross during his detention at Batković in August 1992. For the next hour and a half, he docilely answered the president’s procedural questions about his arrest and detention at Luka, his release into Brčko controlled by VRS, his second arrest and detention in Batković, his exchange and subsequent mobilisation into the Army

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38 Jouhanneau of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Armija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine, ARBiH). Sometimes not precisely enough (in the president’s opinion), he indicated the dates and times, the persons responsible for the arrests, the mistreatments suffered in the camp, the number of fellow inmates. He then gave the required deposition, interrupted only by the president’s frequent reformulations or when he himself would pause and sigh: ‘I can’t remember, it’s hard for me, it’s hard for me…’ At the end of his registration procedure, when the time came for him to sign his deposition and pay the 12 KM [approximately €6] membership fee, the old man declared: ‘I would rather forget. When I remember all that, my hair rises up on my head. Oh well (ali eto)’. The association’s first president then asked him how he lived in the present days, adding that I  was interested in the current life of logoraši. The old man explained that he had previously registered at the association of former logoraši of the Tuzla Canton, but he had never received any help from them. I asked him how he felt upon returning to Brčko. He had received donations to repair his house, he answered. But his retirement pension was 280 KM, it was too meagre to pay for electricity, garbage disposal, and so on. The association’s president then explained he was going to receive a certificate of camp detainee that he should bring to the District authorities [so as to apply for the status of civilian war victim]. In disbelief, the old man answered: ‘If we haven’t received anything since 1996, I don’t think we will now’. The president insisted that a decree had been adopted and that, as he had explained at their general assembly [a couple of weeks earlier], the association was demanding the authorities that the [revokable] decree be turned into a law. The man said that he had not heard that, to which the president answered in an obliging tone that he was there to give the members some information. ‘I was not able to attend the general assembly because I was working to earn 20 KM’, the old man replied, ‘and here they are’, he concluded, standing up and putting a banknote on the table to pay for the fee.15 That morning, the association’s first president made it clear that the organisation’s function was not only to fight for the rights of the logoraši in an activist way, by lobbying for the conversion of the decree on civilian war victims into a more durable law for instance. Namely, he also managed it as a para-administrative counter, offering service provision (information, certificates) in exchange for submitting the applicants to a bureaucratic registration procedure. Moreover, the elderly man’s attitude hints at the variety of reasons for joining the association. He was not eager to share his memories of detention in a peer group, nor did he seem to act out of a political duty to testify on his fate in wartime Brčko – his bitter remark about the fact that he had been ‘sent to the frontline by ARBiH’ right after his exchange from Batković did not cleanly fit into the public narratives that attributed responsibility and victimhood to ethnonational groups. Rather, that scene displayed the material

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The Discretion of Witnesses 39 dimension of associative membership, even though that dimension was probably enhanced by my presence, as I was sometimes mistaken to be an international organisation worker and solicited for help and given complaints about material hardship. The elderly man did ascribe a material meaning to his registration. However incredulously, he was hoping to get some material help, and did so with a sense of entitlement. When seeing his defiant final gesture, I was under the impression he refused to be obliged to the association’s president for the information given; as a former camp detainee, he felt entitled to some help that he had been unjustly deprived of so far (on ‘The One Who Is Owed’, see also Čengić, this volume). Not to ‘Sit like a Dog’: A Certain Idea of Associative Life Even active members of the organisation would refuse to confer any political dimension to their associative engagement. This appears in the way executive committee member Safet, a man in his sixties who ran a small business near the city centre, would present his conception of the association: The association as an association must exist, we have to [go] somewhere… Because as you get old, you have nowhere [to go], so you must [go] somewhere. Be it to the mosque or to the church or to the local community (mjesna zajednica) or to your association if you are part of a fishing or hunting association, etc. etc.… That is to say that a man must have a sort of a hobby, a sort of a hobby (neki hobi). Because spending the whole day walking like, like… like a dog on the street, and remaining sitting like a dog, that is the problem.16 Safet understood the association as a place for extra-domestic male sociability. For him, the former camp detainee association was less an intimate club dedicated to the sharing of memories between peers, or a collective organisation mobilised towards a political goal, than an indispensable element of the everyday life of any respectable man lacking financial means to lead another kind of extra-domestic social life.17 As anthropologist Cornelia Sorabji remarked concerning the old neighbourhoods of Sarajevo in the 1980s, ‘Men spend much of their free time in the cafés or bars of the town. They are neither expected nor desired to hang around the house themselves and do not invite their friends home’ (Sorabji 1989: 69). Safet’s interview thus sheds light on a certain understanding of association membership as a non-‘political’ social activity. Such a meaning of associative life is inscribed in a specific historical trajectory. It draws on conceptions of local associative life in socialist Yugoslavia, especially in women’s ‘active’ groups, which ‘upheld Party policies but avoided political issues’ (Helms 2010a: 20). In the meanings that Brčko former camp detainees ascribed to associative frequentation, we may recognise the avoidance of politika that many ethnographers have observed elsewhere in BiH (Helms 2007, 2013;

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40 Jouhanneau Kolind 2007; Jansen 2010; Stefansson 2010; Palmberger 2010; Hromadžić 2013) and in the post-socialist space (Ragaru 2005; Brubaker et al. 2006). In those works, the word politika is often left untranslated because it encompasses meanings that are not limited to the specialised party politics. Indeed, the uses of the term politika exceed the mere commentary of party politics and politicians. Politika does not only refer to the venality and immorality of the realm of the politicians (političari), opposed to the realm of ‘ordinary people’ (obični ljudi or narod, see Hromadžić 2013); it also encompasses topics that have been converted into polemical issues by the specialised political actors.18 Due to a number of factors, including the political conditions for the formation of the Bosnian multiparty system at the turn of the 1990s and the Dayton consociationalist layout, Bosnian party politics have particularly hinged on patterns of nationalist outbidding, especially as of the mid-2000s. Therefore a process of nationalist politicisation has touched on a wide range of topics, from urban planning and local administration, to the exercise of international criminal justice. This has also been the case with the narration of camp detention, which has been converted by political actors into a political, national testimony about the ‘genocide’ or ‘civil war’. Thus, by avoiding defining their associative engagement as political, and by avoiding public speech on politicised topics, Brčko former camp detainees manifested a form of civil engagement, that is, a commitment for harmonious everyday interactions and life together. In other words, avoidance of ‘the politicised’ evinced their concern for ‘the political’ (see also Henig, this volume).

Discretion as the Preservation of Civil Peace As the frequent uses of the expressions ‘I avoid these stories’ (izbjegavam te priče) and ‘I avoid talking about that’ (izbjegavam da pričam o tome) make clear, for Brčko former camp detainees civility relied mainly on the context-sensitive avoidance of topics considered to be damaging for oneself and for one’s interactions with others; in other words, it depended on discretion. Situated Silences: The Everyday Production of Consensus It should be noted that the social norms of civility they entertained did not rely exclusively on silences. In certain situations, the harmony of social interactions required that participants agree in words on a consensual appreciation of a polemical issue. In those situations, the silence of certain participants might be considered as irritating for others. For instance, Nermin, a Brčko teacher in his forties who was a prisoner at Luka in early May 1992, bitterly complained about colleagues who wanted him to remain silent about his wartime detention: ‘A couple of times at school, I talked to these colleagues of mine with whom I work, Serbs and so on, and they were always like, “Oh, don’t talk about that, don’t talk about that” ’.19

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The Discretion of Witnesses 41 Certain tactics of consensus production required speech acts. In BiH like elsewhere, certain topics – children and health for instance – would represent ‘safe supplies’ (Goffman 2005: 120) that made it possible, in certain conversations, to preserve a working compromise. Ethnographers have often observed the ‘strategic avoidance of sensitive ethnonational topics’ (Helms 2003:  2). Rather than using ethnonational categories, in certain situations people would resort to interpreting categories considered as more consensual, such as urban/rural or gender categories (for instance, Jansen 2010). As far as conversations about the war were concerned, the politicised question of its responsibilities was particularly avoided. One of the ‘safe supplies’ to restore consensus when the topic had been raised nonetheless was the interpretation of the war according to which ‘narod [ordinary people] is not to blame… Politics is to blame’ (Hromadžić 2013: 259; see also Kolind 2008: 123–134). As Stef Jansen summed up, very often, politika was ‘carefully avoided, except as a shortcut to evoke the source of all evil’ (Jansen 2010: 44). In Brčko, the evocation of the politicised topic of war camp detention was thus withdrawn from public and social interactions and confined to interactions considered as private. Rather than an absolute silence on camp detention in former logoraši’s everyday interactions, one could therefore observe their ‘discretion’, that is, avoidance practices through which an individual ‘leaves unstated facts that might implicitly or explicitly contradict and embarrass the positive claims made by others’ (Goffman 2005: 16). Situating the former logoraši’s silences implies realising that they only make sense as actions meant for every participant in an interaction to save face – including one’s own. In certain situations of interaction where moral hierarchies of merit and suffering were actualised, some of Brčko former logoraši would be reluctant to mention their experience of detention. Several anthropologists have depicted such moral hierarchies that constituted a loose normative frame for the logoraši’s everyday interactions, be they symbolic hierarchies of suffering and loss (Wagner 2008:  64–66) or hierarchies of merit based on the wartime demonstration of solidarity (Henig 2011:  130–131, Sorabji 2008: 105–106). This appears in my interview with Nermin when he evoked conversations during which he had felt at risk of painful misunderstandings with people who had not been detained in Luka at the same time as him: He asks me:  ‘How much time did you spend [in the camp]?’ and I answer: ‘About four days’. He says: ‘Oh, but this is nothing’. So I simply answer like this, as a counter-argument: ‘Do you know how long it takes to lose one’s life, to get killed?’ [in a softer voice] He answers: ‘One second’. ‘Well, try to imagine how many seconds there are in four days. And you live each and every one of them’. So they all shut up, nobody knows what to say.20 For Nermin, in certain situations, with certain publics, speaking about detention could lead to exposing himself to the disqualification of his

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42 Jouhanneau experience according to social hierarchies of suffering based on the length of detention. Such a criterion was not only imposed in a ‘top-down’ fashion due to the fact that material reparation was sometimes granted according to the number of days of detention. Symbolic hierarchies of merit were also constructed, reinterpreted or reproduced in ordinary representations, as the interview with Safet suggests: We who have been in the camp, who have lived all that, we agree on 99 percent of the details. But those who haven’t been to the camp… They are diverse. Some of them are pleased that I’ve been in the camp. And they say: “Who forced you to stay [in the city of Brčko at the beginning of the war]?” Others regret it, because they know how I  am. So, once again, there are good people and bad people. Some feel for you and others, others rejoice that you’ve been through that because you were not smart (pametan) enough to run away.21 Here, Safet points to hierarchies of merit that depended on the criterion of cleverness, logoraši being or feeling reproached for their supposed naivety. Lastly, former camp detainees could face yet another form of disqualification of their experience, based on symbolic hierarchy of courage that would sometimes even surface in the Bosnian media. For instance, in 2007, veteran organisations of federation BiH rejected the inclusion of prisoners of war (ratni vojni zarobljenici) into the new project of law on combatants by denying them the status of combatants: [Journalist:]  Off the record, other combatant groups do not wish that you too obtain some legal rights. They say: “Why did they let themselves get imprisoned?!” [President of the alliance of camp detainees BiH:]  We are aware of the fact that we are considered like traitors in BiH.22 One can therefore understand the avoidance tactics in the expression of camp detention memories as attempts to produce consensus and thus not to lose face within the symbolic hierarchies of merit based on criteria of supposed suffering, cleverness and courage. Confined Memories The social norm of discretion about war memories that Brčko former camp detainees observed did not lead to an absolute silence regarding their experiences of detention, but to its confinement within interactions considered as private  – just as ordinary American citizens preferred discussing political topics ‘backstage’ (Eliasoph 1998). For certain former camp detainees, ‘backstage’ referred to domestic space. This was the case for Safet who considered his family and his family home (kuća) as a community

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The Discretion of Witnesses 43 for communication of war memories, be it without uttering a word. However, interactions considered as private did not always take place in domestic space. The public/private and extra-domestic/domestic divides have indeed proved to be extremely blurry, if not contestable (Helms 2013:  161; Gal 2002). For certain persons, expressing memories of war or detention within domestic space could indeed jeopardise the integrity of self. This was the case for Jasmina, who had suffered sexual violence at the beginning of the war. During our interview, she explained that she had kept silent about that experience within her family home, especially with her brothers, while she shared it within extra-domestic, private, interactions: [When I  was exchanged from Brčko and joined my family in Sarajevo] I did not speak at all. I did not speak at all. They could just see on me… the scars that remained, that I had received from those people, and, they had heard certain stories from the people who had been exchanged before me, but as for me personally, I did not speak neither to my brothers nor to my mother [sigh]. And then… then as time passed and when the doctor… My first, my first conversation with somebody about my life in Brčko was with doctor Izet Sadiković. Then I opened my soul to him and he advised me to share it with my mother, to tell my mother everything. And this is how I started communicating with… with my family (sa svojim). My brothers, I never told them anything. It is likely that they made suppositions, but they never asked me anything either.23 For Jasmina, interactions considered as safe for sharing war memories thus took place outside domestic space, especially in non-mixed gendered interactions such as her frequent conversations with the female president of the local association of missing Bosniak civilians. She also highly valued her therapeutic work within a feminist organisation in a nearby town. Confining conversations on the war and detention into interactions lived as private may therefore result from the avoidance of situations where one’s face was endangered. But avoiding public speech on detention also manifested the will to preserve integrity of the social world, of the everyday order of peaceful interaction and local norms of civility. This appeared in my interview with Izet, a former detainee of Luka and Batković, who was then in his sixties. For years, he had been the president of the local community of his village and an active member of the district association of camp detainees. Izet:  As far as I am concerned personally, I try not to think too much about [the camp]. Because, what do I know, it is normal that you can’t forget. When I start talking with somebody, I make sure to tell people that we must not forget. But one should not emphasise it either (potencirati), for the simple reason that we must live normally. Because if we [focused] on the past now, how could we live normally? It would be hard to live

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44 Jouhanneau normally. In general, as far as I  am concerned personally, these things pop up (se javljaju) when there is political turmoil, for instance when I see Dodik,24 when he says something, or when their [local Serb] association of logoraši starts speaking.… Cécile:  Do you sometimes talk about it with friends? Izet:  Well, to be honest, I talk, but more and more rarely.… What do I know? I  talk, but on this topic you can hear all kinds of things and certain persons… I  don’t like participating in discussions (rasprave) anymore, among us there are people who even like to lie, for instance, I heard… I remember very well everything I’ve gone through, for god’s sake. And when I hear somebody who talks about [the camp] and says that they did this or that to him, whereas he has no idea of what he’s talking about… I dislike it a lot, but I don’t like to react, I don’t like to enter into conflicts (konflikti) and discussions. Quite simply, I walk away and… this kind of things even makes me lose the will to participate in such conversations.25 The wish not to ‘enter into conflicts and discussions’ so as to ‘live normally’ with one’s own neighbours, or even with one’s fellow camp inmates, had led Izet to remain more and more silent about his detention in face-to-face interactions. His perception of this topic as a potential source of tensions was linked to the ways it had been publicly constructed, at the country and local levels. The fact that political leaders such as Milorad Dodik made public use of the issue of camp detention contributed to widespread perceptions of this topic as ‘political’ and polemical. Thus, macro social processes did filter into and were reinterpreted at the micro level, in face-to-face interactions.

Conclusion Despite having been constructed as the epitome of the war witness, even though they were expected to speak out publicly about their detention experience, most Brčko former camp detainees opted for ‘interaction rituals’ based on discretion and confinement of their memories. These ethnographic insights do not amount to depicting a gap between two supposedly clear-cut and impermeable realms, that of politics and that of everyday life. The core argument of this chapter is that concrete socialities are not based on the avoidance of the political (norms of civility, life together), but on the avoidance of the politicised. The evocation of war camp detention is confined to private interactions precisely because it has been successfully converted into a ‘political’ matter in specialised nationalist party political and activist spheres and has therefore come to be perceived as potentially disruptive for civil peace. The very discretion about war camp memories therefore testifies to how political struggles can be acknowledged and filtered into concrete socialities and to how avoiding certain matters makes their nationalist politicisation little contested in return.

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The Discretion of Witnesses 45

Notes 1 Instituted by an arbitration agreement in 1999, Brčko district is the third administrative unit of BiH, alongside the two ‘entities’, Republika Srpska and the Federation of BiH. 2 This association was founded in September 2005. Another, smaller association of camp detainees was registered in Brčko district in 2005. It joined the union of camp detainees of Republika Srpska and mainly gathered Bosnian Serbs. 3 Posavina TV report, 4 May 2010 (on file with author). 4 Murat Tahirović, Posavina TV report, 4 May 2010. 5 Author’s interview, Brčko, 9 November 2010. 6 Počela sjednica Glavnog odbora Saveza logoraša BiH. ONASA, 21 March 1998. 7 Ibid. 8 From 1992 to 1996, Radovan Karadžić was the president of the territories controlled by the Army of Republika Srpska (Vojska Republike Srpske, VRS) and Ratko Mladić was chief of staff of VRS. 9 Prosecutor vs. Dragan Nikolić, case no. IT-94-2-R61, ICTY, The Hague, 9 October 1995, p. 62. 10 Author’s interview, Brčko, 8 November 2010. 11 Author’s interview, Brčko, 27 June 2008. 12 Observation, association office, Brčko, 22 April 2008. 13 While the Federation of BiH included logoraši into the category of civilian war victims in September 2006, in Brčko it was not until March 2008 that a decree did so. 14 For more developments on the association’s memory framing work, see Jouhanneau 2013. 15 Observation, association office, Brčko, 17 April 2008. 16 Author’s interview, Brčko, 19 June 2008. 17 In pre-war BiH too ‘acceptable venues’ for social life differed according to gender (Helms 2010a: 20). 18 To support this interpretation of politika, a scene from Aida Begić’s movie Djeca (2012) comes to mind: Sitting at the kitchen table, Rahima and Selma, two women in their twenties, are discussing the veil that Rahima has been wearing for several years. Selma does not use a veil. After saying that she is a true believer, she asks Rahima why she has decided to wear the veil. She wonders why that question bothers her. Rahima makes suggestions:  ‘Because it is radical?  – No.  – Because it is useless? – No’. Without answering Selma’s initial question, Rahima changes the subject: ‘Come on, let’s have a cigarette and let’s stop discussing politika’. Here, politika does not refer to party politics; it refers to a topic that has been converted into a polemical matter by specialised political actors. 19 Author’s interview, Brčko, 4 April 2008. 20 Author’s interview, Brčko, 4 April 2008. 21 Author’s interview, Brčko, 19 June 2008. 22 Bećirović, A.  2009. Ratni zločinci na vlasti, logoraši ne mogu ni u zakon! Oslobođenje, 23 March 2009. 23 Author’s interview, Brčko, 27 June 2008. 24 Milorad Dodik, then prime minister of Republika Srpska. 25 Author’s interview, Brezovo Polje, 23 June 2008.

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2 Fragments of Village Life and the Rough Ground of the Political in Post-War BiH David Henig When I returned in the summer of 2012 to the villages in the Zvijezda highlands of Central Bosnia, the region where I  have been conducting ethnographic fieldwork since 2008, I soon learnt about a family tragedy that happened in the village of Brdo (pseudonym) just a few months before my arrival. The story goes like this: One early April morning the entire village was woken up by a painful scream coming from the garden of the villager Sakib. It was not Sakib, but his wife Mediha, who was screaming and weeping. When Mediha woke up around 5 a.m. in the morning and could not find her husband in the house, she went outside only to discover that Sakib had hung himself from a tree in the garden. A police investigation concluded soon afterwards that Sakib had committed suicide. This took everyone by surprise and the news spread quickly across the municipality, where it was widely debated in cafés even months after the tragedy had occurred. The obvious question that everyone asked was ‘why?’, as Sakib was seen by his fellow neighbours as one of the more fortunate villagers. As his friends emphasised, Sakib was the first villager who got a permanent job after the war ended in 1995. Unlike many in the village, Sakib thus had a regular and decent income. He also had a new spacious house, a nice wife and three young children, and was highly valued among his neighbours for his good reputation of always helping others: he was lauded for being a dobar komšija (good neighbour). So why did he commit suicide if – according to his fellow villagers – he had no objective reason to do so? Rumours later spread that Sakib had accumulated debts and was not capable of dealing with them anymore. These rumours did not make it easier for his neighbours, family and friends to understand his suicide. In the village, Sakib’s suicide provoked further questions and vigorous debates. The question ‘why’ was discussed along with other questions: Why did nobody from the neighbourhood know about Sakib’s problems? Why did he not tell anyone about his debts? Why did people not care about each other anymore? Some villagers even asked why people like Sakib had to live in a state (država) where loans and life in debt are the only means of surviving and getting by, and suicide the only way of escaping them.1 The suicide thus became a radical intervention into everyday matters in village life and a means through which a sense of precariousness associated with the new post-socialist, post-war

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Fragments of Village Life 47 socio-political configurations unfolding in BiH, together with increasingly omnipresent neoliberalising tendencies, were debated among the villagers. The intricate relationship between death and social order has been widely discussed by anthropologists (Bloch and Parry 1982). In the context of radical societal transformations, such as the breakdown of the state socialist ecumene across east and southeast Europe after 1989, death and dead bodies – ‘a parade of corpses’ (Verdery 1999: 3) – have played an active role in articulating these changes. For example, in post-socialist rural Bulgaria, Deema Kaneff (2002) observed how death became a mediating category through which villagers articulated changing relationships between the individual and the post-socialist state. These observations, however, are not unique to the post-socialist context. They equally apply to any abrupt large-scale transformations, as Judith Bovensiepen (2014) recently illustrated in the case of revival of customary funeral practices in post-conflict East Timor as a way to deal with an uncanny violent past and memories. Similarly, in Brdo, Sakib’s premature death and the way he died became the critical point for villagers’ reflections on, and articulations of, the relationships between the individual and the state in post-socialist, post-war BiH. These widely shared reflections can be aptly characterised by the chronotopes outlined in the Introduction to this volume, those of the swamp and the labyrinth (cf. Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić, this volume). As has been increasingly pointed out (e.g. Bougarel et al. 2007), there is a pervasive tendency among scholars of/in BiH to articulate the relationships between the individual and the state in nationalistic terms of belonging and categories of identification. How to attend to such relationships between the individual and the state beyond nationalistic rhetoric and categorical modes of identification? In this chapter, I  argue that it is the very polysemic category of politics (politika) in the highly contested context of the post-war Bosnian polity that needs to be rethought in order to re-engage with the ways in which individuals of different walks of life pursue and experience their lives in BiH today (for a similar problematisation, see Jouhanneau, this volume; also Kolind 2008: 123–137). In so doing, I suggest that we pay more attention to what I describe in this chapter as ‘the rough ground of the political’ in the flow of social life in our understanding of the workings of the politics, and in turn of the entanglements between the individual and the state in BiH.2 By employing the notion of the ‘rough ground’, I seek to shed light on the ways in which the relationships between the individual and the state are experienced first and foremost as a mere struggle for life and lived-through events, such as suicide acts. Specifically, I seek to trace vernacular notions and idioms of the political in order to nuance both the pragmatic and affective dimensions of Bosnian politics ethnographically in their manifold manifestations and instantiations at the very ‘rough ground’ of social relations, where struggles to get by, but also hopes and aspirations to get out of the swamp and the labyrinth, are debated, negotiated, contested and reconfigured day by day.

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48 Henig

Towards the Rough Ground of the Political In recent years, an increasing number of anthropologists have moved towards the study of the political as a way to move beyond reductionist models of politics (e.g. Navaro-Yashin 2012; Jansen 2014b, 2015; Reeves 2014; Spencer 2007). The study of politics, including in BiH, has for a long time been entangled in meta-narratives of political modernity such as democracy, nationalism and the nation state, or citizenship. This is not always the case, when seen from the perspective of the rough ground where the political often takes the form of everyday negotiations between enmity and friendship at various scales and forms that these negotiations entail (Spencer 2007). The anthropology of the political moves away from fitting the complexities of human life into catch-all analytical categories as a point of departure. Instead, it emphasises the need for a more expansive and situational analytical framework, including the expressive and affective dimension of human life, and the context-specific and intelligible meanings it entails (Spencer 2007: 15). The rough ground of the political, that is, the ways in which politics is intelligible in the context of everyday pragmatics as well as affect, unfolds in terms of the ways in which life is not only open to the pain, suffering, joy and ennui of others, but also to how in the entanglements and relations of lives with other lives in the everyday, lines of care and concern emerge, are fostered and also frayed. (Al-Mohammad and Peluso 2012: 44) Put differently, any ethnography of the rough ground of the political is first and foremost a matter of sociality whereby relations between friends, neighbours and foes, or between the individual and the state are negotiated in day-to-day struggles for life. The above-mentioned debates provide us with a useful framework to think with when engaging with the ways in which individuals in BiH create, cultivate and maintain relationships between each other, and also between the individual and the state. In this chapter, I therefore take the rough ground of the political, expressed for example in villagers’ own questioning of Sakib’s death, as a point of departure and ask how sociality is entangled in the political and vice versa, and how people in BiH make and remake social relations vis-à-vis authoritative discourses today. The notion of ‘re/making of social relations’ needs further elaboration. Although the villagers’ reflections on Sakib’s suicide may sound unsettling, they are not entirely unique. Elsewhere (Henig 2012a), I have described similar reflections under the rubric of metamorphoses of sociality and shown that they offer an insightful non-nationalistic perspective on rural lives in BiH, articulated through local idioms and moral conduct that are more accurate in explaining the quotidian predicaments that individuals face in BiH today. By drawing upon Alfred Schütz’s (Schütz 1967) phenomenological distinction of

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Fragments of Village Life 49 social relations, I described metamorphoses of sociality as villagers’ ongoing questions over how one can live with each other, rather than next to each other, be the other a relative (rodjak), a neighbour (komšija), a villager from another quarter (mahala), another village, or national other (druga nacija). Put differently, in my argument I  endeavoured to locate the daily struggle in the lives of the villagers to live up to the moral idiom of neighbourhood (komšiluk) understood as ‘the site in which the life of the other is engaged… [as] a moral striving in its uncertainty and its attention to the concrete specificity of the other’ (Das 2010: 376–377), and in which sociality becomes ‘a moral project embedded in everyday life’ (ibid.). What I failed to recognise at the time was something that my village friends asked themselves when talking about events such as Sakib’s tragedy: how can one make relationships with other fellow villagers (komšije), the village (selo) or a polity such as the canton (kanton) or the BiH state; and perhaps more dangerously, how can one cut off such relationships  – be it by suicide, by withdrawing from village life, or by migration from the village to bigger cities, or abroad in the hope of a better future? In others words, I omitted to take seriously these villagers’ questions also as a matter of the rough ground of the political, where relationships between the individual and the Bosnian polity are debated, contested and expressed, and how these are scaled and re-scaled in villagers’ attempts to ‘secure livelihoods and “normal” or even “good” lives’ (Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić, this volume). Building on these questions, the aim of this chapter is twofold. First, I wish to put forward a case for the almost non-existent ethnography of everyday life in post-war rural BiH as a critical intervention into knowledge production on BiH by means of an analytical heuristics that I describe as a village perspective. In turn, second, the notion of perspective is inevitably connected with the notion of scale (Strathern 2004). I take the village perspective as a scaling perspective on how relations are made and/or cut off – be it between fellow human beings in the village life, or between the individual and the Bosnian polity – and that ‘translates’ these relations always as a matter of village life. Specifically, I trace the vernacular notions and idioms through which individuals in BiH create, cultivate and maintain, but also cut off relationships between each other and also between the individual and the state as a way of attending to the rough ground of the political as experienced specifically in rural areas. Given the limited space, I  cannot attempt to give an exhaustive account of what reconfiguring social relations and living a rural life in BiH today entail. Instead, this chapter offers a series of fragments and stories which, read in conjunction with other chapters of this volume, will provide the reader, I hope, with a more nuanced and tapestried understanding of metamorphosing sociality in contemporary BiH.

A Village Perspective In her recently published book on Muslim lives in rural Turkey, Kimberly Hart (2013) demonstrated the fruitfulness of ‘rural’ fieldwork in building

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50 Henig a novel understanding of processes of secularisation, modernisation and rising socio-economic inequalities in contemporary Turkey. Although the rural and the urban are by no means categorical distinctions in everyday life in western Anatolia, living a rural life implicates a distinct form of social and emotional geographies with entanglements in the state. As Hart argues, living a rural life ‘creates a different field of vision for the future, past, and present’ (Hart 2013:  15). Yet, in her evaluation of the scholarly work on Turkey produced in recent decades, she detected a disproportional lack of rural studies in contradistinction to ‘the Istanbul-centric assumptions  – usually unacknowledged and untested – that the city is the relevant location of all study’ (Hart 2013: 24). Hart’s apt analysis is instructive, I believe, also for the Bosnian context. If we replaced Istanbul with Sarajevo (and a few large Bosnian cities) and Turkey with BiH, we would perhaps get a similar picture of the scholarly work and the knowledge production on post-socialist, post-war BiH. This is striking despite Stef Jansen’s insightful observation, made a decade ago, that the rural–urban perspective ‘constitutes the most widely shared non-nationalist framework for understanding events in the region’ (Jansen 2005b: 154).3 It is even more intriguing, as more than half of the overall population in BiH continues to live in rural or semi-rural areas. The attendant question, however, is: what does ‘rural’ mean to the villagers, if anything at all? And subsequently, what are the implications for carrying out ethnographic research, if the ‘rural’ is taken seriously and brought from the back burner to the centre of the research agenda? The reluctance to carry out research in rural areas is multilayered and it would go beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss it at length. The misgivings about conducting ethnographic fieldwork in rural BiH are largely influenced by the spectres of the community study paradigm that has been prevalent in the anthropology of Europe for a long time (Halpern and Kideckel 1983). This paradigm focused on villages and localities as isolated and bounded communities, cut off from world affairs (Berdahl 1999). Rural life, however, is all but tranquil. If taken seriously rather than romanticised, it unfolds as ‘the complex web of relations between local, national, and international politics and economies’ (Herzfeld 1987:  12), as well as temporalities and imaginaries (Hodges 2013). In turn, the study of such intersections, which cut across multiple scales and processes, as Berdahl reminds us, needs to be ethnographically embedded, for it is ‘ “in the actions of individuals living in time and place” that these forces are embodied, interpreted, contested, and negotiated’ (Berdahl 1999: 3). What is a village perspective then? When saying rural life, or a village perspective, I do not wish to imply that there are two separate worlds of rural and urban areas in BiH, or anywhere else. The two categories are not empirically clear-cut and separated entities, but constitute rather a continuum in shifting horizons of experience, imbued with affective meanings and emotional idioms of belonging. As I have pointed out above, the notion of perspective is inevitably connected with the notion of scale, and I suggest tracing ethnographically the ways in which villagers make

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Fragments of Village Life 51 and remake relationships with one another, as well as with the Bosnian polity. Yet, these relationships are always contextualised, situated and negotiated within a localised and experience-near horizon – that of village life. In other words, this approach is in concordance with Berdahl’s methodological suggestion for a new way of doing village-based ethnographic research ‘beyond’ the community studies paradigm: to follow and explore ‘the effects of long-term and extralocal processes as they are manifested and refracted in a multiplicity of small-scale processes, local practices and individual actions’ (Berdahl 1999: 13). A village perspective is thus a nexus of these divergent geopolitical, economical, historical, material, social and spatial threads. Indeed, my village friends engage thoughtfully with world affairs such as the US presidential elections, the Scottish referendum or Israel–Palestine relationships, as much as with local matters such as harvests, increasingly unpredictable weather, municipal elections, the building of a new mosque, or the inappropriate moral conduct of youth in their neighbourhoods. Moreover, there is a constant daily movement between rural and urban localities within BiH and abroad, be it just a day visit to a relative, or to access a medical service, the regular movement of students and workers, or annual visits of relatives living among the diaspora in Finland and Sweden. Yet, the village continues to constitute an important unit of everyday interactions and concerns, and a primary source of reference and identification in villagers’ daily lives. It is therefore not unusual to encounter villagers who are working in the capital commenting on how running water in Sarajevo is not as sweet as in the village, how Sarajevo is a source of stomach ache and headache. Or one may see villagers living temporarily in Sarajevo suburbs debating the quality of hay on the village meadows, or witness a villager who has just returned to the village from a long period abroad as a construction worker tearfully eating a pinch of soil as a way to reconnect himself with the locality. Furthermore, when villagers ask and debate what a village is, or what it means to live a village life today, these questions and conversations are always intricately interwoven with the questions and debates on BiH at large, but from a particular perspective and at a specific scale: that of the village. This perspective, however marginal in the concerns of politicians as well as researchers, is valuable, I believe, for any ethnographically rich understanding of how social relations in BiH have been reconfigured, negotiated and debated in the post-Dayton years as a form of non-nationalistic discursive and experiential framework. Thus, in what follows, I employ a ‘village perspective’ heuristically as a way to bring together disparate research threads on the rough ground of the political in what the editors characterise as ‘mature Dayton BiH’.

Fragments of Village Life How are social relations made and/or cut off in BiH today as seen from the village perspective? One recurring aspect in the narratives, commentaries and concerns debated by the villagers is increasing economic inequalities

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52 Henig within villages and the emergence of new hierarchies between those who have succeeded in the increasingly laissez-faire post-socialist and post-war environment, and those who have not (i.e. the chronotope of the swamp). I offer two ethnographic tales to illustrate the persuasiveness of these concerns. To do so, let me return for a moment to Sakib’s suicide and to the questions raised by the villagers:  why do people not care about each other anymore, and, more generally, how one can live with others? This way of questioning was not entirely unusual despite the unusual event. During my fieldwork, I  regularly encountered similar questions and debates. Such questions of a general nature, however, were always contextualised in, and ‘translated’ into, the village perspective. The attendant question, therefore, is:  what are the main sources, drives and articulations of reconfiguring the relationships between the individuals and the state? One significant reconfiguration of socialities in rural BiH in the past two decades has been driven by newly emerged ‘hierarchies of suffering’ (Henig 2012a: 12–13; Wagner 2008), which Elissa Helms aptly described as ‘a time of major fluctuation in values, institutions, possibilities, and hierarchies of privilege’ (Helms 2013:  5). Hierarchies of suffering refers to the process of creating moral hierarchies justifying and legitimising claims on humanitarian aid and other benefits during the war as well as in post-war years by ordering, categorising and bureaucratising individual misery and hardship (see also Johanneau, this volume). The main concern in the villages has been centred on those villagers who have managed to get by through exploiting, exaggerating or fabricating their suffering position to receive an early pension, or any material help that could be subsequently capitalised, such as donations of sheep, honey bees, or building material. What is often mentioned during those debates is the use of informal connections known as veze and štela to gain personal benefits (see Brković and Koutková, this volume). It is the increasing pervasiveness of pursuing individual benefits at all costs – seen as an instantiation of increasing neoliberal tendencies in Bosnian society at large – that generates multiple tensions and differences between villagers themselves. These tensions, however, have not been imposed solely from the outside by top-down political rhetoric and policies, but have emerged from the agency of concrete neighbours during and after the war. In turn, such newly constituted hierarchies affect village social relations, that is, ‘the site in which the life of the other is engaged’ (Das 2010: 376), and reconfigure villages into sites of disengagement (Henig 2012a). Twenty years after signing the Dayton Agreement, hierarchies of suffering continue to be a subject of debates and bitter memories about the moral qualities of individual villagers. Nonetheless, time heals many wounds, personal breakdowns and tragedies, and brings former foes back to one table to drink coffee together again. Yet, what is increasingly driving a wedge between individuals in the villages and reconfigures everyday socialities are rising economic inequalities and new symbolic hierarchies between the ‘winners’ and the ‘losers’ of the post-war years.

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Fragments of Village Life 53 A Tale of Winners and Losers In 2012 during the 3-day feast celebrating the end of Ramadan (ramazanski bajram), I  was having coffee in the house of Zakir. While his wife was preparing refreshment, I  asked Zakir about his neighbourhood (komšiluk) and specifically how many of his neighbours visit each other these days. The question was part of the conversational etiquette during such festive occasions, as an important part of the feast is to visit reciprocally all households in one’s neighbourhood. As it was the afternoon of the third day of the feast, Zakir started listing the names, quite confident that no one else would come anyway. After finishing the list, one household that I happened to know as being considered to be part of the neighbourhood, was missing  – Ragib’s household. So I asked Zakir about it. However, my question was received like a twist of the knife in a fresh wound. Zakir started complaining about Ragib, saying that since he had become a successful owner of the village sawmill, he did not care about neighbourhood relations any more, did not chat with people and exploited everyone whenever he could. Such a list of judgements may be easily interpreted as the complaints of a jealous neighbour. However, for Zakir it was a rather painful experience associated with the laissez-faire spirit of the post-war years that created a widening gap between the villagers and turned villages into sites of disengagement where people do not care about each other anymore, as the suicide of Sakib attested to villagers like Zakir. As he bitterly explained: In 1996, the situation in the village was terrible. No one had a job and we relied only on humanitarian donation and our fields. I told Ragib, who seemed to have an entrepreneurial spirit, to open a sawmill in the village. I helped him and gave him 500 KM [€260] in 1996, so he could open a sawmill in the village, make some money and give jobs to people in the village. At the time, he had just opened a small grocery in his cellar, so I gave him the idea and the starting capital. He was paying it back only slowly, usually in coins now and then, no more then 50 KM [€25] at a time [gesturing with hands to show how he was carrying the coins], but I did not care as it was good for all of us here. It turned out to be a good idea, the business has gone well ever since as you can see, his family owns three houses in the village, has expensive cars, jeeps and tractors. Yet, he has come to my house only once since, when I was really sick from brucellosis and paralysed for six months. He came and gave me 50 KM, saying ‘I have never forgotten your help, here you are’. I did not care about the money, but why did he not ask whether my family is okay, or needs any help, as I could not move and had to shit in the bed. Even worse, when I eventually recovered, I could not find any job for years and he has never offered me any help when I had to feed my young daughters. When I eventually convinced his son rather than Ragib to give me a chance, a few months after I started working at his sawmill, I was the first one who

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54 Henig was made redundant when the economic crisis hit the timber industry. That’s what happens when people have money. They do not care (Nije ih briga). Although Zakir’s life story, full of twists and turns, is to a certain extent unusual, the way in which he portrays Ragib as someone who managed to climb over the shoulders of other villagers in the post-war years is shared unanimously in the village. This feeling is further strengthened by the fact that in the post-war years one of his sons succeeded, thanks to Ragib’s money it is believed, to hold the position of secretary of the local branch of the Islamic Community (Islamska Zajednica) and, recently, to become director of the municipal high school with many influential connections, and thus without any need to partake in day-to-day village matters. The story of Ragib withdrawing from village sociality, however, is not entirely unique; on the contrary. From the first days of my fieldwork in 2008 and repeatedly ever since, I encountered stories about villagers having connections and pursuing their own interests through these connections at all costs and thus without taking care of others. Discussion concentrated in particular on those villagers who managed to get tractors or other farming mechanisation equipment through not-very-transparent donation programmes run by municipal officials during the post-war years. The donation programme was targeted at individuals who owned more than 100 dunuma of land (1 dunum = 10 × 100 m) and were able to farm, but more often at those who had ‘connections’. As a result, another dividing line was created between the villagers – those who have always had land, better social status and/or connections, and those without. It was further fuelled by the fact that one of the crucial requirements for obtaining a tractor was that the recipient would make the tractor or other donated equipment also available to other villagers for the duration of at least 4 years after the donation. However, there were no mechanisms of control in place as to whether the recipients were actually helping others with the donated equipment or not. In the villages of my fieldwork, I have observed how those with the equipment were either not helping at all, or charging other villagers money for its use. For example, the standard fee for using a tractor was usually 20–50 KM [€10–25], an amount rather high by village standards, considering the high level of unemployment and minimal incomes. ‘This tractor should be ours’ was the reaction that I often heard from those less fortunate villagers, whenever they had to pay for the use, or whenever any of the owners passed us in the forest or on the village paths. These donations thus monetised, in the eyes of the villagers, mutual help in the villages that is itself associated with a moral imagination of mutuality, generosity and reciprocal exchange. However, as a consequence, the great majority of the villagers without mechanisation or access to any donation are at the loose end of the rope and have nothing to reciprocate but to pay or create debts. This is rather a common story that inevitably impacts and reconfigures socialities in rural BiH today, and the tractor can be replaced by other forms

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Fragments of Village Life 55 of donation that subsequently transform relations between villagers into monetised transactions or indebtedness. In recent years, several municipalities where I conducted fieldwork started a donation programme giving greenhouses to those who live in precarious conditions and yet are able to produce vegetables. The requirement for the recipients of the donation was that those who received the greenhouse donated a part of the harvest to other poor villagers, or to local soup kitchens that are feeding families living under the poverty line, for the duration of 4–5  years. When I  was trying to find out the actual mechanism for distributing the greenhouses, I discovered that the donation of these greenhouses had been used as a form of political bribery during local elections, and that nobody was checking whether any vegetables had actually been donated to those in need. Instead, a number of greenhouse owners have started selling rather than donating peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers to their fellow villagers, thus making money without participating in exchanges of mutual help or charitable donations – an important glue of sociality and moral conduct. Tractors and greenhouses have thus become the idioms through which increasing economic inequalities, emerging social hierarchies created through money and personal connections, have been reflected and articulated as a failure of the corrupted state that does not care and those villagers who increasingly do not care either, which only mirrors the larger political changes in the country. Two years later, in summer 2014, I was sitting in the living-room in one of Sarajevo’s suburbs with Zakir and his wife Rifa. The family had moved from the countryside only a few weeks before as Zakir managed to find a job in the city after he was made redundant by Ragib. Yet, he kept assuring me during the evening that this was only a temporary solution, as he would ‘never leave the village’. When he said that, we both knew that ‘never’ was wishful thinking, an expression of hope and aspiration to live a good life that Zakir associated with being in the village, but that had become increasingly difficult to sustain. So, ‘Do you think you will return soon?’ I asked him. There was a moment of silence and then Zakir said in a yearning tone:4 I was hoping that after the war things would go well, meanwhile everything has gone in a completely different direction, as there is more envy among neighbours, and everything is getting worse and worse. How could I survive there? On that evening, Zakir felt like a loser for whom the return to the village seemed like a sinking dream. This feeling was in contradistinction to those ‘crocodiles’ like Ragib who exploited the opportunities of the post-socialist laissez-faire environment, as well as to those villagers who became successful recipients of donations after the end of the war and can thus stay and live a relatively comfortable village life (cf. Jansen, Brković and Čelebičić this volume).

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56 Henig A Tale of Abandonment If the previous tale explored the metamorphoses of relationships between individuals and the state as experienced and lived in rural BiH through the idioms of careless fellow villagers and emerging new social hierarchies (i.e. the chronotope of the swamp), the following tale focuses on how these relationships are articulated in villagers’ intertwinements with the state’s very infrastructure, and foregrounded by the chronotope of the labyrinth. Two aspects of the state’s infrastructure are arguably significant for villagers: those of roads and cantonal borders as the result of the Dayton cartographic reshuffles. The commonly shared perception in the villages is a tale of abandonment expressed as ‘no one cares about us’ (nikoga nije briga za nas), capturing the sense of severed relationship between the state and individuals living in rural BiH. The Zvijezda highlands area is an apt example of such reconfigurations. Although the area is located in the heartland of Central Bosnia, it lies on the margins of the state and amplifies the notion of semiperiphery within BiH itself. A number of villages are situated literally on the borders of two cantons, the Sarajevo and Zeničko-Dobojski cantons, respectively, as a result of the Dayton Agreement during which the internal cantonal borders were patchworked in a top-down fashion. The post-war internal border cartography would deserve more ethnographic study on the continuous impact of the cantonal borders on the everyday life of BiH citizens, irrespective of their nationalities, in rural areas (see Jansen 2013 for the urban context). These new cantonal borders impact upon the quotidian rhythms of village life immensely. Much has been written about the BiH constitutional design, including cantons. Suffice to say that cantonal authorities can exercise a considerable amount of autonomous power on the lives of their inhabitants that has practical consequences and impacts all areas of everyday lives in the cantons, ranging from education, social policy, access to medical care and to agricultural subsidies. In many villages in the Zvijezda highlands, scattered along the internal cantonal borders, and hence too far from the cantonal or state’s centres of attention and influence, the quality of life and state-provided services dramatically decreased compared with the years before the 1990s war. Consider for example Brdo. The village was historically and administratively linked to much-closer Sarajevo, rather than to the new canton’s capital Zenica, to which Brdo was assigned only after the war, and to which villagers do not feel any emotional attachment.5 For villagers, Zenica is far away and getting there is costly. This situation has proved to be difficult especially in two areas of everyday life for the villagers: obtaining legal documents and access to specialised medical treatments. Not having various documents either in order or up to date is not uncommon for many villagers. The cost of getting from places like Brdo to Zenica is too high for villagers (up to 50 KM, or €25, per trip). The result is that villagers often give up trying very soon. During my fieldwork, I came across a number of stories about prolonged unemployment

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Fragments of Village Life 57 of male villagers, often war veterans with various degrees of impairment, and increasingly of the young generation as well, who neither have enough means nor knowledge or informal connections with the officials or medical doctors to secure the documents needed to be eligible to claim either some compensation, support from the canton or the state, or a job, and who cannot simply find a way out of the labyrinth. For villagers in Brdo, living on the internal cantonal borders has become a life on multiple margins. It is a vicious circle in which living on the margins often means being on the margins of labour opportunities and access to bureaucracy to get the right paperwork done. This, in turn, brings about new forms of economic inequalities and hierarchies that subsequently lead to, and perpetuate, exclusion of many villagers from welfare and wages, and thus detach them from the state represented by the cantons. The post-war cantonal borders thus do not make much sense to villagers. This feeling is further cemented by their daily experiences of complicated access to specialised medical care that is situated either in Sarajevo or in Zenica. Only in about 2010 did politicians of the two cantons negotiate an agreement that villages and municipalities on the cantonal borders, including Brdo, would be eligible to use some of the services, mainly medical ones, provided by the Sarajevo canton. For villagers, Sarajevo is closer and to get there is considerably easier and cheaper. Despite the new possibilities of getting to Sarajevo, anxiety prevails in the villages. Feelings of abandonment are arising from the difficulty of getting documents or decent medical treatment, or from observing the villagers right across the hill who during the cartographic reshuffles happened to be allocated to the Sarajevo canton, thus becoming subsidised and relatively well-off farmers thanks to generous subsidies. ‘Look, I  have been unemployed for eight years, so I have started breeding animals and I’m now producing dairy that I  can sell in Sarajevo’, villager Nijaz told me countless times, and he continued: I would not blame the state for not providing me with a new job, although I still think it should. We live in difficult times, don’t we? But I really don’t understand why there is no cantonal or state support of small farmers here in the Z-D canton. And then, I go to the village shop, to find out that they are selling imported milk from Croatia. Do you understand it? I don’t. The state evidently doesn’t care about protecting its own workers and agriculture. For whom is the state (država), I wonder? This comment succinctly illustrates how complicated relationships between the individual and the state are debated and negotiated from the village perspective, and how the rough ground of the political is articulated through the experiences of life on cantonal borders. A similar set of debates and experiences is associated by villagers with the roads, as another idiom articulating villagers’ relationship with the state.

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58 Henig These semi-asphalted roads connecting villages with municipal centres evoke and bring back stories of life, suffering and survival during the turbulent second half of the twentieth century. In the early 1960s, roads brought education to the villages and made access to health care and work opportunities easier; later, the roads and paths enabled villagers to escape from the villages besieged by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), or to bring food and humanitarian aid to the luckier ones. Roads in the BiH countryside are thus affective spaces also in the manner in which they continue to maintain a complicated relationship with the (post-)Yugoslav past in villagers’ lifeworlds. Indeed, roads relate people and places, villagers’ imaginations, as well as daily concerns of life in rural BiH after the breakdown of Yugoslavia. As my village friends were often half-jokingly commenting while we were travelling on the heavily damaged road connecting the village with the municipality, ‘Tito got a destroyed state without roads and built everything; the contemporary government inherited everything and is incapable of even maintaining it’. Nowadays, a large number of villages in the Zvijezda highlands are connected with the municipalities in Olovo and Vareš through rather deteriorating roads, that thus echo larger affects of abandonment, marginality, and semiperipherality again:  ‘No one cares about us’ (nikoga nije briga za nas) usually accompanies deep sighs of villagers when trying to navigate their cars throughout the Swiss-cheese like roads, itself a metonymy of the chronotope of the labyrinth. The semi-asphalted and unpaved roads, however, are also a source of irony, mockery and rhetorical ammunition for villagers’ critique of post-war development in BiH. Living in the Zvijezda highlands, one will quickly get accustomed to the fact that the great majority of village roads are under ‘permanent construction’, often unpaved, and the construction progress reflects the rhythms of local, cantonal and federal election cycles. Whenever I travelled on such a road in the countryside with randomly asphalted parts, the surprise and excitement on my face brought a characteristic explanation by my fellow travellers: ‘Don’t worry, they will come to fix it before the next elections, otherwise they don’t care about us’. These ironic comments, often made half-jokingly by villagers, have become a common rhetoric apprehension of the abnormality and dysfunctionality of, and a way to get by with, the BiH state.

Conclusion This chapter started with the story of Sakib’s suicide and the questions the suicidal act provoked among the fellow villagers about the intricate entanglements between the individuals and the state in post-war, post-socialist BiH. By introducing the stories of reconfiguration of social relations and how these are scaled and re-scaled in rural BiH, I endeavoured to bring together two interrelated sets of concerns. First, the need to include in the research agenda what I call a village perspective as a largely omitted and yet valuable and much needed critical mirror to the knowledge production on BiH, as well

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Fragments of Village Life 59 as to the dominant political discourses in BiH. Second, I suggested that we focus the village perspective on what I call ‘the rough ground of the political’ as a way to re-engage and re-imagine Bosnian politics, and on how individuals and the state are intertwined. Bringing these concerns together, I argued that the rough ground of the political in BiH is articulated through the manifold ways in which the villagers are trying to come to terms with the question of how people can live with each other in non-categorical terms and modes of conduct, and through the ways in which individual lives are entangled with the state. As the stories of Sakib’s suicide, Ragib’s economic success, or Zakir’s move from the village on the destroyed road to a different canton demonstrate, relations between individuals, and between individuals and the state in BiH, are increasingly negotiated and understood vis-à-vis new forms of socio-economic inequalities, exclusions, idioms of care and carelessness (see also Hromadžić, this volume), and emerging symbolic hierarchies that still need to be tackled by both scholars and politicians, if we want to understand fully the vast scale of societal changes in mature Dayton BiH.

Notes 1 On life in debt in BiH see an excellent analysis by Larisa Jašarević (2012a). 2 The notion of the rough ground goes back to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s critical call for a return to a philosophy of ordinary language that is intelligible in the everyday context (Wittgenstein 2007 [1953]) as opposed to the idealised and extracontextual language conditions employed by Wittgenstein’s philosophical contemporaries. Al-Mohammad and Peluso (2012) amplify the notion of the rough ground into the domains of everyday ethics of care and concern in the course of social life in the context of post-invasion Iraq. They show that the turn towards ‘the rough ground’ in the post-invasion context also runs against extracontextual or normative categories of social life such as tribalism or sectarianism as a means of interpretation and analysis. I find their use of the notion of ‘the rough ground’ in the (post)conflict context useful for attending ethnographically to the ways in which politika is intelligible in the everyday BiH context in a phenomenologically nuanced way (on the lack of comprehension of the post-Dayton socio-political configurations see Jansen 2015, Chapters 1–4). 3 It is fair to add here that since Jansen’s comment, new lines of inquiry have emerged, including gender, welfare and care, or class and inequalities; nonetheless, these are still firmly situated in the urban context. 4 By ‘yearning tone’, I refer to Stef Jansen’s recent work (Jansen 2015). 5 Sometimes my village friends half-jokingly commented that the canton’s acronym (Z-D) should be DZ as it is much closer and easier to get to Doboj rather than to Zenica.

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3 Integrating ‘During the War’ in ‘After the War’ Narrative Positionings in Post-War Sarajevo Nejra Nuna Čengić The recent war in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the most frequent topic of daily politics in this country. It seems that every segment of life is in some way determined by it. On the other hand, on the everyday level, people’s references to their own war experiences are quite rare.1 Most of my research interlocutors stated that they never talked about their war experiences, except to re-tell some funny situations (see Šavija-Valha, this volume). In my personal experience of living in Sarajevo, I also consider this silence to be prevalent. And while reasons for this may be found, for example, in the gap between official discourse and individual experience (see Johanneau, this volume) or in the non-communicability of trauma, my research demonstrates a rather solid capacity to verbalise war experience within an interview (dialogue) process. Based on life story interviews with inhabitants of a Sarajevo neighbourhood aged between 42 and 78, this chapter focuses on so-called ‘ordinary citizens’. Despite continuity of residence in one given location, I found that wartime violence strongly influenced their experience of temporality. Namely, in their narratives, lifetimes are fractured into three time frames: before, during and after the war (see also Palmberger 2013b: 18). Connections across wartime are very rare. Yet I found that, when war experiences were integrated into present life, this occurred predominantly through three modalities of narrative positioning, which I call: The One Who Stayed Put, The One Who Knows and The One Who Is Owed. Resonating with Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity (Ricoeur 1991), which emphasises continuity of self-representation in time and is mainly based on the ethical dimension of personality, these positionings are concentrated around how war experiences are handled in social constellations. In my interlocutors’ emphases, these three narrative positionings are not mutually exclusive, but emerge individually, in pairs, or all together. They do not exhaust all interlocutors’ positionings, nor do they represent closed categories. And they might be found among others in BiH too, in different versions reflecting their specific positions. At the end of the chapter, I will relate these positionings briefly to public addresses at the Plenum of Citizens of Sarajevo for Social Justice (February to May 2014) and illustrate how they were used in a particular context.

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‘During the War’ in ‘After the War’ 61

The One Who Stayed Put The war in Sarajevo, or the siege of the city by paramilitary Serb troops and the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS),2 lasted from 1992 to 1996. During this period, most of the time there was no electricity, heating, water or sufficient food, and the city was subject to daily shelling from the surrounding mountains. Some 14,500 inhabitants died or disappeared, including c. 5,600 civilians (Tokača 2013). Many soldiers and civilians were wounded. An estimated one third of the pre-war population left the city at the beginning of the war, including two-thirds of the Serb population, most of whom moved to the territory under VRS control (Sell 1999: 181). A significant number of displaced persons arrived in Sarajevo from territories taken by VRS. In her wartime study, Maček (2000) shows that leaving or staying in Sarajevo was a hot issue during the course of the war. While official politics prevented leaving and promoted staying as a sign of patriotism, arguments among the Sarajevo population changed over time, but dilemmas were at their sharpest at the beginning and at the end of the war. Primary considerations included personal security, lack of confidence in one’s own ability to start a new life abroad, assessments of the future political situation and concern for family members who left or remained (Maček 2000: 108). Other factors included, for example, protecting property, safeguarding employment, completing studies, staying with friends, and so forth. However, at the very start, Maček notes, only physical danger was taken into consideration as a legitimate reason for leaving (Maček 2000: 109). In this phase many women, often with their children, and less frequently with their husbands,3 left Sarajevo. The dilemma of staying or leaving during the war does not emerge as an explicit issue in the narratives I collected. In five out of 15 interviews, people state that their closest relatives left:  wives, sons, a brother, a mother, a sister. Some female interlocutors say that at the beginning of the war they did not want to leave and that later, when they did want to, it had become impossible. Actual decisions depended on numerous relationships in which individuals were embedded. Milena,4 a middle-aged woman belonging to the non-majority population,5 for whom the war presented the final stage of familial disintegration, culminating in her mother’s death in 1993, says that at the beginning her father called her, her mother and brother to cross over to Grbavica,6 and to flee to Serbia. Yet they refused. Anita (45), whose sister and mother were in Austria, says that she worried about her husband who was in the Army of the Republic of BiH (ARBiH) and thus did not want to leave. In the meantime, her father fell sick and she judges that his illness made it immoral for her to leave. Anita also mentions how at the beginning of the war her best friend asked her what to do: to spend life in war, or to leave and do something ‘with prospect’ (perspektivno). They were in their mid-twenties at that time. Combining humour and bitterness, Anita says that she could not guess how long the war would last and how difficult it would be, so from that point of view, she did not choose ‘prospect’.

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62  Čengić My male interlocutors present their remaining in Sarajevo as self-evident, as if it was never under question. However, the issue is permanently present in implicit ways. It is particularly notable in the starting sentence of their stories, where they present themselves, or in the concluding sentence of their narrative. For example, Damir (56), who was engaged in the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), starts his story with his name and continues: ‘I live and I  was born in Sarajevo, in the centre… and there I  spent… the entire war in Sarajevo, besieged for four years. It was difficult, I wouldn’t go into details of war, it’s more or less known, but it was very difficult’. Selim (69) presents himself in a similar way: ‘I was born in this house… grew up in this house… and probably I will die in this house’. He does not mention the war explicitly, but it is presupposed because, as we shall see, it is central to his entire story. Like Damir, he positions himself as an indigenous Sarajevan (starosjedilac) in relation to ‘newcomers’ and, thus, as a witness of changes in the city over time. Branimir (72), a retired but still very active university professor, also never mentions any dilemma about staying or leaving. However, the very fact that he did stay dominates his narrative. His entire story starts and finishes with the war topic, and he constantly positions himself in relation to colleagues and friends who left. At one point during the war, Branimir replaced seven professors at his faculty. He was also engaged in an association that worked on the cross-border promotion of the truth about the war in BiH, and he says that this was his way of defending the city. Branimir’s narrative focus on his staying put in Sarajevo can be interpreted in relation to the departure of many of his colleagues, to his professional status (which could have facilitated departure), but also to the fact that his name indicates that he does not belong to the ‘majority population’. So, from all these perspectives, the fact that he stayed put and his actions could be interpreted as a confirmation of loyalty to BiH too. A similar sense of loyalty was expressed by Saša (56), who was on work duty during the war and was wounded as a civilian. Since the neighbourhood was the first and very important ‘window’ onto the world during the war, loyalty was tested on this level through practices of helping (pomaganja) and suspecting (sumnjičenja) others, particularly by members of the ethnonational majority. Accordingly, Saša, who belongs to the non-majority population, concludes his narrative: This was my story and I  may emphasise that during the war I  was all the time, well, I’m telling you, at this address. I don’t know, well, if this is praiseworthy or not, whether some of my neighbours knew what kind of man I was, who I am, loyal to my country, this is my country, hmh… Compared to other interlocutors, Saša and Branimir seem to emphasise particularly strongly Sarajevo and BiH as their home. This pattern is especially notable among people like Saša, whose surname is likely to be identified as Serbian. Since the city was surrounded and attacked by Serb forces

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‘During the War’ in ‘After the War’ 63 and many Sarajevo Serbs left the city, for those that remained, it has special significance for post-war life there: their war history shelters them from suspicion by their pre-war and wartime friends (Sorabji 2006: 8). Importantly, my research found that the tendency to emphasise staying put is also gendered. ‘The one who stayed put’ within this research is usually a man, wartime soldier or civilian (less frequently a woman), often belonging to the non-majority population. But in relation to whom do my interlocutors position themselves? To me, to newcomers, to those who left, to today’s citizens of Sarajevo in general? What meaning is ascribed to staying put? To explore this, we must take a further step in the interpretation.

The One Who Knows According to my interlocutors, remaining in Sarajevo during the siege produced a specific kind of experiential knowledge. Although we could detect differences between terms such as ‘experience’, ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’, they often presented experience as knowledge. This must be situated in a context where, internally (within Sarajevo), war experience has been relatively undisputed, yet externally, there is longstanding and vehement contestation of the nature and status of war in BiH. What kind of knowledge are we talking about here? Before we officially started the interview, Branimir said he wanted to tell me two stories. The first one refers to his visit to Sombor (Serbia) right after the war, when a young woman who had moved there from Sarajevo said that they (in Sombor) knew better what had happened in Sarajevo than those who had remained in the city. Branimir describes the interaction in the following way: [The woman said:] I used to work at the… faculty for years, [coughs] and, listening to you, I think that I know the situation in Sarajevo better than you. I ask her when she left and she says at the beginning of the war. Well, thank you for the question and I’m particularly thankful that you told me that you know the situation in Sarajevo better than I do. Until now, when somebody asked me why I remained in Sarajevo, I did not have an answer… But now, I thank you, because now I know the answer. I stayed there so that those like you would not tell me that you know better. Having lived though the siege gives credibility to Branimir for transforming his war experience into knowledge about the war in Sarajevo and about Sarajevo in general. Branimir is proud of this knowledge and considers it a privilege, ‘useful’ knowledge, if you succeed to remain physically and mentally healthy. In contrast, Milena talks about such knowledge in rather neutral terms, but says that she often runs into conflict with her female friends about how things were during the war. She then tells them that they should not talk in that way because they were not there at the time. Milena concludes that this is an inexhaustible topic and that she too does not know how it was in different

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64  Čengić neighbourhoods of the city. Still, she displays intolerance towards ‘external knowledges’. Aside from Branimir, Anita is one of the few interlocutors who do not represent the war experience as a foreign, ‘unintegrated’ experience. Although it brought a cruel transition from an ‘era of naïveté’ to an ‘era of maturity’, she is glad she experienced that. She drafted a non-governmental organisation project on the culture of memory that she would like to implement recording practices of survival during the siege. Describing her motivation for this project, Anita says: ‘No war can be repeated, nor the experience, but when I say, I was there, it is as if I have some experience that others don’t, something that others cannot experience. Yes, that is something important to me’. She refers to the documentary of the Kreševljaković brothers ‘Do you remember Sarajevo?’ (Sjećaš li se Sarajeva? (2003)), which ends with the author’s words that he could live his life well without that experience, and that for a clever man, that experience is not necessary. In contrast, Anita says that with the war she grew up as a person in a moral sense, because she could see how far an immoral situation can go. She describes it in the following way: Firstly, when someone takes that gun, a sniper, well, you cannot understand… it’s a human being, that he can pull that gun. Who would force you?… and the whole war I  repeated that:  who could force me to kill somebody… but when they mobilise you and take you away… Anita says she does not want to forget, that she constantly thinks about the war, that she wants to draw lessons for the future. She is aware of this attitude being uncommon and mentions that maybe she would not think in this way, if someone had been killed in her close family, or if she had been a mother at the time. Anita expresses a sense of belonging to a Sarajevo war community saying that, when she encounters somebody with whom she spent time during war, she feels like meeting her very own brother (brat rođeni). Similarly, in Branimir’s case, the narrative position of The One Who Knows is not simply a fact-based epistemological position. It entails experiential knowledge of The One Who Stayed Put, producing a kind of moral system based to some extent on this position. In that sense, Branimir divides people according to their deeds during the war and says that he made divisions among friends and within his family. This is present in Milena’s story as well: she broke off the pre-war relationship with her best friend who left during the war and never made any contact with Milena during wartime. Maček’s wartime study found similar patterns where war was considered a situation in which it was possible to appraise human relationships better:  to distinguish between friends and enemies (Maček 2000: 108). This kind of experience, framed as ‘unique’ (Anita) or ‘useful’ (Branimir), is, as the Sarajevan poet Marko Vešović (2004) has noted in his poem Balčak, a knowledge about one’s own limits, the only privilege of a victim, something

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‘During the War’ in ‘After the War’ 65 that you can master by ‘keeping your hand on its (knowledge’s  – sabre’s) handle’.7 However, is everyone equally capable of mastering this experiential knowledge and considering it a privilege? How do my other interlocutors relate to this experience? Take Selim and Damir, who fought in the ARBiH and HVO, respectively. Neither of them is proud of his military involvement.8 Selim says it was not his war; it was not a revolution. He states he went to war to defend ‘his little house, his family’, which he opposes to a struggle for ideals. He presents himself as someone who went to the frontline to ‘guard his son’s back’, yet his son was heavily wounded. Damir says he tried to spend as little time as possible at the frontline and, anyway, that he was in a HVO unit, which was less involved at the Sarajevo frontlines, so that he cannot talk about that kind of war. Neither wants to talk about the soldier’s side of the war. However, on several occasions they push me to ask them ‘whatever I want’. This attitude is not limited to wartime, but they behave as if they knew everything about the city and the country of the present day. Selim deploys his soldier position as the highest ground for legitimacy for speaking about the war. Above all, he is angry: he presents himself as a used soldier and a loser, but also as someone who knows the truth about the war. His truth is expressed through resentment, disappointment, resignation. It is not the official truth of the Sarajevo-based authorities, just like Branimir’s and Anita’s are not, but it is not fully individual either. Similarly to Daniel’s findings in Sri Lanka, this truth may present an alternative master narrative, one that is capable of displacing the master narrative since ‘violence undermined the narrativity of the master as well as mastery of the narrative’ (Daniel 1996: 134). In significant measure, Selim’s truth goes against the official discourse on war ‘within’, in Maček’s (2000) terms (life and relationships within wartime Sarajevo), but it mainly stays within the boundaries of the official discourse on the ‘external’ war (how it started, the nature of the siege of Sarajevo and overall war in BiH). Selim says that he and his children, and anybody who went to defend this country ‘from the heart’, returned from the war as a moral zero and feels utterly betrayed. It seems that his struggle and that of his children does not make any sense any more. However, that does not mean that the war experience is unimportant to him. Quite the contrary! The issue of whether to stay – and not only to stay, but to join the armed defence of the city – and the moral system derived from it, is not limited only to human relationships among people who know each other. Selim raises it to a larger scale. For him, having stayed put and participated in the war is not only the ground for any legitimate epistemological position, but also for any political one: it is the only position that he considers legitimate for ruling BiH and determining its future. In sum, the experiential knowledge on war emerges in two modalities: as a privileged or unwelcome knowledge. In my interviews, this difference runs partly along the lines of the civilian/soldier divide. Anita and Branimir, civilians during the war (who, moreover, suffered no casualties within their

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66  Čengić close family), integrate their war experience into their life story and give it a central place in their life afterwards. In Husanović’s terms, they transform experience into view, view into insight (Husanović 2010: 238). For Damir and Selim, soldiers during the war, this is an unwelcome experience (difficult to integrate in post-war life), but also (in different measure) a necessary ground for legitimate knowledge about how it was, how it is now and how it should be. In both modalities, important moral values derive from war experience, determining in significant measure ways of acting and comprehending reality. It becomes an angle of perceiving reality, the sea bottom determining the colours of the world, as stated by a Sarajevo woman in Namik Kabil’s 2007 documentary ‘Informativni razgovori’. Importantly, for other interlocutors, mainly civilians, it seems that war experience cannot cross the fracture between war and post-war life. In Das’s words, it functions as ‘poisonous (polluted) knowledge’,9 knowledge that breaks all levels of humanity, knowledge that cannot be borne in this life (Das 1998: 85–87). What is more, this knowledge presents a barrier to build life anew in the present. However, they may ‘hold its handle’ and this provides the basis for emergence of the third narrative positioning.

The One Who Is Owed Discussing wartime Sarajevo, Maček (2000: 239) challenges the usual civilian/ soldier division, claiming that both shared similar dangers, material difficulties and moral dilemmas. Yet, upon the signing of the Dayton Peace Accord, Bougarel (2006) notes that the combatant population became defined as a distinct social group, completing a process that had started during the war. Combatants’ associations that function largely in partnership with the government were formed. They gained specific rights regarding ‘temporarily abandoned real estate’, and privatisation certificates compensated for unpaid wages. A  large proportion of the budget was reserved for war disabled individuals and war widows (Bougarel 2006: 482–483). Much lower pensions/ supplements are granted to civilian victims of war (wounded civilians, female victims of sexual violence and so on). Furthermore, commemorative practices linked to fallen soldiers and famous battles were introduced by ruling parties to mark territory, but also ‘to perpetuate their own accounts of the war’ (Bougarel 2006:  482). While this went largely undisputed in the 1990s, the situation changed from 2000 onwards, leading to a decrease in material and symbolic status of former combatants. According to Bougarel, this is mainly due to a gap between legal provisions and available funds (under pressure from international financial institutions), resulting in delays of payments, downsizing of the army, decreasing value of privatisation certificates, and so forth (Bougarel 2006:  485). Moreover, the criteria for the allocation of disability pensions/supplements have been subject to much political debate and revisions. Funds for these payments are fully dependent on foreign loans and are considered an important condition of social peace in BiH.

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‘During the War’ in ‘After the War’ 67 Almost 20  years have passed since the end of the war. The structure of Sarajevo’s population has changed: some people who survived the siege have left, some who left at the beginning of the war have returned to the city (an amnesty was proclaimed), displaced persons and others came from other parts of BiH or from abroad. Attitudes towards those who left are divided and change with time. In extreme cases, Stefansson (2004) states, stayees perceive returnees or visitors as having profited from their flight in material, educational and other terms, while the latter feel that they are materially ‘milked’ because of that. In most cases, the principal understanding is that everybody had their own reasons for staying or leaving, but divisions may appear with regard to work relationships and some other forms of sociality (Stefansson 2004). In Maček’s study, one interlocutor says she does not have anything against those who left, considering it an individual decision. However, in a certain way, she does condemn those who could have contributed, but left with the idea that they would return when issues would be settled, leaving others to work for them and risk their lives for them. In sum, she states that people should return, if they would like to, but they cannot expect to come ‘ahead of’ those who remained there all the time, when it was the hardest, and who saved the city’ (Maček 2000: 111). Selim’s life story is permeated by this division, primarily contrasting those who defended the city, ‘little people’,10 with the children of politicians who at that time completed expensive education abroad. And although he too says that he does not have anything against those who left, he perceives them today as people who return to the city, buy privatisation certificates and buy off flats, for which, as he puts it, he contributed from his salary for years. In this interpretation, their leaving places them not only in a privileged position during the war but in the post-war period as well. This corresponds to the findings of Bougarel’s study on former soldiers in BiH who do not appear as heroes any more, ‘but as naive losers, in contrast to those who were able to gain an advantage from the war or at least to escape from it’ (Bougarel 2006: 485). In Selim’s narrative, this division is closely connected to criticisms of politicians and their treatment of former soldiers, and divisions between so-called indigenous Sarajevans and so-called ‘newcomers’. He says he lost everything in the war, lives on medicines and does not believe in anything politicians say. He expresses strong bitterness with the treatment of former soldiers by institutions. He resignedly tells me a story of his son, who was wounded in the war and has official war disability status. When he went to the municipality office to ask for something, Selim says, a clerk turned down his request. To his question for an explanation, she answered: ‘Build a fence around what you defended!’ (Ogradi to što si odbranio!). Selim is astonished. He uses this story to illustrate lack of respect towards former soldiers and the ‘different world’ in which he lives today. In this context, besides politicians, he also criticises newcomers to the city (often perceived to be the same people) who would like ‘us’ to adapt to ‘them’, rather than vice versa. Selim says he can walk for

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68  Čengić hours along Sarajevo’s main street and not meet anybody he knows – and he finds this scandalous considering he has been living in this city for 69 years. Selim clearly feels he is owed something. But what exactly is owed to him? What, if anything, does he demand? What is this debt? He knows that events cannot be undone, that the fact that he and his family stayed put and suffered during the war cannot be erased. What was lost can be reconstructed only through that which remained (Husanović 2010: 219). But debt is not necessarily equal to loss. Is this about justice? What would be justice in Selim’s case? Would reparations meet his needs? And on what basis should they be claimed? Would this reinstate his world, in which he is ‘at home’, the social status that he had, and a sense of ‘ownership’ over space and community? Further, what would be justice for his son, who did acquire a certain status with associated rights? What is justice for those interlocutors who do not fit into any recognised categories? Most of my interlocutors do not speak explicitly about institutional justice and few mention any institutions in this context, but there is a widespread sense that people feel they are owed something. It seems that what is at stake here is eternally irreparable loss. Along with losses of loved ones, two interrelated losses appear through the position of The One Who Is Owed: loss of one’s place in the world, mainly found among male interlocutors, and loss of ‘normal life’, found among almost all participants. Selim’s entire story is constructed around ‘before’ (the war) and ‘now’ (almost 20 years later), where everything ‘before’ is presented as better than ‘now’. He is nostalgic for ‘his world’ where he felt as its co-creator. Damir, in contrast, explicitly says that he is not nostalgic for his pre-war life, but he too feels like a stranger in this transformed world. He concludes his story in a rather resigned way: You have to prove you spent the war here, for all those papers, confirmations you have. When I bought off the flat, I had to prove three times that I was alive, that I was born there… That kind of administration gets on my nerves. On the basis of continuity in place, with the war period and the role of defenders as a particular test, both Selim and Damir make especially strong claims on Sarajevo as their own (home). To them, it is the place they, together with others, ‘created’ and ‘defended’. However, both are confronted with new, unfamiliar ‘rules of the game’. What is also lost is so-called ‘normal life’. For my interlocutors, the contents of ‘normal life’ correspond to Jansen’s findings in the Sarajevo neighbourhood of Dobrinja (Jansen 2014a:  S76):  they recall pre-war life as ‘normal’, which mostly corresponds to secure employment, living standards, social welfare, relative social equality, socialising connected to travel and leisure, consumption, inter-ethnic co-existence, and particularly importantly, an expectation of unproblematic reproduction of such a life. All my interlocutors are employed or retired, and we may assume that all have some kind of

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‘During the War’ in ‘After the War’ 69 income and are covered by health insurance and social care. Yet, particularly for pensioners, this is usually insufficient even for basic survival. Nedžad (78), a retired widower, says that he had to sell his piano for hip surgery and that he does not dare travel anywhere since his health insurance does not extend beyond Canton Sarajevo (see Brković and Kurtović, this volume). Lejla (42), much younger and employed in the non-governmental sector, is waiting for her latest project application to secure her next salary. For younger generations, even this limited security is questionable. Yet, if all my interlocutors are concerned with lack of social progress, mobility and the sense of entrapment (see Jansen 2014a), this is clearly not fully unique to post-war BiH. Muehlebach and Shoshan (2012) claim that, as part of what they call the post-Fordist affect, many people across the globe today, in various measures and ways, miss security and predictability. Let us therefore make a distinction between missing, being owed and demanding. I would say that most people who used to live in socialist Yugoslavia miss the existential and social security that was lost by the transformation to a capitalist system. People who experienced war suffering consider ‘normal life’ as a minimum that is owed to them and they feel entitled to it. This deprivation was not fully caused by the war, but in their experience of time and in accordance with dominant politics, it has become associated with it. The lack of social progress is explicitly related to wartime suffering by many of my interlocutors. Damir says that due to the level of suffering during 4 years of war, the expectations right after it were very high. However, as he says with disappointment, today it is clear that besides physical reconstruction nothing has been repaired. Jasmina (52) a middle-aged woman, who, like many others, constructs her entire story around ‘before’ and ‘now’, speaks in similar terms. She constantly compares her life, and that of her children, with how it used to be before (always: better). Faced with difficulties to find employment for her children, which she experiences as a significant financial burden, Jasmina expresses huge disappointment and says that they ‘deserved more after such great suffering’ (zaslužili smo više nakon tolike patnje). So, this is not only a case of missing lost predictability. The eternal irreparable loss caused by war has been transformed into a slightly more concrete debt of ‘normal life’. In other words, the debt indicated by my interlocutors is a larger, faster and more visible rise in social and personal prosperity, commensurable with experienced war suffering. No less important, it is also understood as re-entering the world of humanity – being fully recognised as human. In this way, being owed, more than the two previously elaborated narrative positionings, is applicable to much wider populations in Sarajevo and BiH. This debt is manifested in many different ways, implicitly or explicitly. The more my interlocutors succeed in finding ways to integrate their war experience into overall life, as Anita does through her work on war memory, the less they articulate this debt. If not permanently present, like in Selim’s story, it usually emerges in narratives about some crisis situation, where misfortune or failure is immediately placed in relation to the level of war suffering (as

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70  Čengić in Jasmina’s story). From this perspective, as time passes and things do not improve, the debt towards those who defended this country, with arms or otherwise, increases. As my interlocutor Damir notes, right after the war life was quite cheap, people were optimistic and many of them tried to make up for much of what was missed during the war. Many felt they lost their best years during the war. Over time, people started to make plans, but life became more expensive and the ‘sense of possibility’ (Hage 1997), as associated with previous lives, was decreasing. People became increasingly alert to the consequences of war, while the lack of societal hope (Hage 2003: 15) did not follow in step with personal desires for social mobility and reproduction of ‘normal lives’. In the post-war period, three realities thus converge: the lost pre-war ‘normal life’ that remains a standard, a war experience that one wants to leave behind, but not forget or see its validity undermined, and current precarity that renders losses disputed and aspirations fraught. This often leads to an attitude that even during war (some) things were better than now. As much as my interlocutors present the war period as atemporal, in the substance of their war narratives there were hopes; above all a hope that war would end soon and that once it ended, ‘normal life’ would resume. Thus, for those who stayed, the war was not entirely a static period; there was a level of planning for life after the war. Otherwise it might have been fully impossible to sustain such a life. For example, Saliha (70) and Lejla both name the accumulation of working years as one of their motivations for engagement in civil defence and work on documentation of war crimes, respectively. The war ended, but as we have seen, ‘normal life’, at least the one that existed before the war, has not re-emerged. Still, this notion integrates different time frames: it presents a standard of good life, indicates a more specific loss (debt) and an aspiration. But, do my interlocutors make demands? Do they request that this debt be paid? And whom do they address, if anyone? They place the blame for the non-payment of the debt on dirty, corrupt (anonymous) ‘politics’ (see Kolind 2007; Helms 2007; Spasić 2013; Greenberg 2010) and less so on specific politicians, parties and institutions who perpetuate war (collective) victimisation. Does this lack of a specific addressee mean that the positioning of The One Who Is Owed mobilises a broader discourse of political victimisation that may help meet some needs and at the same time maintain the moral authority of the eternal debt? Could the three narrative positionings identified in this chapter be used in a different way?

Three Positionings in Use Literally, ‘staying put’ means to remain in a fixed or established position, without moving or being moved. While my interlocutors did not move physically, they certainly did not remain in a fixed or an established position. All feel, to a different degree, that they are now in a worse place. Gender, ethnic belonging, the civilian/soldier divide and losses/wounding within one’s close

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‘During the War’ in ‘After the War’ 71 family appear as quite important factors in their differential experience of this transformation. Claims on Sarajevo as their home (in terms of having security, community, familiarity and a sense of possibility; Hage 1997: 102–103), where staying put has an important role, are significant, but they do not feel at home as they believe they should. If studies of home-making are usually conducted with people who move (migrants, returnees, and so on), for those who stay put, the issue of home seems self-evident. Yet, this study shows that this is not the case in situations of war, social transformations and lack of societal hope. The question then arises: could our three positionings serve to build a closer approximation of home (Hage 1997) than what exists now? My research was focussed on how people verbally articulate their war experience, how they bridge the fracture between war and post-war life. I found the three prevalent positionings presented, but my study did not offer me insight into how they are used outside of the interview situation. An event that may illustrate their application are the more recent ‘plenums’ created from the protest for social justice, which started in February 2014 in numerous towns of BiH (particularly the Federation of BiH). My reason for selecting these plenums, important and innovative platforms for the formulation of demands for social justice through direct democracy, rather than some more usual, everyday event, is threefold: it presents a good illustration of all three positionings identified above, of the sharing of some of them among a broader population, and of the use of them for the purpose of social change. The ‘plenum of Sarajevo citizens’ for social justice did not deal with war issues explicitly and was not limited to those who spent the war in Sarajevo. Some participants were not even born at the time, or they do not remember it. However, the plenum gathered many diverse people who felt they are owed. The plenum formulated requests and sent them mainly to the cantonal government. Initially, many were concerned with halting the process of privatisation; eradicating and prosecuting corruption; linking up lifetime working years (‘radni staž’) for workers in the status of ‘waiting’ (‘na čekanju’), or for whom contributions were not paid; reducing salaries and benefits within the huge political apparatus and similar issues. These were followed by requests such as equal and free access to education, basic health care, social care for unemployed, etc. In sum, more social care and equality. Requests could be submitted in written form to the plenum, but it also functioned as a physical platform open to all participants, where individuals could address the audience (in 2 minutes) and in this way submit a request. In practice, the form of address was in significant measure testimonial. People’s war experience was rarely a part of these testimonies, yet it was still very present and important. In which ways? The One Who Stayed Put during the war in Sarajevo (and others that spent the war in the city) would appear mainly at the beginning of people’s address, similarly to Damir’s narrative above. For example: ‘I, who spent the whole war in besieged Sarajevo’, or ‘I, who fought for this country’, or something similar. This was done mainly by men and less by women, who sometimes referred to the deeds of male family members

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72  Čengić during the war.11 The possibility of leaving at the beginning of the war was very frequently mentioned, as was the decision to stay and defend the country. And while this kind of positioning in terms of loyalty is very common in public speeches, particularly among the political elite, at the plenum it only partly followed their identity and value pattern. In this case, namely, its primary aim was to contrast the struggle for this country with the actual situation, to show, as Branimir says, that this is not the society one had fought for. Namely, at stake here is a debt, a need for progress and betterment, (in some way) commensurable to experienced suffering. In this way, The One Who Stayed Put gives legitimacy to her/his knowledge and to her/his demands. It confirms a place (Sarajevo and BiH) as one’s home, oneself as its defender and one’s moral authority to turn it into something more homely than it is now. As Lubkemann (2008:  316–322) argues in his study of Mozambique, it is precisely this kind of moral capital that converges with two other forms of power – ‘instrumental power’ (position, wealth, and so forth) and ‘epistemic power’ (for instance, men in a patriarchal setting) – to construct authority for disturbing hegemony and pursuing social change. It involves power that is capable of generating added value providing the required credibility. In other words, it instrumentalises loyalty to change social relations. The plenum was an opportunity to articulate the three positionings, place them in mutual relation and, even more importantly, to be heard. The One Who Knows did not present knowledge about the war on the plenum, but knowledge about life now was often presented through stories of personal deprivation of basic life conditions (contrasted to the initial positioning of The One Who Stayed Put). Empowered by the position of The One Who Stayed Put, he/she knows very well what is wrong and how things should be. Here, and in the formulation of requests, the standard is ‘normal life’, whether experienced before or not. Not everyone addressed the plenum in this way, but many did. For them, two realities are crucial:  first, the experience of, or the transmitted idea of, pre-war ‘normal life’, posited as a standard; and second, a war experience that provides a basis for an entitlement to a future ‘normal life’. This is not escapist nostalgia, or a lack of insight that the world has changed in the meantime. Rather, it shows an awareness of contingency:  of the fact that the way in which society is arranged today is not a necessity, that it can be different, and that we know this because it actually used to be different. This is a challenge to current politics, transforming a debt into a protest and a demand.

Notes 1 The research was conducted in 2010 and 2011 as part of a doctoral project about the narrative re-creation of life in post-war Sarajevo. This chapter presents a slightly modified chapter of my doctoral thesis. Over time, it seems, some changes may be occurring, as people in Sarajevo have started to mention their war experiences in relation to the current moment. Also, the importance of having stayed

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‘During the War’ in ‘After the War’ 73 put in the city during the war seems to become slightly less important in light of a discourse that calls for orientation towards the future. 2 With significant involvement by the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (consisting of the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Montenegro). VRS acted de facto as the main inheritor of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) in BiH. 3 On the whole, able men of military age were mobilised for armed defence, except those whose jobs were considered to be of special significance for the functioning of the city. These men had work duty (radna obaveza). Many women, too, had work duty in their jobs, and some (employed and unemployed) women were active in civil defence (civilna zaštita). A smaller number served in ARBiH. 4 Pseudonyms are used for personal  names, and some minor biographical details have been modified to ensure anonymity. 5 In their life story interviews, almost none of my interlocutors identified themselves in ethnic terms. This may be because they find it irrelevant or because they assume one could deduce it from their names. Yet, in narratives about neighbourly relations some of them speak of the ‘non-majority population’ (that is, the non-Bosniak population). For the purpose of explaining some socialities, I will use this term. 6 A central Sarajevo neighbourhood, controlled by VRS. 7 Balčak (tur.) – sabre’s handle. Citing the same poem, Jasmina Husanović argues that having a hand on the ‘handle’ of this experiential knowledge should be used for a politics of hope against the hopelessness of victimisation (Husanović 2010: 258). 8 During the war in BiH, 400,000 to 500,000 men, or two thirds of able men of military age, were engaged in military formations on the territory of BiH (Bougarel 2006:  479). In the defence of Sarajevo, ARBiH gathered the largest number of soldiers, followed by units of HVO. 9 In her study about narrativity and violence among abducted and/or raped women in India during partition, Das (2007) uses this term when describing their silent repression of this experience deeply inside their bodies (interpreted as a conscious act). 10 Selim uses the metaphor prasa i buranija (literally leek and green beans) to mark ordinary people, those whose life is not worth anything at all in relation to the children of politicians. 11 Both men and women participated in the work of the plenum. Men were somewhat overrepresented among those who addressed the gatherings, while in organisational and logistical matters more women were involved.

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Commentary Armina Galijaš and Hrvoje Paić Academics from different disciplines profit from ethnographic research in this volume in a multifaceted way: they receive access to an abundance of innovative empirical analysis that is at the same time a fruitful basis for extrapolation of new theoretical knowledge, detailed and deep empirical knowledge, and they attain a magnified view of society that would otherwise remain hidden and unknown to them. Ethnographic analyses, with their wealth and diversity of sources, surpass often-sterile theoretical discussions, superficial empiricism and institutionally captured views, all the while never lacking a lucid and well-conceived structure or strict and scientific use of form and terminology. The authors in this part of the volume combine powerful ethnographic work with theoretical intervention and guide us through their careful and respectful description into the everyday lives of Bosnians. The three texts, ‘Integrating “During the War” in “After the War”:  Narrative Positionings in Post-War Sarajevo’, ‘The Discretion of Witnesses:  War Camp Memories Between Politicisation and Civility’ and ‘Fragments of Village Life and the Rough Ground of the Political in Post-War BiH’, are good examples of thoughts laid out concerning the ethnography of post-war Bosnian everyday life. These texts do not only analyse social discourses, but also describe the environment and atmosphere produced by the magnified image of a microcosm. The background information is well embedded in theory and the informative texts are thoroughly readable. Cécile Jouhanneau makes use of the example of prison camp detainees from Brčko to demonstrate clearly how avoiding being politicised can also become very political in itself. Based on empirical evidence from everyday life, she addresses issues of great importance for the entire Bosnian society, such as coming to terms with the past or coping with war trauma, in an everyday as well as a political context. Nejra Nuna Čengić also addresses the articulation of wartime experiences, attempting to discover how people in Sarajevo bridge the fracture between war and post-war life. She also confronts us directly, through the telling of very personal stories, with the fundamental question of how contemporary Bosnian society should be ordered. This challenge to current politics arises directly out of the experiences and needs of the people of Sarajevo, out of everyday life. David Henig focuses on three village stories and searches for entanglements between individuals and the state in post-war and post-socialist Bosnia. It is his opinion that, if we want to understand fully the vast scale of societal changes in BiH in the years following the Dayton Agreement, we must understand these relations vis-à-vis new forms of socio-economic inequalities, exclusions, idioms of care and carelessness, and emerging symbolic hierarchies that still need

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Commentary 75 to be tackled by both scholars and politicians. Beside the many advantages offered by such analyses, there is also the potential danger that, because of the multitude of details available regarding a particular topic, certain other important details are overlooked. However, general conclusions can still be drawn  – but with caution. Like in any other study of humanity, detailed images are in danger of being selective, but the question remains whether or not it is possible to avoid this and ‘protect oneself’ methodologically; and if it is possible – how might it be achieved? Here are some remarks considering certain dimensions of this question. Epistemological remarks:  Although rarely explicitly addressed, the analyses in this volume can be seen as research that is in general ideologically and scientifically inspired by elements of the epistemology present, for example, in the works of Michel Foucault and the Frankfurt School. The Foucauldian ‘activist pessimism’ approach and ‘critical theory’ including more concrete theoretical views (such as Bakhtin) are doubtlessly very powerful analytical instruments. At the same time, the use of the pessimist critical epistemological apparatus opens a set of exciting questions. These questions, as in any other study of humanity, highlight the extent to which relevant, general cognitive horizons also limit studies in hand. In this sense, it would be valuable to know why presented ways of understanding research phenomena are notably favoured over some other perspectives, for example, what particular analytical ratio stands behind the selection and/or deselection of certain other possible research approaches. Is the relatively widely spread pessimist critical cognitive horizon in ethnography established as a kind of mainstream horizon? In terms of possible enrichment of this horizon: would it be useful also to consult Foucault who in his later work identified limits of his own perspectives focused primarily on power, rule, discipline and domination without simultaneous reflection on other phenomenon, like freedom? Or in other words, would it not be beneficial to expand perspectives and systematically introduce new aspects and terminology that would contribute to a broader understanding of social relationships including reflections on freedom, relative autonomy of individuals and emancipatory possibilities in the frame of liberal democracies and even possible strategies of change? Crisis, Pessimism and (Self-)Balkanisation:  Most texts in this volume observe and analyse different topics, but what they have in common is the (un) calculated critical pessimism as the cognitive starting point. Therefore, the analyses are tendentially focused on social actors often giving an impression of being locked in trauma, crisis and related social structures: camp detainees, people with war experiences, inhabitants of a nursing home, children with developmental disabilities. These actors are researched in the context of their trauma, moments and phenomena of their personal and social crises. Such perspectives give us an essential, yet not necessarily qualitatively complete, image of a society. At this point, it would be possible to raise the question about reasons for such analyses of society that at the same time leave out reflection on numerous other types of actors, phenomena and moments. It could be

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76  Galijaš and Paić useful – in order to get a fuller picture of research phenomena – to combine this (un)calculated critical pessimism with horizons sensitive to emancipation, for example, to a kind of, let us call it activist-critical-pessimist-optimist approach. Does this approach also bring with it the danger of scientifically legitimising new negative stereotypes of ‘Balkan’ societies, namely the reproduction of those societies as materialisations of war traumas, crises, precarity, clientelism, failed statehoods and democracy? Does it serve a reproduction of colonial knowledge with its power hierarchy between the ‘Balkans’ and ‘Europe’? For the benefit of a critical reflection on reproduction of ‘Balkan’ stereotypes through ethnography, it would be insightful to compare existing analyses on southeastern Europe with ethnographic studies of other parts of Europe and the world. Are the characteristics of everyday life similar to those of presumably developed, Western, wealthy, ‘normal’, liberal, ‘democratic’ and ‘emancipated’, ‘the-end-of-history-societies’? The Introduction to this volume indicates a similar way of thinking by authors, thus this volume can be regarded as a basis and opportunity for combining and comparing ethnographic research from the ‘Balkans’ and ‘Europe’/other parts of the world. And finally, are there researchers from southeastern Europe investigating the everyday life of so-called Western societies, as there are researchers in the ‘West’ expressing a lively interest in the Balkans? And if so – why? How can possible asymmetry of research interests be interpreted? Miš – mouse, kuća – house: Finally, many ethnographic analyses, including this volume, use English simultaneously with original wording in BosnianCroatian-Serbian in brackets.1 Following Aleksandar Hemon, that ‘anything that can be said and thought in one language can be thought and said in another’2, as well as observed from the perspective of some other social and humanity disciplines in which such translation practices are rare or nonexistent, the question arises as to why they are common in ethnography, at least that of southeastern Europe? What do these practices tell us about the authors, about the perception of intended readership and of the researched social field? What are the analytical and readership functions of such wording? Does the use of original wording function as a kind of ‘rule of the game’ in this particular academic field, indicating a deep knowledge of language and society, and in this sense, does it serve as a practice of accumulating symbolic capital (akumulacija simboličkog kapitala)?

Notes 1 For example, very common wording such as loans (krediti), state (država), village (selo), including phrases, such as ‘they do not care’ (nije ih briga) and for south east European societies allegedly specific phenomena like ‘neighbourhood’ (komšiluk). 2 Hemon (2016).

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Part II

Whose Flexibility? Informality in Practice

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4 Affective Labour Work, Love and Care for the Elderly in Bihać1 Azra Hromadžić ‘We are not in this for the Money’ Lidija and Ramo2 are a married couple in their mid-forties. Originally from Banja Luka, they spent the war years (1992–1995) as refugees in Germany. After the war ended and their hometown was ethnically cleansed, they decided to return to their home country and start a new life in Bihać, a north-western town in BiH.3 Upon return, the couple recognised that there was a ‘crisis of care’ for elderly; they secured a high-interest bank loan, borrowed money from family and friends and opened a nursing home called Vitalis (pseudonym) for elderly and needy persons. They have been running it for several years. I am meeting with them on this crisp, summer afternoon to see if I  can conduct my field research on the politics and poetics of aging, care and responsibility in post-war and post-socialist BiH at Vitalis. We meet at one of the centrally located cafés in town, which is empty at this hour. After several hesitant sentences, we ‘click’. Lidija and Ramo open up quickly, their run-on sentences intermingling and bouncing off of the restaurant’s walls. My ethnographic curiosity sharpens, as Lidija starts to talk faster, her words filled with emotion: Azra, you will see. This job is all about briga (both ‘care’ and ‘worry’). Ramo and I are with them [the home’s residents] all the time. [Ramo nods in agreement]. I take them to the hospital. I go there to shave them, to change their diapers. Their children and relatives call me at home at midnight. You see, many of the children are in diaspora, they left the country during the war and now they need help with their parents. But since they are so far away, they are anxious. The cell phone is always by my bed. They call at midnight to ask about their mother. But I understand… I was abroad (vani) as well. So I tolerate the calls.… You will see how I run the place… I am not like some others, like my relative [who runs a nursing home in a nearby town]. She just manages. I do not. I mean, I manage… but I get invested (ja se unosim, also: I get in the middle of things, both emotionally and physically). I ‘spend’ myself (Ja se trošim). I do not isolate myself. I could [isolate myself], but I do not want to. I slept with Fida [a disabled refugee woman from Eastern BiH in her mid-forties] on the floor for two weeks… Why? Because she was scared of her own shadow.

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80 Hromadžić And her family is far away, in Germany and Amerika [the US]. And you will see her… she is happy, she sits with all others… We put her back on her feet!… I am so tired, but I love this, you cannot do this without love. People feel that. But what hurts is that some people in town say that we are in this for the money! What money, please? They think there is money in this work, because we are private business owners (privatnici). But no one helps us! Not the state, not the canton, not the town… See, we still do not have an elevator.… If there were [money in this], do you think we would drive the car we drive? You will see, we will give you a ride home… I mean, they [the home’s residents] say they want new beds with buttons. But that is not what they need. People need attitude and service (pristup i uslugu), not fancy beds and elevators. We are not in this for the money, we love this! I would never wish for another job. Lidija’s words are potent, charged with affect that unveils a ‘collective scandal’4 and a tender zone of cultural intimacy (Herzfeld 1996): the incapability of the state and family in contemporary BiH to take care of their elderly. Instead, as a result of country-wide post-war and post-socialist reconfigurations, there is a widespread emergence of new, privately owned centres for the care of elderly. Furthermore, Lidija’s words also grippingly capture the themes at the heart of this chapter: the changing ethos of care and responsibility, and family and state in post-war and post-socialist BiH. In what follows, I turn to these forces, events, affective states and vernacular knowledges in order to understand the ways in which people in BiH confront, in their everyday lives, the uneven and fraught modalities of care as work and work as care.5 The concern about the growing elderly Yugoslav population and the anxieties about providing care for old people in the face of rapid urbanisation, modernisation and migration of (young) people from villages to cities were present during the Yugoslav socialist era as well (Mitak 1984: 109; Stubbs and Maglajlić 2012:  1177). These anxieties have been deepened and broadened by post-war and post-socialist transformations:  as a result, these changing formations and expressions of care foster a particular kind of post-war and post-socialist privatnik (entrepreneur) and labourer: the one who is ready to ‘spend’ herself by constantly worrying about others and who receives a small monetary reward in return. As Lidija’s words illuminate, this novel context of war-produced fragmentation of state and family is thus generative of a type of caregiver who ‘performs two kinds of labour of care at once; it feels (cares about) others and acts (cares for others) at the same time’ (Muehlebach 2012:  8). The emergence of this type of compassionate privatnik, with her caring employees, is therefore a response to the crisis of care produced by fragmented families and ‘ever more absent state’ (Muehlebach 2012: 36), as it is being confronted in the Bosnian context where ‘lives seem habitually at stake’ (Jašarević 2011: 109). In order to understand these novel modalities of care, we first need to address the context that engenders them, including the post-war and (post)

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Affective Labour 81 socialist politics, policies, discourses and practices of care and social protection as they unfold in a unique context of BiH in general, and Bihać in particular. These processes, experiences and stories shape the lives and deaths of people in the Balkans, and they point at the need to bring into conversation that what scholarship in the region has treated as separate: post-war and post-socialist transformations and regimes of care, and narrated and socially embedded subjectivities that these transformations produce.

Post-war Assemblages: Family and Exile Lidija’s opening account is shaped by multiple affective attachments and practical relationships of care as they are being refashioned in a post-war context at the end of socialism. For example, Lidija and Ramo said they would most probably never engage in this type of labour if the Bosnian war did not take place. Their families, as well as families of the majority of Vitalis’ residents, were caught at the epicentre of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Lidija and Ramo grew up in Banja Luka, a town of 200,000 people that was ‘mixed’; at the brink of the war, the majority of the population was ethnically Serb (roughly 55 per cent), with a significant presence of Croats (roughly 15 per cent), Bosniaks (around 15 per cent) and Yugoslavs (roughly 12  per  cent). This ‘mixed’ town’s habitus, in which different groups intermingled for centuries, was common in BiH and socialist Yugoslavia at large. Lidija and Ramo’s families, like many other Bosniak families, were forced out of their Banja Luka home during the early stages of the war. At the very beginning of the war, the town was ethnically cleansed of its non-Serb population by Serb (para)militaries and incorporated into the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (RS) as its capital. Lidija and Ramo spent several uncertain years in exile in Germany. During this time, they were apart from several close family members, unable to help them or care for them. These experiences profoundly shaped their desire to return to BiH after the war. Their exilic lives also moulded the way in which Lidija and Ramo approach their work at Vitalis: they understand the problem facing numerous Bosnians-Herzegovinians who live in war-produced diaspora and who are looking for a solution to their transnational challenge – taking care of aging parents and other family members at a distance. As a result of the war-produced fragmentations of family, the majority of residents at Vitalis have some family member(s), usually their child(ren), living and working abroad (or receiving pensions from working abroad during socialism), helping to pay their nursing home expenses. Vitalis and other recently opened nursing homes are thus sites of an intersecting capitalist search for profits, changing systems of responsibility, love and labour; and economic privilege: they are very expensive in relation to the Bosnian standard of living. The monthly fee is between 750 and 1050 KM [approximately €380–€535] – a sum too high for the majority of the country’s older inhabitants, who receive an average monthly pension of 350–400 KM [€178–€204].

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82 Hromadžić Family members who work all over the world can only sporadically visit their aging parents and relatives, but they are, in most instances, committed to paying for their expensive (in local terms) care.6 These rearranging intergenerational relationships within family, neighbourhood and society (see Henig, this volume) and an inclusion of private institutions into the ‘mix of care’ are also shaping emotional responses of elderly at Vitalis: many residents embody and express a real tension between feeling grateful to their family members for worrying about their wellbeing and for paying for their significant nursing home expenses on the one hand, and experiencing a strong sense of family’s physical absence on the other. For example, 81-year-old Lucija, a (now deceased) resident of Vitalis, said: ‘I am grateful…. they [Lucija’s three sons living abroad with their families] are alive and healthy (živi i zdravi, thus able to provide for her), but my place is with them, in our house’. These intimate feelings of simultaneous gratitude and betrayal are further complicated by the social context, which understands putting a parent into a nursing home or in any kind of institution of care as shame (sramota). In the spirit of sramota, one of Bihać’s Centre for Social Work employees told me: ‘Let’s say that I decided to put my mom there [Vitalis]… I mean, I would never do that, what would people (narod) say?’ This statement potently reveals that taking care of the elderly in BiH still relies heavily on the pre-war, traditional approaches to family care. Conventionally, Bosnians (especially Bosnian women) took care of their elderly family members; as recently as 20 years ago, sending them to nursing homes was not socially acceptable (Simić 1990; Sokolovsky et al. 1991). At the same time, many Bosnian families, geographically fragmented by war and exile, cannot fulfil these traditional expectations and they often consider the emerging, privately owned nursing care system as a solution. The inclusion of privately owned nursing homes into the system of elder care prompted a momentous change in intergenerational and family relationships, ideologies of care and labour relations. These transformations were further complicated by the upheavals associated with the post-socialist transition to a market economy.

Socialist and Post-Socialist Forces: Coordinates of the Caring State7 Of course, we are not any kind of Samaritans; we are communists, and communists have in the first hand to be humanists. (Josip Broz Tito, Opening speech in Zrenjanin, Ljudska Pravica, 20 November 1958) Starting in the 1950s, socialist Yugoslavia developed a prolific yet decentralised web of republic-based professional bodies responsible for providing social protection (Zaviršek and Leskošek 2005: 39). The infrastructure of Yugoslav social work was rather developed and implemented mostly through a wide

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Affective Labour 83 network of local centres for social work as well as through the ‘traditional long-stay residential institutions for children and adults’ (Stubbs and Maglajlić 2012:  1177). While the parameters of social protection varied across the Yugoslav’s six republics, in all of them the social welfare system included some elements of socialist self-management, Bismarckianism and the engagement of a variety of non-state actors, such as religious institutions (Stubbs and Maglajlić 2012: 1176). As a result of these coordinates of ‘socialist humanism’ (see, among others, Cohen and Marković 1975; Horvat 1982), the Yugoslav state, and the socialist state more broadly, was experienced as paternalistic (Manning 2007), or imagined ‘as a caring parent that provided for its citizen–children’ (Dunn 2008: 247; see also Verdery 1996). This representation of the caring state created expectations about what the state should deliver (Dunn 2008): the supreme duty of the state, as ‘the big father’ (Zaviršek and Leskošek 2005: 40) was to ‘take care of the society as whole’, the process that, according to socialist ideology, would eventually lead to the termination of the need for social help in general, since everyone would be taken care of.8 In order to achieve this, the Yugoslav state, through large-scale technologies of regulation, started to collect information and thus engage in the control of the biological conditions of its population. As a result, ‘the government became responsible for living conditions of the people “from the birth until the grave” (od kolijevke pa do groba)’ (Zaviršek and Leskošek 2005:  46). In harmony with the rest of its citizen care policies, the socialist health care system provided universal medical assistance and was defined as ‘rational, progressive and scientific’ (Read 2007: 204). These ‘universal’ entitlements to social security and health care were central to socialist modernity and the means through which the socialist state demonstrated that it cared for its citizens (Read 2007: 203). The Yugoslav people’s response to these socialism-produced novelties was a combination of ‘enthusiasm and hope, mixed with fear and suspicion’ (Zaviršek and Leskošek 2005: 46). Economic priority, however, was given to the Yugoslav health care services which focused on maintaining and reproducing a healthy and productive work force: those seen as ‘non-productive’ members of the citizen body, including the elderly, were not always guaranteed an equivalent standard of care (Read 2007:  206). Therefore, while the state extended its control and management of populations in all domains of citizen care and protection, when it came to the care of old people, the state had a strong commitment to avoid creating separate (medical) environments that would solely focus on the elderly (Sokolovsky et al. 1991: 3). Rather, the decentralised socialist system focused on the creation of comprehensive primary care services and health centres associated with local ‘self-managing communities of interest… originating in the homes of people’s health (domovi narodnog zdravlja)’ (Sokolovsky et al. 1991: 3). In addition, different republics within Yugoslavia showed a varied distribution of the centres of the elderly: in 1987, Croatia was leading the way with the highest number (120) of special residencies for

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84 Hromadžić the elderly (Dom umirovljenika – ‘home for retired persons’), while Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and the former Yugoslavia, had only two of these centres (Sokolovsky et al. 1991: 2). These discrepancies are reflections of different historical and infrastructural influences, and of more recent demographic trends: for example, Croatia has seen a more developed infrastructure for the care of the elderly while Serbia has harboured the largest number of orphan care facilities.9 In addition, rural Croatia witnessed a heavy out-migration of the young, who could not take care of their elderly parents (Sokolovsky et al. 1991: 2), showing again a strong socio-cultural link between the state, family and elder care. The paternalistic relationships and self-projections of the Yugoslav state and its citizens, and the ‘structures of feeling’ (Williams 1977) they enticed relied heavily on traditional Bosnian approaches to family care however; as aforementioned, conventionally, Bosnians, especially Bosnian women, took care of their elderly family members. Similar to many east European countries where the state projected an image of a caring state, it was ‘the private sphere of kinship, friends and personal networks that became the focus for emotionally inflicted and socially embedded care’ (Read 2007:  206). Until recently, elderly Bosnians were physically and emotionally cared for by their children, and were often expected to live with (at least) one of them, usually the youngest son and his family. These expectations were based on the cultural notions emphasising the communal nature of kinship and symbiotic relationship between generations (Simić 1990: 97; also see Henig, this volume). The legal system incorporated this cultural expectation as well: for example, Article 150 of the former Yugoslav constitution defined the care of the elderly as children’s responsibility (Tomorad and Galoguža 1984: 306), and Article 190/10 stated: ‘Members of the family shall have the duty and right to maintain parents… and to be maintained by them, as an expression of their family solidarity’ (see Sokolovsky et  al. 1991). These legal rights and institutionalised expectations of family care were not always legally enforced,10 yet they still continued to shape the vernacular understandings and responsibilities of care, and these socio-cultural approaches intermingle with the legal register today. For example, in the current family law of the Federation of BiH, it is stated that (grand)children are responsible for taking care of their (grand)parents and vice versa.11 Due to the war-produced geographical fragmentation of family and the devastating reduction of the overall standard of living, family members’ ability to fulfil these vernacular and legal expectations of care could not be delivered, thus causing frustration of all parts of the post-war assemblage of care. The remains of the socialist system of care could not adequately respond to these expectations of care either: at the end of 1990s, BiH had 98, socialism-established, locally based centres for social work, ‘the pillar of statutory social work in the former Yugoslavia’ (Stubbs 2002: 7). While numerous, these centres were underfunded by the post-war government and frequently bypassed by the extensive international humanitarian and technocratic aid

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Affective Labour 85 regime inserted into BiH after the war (Stubbs and Maglajlić 2012). For example, the government of Denmark worked in partnership with other international (non-)governmental agencies and donated money for the opening of four daily centres for the elderly in the RS and five in the federation (Miković 2011:  312 n8). These internationally sponsored, elderly centred projects largely worked around the local centres for social work, thus minimising and rendering what went before (socialist systems of care) explicitly useless and invisible (Stubbs 2002: 7–8). The larger Bosnian post-war political fragmentation and bureaucratic maze (see the Introduction, this volume) is especially visible when it comes to caring for the elderly. For example, reflecting the larger splintering of the state, there is no state-level mechanism in BiH today that is tasked with the coordination of elder care, nor is there a country-wide strategy for the social protection of the elderly. And yet, there is a web of loosely connected laws and provisions that focus on social protection of the elderly population (Miković 2011: 307). For example, both the federation and RS have laws12 specifying older people (over 65 for men and over 60 for women) without family care (starije osobe bez porodičnog staranja) as one of the recipients of their social protection. The ability (and willingness) of the state entities to deliver on these legal expectations of care, however, is fully dependent on material conditions, which are dire (Miković 2011:  309; see also Brković, this volume). These calamitous material circumstances and shifting relations of care took their own, unique form in the context of Bihać.

Zooming into Post-War and Post-Socialist Bihać When I came to Bihać in 2013 to begin this study, the vanishing system of socialist elder care and the growing need for new solutions were omnipresent. This became especially clear to me during my visit to the centre for social work in Bihać in late June 2013. In their dilapidated and understaffed office where, as the social worker Sabina told me, the asbestos-filled ceiling would eventually ‘kill us all’, I  met with Sabina and her colleague Irma, who explained the centre’s engagement with the region’s elderly: You know what kind of situation we have here… The workers are paid by the municipality and the cantonal government pays for our programs. But they [the cantonal government] give us nothing, except for a little bit of assistance maybe 2–3 times a year. They have a reason to do this [not give us assistance] since you know how it is. The country is broke. All we can do, is, you know, help them [the elderly] fill out the one-time aid request, or maybe report their horrific situation. When the situation is truly critical, then we call some non-governmental agencies, such as Jasna,13 to put out the fire. Because we have no means to do it, but luckily, we know whom to call. I am telling you, it was much, much better before the war. [Then] We had more money.

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86 Hromadžić This comment points to several things at once: it hints at the ways in which the state’s partial withdrawal from assisting its population (‘they assist us only 2–3 times a year’) is being filled by other actors, including non-governmental organisations and personal connections (‘luckily, we know whom to call’).14 It also reflects the aforementioned fragmentation of the state (‘the municipality pays for our salaries but the cantonal government pays for our programs’). The Bosnian state is thus semi-absent; while it partially withdrew from the biopolitical control of its population, it is bureaucratically gigantic and complex, consuming, evident and visible. In addition, Sabina’s comment also discloses multiple temporalities of care  – the memories of institutionalised, socialist structures and processes of social protection, which Sabina uses to evaluate the dire present. This economically and politically calamitous present, which stems out of (post) war and (post)socialist ruins is possibly most symbolically visible in the war-interrupted, 1980s socialist plan to build a ‘retirement home’ (Dom Penzionera) on the banks of the Una river in pre-war Bihać:  the building itself remains unfinished, illustrating the combined weakness of late socialist infrastructure for the elderly and the interruption of social life caused by the war. Today, this ghostly building is called ‘built’ (građa) by its unintended beneficiaries – troubled youth who use these ruins to drink alcohol, consume drugs and have sex (Čelebičić 2013). These physical ruins of the socialist project of elder care are a potent site revealing the state’s withdrawal and ‘non-delivery’ of its services in the context where many citizens still remember and frequently discuss how the state used to provide for them. Regardless of the visibly destroyed, declining, neglected and decomposing physical infrastructure of citizen care and its rapid replacement with privatised systems of care (private clinics, private nursing homes, private apartment building management programmes, private universities, and so forth), the expectations of the state to deliver services endured, at least in their partial and decayed forms, even after the socialist state assemblage fell apart during the war. When the post-socialist and post-war state failed to respond to these traditional expectations of care, the individuals and families found themselves disillusioned, disappointed and, at times, angry (see Hromadžić 2015). The post-war and post-socialist state and family incapacity to deliver care open up novel spaces for new regimes, modalities and configurations of care to emerge, including Vitalis. The state – in this case the cantonal government and its representative, the head of the Ministry of Health’s Department for Social Welfare  – was fully aware of its inability to fulfil both the emerging ‘local’ needs and the outside pressures, including the policies recommended and accepted at the Madrid’s International Plan of Action on Aging, which BiH agreed to follow (interview with the head of the Ministry of Health’s Department for Social Welfare, Una-Sana Canton, June 2013).15 Since the cantonal government has limited resources for the care of the elderly and foreign aid is quickly vanishing, the cantonal ministry relies on the emerging, privately owned nursing homes to fill the vacuum created by the state and

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Affective Labour 87 family absences. In return, the state allows the homes to circumvent or postpone the implementation of certain requirements. In the case of Vitalis and some other homes in the region, this ambiguous relationship between the state and caring privatnik is especially visible in the domain of physical infrastructure, such as elevators. The law requires all nursing homes with multiple floors to include an elevator, but Vitalis does not have one. Instead of suspending their work licence, however, the state perpetually extends the home’s right to operate without an elevator for 6  months at the time, which is the legal limit. In addition, I  was told that the cantonal government sometimes allows the nursing homes to open even if not properly registered. These illicit actions of the state were sometimes explained by ordinary people as corrupt (when the government was accused of favouring a certain privatnik, the one with connections, over the others), and at other times as necessary (because registering a nursing home is a bureaucratic nightmare and very expensive). These ambiguities and complex transformations of the state – where the state is both absent (infrastructurally) and present (legally) – generate a shifting and constantly negotiated new terrain of care where the law, market economy, technologies of care, family and the state intricately intermingle.

Modalities of Care and Labour Loving labour, which Lidija described in the opening vignette, merges affect and modest profit-making; Lidija and Ramo describe themselves both in the spirit of homo oeconomicus interested in limited profit making and homo relationalis concerned with fellow-feeling (Muehlebach 2012: 20). The form of labour that Lidija and Ramo – privatnici and caregivers – embody, project and articulate is affective: selfless, sacrificial, necessary and never reciprocal. It is ‘an affective and ethical field’ (Rose 2000: 1401), generated by numerous interrelating practices and discourses, including the themes of love and family; war and exile; semi-absent state; debt and inadequate profit-making. The particular type of compassionate labourer that emerges through affective labour is not typical of Lidija and Ramo alone  – I  heard many similar depictions from the employees at Vitalis, especially the nurses who took care of the elderly. This type of owner/worker who loves labour and whose labour is loving emerges at the intersection of several modalities and coordinates of life and work, to which I now turn. Labouring for Minimal Profit Lidija and Ramo describe themselves as privatnici whose hard labour is not motivated by a brute desire for profit (Muehlebach 2012: 4). Rather, I learned through multiple broken and background conversations that their business is burdened by a significant debt to the banks, friends, family and their [former] employees. One of the Vitalis’ former workers mentioned how she

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88 Hromadžić secured 1,000 KM [roughly €500] to Lidija when she needed it to register her business. Lidija also periodically mentioned the burdens of running a business in contemporary Bosnia where, as she said, birokracija satra (bureaucracy enervates) and employees drive better cars than (some) pošten (honest, uncorrupted) owners burdened by debt. In other words, Lidija and Ramo narrated their subjectivities as modest profit-makers – not greedy like ‘most other privatnici’. This desire (discursively and materially) to distance themselves from most other privatnici can be explained by the fact that Lidija and Ramo considered themselves to be gradska raja (city/urban folk) who despise the dominant image of privatnik in post-war BiH  – rural, greedy, corrupt, without cultural capital (nekulturan) and dishonest warlord who gained fortune overnight by entering illegal and morally questionable deals during the war. Lidija and Ramo, on the other hand, wanted to make normal, moderate (normalan) profit/living and they did not want, they stressed, to do that illicitly or immorally. One commonly articulated and joked about icon of their ‘absence of greed’ is Lidija and Ramo’s car, an old Mercedes. Lidija sometimes mentioned her car as material proof that there was no money (at least not yet) in the business of affective care. Many others at Vitalis commented on this car as well: for example, a nurse told me that one time she saw a piece of metal come off of the car while Ramo was driving: ‘It was actually a very big spring. I do not know how it could even fit under the car’. But Ramo kept on driving. As a result, the nurse started calling her bosses the Flintstones: ‘They are just like Fred and Wilma. You see them in the front seat and you see that the car is moving, but when you lower your gaze you see their legs quickly running underneath the car’.16 This constant emphasis on personal debt, physical and embodied struggles, and economic life located between the present debt and the future (modest) economic gain, is indispensable to the affective labour provided by the privatnik who experiences herself and is seen by most others as honest, caring and indebted. Affective Labour Lidija frequently emphasised her selflessness and affective attachments to the residents. She often said: ja ti njih sve otplačem (I weep for a while after they die), thus stressing the sense of personal loss she experiences with each death she witnesses. This ‘citizenship of the heart’ (Muehlebach 2012: 49) is articulated through willingness to sacrifice bodily comfort at the expense of her relations with the residents – Lidija slept on the floor for 2 weeks with Fida who was too scared to sleep in the bed. Lidija did this because of briga, where briga stands both for care and worry (brinuti) for others. She constantly worries about the people in her care and this takes a toll, she stresses, on her body and her personal life:  she is perpetually exhausted, cannot sleep because of constant calls to her home at all hours and has much less time for her teenage daughters who, if they want to see their parents, have to come

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Affective Labour 89 to Vitalis. In addition, the family cannot even take a vacation together since Ramo and Lidija feel they cannot leave Vitalis for an extended period of time. Ramo explains this other-oriented ‘complete availability’ as well: It is not that they [Vitalis’ eight full-time employees] will not know what to do. They will. But what, if one of them [residents] gets sick, if they need us to go to hospital with them? We provide full usluga (service) here. That is why our residents are happy. See, [nods towards the table where several residents are arguing] they engage in fights, they talk. They communicate. Go to some other [nursing] homes and they [residents] just sit there, quietly, by themselves, outside….We do not want that, we have a different atmosphere. We have to keep it up. We cannot leave. Not yet… maybe in a few years. This investment of ‘time, body and soul’ into briga za druge (care for others) comes at a high price – the neglect of one’s own health, wealth and family life. The loving labour, which incorporates forms of emotional support not previously [in socialism] seen as part of caregivers’ duties (Read 2007: 204) is described as different from the labour performed in state institutions; the nurses at Vitalis frequently mentioned that they were not like the nurses at the cantonal hospital. According to the employees at Vitalis, these other, government-employed nurses ‘simply did not see emotional work, that is, communicating and empathising with patients and creating a warm and supportive environment of care, as part of their job’ (Read 2007: 209–210). According to the workers at Vitalis, those other, state-employed nurses did not take good care of the elderly – they did not change them frequently enough, they forgot to shave them, or to move their bodies so that they would not get decubitus – in short, they did not love them. Tamara, a nurse at Vitalis, who worked at the cantonal hospital in the past, confirmed this view when she said: It is different here. When I worked at the hospital, people came and went. I helped them, but I did not get to know them well. There was too much to do, too many people to serve. Here, we are like family. I know about their health and their habits. I want to make them smile, if they are sad. Once, I took Senija [a Vitalis resident] home with me, for a visit, so she would meet my kids. Tamara thus describes her work as the ‘labour of love; it entailed personal commitment, empathy, attentiveness, devotion and patience’ (Read 2007: 214). This need to make the residents smile and make them feel connected to the larger Vitalis family shows an aspect of loving labour emerging from the new ideologies of post-socialist and post-war nursing care: empathy, novel kinship and intimacy. The goal is not only to provide medical attention, but also to make residents into happier, connected to others, loved and loving

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90 Hromadžić human beings. This combination of ‘modern nursing care’ (Read 2007: 204), and the community and ‘family’ of love and welfare it maintains, is emphasised on the home’s printed brochure as well, which reads: ‘Love begins with the care of the ones closest to us – others in our nursing home’. In order to provide the affective labour, however, the owners and workers at Vitalis had to be ready to endure and tolerate situations that ‘ordinary’ citizens could not or did not want to withstand. On numerous occasions, Lidija, Ramo and the nurses at the home said that not everyone could do this job. For example, when I first asked Lidija and Ramo to conduct research at their home, they told me, half-jokingly, that I  could work there, if I  was willing to change the residents’ diapers. While I did not (so far) change any diapers, I did take residents for haircuts, help them get in and out of their beds, and put their clothes on. This ability and readiness of everyone at Vitalis, including the ethnographer, to be intimate with the aging and often diseased bodies, was frequently talked about. For example, a nurse Ekrema told me: See, the other day I changed my cousin’s baby. She is 7 months old and as I was changing her diaper, I actually thought that her faeces smelled nice. I  mean, when you constantly change old people’s diapers, baby poop smells like ice cream!… And I did not think I would become this… I wanted to be a fashion designer. But, I always loved being with the elderly. I always sat by my old grandma when she was alone and sick. I was different; I was attuned to her needs. Not everyone has it [this ability]… Ekrema’s words reflect what I frequently heard from the owners and workers at Vitalis – that not everyone could do the job they do. It was not so much about the physical aptitude to handle (lift, turn, bathe and feed) heavy and immobile bodies, but the ability of the heart to feel affection towards the elderly, to love them with all of their bodily and mental limitations. Not to pity them, but to feel their needs and to respond lovingly to them. This love for the elderly, when coupled with the tolerance of bodily intimacy and the requirements of demanding physical labour, added an affective dimension to the novel ideologies of care, elder work and caregiving subjectivities in a country marked by fraught, uncertain and provisional modalities of care.

Conclusion Anxieties around the ‘aging predicament’ in contemporary BiH and the shifting roles of family and state in providing care for elderly Bosnians have been exacerbated by the upheavals associated with post-war and post-socialist transformations. The Bosnian state has seen a reconfiguration and erosion (but not full dismissal) of the former (pre-war and socialist) ethos of state protection and family care, and a rise of new ideologies and configurations of care in the wake of these changes. These processes are particularly stressful, because families are torn apart by war and exile, and the traditional and

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Affective Labour 91 socialist systems of care that included aging-related infrastructure are rapidly disappearing. Public funds designed during socialism for the care of the elderly are quickly evaporating and new laws pertaining to the privatisation of nursing care are still incomplete and ambiguous. Private institutions, such as Vitalis, are emerging at the intersection of the shifting topographies of care, requiring a new type of care regime and conceptualisations of labour to respond to localised economic requirements and to compensate for the absence of state and family. These shifting post-war and post-socialist changes in statehood and material relationships have created a (small) market for a novel type of service – privately owned nursing homes – where modalities of care ‘about and for others’ become generative of a unique regime of affective, loving labour. The form of subject that emerges from these transformations is a caring privatnik who enters into new relations of debt and care and who discursively and materially minimises his/her own interest in profit-making in the name of loving labour. This type of affective labour(er) materialises from the existing cultural resources, such as legacies of socialism, war and traditional family, thus making this caring labour meaningful and graspable in its own terms. This labourer is self-described as ethical and attuned to the social needs of others, as well as interested in securing her own living, morally and lawfully. Furthermore, this type of labourer is not only ethical but empathetic, ready to sacrifice her own comfort – including a good car and family vacation – in order to provide the other-oriented care and to make a living from this loving labour. Lidija and Ramo’s experiences are both unique in their intimate struggles and yet, in many ways, similar to many others:  their story is the one of war displacement and destruction of lives and objects; the weakening, semi-absence and reformation of the post-war and post-socialist state; family fragmented across continents; new homes, borders and opportunities, and the shifting terrains and expectations of life and death, and care and responsibility. It is exactly these uneven, simultaneously local, regional and transnational configurations of love, care and labour that produce unique, idiosyncratic and seemingly contradictory yet intimately interwoven caring privatnici and experiences of past and future, politics and affect, and hope and betrayal in contemporary BiH.

Notes 1 The research and writing of this chapter have been supported by the Aging Studies Institute start-up grant, Syracuse University (2013–2014) and the Appleby–Mosher Fund from Maxwell School, Syracuse University (2012–2014). 2 All personal names in this article are pseudonyms. 3 The Bihać region, also known as Krajina, with approximately 300,000 mostly Bosniak residents, is the north-western pocket of the country and Bosnia’s forgotten battlefield (O’Shea 2012). The region suffered terribly during the war. The largest town is Bihać, the sixth largest town of BiH with approximately 50,000

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92 Hromadžić inhabitants. The region was besieged for more than 3 years, but never conquered, by the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). At the beginning of the war, the Serb population of Bihać left the city for other Serb-dominated regions of the country or for abroad. The war began in June 1992, with VRS besieging and intensely shelling the town. Bosniak (roughly 66 per cent of the town’s population) and Croat (roughly 8 per cent of the town’s population) armies and civilians defended their town jointly over 3 years of the siege. In addition, in 1993, the northern part of the besieged region, led by the businessmen-turned-politician Fikret Abdić, proclaimed independence from the Bosnian government and its army, and started to collaborate with the Serb forces. This created a very difficult situation for the region, which was liberated in the controversial Bosnian-Croatian Army offensive in August 1995, soon after which the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed. Today Bihać is the administrative centre and the largest city of the Una-Sana Canton, one of ten cantons that make up the Entity Federation of BiH. 4 I am grateful to Larisa Jašarević for this phrase. 5 The notion of ‘care’ has received much attention in anthropology in the last few decades. Care is both a social fact and an analytical concept. As a social fact, it is deeply embedded in the context of everyday life. As a theoretical term, care remains expansive and fuzzy, where it denotes (too) many things:  care stands, among other things, for practice, disciplining discourse, moral experience, political economy, and labour (Taylor 2014). 6 As Sabina – a worker at the Bihać’s centre for social work – explained to me, ‘the care that Vitalis provides… no one here can afford that. Let’s say that I decided to put my mom there… but if I did decide to do this… my mom’s pension is 300 KM [€150] and my salary is 1,000 KM [€510]. From what (Od čega) [to pay for this]? Only those Bosnians living abroad can afford this type of care’ (Bihać, June 2013). 7 Several paragraphs in this section, slightly modified, will also be published in Hromadžić (2015) ‘Where Were They Until Now?’ Aging, Care, and Abandonment in a Bosnian Town. Etnološka tribina:  The Journal of Croatian Ethnological Society. 8 Of course, not ‘everyone’ was equally deserving of the government’s protection and help. Zaviršek and Leskošek (2005: 47–49) explain how the government divided its people into ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’, or ‘ours’ and ‘not-ours’, where the latter were mostly former owners of shops, factories and banks, and some Jewish survivors, who were all expropriated by the new socialist government. 9 Paul Stubbs, personal communication, October 2014. 10 Tomorad and Galoguža (1984) argue that regardless of the legal right to be taken care of by their offspring, the elderly very rarely used these means to secure these particular rights, because the emotional basis of the relationship was not present. The authors also argue that children were sometimes materially unable to support their parents (Tomorad and Galoguža 1984: 306, n1). 11 The Act 128/2 of the Federation’s Family Law states that a ‘child has a responsibility to help his/her parents’ (see http://www.fbihvlada.gov.ba/bosanski/zakoni/2005/ zakoni/25bos.pdf [Accessed 20 September 2015]. 12 Zakon o osnovama socijalne zaštite, zaštite civilnih žrtava rata i zaštite porodica sa djecom FBiH/ čl. 12 and Zakon o socijalnoj zaštiti RS/ čl. 10). 13 Sabina explained to me that Jasna is a Bihać based non-profit, non-governmental organisation that sporadically provides care for elderly and disabled people. 14 Sabina and her colleague also explained the role of volunteers in helping the elderly in the wake of state and family absence. However, this discussion is beyond the limit of this chapter.

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Affective Labour 93 15 This document committed (but did not bind) the present governments to integrate the rights and needs of elderly persons into national and international development policies. 16 Joking about the car is further complicated by Ramo’s ‘obsession’ with the Mercedes brand – I was told that Ramo did not want any other car but a Mercedes, even if it was a wreck (krntija); it still, at least according to Ramo, drove better than the newest Honda or Toyota.

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5 Flexibility of Veze / Štele Negotiating Social Protection in Bijeljina Čarna Brković A parent’s biggest desire is for her child to die a day before her. What will happen to our children after we are gone? (Magdalena,1 a parent from The Sun) Magdalena, a mother of a teenage boy with developmental difficulties, said this during a meeting at The Sun, a NGO working with children with developmental difficulties and their parents in Bijeljina, a town in BiH, on the border with Serbia. Just like had happened in many other BiH towns, Bijeljina’s social workers from the Centre for Social Protection (the Centre), a state-run institution for administering social protection, registered The Sun in the early 2000s as a kind of substitution for a day-care centre for children with developmental difficulties. This was a poor substitute, because at the time of my research in 2009 and 2010, the parents could bring their children to The Sun only twice a week for 2 hours to play with each other and to work with special pedagogues. There were between 15 and 20 parents, all mothers, who took their children to The Sun regularly. While the children were working with the special pedagogues, I sat with the parents in a separate room, where we were drinking coffee, smoking and talking. Our chats at the organisation often included racy language and revolved around parents’ daily problems as much as around other people in the town. The women discussed their children’s dietary regimes, medical experiences and encounters with social workers. They also shared detailed information about other people – they discussed others’ failed marriages and past love affairs, birthplaces, war experiences and work colleagues, and they regularly adjudicated what kind of a person someone was and how connected this person was within the town. The Sun was a place where they engaged in relational labour (Baym 2014), especially with social workers, and gained useful information about changes in social protection through personal contacts. The parents shared very few social positions. One had a law degree, one was a trained nurse, other women were educated up to secondary, high-school level. The majority of them perceived themselves as Serbs, but there were also women who perceived themselves as Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks, and one perceived herself as a Croat. There were women who were in their late twenties and some who were approaching their fifties. Some of them had been victims of heavy family abuse, while others had harmonious families. Their children also had very different disabilities, and some had more than one.

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Flexibility of Veze / Štele  95 Despite these differences, all parents shared the difficulties that came with the 2000s policy changes that replaced the former Yugoslav ‘medical’ model of social protection for people with disabilities with a ‘social model of social protection’ (socijalni model socijalne zaštite). While the ‘medical model treats disability as a medical problem, and therefore puts emphasis on treatment, rehabilitation and correction’, the social model ‘emphasizes responsibility of society to provide adequate support and to accept disability-difference’ (Anonymous 2008: 21). Or, in the words of one developmental expert during an educational seminar on this topic organised in Bijeljina by the Banja Luka Centre for Social Protection in 2009, the post-war ‘social model’ included dispersion of responsibility for social protection from the state towards the ‘whole community’ (cijela zajednica). The basic principle of the ‘social model’ was to have different actors in private and civic sectors taking responsibility for different aspects of social protection, while the state legally regulates and coordinates cooperation across sectors. The important thing for social protection now, as the same developmental expert said, was to have good managers running things, connecting people and lobbying for shared goals. Despite developmental experts’ promises of improvement, in practice the ‘social model’ meant that women from The Sun had almost no support outside of their families. With 41 KM (approximately €20), the basic social provision in the municipality of Bijeljina was more than ten times lower than the average salary at the time.2 Most parents were unable to enter paid employment – someone had to take care of their children and many of them had been abandoned by husbands or partners after their child was born. Additionally, interpersonal relations shaped the delivery of social protection. Certain social workers from the Centre stopped their statutory visits to two different women from The Sun because of personal animosity (in the case of one woman) and a fight from years ago (with another woman). Also, Bijeljina’s Centre had no technical means to distribute information about new provisions among all its users in a timely manner. As a result, the parents had to cultivate friendly relations with the social workers who ran The Sun in order to learn what they had a right to apply for. All these things formed an environment in which a desire for your child to die a bit before you could be articulated  – as Magdalena’s words suggest. When Magdalena said this, other parents present at the meeting agreed with her. One of them added: ‘Yes… who will take care of them after we are gone?’ While a mother’s desire for a child to die a bit before her may appear as a reflection of a neoliberal ‘politics of failed sociality’ (Giroux 2011), the simultaneous post-war and post-socialist neoliberal transformations of social protection in BiH did not simply cut off sociality, or the state, from the everyday lives of users. Collier (2011) suggests that ‘critical conventional wisdom’ about neoliberalism approaches it as an intellectual movement to define and transform the state into a ‘post-social’ entity – a dispersed and localised coordinator mediating actions of various profit-oriented actors. Criticising this perspective in his analysis of Russian post-socialist transformations, Collier approaches neoliberalism in the frame of biopolitics:  ‘as a form of reflection that arose precisely

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96 Brković in response to the problems of the social state, and a source of proposals for criticizing and reprogramming the social state’ (Collier 2011: 19). Similarly, Muehlebach (2011) argues that ‘the neoliberal present’ in contemporary Italy did not induce a radical historical break with past welfare arrangements; instead, it is dependent on, and intertwined with, practices, logics and affects usually associated with the Fordist welfare state. Taking a cue from this, in this chapter I explore how the simultaneous post-war and post-socialist transformations in BiH (Gilbert 2006) encouraged particular forms of sociality and agency within state-organised social protection, including forms such as veze (literally:  relations, connections) and štele (literally: relations and connections that had to be fixed). Read and Thelen (2007) emphasise that imagery of state withdrawal is analytically problematic for thinking about east European post-socialist transformations, because various state bodies, actors and institutions continue to shape welfare in complex and contradictory ways. In their reading, the problem is not so much that the state was lost for welfare, but that it has changed roles and responsibilities of ensuring survival and wellbeing in new ways. Similarly, in BiH, the post-socialist transformations, alongside the complex post-war administrative divisions of the state apparatus, did not cause the state to withdraw from the life of its citizens. Instead, the state has become, in a sense, personalised (Alexander 2002). Maglajlić-Holiček and Rašidagić (2007) stress that, due to the Dayton administrative division of BiH and the resulting 13 ministries for health care and social protection, the sort of welfare support people could get depended on where they resided. None of the responsibilities for welfare were afforded to the country-level institutions by the BiH Constitution, which strengthened the role of supra-national and international, as well as entity-based and municipal institutions, for the organisation of social protection (Stubbs 2001). This means that some state social protection services and provisions became available to some BiH citizens, but not others. Furthermore, the introduction of the ‘social model’ of social protection, reflected in the medium term development strategy for BiH and its action plan from the mid-2000s, defined the ‘local community’ as the key unit in their framework for providing social protection. Since the early 2000s, funds for social protection in the entity of Republika Srpska have been transferred to the municipal budgets and the so-called third sector (Maglajlić Holiček and Rašidagić 2007).3 This means that municipal governments  – and consequently the party politics – had a very important role, because the municipalities decided the amount of the basic welfare provision, whether to introduce special provisions and, if so, how high a special provision would be and how many people would get it. Such post-war redefinitions of social protection as a responsibility of the ‘local community’ reinforced the ambiguity of whether this is a legal obligation of the state or a matter of personal goodwill on the part of socially located actors within public and private sectors. The ambiguous ground of

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Flexibility of Veze / Štele  97 social protection pushed people to become good managers running things, connecting people and lobbying for shared goals. Veze and štele were crucial for this, because they enabled people to adapt flexibly to different expectations and to invoke personal knowledge and compassion when negotiating services and provisions they felt they were entitled to. As we will soon see, the disturbing parental question of What will happen with the children after [we are gone]? could as well be read as:  ‘Who will pursue veze for the children after we are gone?’. The post-war neoliberal transformations of BiH encouraged the ‘intrusion’ of the sociality of kinship, friendship and patronage into the state arenas. Neoliberalism has reordered sociality in BiH and created new kinds of ambivalent relations and new kinds of desires (cf. Jašarević 2012b).

Ignorance and Stubbornness During one of our regular meetings, Ivona, the director of The Sun and a social worker, came in and announced that the organisation had received support to buy the material for the parents to make handbags. The handbags would be sold and the money raised this way would be used to fund further activities of the organisation. I  came to the meeting the next week excited about this change of dynamic in the organisation. However, the parents did not seem to share my excitement. When everybody gathered at the offices, we started making coffee, smoking and gossiping, as usual. After a couple of minutes, I got up, went outside and brought the materials from another room. I said that, perhaps, we should start sewing the bags, as it would take a lot of time to make them. Magdalena, who was the informal leader of the group, said: ‘Sure, we would start working on that soon’. I sat down, joined the ongoing conversation, and the sewing was not mentioned again. The bags were never made and unravelling why this had happened  – or rather, why it had not happened  – points to a particular structure of entitlement and expectations that this group of women placed upon the state, as citizens. After a couple of weeks, I was sitting in Ivona’s office, located at the shabby wooden barracks of Bijeljina’s Centre. By that point, it was clear that the bags would not be made and Ivona said: These mothers are disinterested, passive; they do not want to move, to work, to be engaged. Although, it is difficult for them, it is not easy to be a parent, let alone to be a parent of such a child. She could not believe that the mothers did not make any handbags, although she had arranged a donation to buy the materials and created a simple plan, which the mothers should have followed in order to raise a small profit for The Sun. In utter disbelief, she continued for some time talking about how mothers needed to be active and to start moving, if they wanted to help themselves, and even added that the mothers are not

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98 Brković ‘the most capable people, intellectually, and we need to find other parents who can make things happen’. From the perspective of the organisation’s leaders and volunteers, the parents seemed to be far from flexible agents who would be willing and able managerially to take things into their own hands and negotiate better social protection in various public and private arenas. However, towards the end of her outburst on mothers’ inability and passivity, Ivona said something quite different: ‘They are not realistic. They do not understand that everyone in the state is in a difficult situation and they refuse to see that. They behave as if they are the only ones with a problem’. The person who was realistic, in Ivona’s opinion, was a 30-something-year-old man with developmental challenges who occasionally visited The Sun and who had said that they should not expect the municipal government to help them, if they cannot help themselves. Thus, Ivona’s irritation was not caused so much by the passivity of the parents, but by their refusal to be ‘realistic’. From her experience, Ivona knew well that the women were perfectly capable to organise themselves and act, when they thought it mattered and in a way they saw as meaningful. A year earlier, Ivona witnessed a situation in which the same parents managed to convince Bijeljina’s mayor to push the municipal parliament to introduce a new social protection provision. She also knew that the parents were willing and able to impose their own views on the distribution of money within the organisation. Namely, after a humanitarian exhibition organised by The Sun with the help of volunteers a year earlier, the parents decided to split the (meagre) raised profit among themselves, instead of investing it in the organisation. Ivona and other people from the organisation were not too pleased by the parents’ decision. It was episodes like this – deciding about money and managing to convince the mayor to introduce a new provision – that challenged the idea of the parents as incapable. In such moments, it was apparent that passivity of the parents was not the result of their ‘pathological dependency’ on the state, or their inability to recognise the need to be proactive. It was more the result of their belief that the state should ‘do its job’ and provide them with much better social protection (see Jansen 2014b). The women did not make the bags because they expected the state to take responsibility for the welfare of their children. As we will see, if they were not allowed to affect the work of The Sun under their own terms, they had no intention of giving up their short intervals of free time to generate a small profit for The Sun. Instead, when they flexibly negotiated improvement of social protection, the parents pursued veze and štele.

Managing Ambiguity Social protection in Bijeljina was sometimes discussed as a citizens’ right and a legal obligation of the state, and sometimes as a matter of personal compassion and goodwill of particular people. Indeed, a tablet on the wall

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Flexibility of Veze / Štele  99 of the Centre’s conference room represented a Golden Medal, which the municipality of Bijeljina awarded to the Centre in 2001, for: Renowned work and activities of special significance for the municipality in the area of social work and especially for forty successful years and the overall efforts in an organized humanitarian work and assistance to the deprived population (emphasis added). The idea that a public welfare institution is carrying out work that has a humanitarian character indicates some of the ambiguities of the status of social protection in Bijeljina in the 2000s. The Sun is a case in point. Although formally registered as an NGO, the organisation did not rely on project funding. As it was registered by the social workers and funded by the Centre, everybody in the organisation talked about The Sun as ‘something like a state service’, a municipal effort to compensate for the lack of a day-care centre. The Sun had no permanent employees, and projects that required involvement of the parents and external funding  – including making and selling bags  – were organised once a year, or once in 2 years. Water and electricity bills and honoraria for two special pedagogues were covered by regular subventions provided by the Centre (and consequently by the municipality). At the same time, the women from The Sun perceived the organisation partly as Ivona’s humanitarian endeavour. As they often commented, without the goodness of Ivona’s heart, there would have been no organisation. Ivona invested a lot of personal and professional effort into improving the wellbeing of parents and their children, despite her occasional outbursts of irritation and disappointment. As a result of this ambiguity of The Sun, division of roles and responsibilities within the organisation was not clear: people visited the meetings when they could, they often postponed the arrangements made only a day earlier, sometimes they cancelled the meetings, and so forth. The triple character of the organisation – as an NGO, a state service and a charity – is a fine example of the complex ways in which the ‘social model’ permitted ambiguity to shape social protection in everyday life. It should be noted that the ambivalent status of social protection was not the consequence of Bosnian cultural specificities or complex and fragile state sovereignty (the implication being that once the BiH state is fully developed and modernised, the status of social protection and various actors within it would be clear and unambiguous). This particular kind of ambiguity was rather the result of the internationally supervised post-socialist and post-war attempts to build BiH state in a way that dispersed responsibility for welfare from the state to the ‘whole community’. Furthermore, ambiguity was not just the outcome of the processes of social transformation  – it was also a characteristic of social relationships that could be managed, intensified or turned into clarity, and thus used to push social relationships and processes of transformation towards a certain direction (Stubbs 2013; Wedel 2009). However, not everybody could do

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100 Brković this – being able flexibly to manage ambiguity of social protection brought influence, personal benefits and power, in various amounts and on various scales (Brković 2015b). For instance, those who could manage the ambiguity of the triple character of The Sun  – as an NGO, a state service and a charitable organisation – seemed to be able to gain something out of it. The volunteers cultivated contacts at the Centre, thus increasing their chances of getting a job there. This had happened with Ivona and other leaders of The Sun: before obtaining a permanent job as a social worker, Ivona volunteered for several years at the organisation, proving herself ‘both as a professional and as a humanitarian’ as she put it, in the eyes of the director of the Centre. Milica, the volunteer from The Sun, explicitly stated she helped out the organisation in order to be ‘within eyesight’ (pred očima) of the people from the Centre, especially the director, hoping to find employment there in the future. The parents, however, had almost no way of affecting and managing the ambiguity of the organisation. They had to guess to whom to direct their requests about better social protection, and in what way. Ignorance and stubbornness were two of the very few ways for the parents to ascertain some degree of autonomy and to make clear the direction of their desires and needs. Other ways often failed them. For instance, when one of the parents submitted a written plea to become a member of the governing board of The Sun, Ivona and other social workers who run the organisation rejected her application. The social workers-cum-organisation leaders wanted the parents to be more ‘active’, but in a very particular way, namely without meddling in the governance of the organisation. Thus, the parents were sometimes placed in the position of charity recipients – for instance, during the delivery of New Year’s gifts (novogodišnji paketići). At other times, they were expected to be proactive citizens lobbying for the wellbeing of their children in the name of their NGO and of all other parents of children with developmental disabilities – for instance, by making and selling bags. Yet sometimes – especially during the interviews for local TV broadcasting companies – they were expected to behave as citizens grateful for everything the state is doing for its poor. Having a parent at the governing board bore the chance of transforming the triple character of the organisation  – as an almost-state service and as a charity, as well as an NGO – into something else, perhaps something less ambiguous. In this sense, the parental position had to be flexible – sometimes active, at other times passively grateful – ambiguous and adaptable to different needs of various actors in different moments.

Flexible Procedures According to Gershon, the neoliberal notion of agency presupposes ‘a self that is a flexible bundle of skills that reflexively manages oneself as though the self was a business’ (Gershon 2011: 537; see also Martin 2005). It means approaching people as businesses who tend to their own qualities and

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Flexibility of Veze / Štele  101 traits as owned assets and who use market rationality to reflect on social relationships and social strategies. The neoliberal notion of self also involves a distance from which ‘one is always faced with one’s self as a project that must be consciously steered through various possible alliances and obstacles’ (Gershon 2011: 539). The activities of the parents from The Sun did not quite mirror such a conception of self. Although the parents did spend a lot of time reflecting on their social relationships and strategies, and they consciously steered through different obstacles and alliances, the parents did not discuss themselves as anything remotely similar to businesses and they did not see their qualities and traits as owned assets that could be turned into something financially valuable. Also, they did not talk about themselves in ethno-religious or nationalised terms. Rather, they stressed their citizenship status and their gendered roles (Helms 2003). The parents talked about themselves as troubled citizens left alone by both the state and society; sometimes as good mothers who would do anything for their children, or as fighters who had to struggle with indifference and prejudice on a daily basis. However, if the parents did not see their personhoods in business-like terms, their procedures of negotiating better social protection were highly flexible. As we will see, when the parents tried to convince the mayor to speed up the construction of a day-care centre and to increase provisions, they looked for a veza/štela to set up a meeting with him. Their pursuit of veze presented a flexible, adaptable and reflexive procedure, which allowed them to fulfil the requirement of being both a citizen and a socially located person (mother, woman, spouse, friend, acquaintance), when needed. To assert again, this ambiguous requirement of being both a citizen and a socially located person in order to access or improve social protection was not some sort of a Balkan specificity, nor a remnant of Yugoslav socialist culture. Instead, it emerged as the locally specific manifestation of a globalised tendency to step away from citizenship rights as the grounds of welfare and replace them with notions of duty and responsibility, which socially located persons may pose to one another (Watson 2006). As Fink, Lewis and Clarke emphasise: the thread suturing the relation between state-people-welfare… came under sustained and systematic attack through the convergence of a fiscal crisis related to the sharpened contradictions of global Fordism and the coming to power of New Right political parties in many countries of Europe and the USA. The result was a shift in the filaments suturing the people to state and welfare away from rights and towards the idea of duty and responsibility. (Fink et al. 2001: 3) It is no wonder (nor a transitional specificity) that social protection in BiH was ambiguously positioned between the right of a citizen and a matter of personal compassion and goodwill of particular people, if the transformations

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102 Brković of this field in the last two decades have not included an aspiration towards the creation of ‘thick structures’ (Stubbs 2014a) in the form of, for example, a country-wide ‘socially blind’ apparatus for distribution of welfare that would be based on equality of all citizens. Instead, the internationally supervised transformations of Bosnian welfare regularly included multiple projects working on the same or overlapping, or yet highly related, issues ‘with little or no dialogue or attempts of complementarity between them’ (Stubbs 2014a: 10). The result was a ‘highly fragmented, unstable and crowded space of governance’ (Stubbs 2014a: 9). As the reforms of social protection across BiH required only weak involvement of the state and stressed the need to develop managerial skills, veze fit nicely into such requirements. The ‘social model’ of social protection in Bijeljina required people first to ‘help themselves’, before they could be helped by the municipal government. It also forced people to envision previously non-existent paths towards the improvement of social protection – to be good managers of social relations. As a developmental expert pointed out, people had to be managers creating associates and alliances where none had existed before. Pursuing veze provided people with just that – a way to generate alliances and to envision novel paths to the improvement of social protection. They provided a logical way to seek new associates, navigate different actors and invoke ideas of duty and responsibility towards socially located persons (rather than rights of citizens in relation to the state) as the grounds of social protection. Ledeneva (2006, 2009) suggests that blat, a system of favours and informal networks in post-socialist Russia, serves to overcome the flaws of an underdeveloped, transitioning market economy. In Bosnian social protection, however, veze/štele should not be understood as a cultural-specific way to overcome deficiencies of the developing market economy. Instead, for the parents from The Sun, pursuing veze was the way to manage social relations flexibly in the field of social protection. Veze did not emerge from the defects of the welfare transformations, but presented a way to enact the new requirements introduced by such transformations. Such overlaps between personal relationships and professional support offered a model of how things actually got improved. For instance, one day at the organisation, Ivona talked about how a day-care centre for children with developmental challenges was opened in another BiH town. She repeatedly emphasised the proactive role the parents in that town had. One particular father of a child with developmental difficulties in that town could have been a role model for the parents at The Sun, as she said, because this man was ‘educated’, ‘cultured’ and ‘persistent’. He was also lucky, she added, because ‘all pieces fell into place for him’ (sve kockice su mu se složile) – the director of the town’s Centre was a spouse of the municipal mayor in that town. Having thus the support of both the Centre and the municipality, this man had easily found investors for the construction of the day-care centre. To this, the women from The Sun said that they would be persistent until they became lucky. ‘Luck’ was thus not just a matter of chance, but something that

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Flexibility of Veze / Štele  103 could be gained or cultivated over time. Being lucky – having ‘pieces falling into place’ – meant that people found a way to make the ambiguity between personal empathy and legal obligation of social protection work for them. Proactive and successful people – like this father apparently was – were those who could manage ambiguity of social protection through personal relationships and favours. With this in mind, let us take a look at how parents ‘started moving’ in order to meet the mayor.

Meeting the Mayor One day during a usual discussion of the problems of the existing regime of social protection, the parents decided to set up a meeting with the mayor. They wanted to convince the mayor to increase the figures of regular and special provisions and to speed-up the construction of a day-care centre. To set up the meeting with the mayor, the women pursued favours – veze/štele. At first, they discussed at length what to do and whom to call. During our regular weekly meetings, the women shared stories about other people in the town and cultivated personal relationships wherever and whenever they could. This relational labour ‘paid off’, in a way, for they knew several people who could serve as a veza/štela to the mayor. None of these contacts meant a certain success and some had been exhausted a year earlier. Therefore, the issue was to gauge which contact was the most promising one. Magdalena knew the doorman at the main municipal building, but the women discarded this option right away as insufficiently ‘strong’. Zora knew Ratka, a woman politician who was a close associate of the mayor and the director of an orthodox religious charity in the town (in addition to having several other public roles and functions). However, the women’s first choice was Mr Vuković. Maja’s husband knew him in person and, as the vice president of the municipal parliament, Vuković seemed like the most promising path to the mayor. This means we were going to meet with someone who had never worked in a ‘social sector’ of the municipality. A couple of weeks later, I joined the parents at the meeting with Vuković, to which they came prepared. They had proposals as how to harmonise the municipality’s regulations with the relevant legislature. By the end of the meeting, every one of the women in the room had said at least once that they were not asking for charity, but for things they were legally entitled to. This repeated attempt to purify the legal entitlement from the personal and the charitable reasoning lost some of its strength when Vuković addressed the women as heroes, because of all the troubles they had to deal with on a daily basis. He promised to see what he could do to get us the meeting with the mayor. A week later, Maja came to the association with bad news – Vuković has informed her husband that the mayor refused to meet with us. This failed pursuit of a veza confirmed the position of the mayor as an almost unreachable person and yet the only one really able to help.

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104 Brković After the initial disappointment, the women decided to pursue another route into the municipality. This means they pursued another favour. They again talked extensively about whom they knew who could help them – they spent some time discussing people in the town and their mutual relations. At one point, Zora decided to call her acquaintance, Ratka, a powerful woman politician who was a close associate of the mayor. This woman met with Zora a couple of days later and scheduled the meeting with the mayor for us. She claimed that the mayor had never been asked about the meeting, because he would never have said no. After this, the parents went to meet the mayor one morning, and I joined them. The mayor said that users of the social protection programmes (socijala) are always in the worst position and that he had to listen to differing needs of different poor people. By this, he expressed his understanding of the women’s position, while simultaneously asking them to understand his position. Such an evocation of ‘understanding’ presented an attempt to shape responsibilities and expectations verbally in a way that mixed personal with institutional commitments. Similarly to Vuković, the mayor also made it ambiguous whether the women were asking for something they were legally entitled to or for his personal charity. The meeting ended with his promise to see how much they – the people in the municipality – could do about increasing social provisions for the next year, and to speed up the planning and construction of a day-care centre. The meeting itself did not change much – at the time of writing this chapter, the day-care centre still does not exist and the social welfare provisions are still ridiculously low. However, it confirmed the need to ‘get things done’ through veze. The way in which this meeting was set up – uncertainty over whether the mayor initially refused the meeting, or whether Vuković had lied – convinced the women all over again that veze/štele were crucial for their struggle. It suggested that one of their key problems and goals was to find the ‘right’ person within the municipality to be on their side. In order to do anything politically meaningful and genuinely effective, they had to have powerful veze to the people in the municipality. Making handbags and raising small amounts of money by selling them was not going to help them to get a day-care centre or improve their living conditions. The way in which the women from The Sun made their claims to better social protection suggests that, in 2009 and 2010, the grounds of social protection in Bijeljina were ambiguous. As a responsibility of the ‘local community’, social protection was supposed to be ‘everyone’s concern’  – state institutions for social work, municipalities, NGOs, businesses, charities, schools, volunteers, politicians, the media and so forth – which left room for negotiation, improvisation and ad hoc decision-making. This was a different kind of ambiguity compared to the Yugoslav social protection. Before the war, social protection was fraught with discrepancies between rigid state plans and categories on the one hand, and the needs and problems of everyday life on the other (Zaviršek 2008). It was an ambiguous endeavour, but this was ambiguity of

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Flexibility of Veze / Štele  105 a different kind, managed in different ways, and serving different purposes from the ambiguity present in the new millennium. Let us take a brief look at the discrepancies and ambiguities of the Yugoslav social protection.

Social Protection in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Social protection had an uneasy position in most communist countries because of the belief that ‘socialism would be able to eradicate the need for social work interventions and would ensure the wellbeing of every “human being” ’ (Zaviršek 2008: 734). In the Soviet Union, social work was ridiculed as ‘an activity for petite-bourgeois women in the early twentieth century’ (Zaviršek 2008). In the SFRY the status of social work was different – and rather unique for the communist states. Although there was the ‘ “sense of shame felt by some party politicians upon the establishment of social work”, as a founder of the school of social work in Slovenia recalls’, (Zaviršek 2008: 748), the first centres for social protection were established in 1956 and over time opened in all Yugoslav republics. The education of social workers was institutionalised throughout the country in the 1950s. Assuming at first only a portion of responsibilities for social protection from the municipalities, the centres across the country became fully administratively responsible for social protection in the early 1970s. Social work education was developed with the help of experts from the USA and so presented ‘to a large extent, a product of the cold war equilibrium’ (Zaviršek 2008: 738). Ambivalence coloured the former Yugoslav social protection regime – but quite differently from the ambivalence present in 2009 and 2010. The Yugoslav social protection was ambiguous because there were discrepancies between how things were planned and how they actually took place in everyday life. The first discrepancy was that social protection services were both necessary to ensure a certain quality of life, as well as a proof that socialism had not just yet fulfilled its promises of wellbeing for all. This was enacted through a network of specialised institutions, which had replaced charitable forms of care provided by housewives and the church before the Second World War. For instance, the state opened kindergartens, public kitchens, summer children colonies, as well as boarding institutions, such as nursing homes, boarding schools for disabled children, asylums for people with disabilities, elderly homes, youth correction houses, and so forth. Second, this network of state institutions was envisioned as the best possible framework for providing social protection, while many people preferred family and kin groups for the same task. In practice, a large portion of care for others and social protection had been done within the framework of family and kin groups and this was considered as a respected alternative to ‘locking people up’ in institutions. However, the common memory of women with disabled children in the SFRY was that ‘social workers always encouraged or even forced them to “put” the child into long-term close institutions’ (Zaviršek 2008: 743).

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106 Brković The third discrepancy relates to the position of people with special needs, who were included in the Yugoslav ‘body politics’, but under a specific condition of being ‘categorised’. Zaviršek suggests that the social protection separated out particular groups of people from the ‘general population’, fully controlling conditions of their visibility, but also providing them with security and predictability: People in such institutions got the symbolic status of ‘state’s children’, which deferred them from any complaints and made them both guilty and grateful. The state defined their personalities by physical separation from the regular life and specific silence. (Zaviršek 2006: 70) Under such conditions, a desire for your child to die a day before yourself could not be articulated – parents knew full well what would happen to their children, if they died. Yearnings for ‘normal lives’ – the lives of predictability and certainty largely dependent on the state services and institutions – became possible under the post-Dayton conditions (Jansen 2014a, 2015).

Conclusion In this chapter, I looked at how users of social protection negotiated better public services in a BiH town. In the developmental and policy worlds, Bosnians can become agents only in a pre-designated, often nationalistic, way, while other forms of agency and citizenship claims are rendered invisible (Hromadžić 2012; Mujkić 2007; Šavija-Valha 2010). Stubbs (2014a) demonstrates that BiH citizens are simultaneously denied the ‘right to intervene’ – and thus agentive capacity – and are expected to adapt flexibly to the new circumstances. Parental ignorance and stubbornness were part and parcel of their flexible adaptation, because flexibility includes an element of active selection from a cornucopia of possibilities (Martin 1994:  37). It does not require continuous adaptation to all possible options, but a repeated effort to meet those requirements that provide the best opportunities. This was what parents did – when it mattered from their perspective, they engaged in ‘relational labour’, adapted to the needs of the moment, met the politicians, gave statements for the media, and so forth. When the parents did not think that a particular route to improvement mattered, such as the making and selling of bags, they were ignorant and simply let things slip past them. Behaving in a proactive and flexible way in this context meant pursuing veze, rather than engaging in other kinds of activities. Veze probably have been intertwined with public administrations in BiH for quite some time (cf. Horvat 1969). They present a socio-historically embedded manner in which to make claims to public resources in the context in which social protection is ambiguously positioned between citizenship rights, on the one hand, and duties and obligations of socially located persons, on

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Flexibility of Veze / Štele  107 the other. Ong’s work indicates that, in China, using kinship and friendship relations called guanxi for professional purposes should not analytically be regarded as a value of ‘Chinese culture’, because it is ‘basically a structure of limits and inequality for the many and of flexibility and mobility for the few’ (Ong 1999: 117). Something similar could be said about veze. Veze and štele offered a flexible procedure to get to the ‘right people’ and try to persuade them to improve social protection. As Koutková demonstrates in this volume, there is little difference between veze and štele in BiH and the practice of networking. However, although everybody may have pursued a veza for something, they ended up reinforcing inequalities and limiting systematic improvement of public services. Ambiguity and randomness of social protection put its users in a precarious position. Social actors with more power – from social workers all the way to the mayor – strived to maintain the grounds of social protection ambiguous and based on personal relationships. That was not only how ‘things got done’, but also how certain actors improved their livelihoods and social positions. Ambiguity of social protection was not guided by clear business principles, but it was grounded in struggles over positions and power, enabled by the marketisation and privatisation of welfare services across BiH. As a result, dependence on social protection was an erratic, unpredictable and ‘mysterious’ experience, and women from The Sun found themselves having to cultivate good inter-personal relations and to pursue veze. When the parents failed to do so, they sometimes simply could not access a service that they were entitled to as citizens – as was indicated by the social workers who stopped statutory visits for personal reasons. This chapter looked at how, under such circumstances, a group of parents acted when it mattered and did not act when they did not think it would matter. It explored what constituted a meaningful political and civic act for the parents and how they negotiated their position in relation to the change of policy towards the ‘social model’ of social protection. Being passive, yet stubborn in their expectation of state support, the parents spent most of their time at the organisation cultivating relations with social workers and waiting for the state finally to ‘do its job’. However, there were moments when they ‘started moving’ (kada su se pokrenuli) and when they ‘became active’ (kada su se aktivirali). These moments, which both the parents and the social workers recognised as movement and activity, illuminate how politics of survival and wellbeing was organised in everyday life. As we saw, when parents stopped being purposefully ignorant and stubborn and instead started ‘moving’ and ‘acting’, they did so by pursuing veze. Veze provided people with a flexible path to state services and resources. The chapter suggested that acting by seeking veze was not the result of a ‘flawed’ and ‘incomplete’ democratisation and marketisation of BiH, but a context-specific way of performing the new requirements of being flexible. Veze and štele in Bijeljina in 2009 and 2010 presented the socio-historically grounded enactment of the post-war, developmental expectations placed upon BiH citizens.

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108 Brković

Notes 1 All personal names in this chapter are pseudonyms. 2 Around the time of my fieldwork, the basic social provision was increased from €20 to €30 per month, while the average salary was between €350 and €400. 3 There were very few public, state-run institutions that organised, financed and delivered some elements of social protection for children on an entity level, such as the Public Fund for Children’s Protection, and none that worked across the whole country.

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6 ‘The King is Naked’ Internationality, Informality and Ko Fol State-Building Karla Koutková Introduction1 ‘I can give you a thousand examples of štela in the organisation, thousands’. This is what Zlatan, a 31-year-old ‘local’,2 who became my friend and colleague at the mission, told me at the birthday party of his girlfriend Ana, employee of another international agency. By štela, Zlatan was referring to the local colloquial term for the use of social connections, sometimes also referred to as veze, which, as Zlatan knew, formed the object of my research in BiH.3 All of us spoke Bosnian at the bar in Baščaršija, Sarajevo’s old town, frequented by the expatriate staff of foreign agencies. On another occasion, when we met over lunch in a formal setting, Zlatan spoke English and was both dismissive and apologetic about his previous impromptu revelations about the inner life of the mission. We talked about the mission downsizing, which was the principal concern for many staff members during the time of my fieldwork in 2012–2013. Staff members could only speculate whose contracts would not be renewed at the end of the year. On this occasion, Zlatan applauded how transparent, fair and graceful mission representatives approached staff employment policies. In this narrative, he mentioned an instance when one of the soon-to-be dismissed mission drivers approached him with a request for a word with Roger, a senior official of West European origin, because the driver knew that Zlatan was well connected (zna ko je sa kime dobar) and well versed in navigating the world of the ‘internationals’. As a participant observer with the mission, I worked on democratisation projects, community engagement and revival of neighbourhood governance. I was not new to the environment; my country of origin, the Czech Republic, generated likeability and feelings of post-socialist camaraderie among my interlocutors. I spoke Bosnian with my ‘local’ colleagues and a handful of ‘internationals’ who stayed in the country long enough to learn Bosnian. These multiple identities (both ‘international’ and ‘local’, both insider/co-worker and outsider/researcher) enabled me to relate to my interlocutors in multiple positionalities and to access the object of my study – informality, privilege and power in state-building. It may seem as no wonder that on the record, in close physical proximity to the office, Zlatan and other interviewees would adhere to the official statements, as ‘professionals’ they highlighted the role that transparency and textualism played in the inner life

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110 Koutková of the mission. Through this veneer, however, a more complicated dynamic emerged. In this chapter, I  argue that the ‘internationality’ and ‘locality’ of both groups of employees was a matter of social practice. One could be more ‘international’ and, respectively, more ‘local’ by embodying a set of external characteristics, such as resorting (or not) to the exclusive use of English, engaging in a particular sense of humour and attending certain venues. Along with these characteristics, employees embraced ‘internationality’ by framing the use of social ties at the workplace in ethically neutral terms. This ‘interpretive labour’ (Graeber 2012) allowed the ‘internationals’ to maintain ethical dualism: what we do (professionalism, networking, re-hiring) is different from what they do (štela, veze, corruption, nepotism). On the other hand, ‘locals’ saw no difference between the two groups of practices. To be an ‘international’ in BiH in 2012–2013, meant for Bosnians to ‘live like a king’. However, to the ‘locals’, this royal costume was ko fol (as if), collapsing the moral and power distinction between us and them. The idea of ‘professionalism’ and framing one’s use of social ties at a workplace in ethically neutral terms became the key mechanisms through which one gained or asserted their status as an ‘international’, irrespective of their nationality.

‘Running the Raj of Bosnia and Herzegovina’: Internationality, Power and Privilege The mission was included in the Dayton Agreement of 1995 and it embraced the concept of comprehensive security, within the architecture of humanitarian development and security organisations of the immediate post-war period. This meant the simultaneous focus on politico-military issues, economic, environmental and human or humanitarian areas. Between 1995 and 2013, the organisation went through several waves of restructuring, downsizing and the continuous search for its raison d’etre. Ethnographers who observed the inner life of the mission in the early and mid-2000s (Coles 2007; Gilbert 2008), point out the unusual and, to a certain extent, experimental nature of work that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was doing in BiH. Gilbert (2008), for example, recalls the first US ambassador to the OSCE as saying that the organisation was an ‘excellent laboratory’ in which BiH was to be tested. The size of the organisation grew from four people in December 1995 to a staff of nearly 900 a few months later, to stable numbers of 600 staff in the mid-2000s, which started to decrease only after 2010. Among other international agencies in BiH, its distinct feature was its field presence: apart from the Sarajevo headquarters, it operated 14 field offices across the country. Another distinct characteristic that seemed to torment some of my interlocutors was the confusion over what the real goal of the organisation should be. As Magda, an ‘international’ co-worker of central European

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‘The King is Naked’ 111 origin, once shared: ‘The official mantra is now that we bring [local] people together… People who maybe otherwise would not have met’. The Human Dimension was the name for the civil, non-military structure that since 2010 encompassed portfolios as diverse as judicial and legal reform, education, human rights, economic affairs, municipal development and community engagement. In these areas of competence, the everyday work of a mission employee consisted of organising meetings with local counterparts, trainings for governmental and non-governmental officials, trainings of trainers, workshops and retreats. The social category of ‘internationals’ was used by my English-speaking interlocutors within and outside of the mission to refer to a group of foreign employees on seconded or contracted positions. In terms of secondments, the formal requirement had it that the maximum time of service was 7 years. Contracted positions, such as special service assignments and short-term agreements, had no such rule in place, although it was expected that people in these positions would fluctuate more frequently. At first glance, the ‘internationals’ enjoyed a significantly higher position, access and privilege in the mission than their Bosnian co-workers. Compared to the times of Coles’ (Coles 2007) service in the BiH mission, an aid worker’s or diplomat’s CV for an international career changed significantly. Namely, when Coles was contracted at the elections department in the early 2000s, an air of emergency and immediate post-conflict situation still made ‘internationals’ land at the Dobrinja airport with not much more than a windbreaker and heavy-duty boots. Ten years later, BiH shifted from the ‘make you or break you’ posting to a ‘baby destination’. These were the times foreign diplomats would send their children for an internship to the OSCE, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) or the EU departments in BiH, in the hope of earning some months of experience in the safe backwaters, which still rang a bell in the international humanitarian, development and diplomatic world. Internships were increasingly hard to get, at least through formal application channels, due to heightened demand and overall mission downsizing. In contrast to the period during Coles’ research, the idea of expertise based on foreignness embittered many of the ‘local’ staff with years of practice and degrees from renowned universities. They experienced a glass ceiling when it came to advancing their careers in the mission, getting authority over projects, or deciding on budgets. According to the formal organisational structure of head office and field offices, each programmatic or geographical unit was presided over by an ‘international’ assisted by a team of two to seven ‘locals’. In field offices, this created a dynamic in which people in their late twenties, with a minimum working experience and limited knowledge of the local ground, became responsible for a group of local middle-aged co-workers who had lived in the area of responsibility for most of their lives and who had collected equal or higher education degrees abroad. In 2011, Sandra, a West European co-worker in her mid-twenties, became head of a four-member team in one of the field offices, straight after obtaining her Master’s degree in international

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112 Koutková studies and a 6-month internship with another international agency in BiH. The internship, as the rumours in ‘international’, as well as ‘local’ circles had it, was arranged through her private connections. For Sandra, learning Bosnian was not desirable, as it was not encouraged among the foreign staff in general, and the use of English was required even in situations when no ‘international’ was directly involved in a conversation. On occasions when one ‘local’ employee turned to another in Bosnian, Sandra tried to bring them back to English by addressing both of them in her mother tongue. Issues of dramatic differences in salaries and resulting differences in lifestyles and life quality were felt and expressed by ‘local’ co-workers. In 2008, the first shopping mall, called BBI, appeared in the epicentre of Sarajevo, on Maršala Tita Street just opposite Veliki Park (Big Park), replacing the ruined building of Sarajka. Since then, three other shopping malls have grown in the centre of Sarajevo, all in very close proximity to UNITIC, the mission headquarters.4 Goods that were on sale in these shops were out of reach for a person living on an average Bosnian income and inaccessible for most ‘local’ employees, such as drivers, assistants and administrative support staff. Yet, for some of the better-situated ‘locals’, acquiring status symbols and branded goods on display in BBI, Alta or Importanne became a part of the ‘pretending-we-are-doing-well’ strategy. There was a simultaneous growth and expansion in the realm of services, such as gyms, cosmetic salons, restaurants and private clinics catering to the ‘international’ clientele. ‘International’ women employed at the mission made it a habit to go for facial and massage treatments to Hotel Central, where a modern gym and wellness studio offered rates that required a significant percentage of the ‘local’ employees’ salary. These discrepancies were aptly formulated in one of the recorded interviews I made with my co-worker Senad, who used post-colonial terms to refer to contemporary BiH:5 [T]‌here is a… very clear divide between the international and the local staff. There is. I  mean, you cannot help yourself, but you must notice the division, looking at the facts. For example, my immediate supervisor is my junior regarding anything, education, work experience, influence, connections, legitimacy through work in local communities and yet, there is a gap, in funds, I  mean in salary, in social standing, so to speak.… I’m a local, [the internationals] are the imperial, they are running the raj of India with little compassion. You can see that the expats are herded together, and the locals together. There are two communities. There is mingling, but it is very peripheral. But when it comes to the substantial, the nature of the task assigned is that the international expatriate staff is running the show. So of course they are in better advantage when it comes to reciprocity, assigning who stays, who leaves. Sensitive to what the ‘internationals’ could and Bosnians could not afford in BiH, colleagues who would relate to me as naša (ours, one of us) sometimes

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‘The King is Naked’ 113 mentioned instances when an ‘international’ would be surprised that they, too, can afford this. Shortly after a meeting in May 2012, Aida shared with me that she, her husband and their little daughter got as a gift from their diaspora relative tickets to an especially expensive opera performance at the National Theatre. The opening night, she said, was crowded with diplomatic staff from embassies and missions. She mentioned several people from the OSCE who also showed up, including Sandra, who allegedly expressed her astonishment with an arrogant intonation that Aida imitated while telling me about the encounter: ‘Oh, you are also here?’ ‘Internationality’ became associated with a privileged status that was aspired to by the more ambitious and hardworking ‘locals’. Matea, a ‘local’ officer, was promoted to headquarters from a field office in a nearby town. Gradually, she opened up to me about her frustrations with the dynamics and clashes among staff members. On a rainy day in mid-November 2012, as we walked together to a meeting at one of the partner NGOs, we talked about her future and career possibilities with the OSCE. Unlike Senad, she seemed to believe that the ‘glass ceiling’ set by the ‘internationals’ could be broken through by obtaining a postgraduate degree at some ‘serious university in the West’.

Contesting the Distinction Between the ‘Internationals’ and the ‘Locals’ The ‘bifurcation of the two worlds’ can account for the lack of legitimacy in external state-building in Kosovo and East Timor (Lemay-Hébert 2011). Similarly, analysts of international involvement in BiH have written about the way this power dynamic paralysed ownership of the state-building process (Coles 2007; Gilbert 2008; Džihić and Hamilton 2012). Writing from the perspective of the ‘internationals’, Coles (2007) and Gilbert (2008) have noticed that most of the international staff valued disengagement from the ‘local’ life and used the self-portrayed notions of universalism. Studying the social world of the local intermediaries, Barakat and Kapisazović (2003) describe lokalci (‘locals’) as the new Bosnian social class, while Baker (2014) addresses them as an ambiguously privileged ‘projectariat’ coping with constant labour insecurity and precarious life. The ‘international’/‘local’ binary has been emblematic not only of the power relations, but also of the notions of supremacy of the ‘formal’, ‘textual’ and ‘neutral’ over the ‘local’ and ‘parochial’. However, during my time with the mission in 2012 and 2013, the categories of ‘international’ and ‘local’ were not firmly tied to having – or not – a non-Bosnian citizenship. Within the mission, some employees evaded the categories of ‘international’ and ‘local’ by adopting practices of the ‘other’ group. For instance, these were the ‘internationals’ who became naš or naša (ours, one of us) through having soaked up enough Bosnian language and culture to understand and integrate with the ‘locals’. These were also the ‘locals’ who were either from different parts of the former Yugoslavia or who

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114 Koutková adopted the ‘international’ lifestyle to an extent that made them consider themselves ‘international’. Similar to many ‘locals’ working in higher positions within the mission, Zlatan portrayed himself as part of the world of ‘internationals’. During our lunchtime-recorded interview on a cold day in early December 2012, he said: ‘I really feel like an international in my own country’. For him, ‘internationality’ did not represent just a place of origin, but primarily a certain attitude, position and savoir vivre, as well as the transience and temporality of an ‘international’ life: I’m in a fantastic position now, with this two-year contract, this is fantastic… This is a fiction; I mean, nobody has this here. Plus I really love the lifestyle, going for dinners, the sarcastic, cynical humour [of the internationals] and, I mean, I know that one day this will be over… For Zlatan, being an ‘international’ meant being a professional and adopting a healthy dose of what he saw as the necessary level of networking. Speaking about his own entry to the organisation, after he returned from a multi-month engagement with an NGO and a foreign service agency in a neighbouring country, he explains: [b]‌ack in BiH, I applied for several positions and everyone was saying, ‘Oh, this person is a supervisor for this position and this person is a supervisor for that position and maybe I should take that person out for coffee’. I mean, this is how you get a job in OSCE. He was the youngest applicant for a position in one of the field offices, but he was already known to people on the selection committee. Despite being told that the job was ‘pre-destined for someone else’, he eventually got the job. Zlatan saw a clear dividing line between štela and presumably benign, professional ways of extending engagement at the mission: And then I came to her [head of section] and asked, ‘I didn’t know you are looking for somebody’, and she said, ‘Well I  didn’t know you are looking for a job. If I knew you were looking for a job, I would offer you a job’. And (…) so I didn’t realise that it is very important that you walk around and tell these people you are without a job, so it’s not štela, it’s not corruption, it’s networking: sometimes people just need to know you are searching for a job. And it makes perfect sense, if people don’t see you around… So from that perspective networks and connections do play a role in our work, it’s absolutely natural. The ‘international’ status was easily lost in the case of ‘internationals’, who adopted the signs and symbols associated with the ‘locals’. Janine, a young

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‘The King is Naked’ 115 officer from the USA, had spent 5 years prior to joining the mission as a volunteer in Tuzla and a radio host in Sarajevo. Her Bosnian was impeccable and her group of friends was mostly Bosnian. After 6 months of internship and 6 months of consultancy, Janine was fast tracked into a seconded position in one of the field offices. However, for her ‘local’ co-workers, Janine was not a ‘proper international’, since during the meetings she regularly attempted to speak Bosnian. This, as she noticed, confused her co-workers and put her in a position of lower power and privilege:  ‘So when I  speak Bosnian, everyone is correcting my grammar, and since I’m not fluent, it maybe does not come across as decisive enough. Also the fact that I hang out with locals does not help’. She complained several times to me that when she spoke Bosnian, her ‘local’ co-workers would ‘overlook her in the office, disregard her ideas and treat her maybe even worse than as a Bosnian’. The not-quite internationality of Janine and of a handful of other foreigners who have lived in the country long enough to become naši, demonstrates that the ‘local’ and the ‘international’ are categories of practice. As Janine told me once over a coffee in UNITIC, her ‘local’ colleagues regularly tried to find ways to force her into an unambiguous social category: When I  went to a meeting with the mayor, they always ask you if you need an interpreter, even if it’s obvious that you don’t. So I rejected initially, but then my local co-worker came to me and said that I should take someone with me, that it would not look good if I spoke Bosnian with the mayor. So, I always feel a bit fake, playing this international who has not been around and speaks only English. Similarly to Zlatan, in Janine’s case it was not the nationality or place of origin that made people perceive or be acted upon as a ‘local’ or ‘international’, but rather their self-presentation, lifestyle and language in which they chose to operate.

Practices of Employment and Employment of ‘Practices’ inside the Mission In terms of career advancement, my ‘local’ colleagues expected that ‘hanging out with the right people’ would help. Those right people were usually the ‘internationals’. This became evident during many of my conversations with ‘local’ co-workers. In this respect, Matea and Aida often teased me about spending too much time with the ‘locals’: ‘You know, the only thing we can do for you, is we can go for lunch or we can find you a husband… but if you need a job, you have to hang out with the internationals’. On a different occasion, Aida recounted to me how some ‘local’ employees got far by hanging out with the ‘internationals’. This was not evaluated as štela: just like in Zlatan’s narrative, it was just how things got done.

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116 Koutková Enquiring deeper into the differences between how jobs were allocated inside and outside of the mission in BiH, responses of my ‘local’ co-workers were ranging in difference. For example, Amila, who spent several years in the USA after 1995, suggested that networking is about knowing someone with qualifications and just recommending them for the job. In international circles, getting a job through a connection was seen as a matter of networking – to Amila it seemed relatively innocent. On the other hand, štela, as she saw it, ‘is about incompetent people getting those jobs’. The following day, however, when I  discussed the same topic with both Amila and Matea, the line dividing štela and networking did not seem so clear-cut. During lunch in Alta, Matea pointed out that many of the OSCE interns and people who worked in international organisations were born to families of diplomats, so that she saw no difference between the two groups of people and the concepts of networking and štela in this respect. Similarly, speaking from the position of an ‘international in his own country’, Zlatan would frame practices of informality carried out by the ‘internationals’ in ethically neutral, or benign, terms. These practices involved: identifying project partners through private networks, tailoring one’s terms of reference, assigning consultancies through private networks, intervening on behalf of colleagues of the same nationality, or providing internship positions to the offspring of one’s friends. As a ‘local’ interlocutor shared with me on a hiking tour in the Bjelašnica mountains, many recruitment procedures were ko fol, meaning just pro-forma. He thought that another strategy of informal connections slipping into the picture included ‘non-transparent ToRs’ (terms of reference). The terms of reference were formulated in a way that left a lot of room for interpretation and no clear benchmark on what it was that the consultant was actually supposed to deliver: ‘Usually, they write something like, “help with producing this or that report” – either you produce it or not, what is this “help with”?’ At the time of our conversation, his unit launched a project on Roma inclusion, in which, to his allegations, special service assignment consultants were all people who were ‘just on good terms with the project manager (dobri sa šefom)’. Fake recruitment was a practice widely known both within and outside of the organisation among applicants who were interested in mission jobs. As Amila once shared:  ‘I do get calls from people applying for positions asking me, “Is this a real or ko fol vacancy?” And the truth is, in most cases, we already know the person that is going to get the job’. This understanding was shared by the ‘internationals’. As Anne-Sophie, a French consultant in her late twenties, told me about her extended engagement at the office: Well, there is a test and an interview. That was a pretty transparent process. On the other hand, my interview was not that transparent. When I  moved from an intern to a consultant, I  had to apply and be interviewed, for transparency reasons. They claim it is the culture, everything

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‘The King is Naked’ 117 has to be transparent and this and that, but even in recruitment of their own staff, it is kind of shady how these things actually go… I was kind of in doubt and they could have gone straight for me and for Michael, qualification-wise, they had people who were more qualified, but we had the advantage of already being in… so… it is possible that other people applied but we were already in and with retrospect, it is kind of clear that the position was ‘ours’. These practices were part of what my ‘international’ co-workers on several occasions framed as ‘internal politics’ within the mission. The perception among junior staff members was that there were people within national staff that one needed to know. Discussing how employment worked among ‘locals’, Anne-Sophie hypothesised that: there is štela going on, on national basis… but I don’t know who. There are certainly some mahalušas6 within the departments, especially in the admin section. People try to be good with them, because they are in the position to decide on their future employment. There is the national head of security and national head of HR, and these people have access to senior management meetings, so have a direct access to the information and sometimes have the power to push forward their candidate. On another occasion, sipping coffee in my living room across the street from UNITIC towers, Anne-Sophie shared with me her experience of how, according to her, informality has worked on an ‘international’ level: Among the internationals, the politics is more about the country you come from. For example, there was this Danish high official who came to my office every now and then and said things like: ‘What are you still doing here? How much am I paying for you?’ And meanwhile, he would drop by my Danish colleagues who were interns at the time and were both from nearby his hometown, and he would try to encourage them to apply for open seconded positions, making sure that they could count on his support in the process. So I think, among the internationals, it is all very much based on national basis – some senior officials sort of favour employees or colleagues from their countries. Regarding what Anne-Sophie framed as the ‘whole intern culture’ (whereby internships were perceived as the gateway to the organisation and thus to a serious employment in an international mission), the perceived practice was that young graduates were hired based on their parents’ connections, or according to potential career advancements they could bring to certain individuals: You would recruit an intern, even if you don’t really need an intern, because it came from your boss or because his father is in high position

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118 Koutková in your field of expertise. For instance, there was a case when an intern’s application came with a letter from a highly placed official saying: ‘This girl needs to get an internship ASAP’. When these young interns get access to short-term employment with the OSCE, it opens doors to their future careers. Oftentimes, these kids do not care at all and are doing far from a fantastic job. But once the door to these agencies is open, it helps them kick start their international careers. Among the ‘locals’, awareness of these practices resonated with bitterness over the unequal access to privilege, power and merit-based career advance. The following is an excerpt from my recorded interview with Senad, dated approximately one month after he heard the news that his position would be cut, subject to mission downsizing the following year. That day, Senad shared his frustrations about the creative practice of ‘ToR manipulation’ and about the role that networks play in the organisation: I applied for this position, the National Policy Officer and was really convinced that despite the rumours, OSCE is OSCE… That there will be no bending of the rules, or whatever, and I applied for the position. Produced my CV, application letter. And then they told me this position is already pre-destined for some other person. Basically what happened, the position used to be seconded, which meant there was a person that was assigned for this duty, it was an American person, who was on this job straight for seven years. Because of the rules, rules of the OSCE, this person cannot work longer than seven years. But this person is a good friend of all the big guys… and girls… so what they did, they designed a way to keep this person in after seven years for less money. But still, the job security is very important in these times. This American person also has a Bosnian citizenship, so they ‘nationalised’ the position, they made a public call for proposals, CVs. And then somebody told me, I don’t stand a chance, despite having the best CV probably in the mission. I mean, of course what happened at the end, this person was selected. They never gave me any feedback on why this happened. Researchers dealing with the inner logics of international missions in humanitarian or development contexts have noticed the hidden part of the iceberg that gets omitted in evaluation reports and policy analyses of implementation rates (cf. Lemay-Hébert 2011). For example, in his ethnography of expert knowledge in international development, Mosse (2011: 56) writes about the paradox between appearances and realities in the ‘professional’ life of his interlocutors: [aid] professionals do have to engage in the messy, emotion-laden practical work of dealing with relationships and contingency… [T]‌hey have to negotiate identity, gender, age, race or nationality, not to mention

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‘The King is Naked’ 119 personal security, loneliness, family relations and stress  – issues hardly attended to in the literature – while shoring up their motivations within moral-ethical or religious frameworks that remain private. And yet, as experts and professionals, they have to make themselves bearers of context-free ‘travelling rationalities’ and transferable skills. In his discussion of what ‘professionalism’ in the development context entailed, Mosse describes the tension between formal procedures and informal ways, unscripted roles, relationships, events and interests. Being ‘professional’ for his interlocutors meant that they would not speak openly about the fact that their humanitarian or development aid work was a rather profitable enterprise as compared to jobs they could get in a domestic setting. It also meant they would read his ethnographic account of their everyday lives as either an unethical exposure of inner workings of the institution or an evaluative assessment of the results of their work. While the air of professionalism meant that ‘internationals’ would remain silent about using the practices described above, there were a few who shared their insights and bitterness during the time of my service. For instance, Adam, a senior official of central European origin, complained to me in mid-December 2012 in the expat gym of Hotel Central about the ‘nepotism, favouritism that goes on, for example in hiring and re-hiring of people’s acquaintances’. To describe this, he used the expression ‘our dog’s puppy’, a metaphor used in his native language for senior officials who established closer rapport with certain team members either through national affiliation or through spending leisure time together. Later on, he explained: I mean, this is the practice, you just hire the people that you know, that worked with you earlier. It is more convenient and of course the higher positioned you are, the less people question your decisions. We tend to prefer internal hiring, and to a certain extent it is unfair – it is about rehiring people that are already on staff. In a way, it is a question of ethics, how and what we implement, what is our internal message.… It might have an unfair, long-term negative effect. I don’t see a lot what is happening among the locals, as I am not a witness to their hiring practices, but among the internationals, there is a lot of that. It sometimes depends on the chairmanship, also… of course, the participatory states always push forward their own candidates. That is a widely shared, accepted practice. Similarly to Janine’s and Anne-Sophie’s accounts about the role of nationality in allocation of jobs, Adam openly mentioned instances in which favouritism – in his words  – was reproduced on a national basis. While hesitant on the record, Adam opened up one afternoon in the mission cafeteria: For example, today I talked to a colleague who is Dutch. I can suggest to him a person that would be suitable for this job, but the practice goes,

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120 Koutková there are already two Dutchmen and that would be too much. So there is this paternalistic approach – at one hand, you push forward your nationals, but then you also have to care that not too many people are already in. Everyone is protecting their own nationality, regardless of merit. So there is this pathetic mental state – this is an issue, pretending that this organisation is based on merit. But I  don’t think employment here is merit-based. When you have an interview for an international position, usually there are three committee members, one is from the HR, one is the one who hires, one is from another section, the neutral one. It is so obvious that he who hires can push his will. This is unfair. I mean, it is twisted, it is unclear. You can see some nationalities getting upper hand. Practices described above by both ‘international’ and ‘local’ interlocutors in an informal setting, over lunch, coffee, or a hike in the Bosnian mountains naturally contrasted with how staff members labelled their reality in a formal environment. All of these, however, were a part of the common knowledge within the organisation, which also corresponded to the way that ‘locals’ outside of the mission perceived them: as ko fol, not different from the Bosnian world where sociality, connections and relations often decided who would stay and who would go.

Conclusion In his fictional parody of the international–local relations in contemporary BiH, Sahib: Impressions from Depression, Veličković (2011) suggests that part of being an ‘international’ entailed being dismissive and distrustful of the ‘local’ population. More than 10 years after his book was written, and nearly 20 years after the end of the 1992–1995 conflict, concepts of ‘internationality’ and ‘locality’ evolved from fixed identity markers to categories of practice. If during the first post-war decade, the institutions of ‘hyper-Bosnia’ (Coles 2007) were laid on top of ‘BiH proper’ and composed of parallel infrastructure (such as road names, currency, security and health care catered to the ‘internationals’), in mature Dayton Bosnia they were reduced to a handful of symbolic relicts. Similarly, with an increasing number of Bosnians completing advanced university degrees in Western universities, combined with the long-term experience of ‘locals’ working in the international environment, Bosnians’ imaginary exclusion from Europeanness (Coles 2007) was no longer tenable. In this context, young and affluent ‘locals’ embraced ‘internationality’ through self-representation with symbols, such as language and lifestyle. At the same time, it was a matter of tacit understanding among the Bosnian employees, that the language of ‘professionalism’ with which the ‘internationals’ coded their use of private networks for gaining or maintaining employment at the mission was no different from the local practice of štela. Modus operandi in which internationality thrived was enabled by the ko fol logic, in which most formal, institutional relations were interpreted as by

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‘The King is Naked’ 121 default fake and pro-forma. Seen through this prism, informal practices and their perception within the mission were no different from those outside; the ‘international’ speech only labelled them differently.

Notes 1 This chapter is based on PhD research supported by the Central European University and the International Visegrad Fund. I am immensely grateful to my former colleagues/interlocutors at the OSCE mission to BiH. All interlocutors whose narratives have been used herein have agreed to participate in ethnographic research on informality in state-building. Their identities, including their country of origin, have been altered so as to preserve their anonymity. 2 In the following, I  use ‘locals’ and ‘internationals’ under inverted commas as emic categories of social identification within the OSCE, as well as in other international agencies in Bosnia. The term ‘locals’ (lokalci in the Bosnian language) signifies holders of Bosnian passports employed on a 1-year renewable contractual basis. ‘Internationals’ (stranci in the Bosnian language) denotes non-Bosnians seconded to the mission by their national governments or employed on contractual basis as long or short-term consultants. 3 For previous accounts of štela and veze in academic literature, see Sorabji (2008), UNDP (2009) and Brković (2014). 4 In 2011, Altavista, familiarly referred to as ‘Alta’, opened a building just next to UNITIC, catering to the employee population from the twin towers with its cafés and shops. In 2012, Importanne opened its gates to the neighbouring UN headquarters. Another shopping mall across the street from Alta was opened in late 2013. 5 Since he was a former academic, we may assume Senad was referring to Knaus and Martin (2003). 6 Mahaluša (from mahala, the term for residential neighbourhoods surrounding Sarajevo’s commercial centre) refers to a neighbourhood gossiper, a lady who presumably knows ‘everything about everyone’ and likes to share the information further.

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Commentary Paul Stubbs Through direct and sustained contacts with, variously, the owners of a private care home, a group of mothers of children with disabilities and the staff of the OSCE mission in Sarajevo, these three ethnographic accounts demonstrate the contradictions, complexities and contestations of everyday human practices. The accounts go far beyond mere description to explore how these practices are framed within, but never completely determined by, the interpellations of, inter alia, socio-economic reform and externally driven state-building in contemporary BiH. They show, in their different ways, the dangers of assuming that the dominant practices of ‘neo-liberalism’ or of a ‘liberal peace’ automatically produce and reproduce an array of disciplined, duped and governmentalised subjects, performing structurally determined roles and never allowed to deviate from agreed scripts. They force us to question the rigid categorisations beloved by a policy scholarship, which privileges a ‘view from above or from nowhere’ (Marcus 1995), while never neglecting the materiality of power, inequality and hierarchy. Although they would perhaps eschew being judged through the lens of ‘policy relevance’, they offer glimpses of ‘policy otherwise’, prefigurative or alternative practices, which could ‘unsettle dominant policy conceptions… (and) open up meaningful spaces for contestation, resistance and positive alternatives that are not only different, but actually make a difference’ (Clarke et al. 2015: 196). The chapters by Azra Hromadžić and Čarna Brković address ‘assemblages of welfare and care’ as an unstable and dynamic mix in the context of ongoing and profound reconfigurations of the state and the family in contemporary BiH. What is at stake here is far more than a neoliberal injunction for the state to retreat, ‘steering not rowing’ (Peters 2011), translated ad absurdum within BiH’s decentralised, under-funded and neglected ‘social sector’. Vitalis nursing home for the vulnerable elderly of Bihać, and The Sun facility for children with developmental difficulties in Bijelina are complex and contested sites of relational, affective and material labour, literally existing in the shadow of unfinished and, perhaps, never to be finished, etatised projects, Bihać’s Dom Penzionera and Bijelina’s day-care centre. Hence, in Azra Hromadžić’s chapter, we confront the paradox of a private nursing home, a symbol par excellence of the recommodification, privatisation and marketisation of welfare, actually being a humanising, emotional and loving space, albeit only for residents whose children, mostly in the diaspora, can afford the fees. What are we to make of its owners who appear to embody the values that cannot be found in public facilities, in a state that ‘could not care less’ about vulnerable older people, engaged in a ‘labour of

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Commentary 123 love’, sacrificing time and money to provide intimate and seemingly limitless care to their residents? At the same time, local officials’ ‘turning a blind eye’ to Vitalis’s failure to meet certain standard requirements creates precisely the space for less scrupulous, more short-term profit-oriented, owners to operate in a growing grey zone of unregulated, unregistered, overcrowded and, frequently, sub-standard private care facilities. The dynamics of care are profoundly gendered, classed and transnational so that the assemblage which allows for Vitalis to provide a good service for the parents of the diaspora is the same assemblage that allows for the transnational movement of care capital whose very principles of ‘risk, expansion and profit’ conflict with an ethics of care based on ‘individual needs, continuity and quality service’ (Williams 2014: 97). Čarna Brković shows how active welfare subjects (a term preferable to the patronising notion of ‘clients’ or ‘beneficiaries’ or the neoliberalising notion of ‘users’) combine a steadfast and stubborn refusal to conform to some of the demands of social workers with a strong capacity for the flexible management of ambiguity, investing considerable time, energy and skill just to work out whom to approach in order to set up a meeting with the local mayor. Significantly, in the meeting, it is the mothers who invoke a seemingly lost logic of welfare as a right in the face of a reiteration of a logic of welfare as charity, compassion, humanitarianism and, above all, discretion. The study demonstrates how survival requires flexible and active citizenship, a constant movement to find and use the right people, which, if combined with enough luck, when ‘all the pieces fall into place’, allows the mothers to get by, and to provide for their children’s needs, at least for a while. Catch-all discourses of ‘user involvement and participation’ and ‘self-help and empowerment’ cannot capture the contradictions and power dynamics involved. There are glimpses of a possible transformation from ‘stubborn’ to ‘activist’ citizenship, a world turned upside down, in which it would be the mothers who govern the association, from which they are deliberately excluded in the case study, in a radically reconfigured partnership with the state, in the embodied form of social workers and local public officials and politicians, for once actively upholding rights and helping to ameliorate ‘inequality, hardship and insecurity’ (Newman and Clarke 2014: 5). Karla Koutková’s organisational ethnography of the OSCE office in Sarajevo shows how ‘the binary between “local” and “foreign” is both central… and impossible to maintain, in any meaningful sense, within the “black box” of everyday encounters’ (Stubbs 2015: 93). State and peace-building initiatives in BiH have long been understood as constitutive of an ‘intermestic sphere’ (Pugh 2000). The chapter explores the reconfiguration of the performance of ‘locality’ and ‘internationality’ in the context of a downsizing of the OSCE’s presence, with local staff who have worked for the organisation for a long time being formally subordinate to young, inexperienced, often less well educated, foreigners. The OSCE ‘mission’ no longer has, if it ever did have, the ‘missionary’ zeal of external interventionism charted by Gagnon (2014),

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124 Stubbs as power, hierarchy, mobility and material security are reworked through a matrix of multiple positionalities and flexible practices. The blurring of the local–international boundary reinforces, rather than erodes, its significance as distinct choices of language, lifestyle, performance and consumption emerge. The attempt to distinguish between the use of informal contacts, veze and štela, as localised practices akin to corruption, embodying in microcosm a supposedly peculiarly Bosnian pathology, and the very same practices within the OSCE as ‘networking’, betrays the limits of the neocolonial disciplinarity of externally driven state-building as a productive and agentive ‘fiction’ (Lendvai 2015) itself constitutive of new materialities and forms of domination. The limits of single sited, time-limited, bounded ethnography, of course, lies precisely in grasping phenomena, which are constituted at multiple scales (Gould 2004: 2) and across multiple sites. The ‘incommensurability’ here is less the familiar binary between ‘agency’ and ‘structure’ or between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ analytical frames, and more the gap ‘between that which an ethnographer can grasp and the totality of forces which are beyond (their) capacity’ (Stubbs 2014b: 17). It is a testament to the value of the ethnographic insights presented here that they appear to narrow that gap, being both suggestive of the need for further ethnographic work and aiding our understanding of the multiple determinations, historical legacies and complex contradictions underpinning some of the profound reconfigurations of the social, political and economic terrain of contemporary BiH.

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Part III

Whose Vote? Engagements with Representative Democracy

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7 Beyond to Vote or Not to Vote How Young People Engage with Politics Vanja Čelebičić Introduction Ethnographic scene 1: Pre-electoral campaign. Mid-September 2010. In the central pedestrian street of Bihać, posters made by young people are displayed. This exhibition is part of the foreign funded campaign ‘Youth & Elections 2010’ (Mladi i Izbori 2010). It was organised by a Sarajevo-based NGO in partnership with NGOs from all over BiH. This campaign tries to mobilise young people to create posters and videos attempting to convince their peers to vote. The best poster or video would receive a cash prize. Most of the posters on display revolve around the idea that one should go out and vote. For instance, one of the posters, created by a young man from Sarajevo, states: ‘Go out and vote:  your vote can remove BiH from the “life-support machine”. VOTE 03.10.2010’. Another poster, made by a young man from Doboj (Republic of Srpska), asks: ‘What’s your excuse (for not voting)?’ It proposes a few rather common ‘excuses’ among young BiH citizens: ‘I cannot be bothered’; ‘I have nothing to do with elections’; and ‘My voice does not change a thing’. Similarly to his peer from Sarajevo, he also concludes: ‘VOTE and make a change!’. In yet another poster, a young woman from Tuzla (Federation of BiH) replicates the well-known image of the three wise monkeys who ignore what is happening around them. She suggests that, in fact, what one does not see in BiH is progress, what one does not hear in BiH is something nice, and that one does not talk in BiH, but endures through suffering. She concludes by saying ‘That’s why I am going to vote!’1 These and other posters on display served as a general commentary on how young people from all over BiH, regardless of their ethnicity, perceived their milieus. Furthermore, they paralleled my fieldwork notes about how young Bišćani (people living in Bihać) talked and behaved in relation to the elections. The very same ‘excuses’ presented in the poster made by the young man from Doboj were also very common among young Bišćani when asked why they did not plan to vote. For instance, when I enquired about whether Ivana, an 18-year-old school-leaver, intended to vote, her facial expression filled with horror:  ‘Oh, no, no, no… (pause) Not for me, thank you. I  don’t want to have anything with it, politics do not interest me’. Or, in conversations I had

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128  Čelebičić with other young people, they often suggested that in BiH one did not have a choice but to ‘shut up and endure through suffering’ (ma nema ti ovdje druge, nego šuti i trpi). This idea of endurance was inspired by a famous song called Šuti i trpi2 by Sarajevo-based band Dubioza Kolektiv. I learnt about the Youth & Elections 2010 campaign while I was living and doing my research in Bihać, a small town located on the BiH side of the border between BiH and Croatia. Between 2009 and 2010, I spent about 15 months in this town. I wanted to learn how young people living there engaged with their futures, how they understood their possibilities, if and how they felt belonging, and how they comprehended BiH and Bihać as places in space and time. While living there, I became close with Emina, a 22-year-old student. She is the one who told me about the Youth & Elections 2010 campaign. For the past 5–6 years, Emina has been volunteering for a local NGO that aimed to encourage greater civic participation among young people. Recently, in addition to their work on the exhibition presented in the city centre, Emina and other NGO volunteers distributed small leaflets and stickers in cafés and other places where young people spent their free time (cf. Coles 2007:  22). All these were supposed to encourage young people to vote as they conveyed messages such as: Saturday evening without a drink is like the general elections without you! Tonight I choose a drink, but tomorrow the future! I drink to forget, but I vote to change! 4 years: 4,380 beers and one election! Tomorrow! There was an element of criticism in these notes:  they all suggested that voting, unlike everyday drinking, took very little time, but nevertheless could have a crucial impact on the future. Despite this, the campaign suggested, young people found time for drinking, but not for voting. In doing so, they chose to disengage from the collective future, instead focusing on their personal daily routines. This ‘youth-targeted’ campaign was not unique to BiH (see Kimberlee 2002: 85; Kovačeva 2000), nor was it unusual. In the months leading up to the general elections in October 2010, popular narratives in the media and among politicians, as well as everyday conversations, suggested how important young citizens’ votes were for the future of BiH. While the pre-electoral political campaigns focused their efforts on promoting their manifestos, they also addressed young people, encouraging them to vote. At the same time, the national and the local media were busy speculating about the possible numbers of young voters, while various other NGO campaigns were also actively trying to persuade young people to vote.3 None of this is surprising. According to Greenberg, it was in ‘emerging democracies’ that policy-makers and scholars invested extensive efforts in an attempt to get citizens to participate (Greenberg 2010: 50). In addition to being condemned in the eyes of many Bišćani, a low turnout of young voters suggested that there were reasons to worry about the

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Beyond to Vote or Not to Vote 129 collective future. For instance, in a conversation I  had with a pensioner, he implied that because young people did not vote, the situation could not change. In his words: ‘We are not the problem, but young people: they are those who do not vote’. But statistical data suggest that the general turnout at the 2010 BiH general elections was 56.6 per cent, while the percentage of young persons voting was 48 per cent.4 Clearly, reality does not support the prevailing public opinion that young people do not vote. Furthermore, as proposed by Kurtović, ‘high rates of association with political parties challenge the view that Bosnian political problems stem from civic nonparticipation in politics’ (Kurtović 2012a: 56). Thus, departing from an assumption that many young people actually do vote, I suggest that many of the efforts to encourage young people to vote failed to address what was at stake here. In this chapter, instead of looking at how many young people voted, or why (according to some) so few did,5 I look at what voting and elections entailed in general. First, I consider how and why young people voted. Second, I consider how elections, as a single-dated event, were promoted as a life-changing moment, as an opportunity for young people to take responsibility and to make futures for themselves and for all BiH citizens. In contrast to the general impression that young people were passive or simply disinterested in participating in elections, or that they were just sitting and waiting, I argue that the ways in which young people got involved politically cannot be understood simply in terms of passivity or disinterest. In such narratives, a young person could be either a passive (and hence irresponsible) or an active (and hence responsible) citizen. Instead, my ethnography revealed how young Bišćani ‘expressed agency… through their own resourcefulness’ (Jeffrey 2011:  245; Jeffrey 2010), and how one could be simultaneously ‘responsible’ towards a friend, a parent or a relative, but ‘irresponsible’ towards ‘the collective’ or ‘the common good’. This is well expressed in the following ethnographic scene. Ethnographic scene 2: At Emina’s grandmother’s place. Saturday, 2 October 2010, one day before the general elections in BiH. I am with Emina at her grandmother’s place. Her grandmother is called Mejra. Every Saturday, Mejra’s four daughters, occasionally with their families, pay her a visit and I have joined them a few times. We normally chat and laugh while eating delicious food prepared by Mejra. We are eating masnica (layers of pastry) and chicken made in the oven, heated on woods. Emina: (talking to her aunts) I  need someone to vote instead of me. Who is going to vote? (then she turns to her grandmother) Majka (grandma’), I will write instructions for you how to vote, it looks a bit complicated, but I will write down everything for you, just follow what it says, ok? Some time ago, Emina promised her best friend that she would vote for ZABiH,6 a party which secured a job for her best friend’s father. The

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130  Čelebičić future of his position depends on how well this party does at the elections tomorrow. However, in the meantime something has changed: a possibility to vote for money. Another of Emina’s friends, Djidji, said that ZABOLJITAK,7 another party, gives 100 KM [approximately €50] to anyone who would vote for them. Emina does not know much about what ZABOLJITAK stands for, but she does not really care. She is planning to move with her boyfriend to Mostar in order to pursue an MA in economics, and she needs the money at the moment. And although 100 KM is not a lot, every bit helps. She does not feel good about breaking a promise to her best friend, though. Also, she wants to help her friend’s father. Hence, she tries to fulfil her promise through securing an additional vote, that of her grandmother. This is not unusual. Many young people are willing to vote, if the outcome of their vote has an immediate effect. But Emina? I  am somewhat surprised. This is because she often tells young people how important it is to vote. For instance, a few weeks ago, Emina asked two friends at a café if they had an idea how to make a short film which would convince as many young people as possible to vote. One of the two friends, Faruk, reacted by saying: ‘I can help you think of an idea, but I  will be the first one not to vote’. To this, Emina responded: ‘It is not alright not to vote, everyone complains all the time, but they do nothing to change things’. Emina did this as part of her voluntary activity for the Youth & Elections 2010 campaign. Hence, when we sat at her grandma’s place, I was surprised at her predicament. In the car, after leaving, I share my surprise with her. Vanja: Why are you doing this? I  mean, why vote for money or as a favour to a friend? Emina:  Well, I know that nothing is going to change anyway, so why not help someone, if I can? Vanja:  Ok, if this is what you think then why do you volunteer? Emina:  You know, to start with, I  did it for Omar,8 I  knew he needed someone to help him and I was the only one available at the time. But then I went with him to this seminar and I really liked it, I got interested in the topic and I felt like I learnt a lot. But my decision to vote for ZABiH derives from my wish to help someone close to me in the short run. Although I think that ZABiH are quite terrible, thanks to them Džana’s dad has a job. And what is he supposed to do, to act as a moral person among all those lacking morality? Besides, you know I need money for Mostar. If I lived elsewhere, in a better place (na nekom boljem mjestu), I would not do it, I would vote properly (kako treba). After my initial surprise, I began to understand that despite her voluntary activity, there was nothing unusual in what Emina did. In fact, all she was encouraged to do through her voluntary position was to vote and to persuade

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Beyond to Vote or Not to Vote 131 her peers to do the same: and she did exactly that! Hence, I suggest, it is crucial to understand how young people decided to cast their vote. To do so, one needs to know a little bit about young people’s understanding of the place in which their lives were unfolding and their future prospects in it.

Beyond to Vote or Not to Vote: The Place in the Eyes of Young Bišćani When I lived in Bihać, I spent most of my time in the company of young people. While socialising with them, I learnt that life in BiH was unpredictable on a daily basis. Many young people felt they could not anticipate what would happen next, even in situations when they thought they should be able to do so. For example, Darmin (a 20-year-old student) could not know whether tomorrow’s university exam would take place, as it depended on whether a professor would ‘decide to show up’ (and at times they simply would not); or Emira (an 18-year-old school-leaver) could not plan to enrol on a desired university course in Sarajevo as her father could lose his job any day; and Ana (a woman in her twenties working in a corner shop) did not know, on 30 April 2010, whether she would have to show up for work on 1 May (the still very much celebrated Workers’ Day); I  was unable to schedule an interview meeting with Osman (a young man in his twenties) one day in advance, as he did not know whether he would be called for work the following day. There were many similar examples of one’s inability to plan because of the inability to know what would happen. Anthropologists have shown how a sense that the future is unpredictable or problematic may have debilitating effects on people, both in a practical and in moral sense, and how it shapes the way they act and the way they feel they can act (see, for example, Crapanzano 1985). At the same time, despite the unpredictability, in the eyes of many young people, everything remained the same in BiH. This was conveyed to me by a friend, Nikola, during one of the Skype conversation we had after I left Bihać. At the beginning of our conversation, I asked him what was new, to which he responded: ‘This is Bosnia, nothing is ever new here’. Another example relates to the elections. Many young Bišćani did not think that how they voted would make a difference. Thus, similarly to their peers in neighbouring Serbia, they thought that their ‘political choices were neither “real” nor worthwhile in the current system’ (Greenberg 2010: 56). The image people hold of a place as never changing inevitably shapes the way they relate to it and imagine their future in it (cf. Vigh 2009). In the specific socio-political configuration of ‘mature Dayton BiH’ (see the Introduction to this volume), this paradoxical sense that nothing changes in BiH while the future is unpredictable generated a feeling among young people that BiH as a place did not offer opportunities for many of them (in terms of education, employment, self realisation and personal development), or a possibility for any meaningful political change. Many young Bišćani felt

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132  Čelebičić they lived in an improper place (as opposed to, a ‘better place’ to use Emina’s words). Importantly, as the above scene suggests, they also felt they lived in a ‘non-decent society’ (as Emina said, ‘what is he supposed to do, to act as a moral person among all those lacking morality?’). The link made between one’s sense of opportunities and people among which one’s life unfolded is not surprising. According to Hage, a society is considered to be a ‘decent’ society, if it is able to distribute ‘societal opportunities for self realisation’ or to distribute hope (Hage 2003: 15–16). Practices and experiences of many young Bišćani suggested that BiH society did not offer societal opportunities for many: it offered hope for certain individuals (private and short-term hopes), but not societal ones. So unsurprisingly, ‘proper’ political participation was conceived as a matter that could only be done elsewhere, in what many young people considered a ‘better place’, a place where hope resided. Furthermore, in the context of BiH, ‘voting properly’ (glasati kako treba), to use Emina’s words, was perceived as unproductive, having no significant effect on the lives of people in BiH, not offering any hope: private or societal. In what follows, I show ethnographically how what one may call ‘improper voting’ could give a sense of some hope, how this hope was invested in the elections by ‘ordinary’ citizens, as well as by local and international elites, and how practices and decision-making concerning this event were both endorsed through interpersonal relations and shaped by the immediacy of the effect.

Dated Hope Analysing developments in economics and in Christianity, Guyer suggested that an attachment to dates – or punctuated time – have come to fill the gap between what she called ‘enforced presentism’ and ‘fantasy futurism’ (Guyer 2007:  410). Namely, according to Guyer, the idea of the long-term future (with which one could have very little reasoned engagement) co-existed with immediate concerns oriented towards the very short-term future (people increasingly find themselves dealing with immediate tasks, such as getting enough money to pay a bill). Caught up between these two temporalities, the near future seemed evacuated. Of course, the near future, Guyer suggested, has not really been evacuated, but it took the form of a punctuated time (Guyer 2007: 416): dates, and not the process, have come to be experienced as ‘qualitatively different rather than quantitatively cumulative’ (Guyer 2007: 416). According to Guyer, it is dates – as events – that often motivated peoples’ practices, actions and imaginations. In BiH, the near future was brought into play in the form of punctuated time through the elections. Local and international elites, as well as ‘ordinary’ citizens, linked hopes with the election’s date in different ways. I call linking hopes to a certain date dated hope. In the opening scene of this chapter, I showed how, through the use of propaganda (be it by NGOs which operated mostly – though not exclusively – with

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Beyond to Vote or Not to Vote 133 support of international funds, or by local politicians), the ‘international community’ and the local political elites tried to instil a sense of hope. They promoted 3 October 2010 as a meaningful date that could potentially alter the social and personal lives of BiH citizens, but only if they played their part in the electoral process. In fact, what political elites tried to do was to distribute a certain ‘societal hope’ (Hage 2003: 15), which was associated with a particular date. As in previous election campaigns, slogans developed especially for the elections ‘expanded on the basic definition of election as choice by linking choice to agency, decision making, change, and the future’ (Coles 2007: 21). Writing on the previous elections, Coles (2007: 21) suggested that through electoral propaganda, the elections themselves were offered as a solution to all sorts of social, political and economic problems that BiH was facing. According to her, the ‘international community’, which worked along the lines of liberalism and neoliberalism, used elections (and democratisation) as a means through which certain ideas (such as progress, agency, choice) were naturalised and normalised (Coles 2007:  11, 22). In an attempt to encourage citizens to go out and vote, great emphasis was placed on a link between progress and agency. The ‘technical event’ itself (elections), was subsequently promoted as being transformative and progressive (Coles 2007: 21), without taking into consideration the many political, social and economic processes that shaped this ‘technical event’. The link between progress and agency implied that progress could be achieved through mere participation in the elections, ignoring the importance of what that participation involved. In other words, the focus was on quantity (how many voted) and not on quality (how those who voted decided to cast their votes). Many ‘ordinary’ citizens also engaged with a dated future, but differently. Many of my friends and acquaintances in Bihać, older and younger alike, who seemed only sceptical about the realisation of changes the political elites promised to bring about, had some personal expectations of this particular day. As Emina’s story illustrated, many people now and again directly participated in the very making of these expectations. By doing so, also they, in fact, invested a degree of hope in this dated future. This hope, though, did not allow a sense that things in BiH would change overall. While also being associated with a particular date, the change they thought possible was of a smaller scale, more personal (such as helping a friend’s father to keep his job). Hence the hope they invested in was private hope.

Immediacy of the Effect While most young people did not believe that their practices could have any significant outcome for the collective present and future(s), they believed, as Emina said, that through their actions, in the short run, they could help themselves, or someone else they were close to. And indeed, the general elections were a great opportunity to do so. Unsurprisingly, most often actions by young individuals were not motivated by long-term

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134  Čelebičić considerations or by the parties’ agendas. Rather, they were driven by an estimation of how immediate the effect of their vote would be and by the ability to know relatively quickly what to expect from their actions. As their everyday lives were saturated with an inability to know what would happen next, combined, paradoxically, with a feeling that overall ‘nothing changes’ in BiH, knowing what would happen next, almost immediately, became crucial. Hence, an estimation of the immediacy of the effect determined young Bišćani’s practices and behaviours, and, for that matter, how they voted. The immediacy of the effect did not necessarily concern the immediate future, but rather one’s relative ability to estimate what would happen immediately following their action. Thus, the estimation of the immediacy of the effect of one’s actions both shaped, and was shaped by, many other practices, relations and engagements with the future. In that sense, young people took on very particular responsibilities, for example, Emina’s decision to help her friend’s father, while refusing others. What motivated actions in the short run was often the expectation of a relatively immediate material gain. The example of 20-year-old Emir will help to elucidate this point. He tried studying at the local university after graduating from high school, but it did not go well for him, so he decided to drop out. He thought that it would be better to find a job and help his parents who seemed to be struggling financially. Yet, he ended up unemployed and bored. All his future plans were located in a distant future. For the time being, Emir was waiting, passing time in cafés. However, when an opportunity arose for an action that could bring an immediate outcome, he took it. Shortly before the elections, I invited him to join me to listen to what ‘Our Party’ (Naša stranka) had to offer to citizens. He agreed to come, but informed me in advance that he could not vote for them. This was because his relative was a member of the SDU (Social-Democatic Union or Socijaldemokratska Unija) and he was expected to vote for them (upon my enquiry, I learnt that Emir knew nothing about what the SDU stood for). Also, his relative promised to secure a pre-election job for Emir, perhaps putting up the party’s posters. Emir concluded that if his relative really fulfilled his promise and secured a short-term job for him, then he would vote for him, and if he did not, he would have to decide what to do. Through my long-term acquaintance with Emir, I  learnt that he, similarly to many of his peers, had a quite dystopian vision of the distant future. This knowledge, together with the story of how he acted around the elections, suggest that young persons’ imaginings of their long-term future possibilities in the specific socio-political configuration of the mature Dayton BiH or, in Crapanzano’s words, their ‘imaginative horizons’ (Crapanzano 2004), shaped their experiences, perceptions and actions in the present (cf. Malkki 2001: 328–329). Clearly, the immediacy of the effect was temporal: an immediate outcome to one’s action shaped how one acted. Other scholars have also discussed

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Beyond to Vote or Not to Vote 135 political participation involving an expectation of some sort of personal, often immediate, gain (Ruud 2001; Jeffrey 2010). But Emir’s story discloses another facet of actions based on the immediacy of the effect: the spatial dimension. An estimation of an immediate outcome to one’s action was often mediated through a short chain of people. For instance, Emir engaged directly and only with his relative, and it was in his relative’s power to assign him, or not to assign him, the pre-elections job. In Emina’s case, she corresponded directly and only with her friend, Almaida, who was tasked by ZABOLJITAK to buy people’s votes. Furthermore, it was very important whom one’s actions would affect. Here too, immediacy was crucial: Emir, for example, was not interested in voting for SDU because this would have a good effect on someone he did not know. Thus, the expectation was also that there would be some positive effect for someone in his immediate surroundings: himself or someone as close to him as possible. As I have shown, it meant that this kind of voting was based not on concern for a collective beyond one’s immediate surroundings, but strictly on pursuing a favourable outcome for oneself or someone close. Clearly, and as the next ethnographic scene will illustrate, interpersonal relationships were very important in how young people acted (and voted) and were often considered to be most effective in making certain things happen.

Interpersonal Relations Ethnographic scene 3: Making change? It is December 2009. It is evening. Another film and photography workshop. I asked everyone to draw a map of the EU as they experience it. While Neno and Amna are focusing on drawing their maps, Azra and Adi discuss BiH’s future, with Fera and Emira offering occasional comments. Azra:  Ok, so what are we trying to say here? Our politicians suck, right! But what about us? Adi:  Look, new generations are coming, new generations who will hopefully be less bigoted. Azra:  Are you bigoted? Adi:  (a bit hesitantly) To be honest… I am. Azra:  (very understanding, nodding. She knew that is what Adi would say) You are… Of course… Now tell me what do you want to do about it? Adi:  Hmmmm… I… I don’t know, I am for myself (sam za sebe). I don’t like politics, I don’t like organisations. Azra: Hmmmm (nodding), I  see, so you would like the situation to remain as it is? Adi:  No, I would not. Azra:  (ironically) Well how do you expect things to change, if you are for yourself ?

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136  Čelebičić Adi:  Well that’s why we have three heads,9 to agree on things. Azra:  (by this stage, she loses her patience and raises her voice) But man, three heads have been ‘agreeing’ on things for the past 15 years, and look where that has got us. Adi:  I know, but probably the time will come when things will change. Azra, why are you so pessimistic? Azra:  I would like to make a change, whatever it takes: talking, smashing, but we all have to be united in order to make that change. Fera: I know what you mean and I  totally agree with you, but people don’t care. Adi:  But look, we did not find ourselves in this situation over night: it has been developing over many years. Now in order to change it, it will also take many many years. To begin with, we need decent politicians. Azra:  But if we keep on sitting, doing nothing, nothing will ever change. Adi:  But hold on a second, let me ask you, when your teachers were on strike, did you go to support them? Azra: No. Adi:  Nor did I. Furthermore, last year I was passing by a place where disabled people were protesting for their rights, and people who sat in the nearby café were laughing at them. So if someone attempts to make a change, he is being teased and laughed at! And you cannot change that overnight. Azra:  Where was that? Adi:  Next to the government building. Azra:  In what café? Adi: Galeb. Azra:  (cynically) Well of course, police officers go there. Fera:  Our people are a bit primitive, if one tries to do something different, they automatically categorise you as insane (lud), and they basically laugh at you. I have issues with my mother on a daily basis because of this. I want to do things differently, but she disapproves of it. She lives in her world and I live in mine, and our worlds don’t meet. Emira:  (agreeing with Fera) Yeah, let’s say I wanted to do something ‘good’, maybe a particular voluntary activity, even my parents think I am crazy. Let me embed the above conversation within the broader context of my acquaintance with Adi, Fera, Azra and others who regularly came to film and photography workshops I  ran for young Bišćani during my research period. Although Azra and Adi’s approaches might appear different, their daily routines were very similar:  in practice, neither of them undertook activities with an objective of making a change on the collective level. There were some parallels between the above scene and Emina’s story. Through her voluntary involvement with Youth & Elections 2010, Emina campaigned for greater involvement by young people, but in practice got caught up in the expectation of an immediate material and practical gain. At the end of the

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Beyond to Vote or Not to Vote 137 day, neither she nor Fera or Azra took action for the sake of the collective, despite their beliefs. Both of these scenes suggest that social relations act both to facilitate certain and to discourage other forms of action. Unsurprisingly then, young people’s engagement with the future was embedded in interpersonal relations: while Emina acted the way she did because she wanted to help someone close to her (her best friend’s father), Fera, Emira and others suggested that the mere attempt to ‘do things differently’ or ‘do something good’ met with disapproval of their close kin, their friends and their acquaintances. This sense that the local community may stifle one’s action was summed up for me already at the early stages of my fieldwork when a friend told me the following joke: There are three barrels: the first stands for BiH, the second for Serbia and the third for Croatia. Above the barrels is the EU. Above the Croatian barrel stands a man with a baseball bat and prevents any movement from Croatia towards the EU.10 Above the Serbian barrel, two men stand with baseball bats and if someone attempts to leave Serbia, they hit them really hard and prevent their movement. Above the BiH barrel, no one stands. People wonder, how is this possible? Someone explains: if someone tries to leave BiH, at least two people would pull him down from below. But let me go back to the elections. Upon close observation, I realised that pensioners and the parents of the young people I knew very often voted in a very similar manner as young Bišćani did; the only difference being that they hardly ever doubted their intention to vote in the first place. For example, most pensioners I  conversed with talked about voting as being their duty, while the majority of school-leavers and students did not. Furthermore, the older Bišćani expected younger ones to ‘contribute’ their votes to help family members and/or friends, or to use the elections as an opportunity to secure a job (even if only a short-term one), or even to prevent their relative’s success (through intentionally not voting for the party they were in). This was expressed on numerous occasions during my fieldwork. For instance, Elma’s (22-year-old student) parents tried to encourage her to join a party which one of their relatives was already a member of. Although they did not like what that party stood for, they nevertheless believed that Elma’s chances of finding a job were better if she were a member of a particular party, and to them it only made sense that that party should be one in which she (or perhaps they) already had ties through kin relations. Furthermore, Emir’s family expected him to vote for SDU only because their relative was in that party. Yet again, Džana, who hated the principles of ZABiH, nevertheless voted for them because they helped to secure her father’s job. Working in a Bengali village, Ruud (2001) looked at what seemed to be a clear paradox between how ‘ordinary’ villagers felt (embarrassment) and acted when it came to politics. Just like in the Bengali village, politics in BiH

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138  Čelebičić were not understood to be about morality. Furthermore, the reallocation of political loyalty was shaped by one’s search for better opportunities in life through social relations (see also Kurtović in this volume). This comes across well in the following ethnographic scene. Ethnographic scene 4: Voting among older Bišćani in mjesna zajednica. It is September. The sun is shining on Bihać. I am in one of the local communes (mjesna zajednica). As on many other days recently, a big proportion of the time is spent on discussing the elections. Today, many people present are not familiar to me. They talk about whom they would vote for, but also about their perception of young people’s involvement in the coming elections. Esmir:  Our youth, they are the problem, they don’t vote. All they are interested in is this, how is it called? (pause) this facebook, and spending time in cafés. Vlado:  To tell you the truth, the youth are the cleverest, they understood the situation here and they simply don’t vote. We are fools for voting despite nothing ever changing. Man y:  I still haven’t decided whom am I going to vote for, I have to see. Man x:  We would all vote for Dodik,11 if he secured pensions for us, or jobs for younger people. Man z:  Do you know how things work here today? Let me tell you: in 1996, I had an accident, I was in a tractor, someone hit me with a car and then ran away. I fainted and when I woke up I found myself in a puddle. After some time, I found the person who hit me, so I sued him, three times, and every time I  lost the trial. They managed to make me look guilty. This is only because the person who hit me had connections with someone from a very influential party. Not long ago, I got hit again. This time, I was crossing the street and this man was driving in reverse. I  decided not to sue him, what’s the point, I know how it will end. Vanja:  Do you think that something like this could have happened in the past, during the Yugoslav time? Man z:  No, I don’t think so, at least not this way. Look, things were not perfect back then either, but there was only one party, Tito’s party, that made things simpler. Vanja:  So do you think that you will end up voting? Man z:  Yes, I will vote, but I am not sure for whom yet. I know that it is not going to be for any of the ruling parties. Vanja:  I noticed that parties serve as job centres for young people. That’s how some parties get votes from young people. Is there anything that pensioners get? Jasna:  Well, parties may give money to the local commune (mjesna zajednica), or to the pensioners’ association. Also, just before the elections

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Beyond to Vote or Not to Vote 139 they organise parties, like big barbeques for everyone. Not all parties have money to do this, but eventually those who do get most votes. One day later, I find Jasna alone and we continued the conversation from the day before. Vanja:  It seems to me that many pensioners change their opinions frequently or that they tell me one story, but act differently to the story they tell. For instance Esmir… Jasna:  (interrupts) Ahhh Esmir, he is for SDA, this is because his nephew is in the SDP and they have all sorts of family issues, so that’s why he does not want to support the SDP. Also, SDA helped his son (pause, raises her hand). Ahhh, family issues… He, like many others, wears a new coat every year (svake godine mijenja kaput). My conversations with Jasna, Esmir and others illuminated how people were both willing to shift their political affiliation and to vote for another party in search for a different, better, life. Older men were willing to vote for Dodik, if he would provide them with better pensions, which perhaps suggested something on the limits of national ideology in everyday lives:  as Jasna said, ‘people just want to live’. As the above scenes illustrate, people in BiH voted in a very similar manner regardless of their age. Where age differences were apparent was in older persons’ unwavering intention to vote. However, as already suggested, it was not only the percentage of voter turnout that mattered for the collective future, but what voting itself entailed, namely, how and why they voted.

Conclusion Many young people in Bihać felt that they lived in a place where hope was increasingly shrinking (cf. Hage 2003), where their potential and possibilities were limited. They acted accordingly. This chapter illustrated that a general sense among them was that only a change on a small level, for individuals, through personalised relations, was feasible (see also Brković in this volume). And while the actual change did not necessarily happen for many (even if they joined parties, or voted for particular individuals, people in Bihać knew that their actions did not always result in the desired goal), a hope that it may happen affected how people acted (for instance, how they voted). The general elections, as a dated event, facilitated what I called dated hope. At times, dated hope reinforced private hopes (for instance, while many young people did not think that the future in BiH was bright, they thought that a change for individuals was possible) and at other times, it enabled the distribution of societal hope (mostly by the local and international elites); dated hope often rationalised engagement with the immediate future (for instance, an expectation of an immediate result to one’s vote) and, occasionally, it made the predictability of an immediate/near future possible (for instance,

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140  Čelebičić short-term employment during the elections); at other times, it facilitated long and short-term unpredictability (for instance, the overwhelming preoccupation that the coming elections would really change everything helped to defer discussion on the long-term future; or an anxiety before the elections that a certain party would get enough votes for one to keep her/his job). In the case of the elections, hope invested in a particular date also meant mediations through short, as opposed to long, chains of people, and care for those in one’s immediate surrounding. As I hope to have shown through my data, the concern with a low turnout of young voters is not always, and necessarily, the most appropriate one. Similarly, the presumed hard dichotomy between an active, responsible voter and a passive, irresponsible non-voter is rather weakened when looking ethnographically at what really happened ‘on the ground’ before and during the election period. My research findings suggest that one cannot argue that young people were simply alienated or disinterested in the future, or that they did not care for any kind of collective. Rather, I used the 2010 general elections as a case in point in order to show how young Bišćani were actively and ‘resourcefully’ (Jeffrey 2011: 245) living their present routines and engaging with future/s. I showed that in the specific socio-political configuration of ‘mature Dayton BiH’, young Bišćani’s practices were motivated by how they understood three interrelated things: the actual place in which their lives unfold; the chances for an overall change in that place (which in their view were minimal); and personal future potentials and opportunities, either their own or of someone in their relative immediate surrounding. Because, in the eyes of many young people, life in Bihać (and BiH) presently did not (or even could not) contain hope, they felt stuck; they felt they were heading nowhere in particular. As I  have shown, most often young persons’ future-oriented rationalities were not strictly individual but rather embedded in social relations. And here, an estimate of immediacy, temporal and spatial, was key. While dealing with too much unpredictability and somewhat undesirable predictability (‘this is Bosnia, nothing is ever new here’), I showed that during the 2010 general elections, young Bišćani partially created and partially responded to Bihać and BiH as places in space and time.

Notes 1 To view these and other posters and the videos, see http://www.biraj.mladi.info (last accessed 15 March 2015). 2 Literally meaning shut up and endure through suffering, the song portrayed the profound inequality between those in power and ‘ordinary’ citizens, suggesting some sense of paralysis entailed in the everyday experiences of ‘ordinary’ citizens. 3 For similar accounts from previous BiH elections, see Coles (2007: 21). 4 See http://www.bhas.ba/tematskibilteni/2010_OP_IZB_bh.pdf and http://www. oia.mladi.info/index.php?type=1&a=ovdje_i_sad&id=86. Also see http://www. oiabih.info/index.php?type=1&a=znate_li_arhiva (last accessed 15 March 2015).

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Beyond to Vote or Not to Vote 141 5 Young people’s lack of interest in politics and/or elections has been of great interest for social scientists. For analysis on political (non)participation, see the works of Henn et al. (2005) or Kimberlee (2002) focusing on young people in Great Britain, Melville (2005) looking at young people in Australia, Kovačeva (2000) on young people in eastern Europe, and Greenberg (2010) on young people in Serbia. 6 Short for Stranka za BiH (party for BiH). 7 Short for Narodna stranka radom za boljitak (People’s Party Work for Betterment). Djidji and many of his peers, like Emina, often referred to this party not by its name, but rather by the location of its origin, which was Herzegovina. So they would often call it simply ‘the party from Herzegovina’ (stranka iz Hercegovine). 8 Omar was the founder of the NGO Emina volunteered for. 9 The presidency of BiH consists of the three-member body, which collectively serves as head of state of BiH. The three members of the presidency come from the three different major ethnic groups in BiH. When Adi said ‘three heads’, he was referring to this body. 10 This was before Croatia entered the EU. 11 Milorad Dodik was the President of Republika Srpska (RS). He was the leader of the SNSD (Alliance of Independent Social Democrats) party, which aimed at maximum independence of RS and aspired to achieve ‘the transformation of this entity into a state-building subject’ (Sejfija 2013:  90). Because of his nationalist inclinations, the relevance of the comment by man x lies in the fact that it would be very surprising if many people in Bihać indeed voted for Dodik.

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8 Future Conditional Precarious Lives, Strange Loyalties and Ambivalent Subjects of Dayton BiH1 Larisa Kurtović On a warm summer morning, as we sat in the commercial centre of Jajce under the shade of a sapphire-blue parasol advertising Bavaria beer, my 30-year-old friend Mirna2 described to me what it meant suddenly and unexpectedly to lose her job. Just before my 2013 return trip to this town in central BiH where I had been conducting ethnographic research for years,3 she wrote that she had been fired from her previous position in one of the subsidiary metallurgical enterprises now owned by a large foreign firm. A longer conversation about this would have to wait for our reunion over a cup of coffee. As we waited for our macchiato in the outdoor seating area of our favourite café, Mirna’s recollection of the initial shock gave way to her burgeoning plan for finding a new job. Its very first step involved becoming a member of HDZ, the chief Croat nationalist party in town.4 This swift declaration caught me by surprise. In light of her personal history and reputation, she was perhaps the last person in Jajce whom I would have expected to make such an announcement. As a child of a Bosniak mother and a Croat father, Mirna passed neither as an uncomplicated Croat nor a convincing nationalist. Her mother’s post-war activism in a rival social democratic party was well known, as was the fact that the ‘politically unfit’ Croat side of her family suffered all kinds of discrimination at the hand of the same nationalist party after the war. Hence, it was difficult to imagine Mirna as a formal member of HDZ, even if such an affiliation might result in a solution to her current employment problems. Still, Mirna has always had a pragmatic side. Acutely aware of her political and economic surroundings, she had made a rare and significant transition through several different jobs, each of which had been better than the last. Her relative success in Jajce’s limited job market resulted out of fearless ambition, rather than political connections, which other townspeople commonly used to land coveted public-sector jobs. But even for Mirna, who had worked for NGOs and private firms, forging such connections now seemed a necessity. She was tired of dubious local businessmen; the latest one fired her because she dared to challenge an idle employee who was also the boss’s relative. ‘Perhaps it is time for me to work in the one place where I haven’t yet’, she offered, ‘the municipal government!’ However, to get a coveted government appointment, Mirna needed the backing of a very strong political party, like the HDZ, which had greater support than the social democrats and more

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Future Conditional 143 leverage in decision-making. Despite fierce competition, Mirna was confident about her chances in the light of positive signals received from the party leadership and her ‘new connections’ (veze). But a few months after I returned to the USA, I received an update from Mirna that she was leaving Jajce to join her sister who had been living in Norway for many years. This was to be a permanent move, only this time there was no carefully laid out plan, no promises of employment and no pragmatic moves to be made. Mirna would enrol in a language-learning programme and work her way up from there. In this delicate moment, I could not bring myself to ask what happened to her previous plan and hope of landing an appointment in the municipal agency. But in some ways, I  did not need to: Mirna was not the first, nor will she be the last, person in Jajce to have tried to make her way through the precarious post-war economy by shifting her political alignment. Nor was she the only one for whom such moves failed to bear fruit.

A Post-War Conundrum I open this chapter with an ethnographic moment that is at once a product of an intimate exchange and an exemplar of the dilemmas facing many residents of post-war BiH, especially those that live in small, de-industrialised and politically divided towns. Mirna’s situation  – her waning employment prospects, a botched plan to navigate local political hierarchies and her ultimate Scandinavian departure  – offers an illuminating window into the precarious lives and odd affiliations engendered by the contradictions of BiH’s 20-year-old peace. The surprising, if unproductive, pragmatism with which Mirna initially approached the potential value of her political association should also lead us to ask a series of related questions. What made Mirna, and as I explain, thousands like her, think that such a shift in her political affiliation might open up a more secure future? How did political loyalty become imagined as a currency, a vehicle for paving one’s way into a more promising tomorrow? Under what conditions did post-war residents of BiH, like Mirna, come to see the once problematic choices as the most viable ones? And if we were to take their predicaments seriously, how would our analytical approach to nationalist politics change? In what follows, I demonstrate how declining economic prospects and rising joblessness have – instead of de-legitimising – actually strengthened the very same political forces responsible both for the devastating war and for the ensuing political paralysis. Dayton-designed administrative organisation, characterised by ethnicisation of territory and complex forms of power sharing, has not only fortified, but has also remade, dominant political parties into major agents of socio-economic redistribution. In economically depressed areas of BiH, this political restructuring has made party membership – either official or informal – both an important vehicle of social mobility and a tactic for making communities more governable under the logic of Dayton Accords.

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144 Kurtović Shining light on these emergent rationalities demonstrates how BiH’s longstanding political elites, despite their well documented ineptitude and corruption, manage to keep themselves in power by manipulating the distribution of jobs, contracts and other socio-economic resources on which their constituents depend. I argue that this homebred form of political clientelism – which usually involves exchange of electoral support and political membership for various benefits – constitutes one of the central pillars of the Dayton regime. It helps keep the system in place all the while making it appear immutable and totalising, and therefore capable of absorbing of any and all dissent. Yet, as this chapter clarifies, the complex turn-taking combined with the growing shortage of resources that can be distributed, also makes governance through patronage extremely difficult to sustain. As competition among and within parties increases, so do the numbers of broken promises, deferrals and crushed hopes. Failure of patrons to deliver in turn leads to new kinds of speculation sowing mistrust and greater political fragmentation, but also feeding the rising popular indignation that animated, for example, the important series of civic protests in February of 2014. Although the analysis that follows is primarily ethnographic, my framing questions echo those posed by the anthropological literature on the role that privatisation of state-owned resources played in remapping of power relations in former socialist countries (for instance Ledeneva 1998, 2006; Humphrey 2002; Mandel and Humphrey 2002; Verdery 1996; Dunn 2004). This work has not only demonstrated how liberalisation of post-socialist markets helped pave the way for the emergence of new politico-economic oligarchies, but also how such processes created new forms of social discipline and entailed transformations in the nature of post-socialist personhood. The intensification of political patronage in present-day BiH casts new light on the mutual interpenetration of political belonging and economic exigency in the aftermath of war, post-socialism and foreign intervention. From BiH’s unique vantage point, it is possible to show how post-socialist privatisation does not always lead to market-driven governance or commonly anticipated forms of state withdrawal. In BiH, as the size of the public sector swells, its various segments find themselves under the control of specific political interests, which can then use their control of budgetary funds as a means of garnishing political support. I argue that these processes cannot be understood as mere ‘corruption’ resulting out of an incomplete transition, or worse, as remnants of a communist past (cf. Abente-Brun and Diamond 2014; Marten 2014). Instead, they should be seen as original responses and novel adaptations of existing social bonds in an ever-evolving political context. As it shifts between analysing micro politics of Jajce and dissecting national politics, this chapter posits problems of unemployment and political manipulation of hiring as the central sites of both political mobilisation and demobilisation in contemporary BiH. The two sections that follow analyse how the post-war economic decline made internal privatisation of state-owned resources into a key tool for securing popular complicity with the dominant

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Future Conditional 145 political agenda. While my focus is on Jajce, I subsequently discuss the role similar kinds of patronage play across the country. At the end, I offer another ethnographic portrait, which complements and places Mirna’s in a different perspective. Resisting the temptation to read Mirna’s ill-fated strategy naive or foolish, I  show instead how it came to make sense amidst the perceived individual and collective futurelessness.

The Two Faces of Jajce: Past Glory and Insecure Future of BiH’s Rust Belt The town of Jajce, my ethnographic setting, is located about 135 kilometres northwest of Sarajevo. Encircled by a confluence of two emerald-green rivers, Vrbas and Pliva, Jajce was built on a porous hill made out of tufa deposits, on the top of which sits a medieval stone fortress. The town’s picturesque character remains unspoilt even as the moving road reveals a large industrial yard marked by several protruding smoke stacks. The yard and its structures, now repainted in bright shades of blue and red, are all that remains of Elektrobosna, a ferrosilicium-producing plant, once the single most important economic force in town. After the war, this conglomerate was divided into several different subsidiaries through a devastating process of privatisation.5 The new firms that emerged out of this process now employ a fraction of the labour force that used to work in the socialist-era factory. The architectural setting of the town brings into relief the secession of political transformations that shaped local history. Although it was established in the fourteenth century as the coronation site of the late-medieval Bosnian Kingdom, Jajce has been known more recently as the town that hosted the Second Congress of AVNOJ (Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia, or Antifašističko Vijeće Narodnog Oslobođenja Jugoslavije) where in 1943 the leaders of the resistance and future architects of socialist Yugoslavia brought into being a new federal republic. As ‘Yugoslavia’s birthplace’, Jajce used to be the third most visited tourist spot in BiH, having become an essential stop on fieldtrips and excursions of Yugoslav pupils. The 1992–1995 war in BiH left Jajce with scars of two consecutive military campaigns and waves of ethnic cleansing. In October 1992, the Serb Army took over control of Jajce from the allied Bosniak-Croat forces after a brief but intense period of fighting. At that time, most of the Croat and Bosniak population fled Jajce, either to nearby towns, neighbouring Croatia, or Western and Northern Europe. This large-scale displacement subsequently prevented a direct military confrontation between local Croats and Muslims when their tenuous union broke down in 1993. At that time, growing political differences and a possible pact between Croatian president Tuđman and Serb leader Milošević to divide up Bosnian territory (the so-called ‘Karađorđevo Agreement’), begot a series of brutal military confrontations in Herzegovina and other parts of Central Bosnia. Months of fighting between former allies did not end until the Clinton administration forced the two sides to restore

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146 Kurtović their alliance through the ‘Washington Agreement’. This pact became the basis for the future cantonal organisation of the Muslim-Croat Federation, one of two territorial entities introduced by Dayton Accords that comprises the BiH state today. Since during this crucial period Jajce was under the control of the Serb Army, the town escaped the fate of many similarly ethnically mixed towns, which today remain sites of extreme political friction. Still, relations between local Croats and Bosniaks did not greet the end of war unscathed. In August 1995, Croat forces took control of Jajce as part of the much larger operation ‘Storm’ (Oluja) that pushed Serb forces towards the town of Banja Luka. This victory enabled the local Croat Defence Council to take political control and subsequently obstruct the return of Bosniaks and other non-Croats, in hope of preserving the newly established Croat majority. It was during this period that local Croats and Bosniaks truly began to clash – over the right of return, property repossession and re-institution to pre-war posts and jobs (see also Toal and Dahlman 2011). Under the pressure of OSCE and the Office of the High Representative, the Croat Defence Council had to allow gradually the return of non-Croat refugees – a process that eventually led to Bosniaks re-emerging as the largest and most dominant ethnic group in the municipality (for details, see Toal and Dahlman 2011:  194–201). However, despite the fact that Bosniak nationalist politicians have held the mayoral post for a decade, local Croat nationalists remain a formidable and important political force. Jajce’s residents frequently emphasise the unique wartime history and the specificity of local Croat–Bosniak relations. That ‘Jajce is not as divided’ has become an odd point of local pride. Occasionally, Bosniaks would complain about difficulties involved in their return to Jajce, while local Croats expressed their fears about becoming a politically vulnerable minority. The days of socialist-era ‘brotherhood and unity’ were in many ways long gone:  like in many other ‘divided towns’, Jajce’s kindergartens and elementary schools are now ethnically segregated. Nonetheless, due to shrinking generations, previously separated pupils reunite under the same roof once again at the high school level, which makes possible certain kinds of spontaneous integration. By the time I arrived in 2006, local cafés and other small businesses were for the most part integrated (even if certain preferences still prevailed). The town, however, has had to confront other serious problems. Despite the fact that its pre-war population has been reduced by nearly half, unofficial estimates place rates of unemployment as high as 50 per cent. This shortage of jobs has forced residents to emigrate in search of temporary work in the EU states, including Slovenia and Croatia (for comparison with Tuzla, see Jašarević 2014). Rising poverty is mitigated by the fact that most families own their homes and apartments either through inheritance or a voucher-based process of post-war privatisation. Still, many such homes sit empty, bearing witness to the massive wartime exodus. Many remaining households still rely on remittances from family members abroad. In the town proper, there

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Future Conditional 147 is a small private sector, mostly consisting of mid-size technical companies employing a few dozens of local craftsmen. There is also a modest service economy, which encompasses hotels, cafés, supermarkets and corner stores, and employs an army of underpaid workers whose salaries are routinely late. For a while, Jajčani (residents of Jajce) hoped that renewal of the local tourism sector would lead to a much-needed influx of investment. During my long-term fieldwork in 2008 and 2009, Jajce’s ill-fated candidacy for the UNESCO World Heritage Site list represented something of a panacea, a way of imagining the town’s economic revitalisation on the wings of heritage and eco-tourist industries. This was an appealing, yet very distant future that could not help those presently looking for work. Meanwhile, the most desirable jobs remain those tied to government budgets, which besides the local government also finance state-owned service providers (schools, hospitals, sanitation and so forth). Jobs in these institutions are among the most coveted, not because of the pay or opportunities for advancement, but because they are perceived to be the most respectable and secure. However, such jobs are nearly always given out as rewards for political loyalty to members of various political parties, which form the town government. After a position becomes available, it is almost always clear which party has a turn in naming the successor to that post. Local residents also understand that specific institutions such as the theatre, post office, library and museums are each under the control of one or at most two nationalist parties. Local political parties control this process in Jajce so tightly that I have never even heard rumours of, let alone seen actual proof of, jobs being given out as a result of a monetary payment.6 In such a situation, young people, like Mirna, face a formidable challenge of finding appropriate employment. When I spoke to the director of the local bureau for employment, she confessed that there was no space for new workers in town. At her admission, youth had to wait for older workers to leave their posts, either through retirement or death. The situation was even worse for those without degrees, who often had to take on insecure and badly paid service jobs, which many in the older generation perceived as demeaning. Things were especially complicated for women. I learnt this through the case of Amila, a recently divorced single mother, whose parents disliked the fact that she had accepted a job as a bartender in one of the popular locales. The lack of desirable jobs placed many young people in Jajce in a dilemma. Some, like my occasional interlocutor Katarina, could rely on a combination of family and political connections eventually to land a job. But even for those well connected rewards came slowly. Katarina, for example, waited for years to land on the voting list of candidates for the municipal parliament, which eventually made her a councilwoman. Others found shelter in local NGOs, a few of which have had success in securing access to external funding. Such grants periodically enable them to hire motivated town youths on short-term contracts. However, as international interest in peace building moves elsewhere, such funding has become more difficult to come by. The

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148 Kurtović once independent associations now have to reorient themselves towards the local government. To echo the words of Nihad, an NGO activist, the same organisations that are supposed to play a role in the system of democratic checks and balances find themselves becoming clients of the state. Since the 2008 global economic crisis, the finite nature of local resources has been increasingly apparent, both through the withdrawal of funding and the decreasing numbers of available jobs. This has shaped local community dynamics in very specific ways. During my fieldwork, I  found residents of Jajce to be uncharacteristically hesitant about openly criticising the local government. People I  interviewed routinely asked me to turn off my voice recorder when they wanted to speak about municipal authorities. This cautiousness especially marked my interactions with government employees and people close to political leadership. Even during informal conversations, this subset of interlocutors never dared name specific individuals when speaking about past instances of violence or corruption. Yet, when it came to their peers, many people were openly critical about their past and current confidants, especially those they perceived had failed to share the spoils of their political connections. Alliances between kindred groups often turned sour because they started to see each other as competitors. In fact, because of these shifting coalitions, during my repeated returns, I often found myself having first to re-discover who was now friends with whom. The fickle nature of intimate and professional relationships suggested that ethnic divisions were only a small aspect of a bigger picture. Jajce was indeed divided, but not in the way outsiders – both international and Sarajevo-based observers – assumed. Many of these cleavages emerged out of rumours and speculations about the way things worked, rather than out of concrete proof. Predictions often turned out to be wrong and plans seldom worked out. Frequently, more than one member of the party was promised the same position; the awards usually went to those that had the right combination of political, familial and personal ties. After years of waiting, final decisions could be devastating to those who did not get promised positions. And since informal agreements often did not materialise, some people started to change their political affiliation repeatedly. Those who could not or did not want to align themselves with the big nationalists tried their luck in smaller, reformist parties. In Jajce, political membership had indeed been democratised, but not in the way post-war democracy promoters hoped. Namely, in contrast to the communist period, when belonging to the Party was expected only of high ranking officers and managers, in today’s Jajce, even aspiring janitors find themselves in search of the most salient political affiliation.7

Post-Socialist Unemployment, Popular De/Mobilisation and the New Political Economy Jajce is not the only place in post-war BiH facing these conundrums. Currently, approximately seven key political parties in the country (all but

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Future Conditional 149 one self-professedly ethnonationalist) control not only the ‘not yet’ privatised capital, but also use their control of state budgets to mitigate steadily rising popular dissent. The use of public funds to buy political support takes the form of the expansion of social categories eligible for state support, bestowing of organisational grants, fixing bids for state contracts and perhaps most importantly, manipulating hiring appointments. To make sense of Mirna’s original plan, one must understand the mechanics of this new redistributive politics, and its significance amidst widespread economic uncertainty. In 2013, formal rates of unemployment in post-war BiH stood at an estimated 27 per cent, at least according to the World Bank, which uses the International Labour Organization methodology to account better for the role of the grey economy. By contrast, the Bosnian Agency for Statistics now claims that the unemployment rate is actually 44 per cent. Neither organisation distinguishes between major urban centres and the de-industrialised provinces where unemployment is even more concentrated. What is more, these statistics simply account for the percentage of job seekers – they do not take into consideration those people who have simply stopped looking for work. It remains difficult to know what percentage of people actually work in the informal sector, or may be employed under precarious, limited-time contracts. Nor do these numbers say much about the variety of arrangements that often exist between employers and their employees.8 Political wrangling, shortage of investment, decaying infrastructure and lack of cohesive strategy for economic development have slowed down the post-war economic recovery. In place of large socialist-era industrial conglomerates that used to employ tens of thousands of people, the government itself is now the single biggest employer, thanks to the proliferation of governmental bodies in charge of protecting ethnonational interests. Post-war reforms were supposed to guarantee that hiring processes would be impartial, fair and follow the rule of law. In theory, all hiring for government jobs should be done by the Civil Service Agency, which puts out calls for applications and must conduct rigorous assessment of qualified candidates. However, according to the journalists at the Centre for Investigative Reporting, nearly all such contests are rigged. Specific candidates with the right political and family ties almost always rise to the top – a claim supported by numerous other media reports of politicians’ children winning entrepreneurial grants and coveted spots in public administration.9 Aside from helping their own progeny, political parties have a stake in appointing their own people in order to direct agendas of specific government agencies.10 Similar kinds of nepotistic hiring and political patronage are at work in firms that remain partly state owned. Political parties treat such companies as war bounty – as a result, each major enterprise now is under the auspices of one, or possibly two political camps. Managers and high-ranking officers of those firms are almost without exception close to one of the dominant political parties. But the problem is much deeper. Preferential hiring has been used to such an extent that transportation firms, electrical distributors, mobile

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150 Kurtović communications providers, hospitals and certain schools have an unsustainable surplus of workers (usually low level). At this point, given the overall precarious economic situation in post-war BiH, downsizing such companies would only produce new problems, because so many families in post-war BiH depend on these jobs. Hence, the situation that I first described in Jajce is not much different in much larger cities, where astounding numbers of people also rely on budgetary funds to make their living. However, in the capital, where the labour market is larger, such association tends only to be necessary for civic servants, high-ranking employees of state owned enterprises. The nature of the post-war labour market has important consequences for how large segments of Bosnian people act as voters and citizens. In the course of my research among grassroots activists, I saw instances where political parties, both nationalist and non-nationalist, attempted to bring into the fold leaders and organisers of protests by offering them government jobs and grants. In 2008, at least three political activists I  spoke to reported losing their public-sector jobs because they were ‘caught’ protesting on TV. Such moments brought into relief just how important the labour market and the politics of hiring have become to securing political complicity and eliminating popular dissent. When large-scale civic demonstrations began again in February 2014, problems of long-term unemployment emerged on the top of protestors’ grievances. Yet, soon after, rumours began circulating that leaders of certain political parties actually sponsored the protests. This speculation revealed how pervasive the expectation of political patronage has become:  many believe that any and all political acts reflect the will and interests of some political party. What is more, in the aftermath of the uprising, some of the former protesters seemed to have literally ‘sold out’ by deciding to vie for power in the October 2014 elections under the aegis of various old and new parties.11 The dominant interpretive frame for such forms of (re)politicisation is that of opportunism and the reaction is almost always that of moral condemnation. In an impassioned critique of this kind of partnering with political parties, one disgruntled protester described such ‘willing’ acts of incorporation as ‘insane’. Relying on a standard critique of false consciousness, he offered that these people were working against their better [long-term] interest. Although I certainly remain sympathetic to this critique and the modality of affect on which it draws, I want to trouble the moral righteousness with which the Bosnian public so frequently demands that individual citizens stay true and uncompromised, even in the face of widespread corruption and economic uncertainty. To do this, I offer an ethnographic portrait of Zora, one of my long-time ethnographic interlocutors in Jajce, a complicated but in certain ways very consistent woman, whose story helps illuminate the struggles encountered by ordinary people who did not ‘sell out’. I purposefully contrast her story of long-term precarity to Mirna’s, in order to show what sometimes happens to people who never secure for themselves strong institutional and political support.

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Future Conditional 151

Life and Death in the Embrace of the Post-War Market When I met her in 2008, Zora was a 40-something, energetic and charismatic woman, with a generous disposition and a number of strong opinions. In Jajce, she was instantly identifiable as one of the few Serb returnees who came back after the massive October 1995 exodus that followed the arrival of Croatian troops. At that time, Zora and her family left everything behind and sought safety up north, in the territories controlled by the Serb Army. For several years, they lived in a small town on the banks of the river Sava, where Zora and her husband took up hard and demeaning jobs. When the nationalist municipal government began allowing the gradual return of other non-Croat residents of Jajce in the early 2000s, Zora, who had already had enough of life as a sub-tenant (kao podstanar), as she put it, decided to come back home. Her children and husband initially opposed the idea; her husband was a soldier in the Serb Army and the family feared retribution. In the end, Zora came back to find her house still standing, but overgrown with thick shrubbery, which she herself cut down with rudimentary tools. The first months were not easy, as she was alone and occasionally a target of Croat intimidation tactics. Zora also found herself unemployed. Although she once worked as a sales associate, the war left her without an easily convertible set of skills that would help her make a living in war devastated Jajce. In order to provide for the family, Zora’s husband found temporary employment in Slovenia, where he worked at construction sites that proliferated during a short-lived economic boom. Zora’s daughter Jelena worked a series of jobs in local slot machine joints, cafés and hotels, while her son made a living as a musician outside of town. Because of the informal and impermanent nature of their employment, nobody in the family had proper access to still-nationalised medical insurance. Instead of attempting to find a low-paying job in one of the local stores, Zora decided to pursue the production of natural and organic food. A long-term enthusiast of natural remedies, she saw the future of her family and community in the return to land. While these plans certainly dovetailed with top-down narratives of economic development, for people like Zora, rewards were small and slow in coming. While patiently ploughing her way into a more sustainable future, Zora worked on resuscitating her social ties. But this process was not without friction, because Zora had quite a few unpopular political opinions. For example, she was an unapologetic proponent of some of the most dubious of Serb nationalist narratives about the war. She openly blamed Croats for ‘starting the war’ and Muslims for grossly ‘exaggerating’ the number of victims in Srebrenica. She would offer these views to whoever would listen, apparently unconcerned about the impact her words would have on interpersonal relationships. I was not the only one puzzled by these behaviours. Close Bosniak friends of Zora and her family spoke of their frustrations with her interpretations of historical events, which one of them called ‘blatant lies’.

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152 Kurtović Whether Zora’s views were true or false mattered far less in her situation than whether or not they were politically damaging to her standing in the community. In an atmosphere marked by a flood of whispers about people’s ‘real’ motives and allegiances, where it sometimes took me years to get people to speak to me candidly about the local political situation, Zora’s earnest, if disturbing speech, left people, including this ethnographer, stunned and stumped. What was surprising was not so much the content of her political positions – problematic political ideologies were often circulated among intimates among both local Bosniaks and Croats – but her unwillingness to adjust her behaviour in the presence of ethnic others. In contrast to more calculating town residents, who navigated the complex political landscape with tremendous caution (see Kurtović 2011a), often keeping their own views obscure, Zora was in a manner of speaking, wearing her heart on her sleeve. Yet despite all of this, she did not lack in friends and allies – some chose to ignore her nationalistic banter, others actively tried to change her points of view. But outside of these enduring networks, Zora’s political standing in the community was uncertain. Once, during a conversation about voter intimidation and the buying of votes, she told me jokingly: ‘I wish someone would knock at my door with a gift basket or 50 KM [about €25]. I’d give them my vote in a heartbeat. But they never come’. Her joking aside, the absence of attempts to bring Zora into some kind of a client–patron relationship also testified to the fact that her own political position in this community remained profoundly marginal. Although she was one of the few remaining Serbs in the municipality, and potentially a valuable token asset, no political party even bothered to buy her vote. This marginality had devastating consequences. In the spring of 2013, Zora fell ill. She suspected it was her gallbladder, but could not know for sure; her prolonged unemployment had left her without any kind of health insurance that would cover a visit to the hospital. As her condition worsened, her daughter’s boss allegedly helped the family negotiate Zora’s way into the local hospital where she was to have surgery (and where patients are rarely accepted without some kind of an additional monetary contribution). The surgery went fine, but within a few days, her condition deteriorated due to a secondary infection and eventual sepsis that the local doctors somehow failed to identify. Within days, this 50-year-old woman who beamed with strength and resolve, died of a preventable and treatable infection, in what was once the best public hospital in the region. I do not mean to suggest that a more salient political affiliation would have prevented Zora’s untimely and bitterly tragic end. But I will propose that her chronic unemployment, combined with a lack of access to proper medical care, led to her failed medical intervention, which eventually took her life. A casualty of the economic ‘transition’ that followed the war, which left her generation of workers unemployed and unemployable, Zora somehow managed to cope with her myriad forms of dispossession until a health emergency

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Future Conditional 153 put a final stop on all of her future prospects. Her death revealed not only the vulnerable nature of the human body and life itself, but also the precarious character of everyday existence for those who did not find elusive economic security in the post-war period (see Jašarević 2012a). It also placed in a different context the seeming pragmatism of younger residents of Jajce like Mirna, who sought an exit out of their never-ending insecurity. A municipal job, as uninteresting as it may be, provided an ostensible guarantee of a regular, dependable salary and benefits that could make the risks of the new market easier to bear. For whatever reason, seats of political authority appeared more likely to weather crises than any business or NGO (despite the fact that public-sector salaries are now also late thanks to declining state funds). Public servants therefore seemed best able to stay afloat – at least until ferrosilicium production resumes or the tourism industry again rises from ashes. To that end, perceptive young Bosnians like Mirna could not remain wedded to ideals of personal integrity or ideological consistency that ostensibly matter among their parents’ generation (which is frequently outraged when it learns someone would join a political party just to get a job). Nor could they afford to let others know what they ‘really think’ in the manner in which Zora so frequently did. The brutally marketised post-war economy has transformed previously inconceivable moves into ostensibly viable strategies. However, these forms of apparently instrumental rationality represent much more than evidence of rational choice, as they often come at devastating personal costs (for example, loss of face, reputation and friends) that make doubtful their practical use. That they so often fail to bring about the desired outcomes further testifies to their tragic, rather than utilitarian, character. In that sense, my critique here focuses not on the fact of political affiliation having become an economic currency, but on the widespread perception that political affiliation is necessary in order to secure a non-conditional future.

Remapping the Political in Times of Uncertainty This chapter has provided a critique of both instrumental rationality and the trope of ‘sold-out souls’ (prodane duše), which is so often mobilised in order both to portray and condemn those who enter political parties in order to secure viable future prospects for themselves and their families. In my experience, these types of opportunism never bloom overnight, but are instead a product of complex, prolonged and fraught negotiations. It is telling that Mirna chose emigration only when she realised that her last-resort plan would not work out, although she could have left for Norway many years ago. Exile began to look like salvation only when a future in her hometown began to appear completely foreclosed. Mirna is not alone in this – young professionals continue to leave BiH nearly two decades after the end of the war because they either cannot or do not want to become embedded in these new political configurations. As the field within which one can negotiate alternative means

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154 Kurtović of earning a living shrinks even further – consider for example the effects of the departure of the international intervention machine, which has provided thousands of jobs for local Bosnians  – so do ways of imagining a liveable future. Those that have to stay behind have to join the powers that be, which they will not likely be able to reform or conquer. In place of denouncing these allegedly corrupted subjects of the aftermath of the war, I  have tried in this chapter to sketch out the structural conditions defining possible ways of being in contemporary BiH. Although I too think that this Dayton regime is sinister and destructive, I do not find its characteristics particularly unique. Different types of patronage and clientelism not only exist across the world, but often play a vital role in maintaining social bonds (for instance Bailey 1971; Gellner and Waterbury 1977; Auyero 2001). There is nothing inherently immoral in using one’s associates and friends to find employment – to echo the words of my perceptive friend Aida: ‘In the US, they call it networking’ (see Koutková, this volume). What is more, transactions and exchanges are at the heart of every relationship, and every individual is a cluster of such relations. For this reason, it is a mistake to see political clientelism in post-war BiH merely as a form of corruption  – instead, we should see it as a way of thinking about power as historically contingent and as responding to the exigencies of the present. If the goal of modern governmentality is to get people to do as they ought, then contemporary forms of clientelism in BiH need to be seen precisely as a highly adaptable and organised way of ensuring proper conduct (cf. Haller and Shore 2005). Recognising clientelism as a constitutive aspect of modern political life in BiH also means reassessing the idea that the key cause behind the ongoing political paralysis is lack of popular political participation. As my ethnographic data on party affiliation from Jajce shows, citizens of BiH are indeed participating politically, but not in the ways envisioned or preferred by international and/or local democracy promoters. Attention to the role that clientelism plays in local communities should also be given on behalf of those who believe that the solution for BiH’s democratic deficits and widespread corruption lies in further decentralisation (for instance Bassuener and Weber 2014). Municipal governments and local communities tend to be the biggest strongholds of dominant political currents. Barring dramatic economic changes, these sites cannot be the axis or origin of reform, because the people inhabiting them are too boxed in to challenge the status quo. Still, that political parties must rely so much on near-compulsory party membership to incorporate political threats also suggests that the Dayton regime, despite appearing immutable and totalising, is actually very frail. If political affiliation owes so much to coercion and economic pragmatism, the increased shortage of economic resources at the disposal of political parties may lead to radical shifts in citizens’ behaviour. As the scarcity of jobs, opportunities and budgetary resources continues to grow – despite the attempt of political elites

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Future Conditional 155 to create a temporary fix through foreign loans – such loyalty will become far more difficult to secure. Hence, instead of stability, the years that follow may actually see far more rebellion against the soul-crushing logic of this ethnically defined illiberal democracy and its merciless forms of dispossession.

Notes 1 I wish to thank the people whose reading of and engagement with this text made it immeasurably better. I am grateful for the comments and tireless guidance of our editors Stef Jansen, Čarna Brković and Vanja Čelebičić, as well as for the feedback I received from Florian Bieber, Paul Stubbs, Azra Hromadžić, Larisa Jašarević and Nejra Nuna Čengić during our October 2014 workshop in Graz, Austria. 2 The names are pseudonyms, used to protect confidentiality. I have also changed minor details in order to make individuals less easily identifiable in the town proper. 3 This research was made possible through the invaluable support of the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) 2013 ‘short term grant’. This analysis also draws on earlier doctoral fieldwork in the town of Jajce, conducted between 2008 and 2009 that was generously sponsored by the SSRC-IDRF programme. The responsibility for the content of this publication rests with me alone. 4 Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, HDZ) is the oldest, post-1990 Croatian nationalist party in the region. During the war, HDZ in BiH was the main organising force behind Croatian Defence Council (Hrvatsko vijeće obrane, HVO), which in 1993 engaged in armed struggle with the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Armija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine, ARBiH). 5 The Sarajevo-based Centre for Investigative Journalism – CIN has done extensive reporting on the process of privatisation of Elektrobosna. For more information, see http://www.cin.ba/en/prica-1-aukcija/. 6 By contrast, I have heard these accusations quite often in my other field sites like Sarajevo and Tuzla and, to a lesser extent, Banja Luka. Sometimes, parents give up their severance and retirement packages to ensure their children inherit their posts. Other times, people use their savings from a temporary job abroad to purchase a position in one of the more prosperous state-owned firms. 7 Entanglements between unemployment and popular de/mobilisation have an important history in the region, which has been chronicled by a number of socialist-era scholars (for instance Cohen 1989; Anđelić 2003). The distinct geopolitical position of Yugoslavia and relatively early processes of economic liberalisation led to the unprecedented presence of unemployment in a socialist state that was supposed to guarantee work for everyone (for instance, Woodward 1995; Zukin 1975). My ongoing research affirms Woodward’s insistence on the crucial link between unemployment, the rise of nationalism and political disintegration in the former Yugoslavia, suggesting these links remain important in the post-intervention period. 8 For example, during a particularly difficult period, an employer might terminate his workers’ contracts in order to stop paying for their social and medical insurances, but keep employing them informally. 9 For most recent news about this kind of preferential hiring, see ‘Objavljeni rezultati Konkursa-Najbolja kandidatkinja ćerka Nebojše Radmanovića’ published by portal BUKA (6yka) from Banja Luka on 8 August 2014 (available at: http://www.6yka. com/novost/61626/objavljeni-rezultati-konkursa-najbolja-kandidatkinja-cerka-nebojse-radmanovica) and ‘Sin Željke Cvijanović dobio posao u Elektroprenosu BiH,

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156 Kurtović ona u tome ne vidi ništa sporno’ published by Sarajevo daily Oslobođenje, on 13 July 2014 (available at: http://www.oslobodjenje.ba/vijesti/bih/sin-zeljke-cvijanovicdobio-posao-u-elektroprenosu-bih-ona-u-tome-ne-vidi-nista-sporno). 10 In other cases, parties in power change laws in order to be more able to control what kinds of candidates get hired into certain kinds of positions. For example, a few years ago the government of Milorad Dodik changed the rules for hiring professional police. This has widely been interpreted as an attempt to turn law enforcement in RS into an extended arm of Dodik’s party. 11 See ‘Kako je politika pojela radnički bunt u Tuzli’ by Maja Nikolić, in Slobodna Evropa on 7 August 2014 (available at:  http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/content/ kako-je-politika-pojela-radnicki-bunt-u-tuzli/26517162.html).

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Commentary Florian Bieber A common response to discussing politics in BiH is the observation that all politicians are the same (svi su isti). There were moments when one or the other opposition party was associated with the potential for change, but soon after their electoral success, they became the ‘same’. The persistence of political parties that campaign on narrow ethnonational platforms and their unwillingness to engage in political or economic reforms is a consistent paradox. The constitution and political system set up at Dayton in 1995 is complex and blurs the line between opposition and government. Few larger parties are ever completely excluded from power, but hold office at the municipal, cantonal, entity, or state level. The persistence of parties that are dominated by a small elite remains an enduring feature of BiH politics. There are two ways of interpreting the electoral success of a small group of parties, which mostly claim to defend ethnonationalist positions. First, one could interpret the success of ethnonationalist parties as a result of the inter-ethnic polarisation in post-war BiH. This position would argue that the legacy of the war, war crimes and expulsions (or alternatively the pre-war divisions reflected in the 1990 elections and consolidated throughout the war) are reflected in elections. The victory of ethnonationalist parties in most post-war elections are thus of a genuine will of most citizens (Bardos 2011). However, this view has its limitations. A  significant number of BiH citizens continue to identify as Bosnians, rather than through ethnonational categories (Markowitz 2010) and the protests in BiH, especially in the federation in 2014, explicitly discarded features of ethnonational identity. It would be possible to argue that these citizens would be represented by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) or the Democratic Front (DF) that in the federation have claimed to represent the electorate. Hence, there are few exceptions to the rule. However, the protests in 2014 were directed as much against the Social Democratic Party as against the ethnonationalist parties, reflecting a broader crisis of representative democracy (Arsenijević 2014). Furthermore, all indicators of interethnic relations suggest few tensions (see for example O’Loughlin 2010). In addition, inter-ethnic relations are not a primary marker of electoral contests. No doubt, electoral campaigns are often fought over preserving or strengthening particular political institutions  – whether state, entity or proposed entities  – associated with ethnonational identities, but these contests are framed in larger issues of statehood or ‘entity’-hood. While the society is geographically and politically divided, such an approach fails to answer the puzzle in its entirety. A second line of argument would suggest that low turn-out in elections, hovering just above 50 per cent in recent polls, is the main explanatory factor

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158 Bieber for the prevalence of a narrow group of political actors. This argument is compelling – civic-minded citizens have stopped voting and ethnonationalist parties with a more loyal and easily mobilisable electorate are thus able to persist. However, this interpretation fails to explain why civic parties, such as Our Party (Naša Stranka), are unable to capitalise on this segment of the electorate. One might ascribe their failure to draw significant electoral support to their inability to reach out to voters, yet this cannot explain why no successful contenders emerged, if such an electorate were to exist (Touquet 2011). The chapters by Larisa Kurtović and Vanja Čelebičić provide a different perspective on this question. By focusing on ethnographic research, they show that the dichotomy between voters of ethnonationalist parties and engaged civic citizens is not as convincing as the larger picture might suggest. Rather than a resigned civic electorate that does not go to elections or does not exist – depending on one’s interpretations – and an ethnonationalist one that consistently votes for their party, both chapters show that voters and party activists are motivated by much more immediate concerns than the programmes on offer. Political parties offer tangible benefits to their supporters and voters. Be it a job or a useful ‘connection’ (veza) to survive, or yet again a bit of money, parties are the key arbiters in individual lives. Through their control of employment and state services, they are able to elicit support – not loyalty. As the chapters argue, this is not based on larger promises of protecting ethnonational identities or fighting their prevalence, but on individual rather than collective benefits. The main support structure thus rests on clientelism and informality, rather than electoral campaigns and claims to represent ‘the nation’. As a result, access to services, as Larisa Kurtović suggests, is not based on belonging to the right, that is, dominant, ethnonational community, but also on being associated with the right political party and possessing the right social ties. In this regard, the studies highlight that the structures of political power are less exceptional than the focus on ethnonationalism or the divided nature of government in BiH often suggests (see also Vetters 2014). The persistence of political parties and their dominance based on state capture to provide favours (and exclusion) is a consistent feature of a number of post-Yugoslav states (and not only) even when ethnonationalist identity is less important (Cvetkovska 2012; Pešić 2007). As a consequence, the chapters question the reduction of the political paralysis to BiH being a ‘divided society’ or complex decision-making procedures. No doubt, these features of BiH provided tools for party control, but are not their cause. It might be tempting to dismiss Emina and others who vote for some money or promises of employment as opportunistic. Yet, this downplays the structural dynamics of party control. If most parties – at least those visible in the public sphere – have no clear programmatic differences, and even if they do, they show little evidence of acting on them once in power, what difference does it make? If the choice were between a party that offered a job or 100 KM and a party that would be principled and offer good governance, the choice

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Commentary 159 for the former could easily be considered short sighted. However, if such a distinction either does not exist or is not visible to an average voter, why not vote for the party that offers tangible benefits? As the chapters show, these choices are not purely selfish, but are embedded in the social relations of the individual. Voting might be to secure the job of friends’ relatives or acquaintance with few, if any, individual benefits. There is no single convincing theory that would explain how such a dynamic comes about. Rather, we have to explore a combination of factors, from historical legacies, the weakness of institutions and the nature of social ties. The two case studies thus suggest that studying informality and state control are more fruitful venues of understanding BiH now than limiting oneself to ethnopolitics.

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Part IV

Who are ‘We’ in the First Place?

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9 Raja The Ironic Subject of Everyday Life in Sarajevo Nebojša Šavija-Valha The beginning of any story on BiH can hardly be more convenient than a joke, such as the one in the Introduction to this volume. To a certain degree, it creates an initial situation of communicational ambiguity, which floats between seriousness and frivolity. A potential reader is not only introduced to the text, but also drawn into similar circumstances shaping a significant portion of everyday communication for many Bosnians and Herzegovinians, particularly, but not exclusively, in urban areas. As several of them claimed: Socialising in Sarajevo assumes a certain ironical pretext… You know, no matter how ironic people are in relation to others, there is a tradition in Sarajevo to be ironic to themselves, too… [Actually], everybody makes jokes firstly at their own expense and then at the expense of all others… [And it is a] battle [which wanders] in a permanent circle… And a battle for being cleverer, better… It charms the joking, the irony… The places in the world where you can find such a quantity of irony, jokes, humour are rare… [Finally] we should say that irony and sarcasm keep raja1 together. [However, not only that irony holds raja together but it is] a drama – a classical one – that everybody should be in the raja! Obviously, there is a form of circular reasoning implicit in the compilation of interviewees’ statements quoted above: (socialising in) Sarajevo, (self) irony, jokes and raja seem to be intrinsically and even categorically connected. In this chapter, by describing and analysing the particular form of social interaction in BiH called raja, which I  argue is an overarching strategy of everyday life in urban areas, most notably in Sarajevo, I explore the condition of communicational ambiguity and suggest its causes and consequences, structure and function. The study of the phenomenon of raja was carried out between July 2009 and May 2010 in Sarajevo. During the course of the research, I conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with ten residents of Sarajevo, who are also members of raja(s). Governed by the ‘diversity principle’ (Barbour: 2008: 53), the interviewees were chosen from different ethno-religious, professional, educational and social backgrounds and type of interests, including different residential areas, gender and age. In addition, my ‘native’, ‘one-of-us’ position, namely deep ‘genetic’ intimacy with the setting, made the interviews

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164 Šavija-Valha function more like a discussion on the widest range of topics connected to the phenomenon. This resulted in a rich set of detailed ethnographic data that provided a very solid base for this analysis.

Quid est ergo raja? Raja is Raja! Being identified as raja is a very, if not the most important form of social recognition a person in Sarajevo can achieve. As one of my interviewees said: It is a term of belonging… What does that belonging mean? It’s interesting; when I lived abroad, I never used the word raja for the people I hung out with there. However, when I  met a person from Sarajevo, and we spoke about a third person [from Sarajevo]: if he was good, we called that person raja. And only the two of us knew exactly what that means, which qualities the person must possess to be called raja. Appearing as a certain esoteric term used by an exclusive circle of initiated individuals, raja resists easy understanding. The ‘mystery’ goes even deeper. Asked to offer a brief definition of raja at the beginning of an interview, three out of ten interlocutors said: ‘Raja is raja!’ Although this obvious tautology disrespects Grice’s (Grice 1975: 45, 52) conversational maxim of the quantity of information necessary for exchange, it nonetheless contains certain implicit information. By this utterance, protagonists actually imply the complexity of the notion of raja, which for them is both a ‘horizon’ and an ‘entity’ of everyday existence in Sarajevo.2 Therefore, it has both ‘ontological’ – ‘raja is’ – and ‘ontic’ – ‘raja’ – value.3 In this regard, raja is a polyphonic term (Ducrot 1996), which signifies a complex cultural phenomenon that cannot be unambiguously determined, but which appears from a sequence of its descriptions provided by my interlocutors. For them, raja is a ‘mentality of persons from Sarajevo’. It is a cultural milieu in which the ‘drama’ of everyday life in Sarajevo is played out. Raja is also a ‘code of conduct’ and as such, a principle of practice. However, this principle is actualised by the socialisation of individuals in groups called raja that comply with this principle and simultaneously construct it. Also, raja is an individual who respects the codes.

Different? – One Shall Not-Be-Different from Raja! Considering raja as a group, an interlocutor noticed that its composition ‘is perhaps more heterogeneous than elsewhere. So, not only people of the same financial status or the same class… or whatever, get together’. Furthermore, this heterogeneity includes ethno-religious belonging:  ‘Where there were mixed ethnic or religious groups, raja appeared, and such raja got together regardless of religion, nation…’. Hence, raja is imagined as a community that recognises a wide spectrum of differences within its constituents. However,

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Raja: The Ironic Subject of Everyday Life 165 by this general recognition and particularly by the moral imperative, which requires that ‘the primary condition [of being raja] is: ‘it is not important what you are… or who you are, but what sort of person you are’, the difference as such appears to be completely redundant, an ‘excess of signification’. As a result, the value of difference decreases to non-recognition. Within this line of understanding, one interlocutor said: ‘My starting point is: I don’t care if you are a star or if you are rich…’. Another one added: ‘We did not know about each other’s ethnicity, it did not interest us, it was not a topic’. Finally, in an article ‘Raja or a Death of the City [Raja ili smrt čaršije]’ (Aeroklub Sarajevo 2015), which has been circulating on the internet for a while, an anonymous author concluded: ‘A division between raja on the one side and scum on the other side was the most honest and the most correct one for… it excluded any cultural, national, religious, gender, racial, intellectual or whatever differences’ (emphasis added). In this collapsing of differences, in the devaluation of the excesses, only one value remains: ‘one shall not-be-different from raja’. It invokes a ‘typical’ image of a social setting in Sarajevo, as one interlocutor described: ‘You enter a café here where doctors and dustmen sit together’.

Displace the Excess! Address: The Mother’s Home However, ‘not-be-different from raja’ is not a state:  ‘You must balance the whole of life’. It includes a process of permanent ‘levelling’, which can be seen as reciprocal exchange (Mauss 1966). Although exchange of material goods and labour is part of it, people help each other, share goods and property  – ‘what is mine, is yours’  – this exchange is basically the exchange of what Mauss (1966:  12)  calls ‘spiritual matter’, hence symbolic exchange. It works as the exchange of the excesses of significations by which the very excess is simultaneously recognised and excluded: the excess, being a doctor for example, is recognised as a property of an individual; simultaneously, it is excluded as something that does not belong to raja. Abandoning the excess, denouncing your doctorness – as something completely individual, which eventually cannot be exchanged and which for that reason violates the possibility of reciprocity – is the ultimate gift the person gives up in exchange for entry in raja. The excess of signification appears to be in the very foundation of the discourse of raja, which functions as the permanent exclusion or paradoxical exchange of the excess. The exchange is a process of permanent re-creation of a common symbolic universe devoid of any grandeur and excess. Simultaneously, it reproduces raja as the community founded on that universe. This practice is called socialising [druženje] – getting together with your raja for any and every purpose. Although informal, it is not a purely voluntary practice. As demonstrated before, ‘everybody should be in raja’. As a requirement of reciprocity, socialising is imperative. It is only through socialising that a person demonstrates her/his compliance with raja’s codes. Through socialising, the person is enrolled, challenged and confirmed as raja.

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166 Šavija-Valha Through socialising and reciprocal exchange, the individual is not only invited to give, receive and repay, but also to increase the stakes of the exchange:  ‘And the battle for being cleverer, better… when you’re telling jokes it’s like ping-pong:  joke upon joke, pure inspiration. So you give ever more’. For this reason, raja is a highly competitive community in which exchange is exercised in a form of competition and rivalry. Mauss (1966: 5) defines this agonistic type of total prestation,4 the potlatch. The principle of the potlatch challenges every individual to invest ‘even more than the maximum of her/his abilities’ to confirm her/himself as raja. ‘You must play football… even those who have two left feet.’ However, this does not necessarily mean that one should be better or stronger. It means that the person has to be ready to challenge her/his own personality, either to improve it or to degrade it to the level of raja, so that it becomes a challenge for the others. Hence, although competition is a permanent dimension of being-in-raja, there is a threshold not to be exceeded: ‘You can reach a certain limit… to cross it, to rise above the others, that you must not do’. The threshold is defined by the stake anteed up by an individual, which cannot be exchanged. This means that the person tries to actualise her/his excess of signification; to identify herself/himself in a mode of his/her personality as such, as particular or unique; or to impose permanent authority. By these actions, the person tries to introduce into the discourse something that, by definition, cannot be exchanged. As a violation of raja’s codes of conduct, such actions are eliminated from any socialising; persons who try to exercise them are ‘expelled’ from raja: ‘[Some famous] musicians, writers and others… couldn’t even live here. They had to leave, willingly or not. Because they are authorities or stars everywhere, except in this city’. The exclusion of the excess of signification is by no means its annihilation. It is its displacement. If a person within raja insists on a certain identity or practice, namely protecting or imposing his or her excess of signification, she/he will be ‘warned’ to ‘cool it down’. For example, if a person seriously says:  ‘I am a poet’, the probable comment of raja will be:  ‘Hello, poetry! You should recite to your mother, not here! [Halo, poezija! Materi, pa recituj, mojne ovdje!]’.5 Thus, the excess of signification, expressed in ‘being a poet’, is actually displaced from the public sphere of raja into the private sphere beyond it. It is important to note that such displacement has no spatial meaning.6 Its use here refers to Freud’s use of the term in his explanation of dream-work. He suggests: that a psychical power is operative in dream-work which on the one hand strips the psychically valuable elements of their intensity, and on the other creates new values by way of over-determination out of elements of low value; it is the new value that then reaches the dream-content. If this is

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Raja: The Ironic Subject of Everyday Life 167 what happens, then a transference and displacement of the physical intensity of individual elements has taken place. (Freud 2008b: 235, italics in original) Similarly, raja uses displacement to strip the intensity of highly valuable elements – the excess of signification – and creates a new value, which I  will refer to as ‘raja selfhood’. The excess is not annulled, but kept and reproduced by way of transposing it into other social contexts, which do not belong to the sphere of raja. These are ‘private’ domains of ethno-religious, class, cultural, status, professional and other identities, which basically represent a realm of the Subject that assumes privileges and inequalities along and across social strata. These identities, on the one hand embedded in such orders and on the other hand being the most personal ones, are incommensurable and non-exchangeable. So, in order to enrol in raja, a person should displace them. This process is actually de-privileging the Subject, it marks its de-Subjectification. By this act, the person earns raja selfhood, which is the only possible self in raja. And this de-privileging is a universal requirement: both the doctor and the dustman are invited to displace their statuses. However, displacement is neither reduction to any common substrate  – be it ethnic, class, interest and so on – nor to averageness. It might be perceived as what Deleuze and Guattari (2004: 558–559) call the plane of consistency, which: concretely ties together heterogeneous, disparate elements as such:  it assures the consolidation of fuzzy aggregates… In effect, consistency, proceeding by consolidation, acts necessarily in the middle, by the middle, and stands opposed to all planes of principle or finality… What is retained and preserved, therefore created, what consists, is only that which increases the number of connections at each level of division or composition. Thus, displacement is a discursive ability to manipulate the complex reality of significations. On the one hand, it constitutes raja as the individual (having raja selfhood) and as the collective, and on the other hand, the displaced excesses remain available for other, ‘private’ purposes, conducted away from raja.

The Eirôn of Sarajevo’s Drama For individuals, a discursive ability of raja means that she/he must be ready to communicate in a space of polysemia (Hutcheon 2005:  59), where what is said is not necessarily (or most probably) what is meant. Exercising such communication, the person enters into a domain of irony and must be ready to become an object of irony and to treat others as the objects of irony. Raja not only accepts such a position, but it also has an active approach to irony by seeing socialising in Sarajevo both as practice and as the very ‘scene’ of irony (Hutcheon 2005: 1–7). A hint to understand this central position of irony in

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168 Šavija-Valha the discursive construction of raja can be found in the following utterances of my interlocutors: To me, irony is really the most interesting thing in the whole BiH society. Maybe because we look at… our situation as it is, for we are able to joke about our problems… We either expect something better, or the situation is simply so ridiculous… That is why we are ironic:  better to be ironic than depressed! That wittiness, raja enabled us to survive what nobody survived for twenty centuries! Irony thus appears as a kind of a survival mechanism developed in the social, historical and geopolitical context. A key to further decipher this link seems to lie in understanding the very mechanism of irony and the social context in which it is exercised. In her book Irony’s Edge:  The Theory and Politics of Irony, Hutcheon argues that irony happens in the contact of different discursive communities, which overlap to a certain degree with meanings that are not fixed (Hutcheon 2005:  87–88). Drawing upon Foucault’s term discursive formations (Foucault 2008: 34–43), Hutcheon defines discursive community as: a sociorhetorical construct… [which] acknowledges those strangely enabling constraints of discursive contexts and foregrounds the particularities not only of space and time but of class, race, gender, ethnicity, sexual choice – not to mention nationality, religion, age, profession, and all the other micropolitical groupings in which we place ourselves or are placed by our society. (Hutcheon 2005: 88) As a result of its geopolitical position, historical contingencies and the social structure that originated from these factors, BiH society (including Sarajevo) has developed a complex network of discursive communities. BiH is situated at the very encounter of three major cultural-religious systems: Christianity as Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and Islam. These systems were historically bound up with great world powers, and BiH was in the middle of their routes of conquest. Such a borderline position and a sequence of conquests caused much in and out-migration and has made BiH society ethnically and religiously heterogeneous. As a result of various factors and processes – not least antagonistic acculturation (Devereux and Loeb 1943) – different parts of the population have developed ideological ties with different great powers. This process resulted in the creation of a number of ‘segregated sub-universes of meaning’ (Berger and Luckmann 1991: 102) – most notably three, to a certain degree distinct, ethno-religious groups.7 Tied to these systems of power that were/are mutually antagonistic and external to BiH society, the ethno-religious groups have also been volens-nolens in (potentially) antagonistic stances toward each other. With regard to power

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Raja: The Ironic Subject of Everyday Life 169 and politics, they have been ‘eccentric’ – for the centres of power and ‘politics’, those ruling powers (or powers pretending to rule), have always been outside of BiH society. Another differentiation was also a consequence of these ties. Depending on which great power ruled, Redžić argues, ‘social opposites: feudal lord–vassal were manifested as religious opposites: Muslim–Christian. Namely, social and religious opposites coincided in Bosnia and Herzegovina’ (Redžić 1990: 154). Therefore, ethno-religious and class identities serve as the privileged signifier to each other and they tend to invoke the phantasm of antagonism. Regardless of, or despite of, these processes of constructing ethno-religious groups and divisions, in the mutual vicinity of everyday life and interdependence, the population of BiH has always been able to establish close cooperative relations ranging from mutual help on various occasions, through developing deep friendships, to inter-religious (ethnic) marriages. This analysis of elements of the construction of BiH society8 suggests a certain (heuristic) structure in which an identity game is played in the interaction of a number of ‘typical’ players. It seems that the BiH population operates in two contradicting registers of identification. Individuals are permanently ‘offered’ the choice between two senses of belonging. The first one I call the particular–WE.9 It originates from religious identifications linked to external factors (namely, ‘great powers’) and it is hierarchically structured in a patriarchal register. The particular–WE appears as a single ethno-religious corpus in which power is structurally given to those representing the image of pater familias – religious, ethnic and national elites. This identification has a ‘political’ function, as societal power is exercised through it. The second register I call the general–WE. It results from an experience of the heterogeneous community of everyday life in which people perceive themselves as ‘fellow sufferers’ (Rorty 1995: xvi) in historical contingencies. This involves (pragmatic) cooperation that addresses this ‘destiny’ and produces a strong and cohesive community with certain mechanisms for transcending ethno-religious differences. The general–WE operates in a horizontal domain establishing a wide spectrum of inclusive social networks, so it has a ‘social’ function. Although the general–WE transcends ethno-religious differences of particular–WEs (by displacing them into the domain of privacy or culture), it cannot appropriate their power. Power remains associated with those who represent particular–WEs, namely the elites. Hence, the elites also appear to the general–WE as disturbing factors, if not as the ‘enemy’.10 The elites, therefore, could be seen as the third ‘player’. As a kind of survival strategy and drawing upon available registers of identification, people in BiH then play a double-loyalty game by being pragmatically interpellated into the role/identity, which provides an optimal level of socialisation, either in the political or social domain, consequently maximising their ad hoc odds. In terms of the complex BiH identity markers, raja falls into the category of general–WE, in contrast to ethno-religious communities as particular–WEs.

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170 Šavija-Valha However, the function of the latter has also been extrapolated throughout the whole spectrum of ‘vertical’ orders representing the Subject. Hence, raja has a wide set of various, yet overlapping, discursive communities available for its use. Raja acts as an area of contact in their interfaces in which irony happens ‘naturally’. As Hutcheon suggests, irony does not fix meanings, for it is not a direct language of a contact. It is in an inter-space at the very edge of contact, in ‘hermeneutical movement’ between meanings of what was said, unsaid and suspended (Hutcheon 2005: 61). Being movement, irony is always intentional. Demanding interpretation, it is relational  – both inclusive and differential (Hutcheon 2005: 56). Ase it can be used for any tendency, irony is transideological (Hutcheon 2005: 10). From this perspective, irony seems to offer an almost ideal discursive means for raja. Raja uses irony as a convenient tool for the displacement of the excess of meaning, that is, of the Subject beyond the sphere of raja. Displacement is the entry of a highly valued signifier into the contact zone, the meaning of which is suspended, thus appearing as something else. Displacement is actually an ‘ironing’11 of the Subject that happens by adding a certain irony marker, be it quotation marks, mimics, a word, or a phrase like ‘kind of’. Referring to the role of irony in everyday communication, one interlocutor noticed: A cousin told me about a man in Canada who was a medical doctor here in Sarajevo and who always says ‘I’m telling you this as a kind of doctor’. And he has lived in Canada for 25  years as a refugee… and when he speaks, he must say – I, as a kind of doctor. So to be accepted by raja as the Subject, a person who has a diploma and the status of a medical doctor has to say ‘I as a kind of doctor…’. This minor, but crucial, suspension is what Hutcheon calls the ‘semantic solution of irony’ (Hutcheon 2005: 61). The formula is simple: ‘DOCTOR’ (said) + DOCTOR (suspended)  =  RAJA (ironic, or self ironic). In this game, DOCTOR (as Subject) becomes ‘DOCTOR’ (Subject). As such, the person reaches the ‘plane of consistency’ and becomes raja. By these procedures, the three meanings have been maintained and the Subject accepts this compromise and transforms itself into what I call an ironic subject. Being an ironic subject means being permanently open for re-descriptions of one’s own personality. And this is a generalised demand: in raja, everybody is required to participate in the process of de-Subjectification and transformation into an ironic subject. Rorty’s term ‘the liberal ironist’ is very useful in considering the function of irony in raja. Rorty uses this term for a person who ‘faces up to the contingency of his or her own most central beliefs and desires… who includes among these ungroundable desires their own hope that suffering will be diminished’ (Rorty 1995: 15). She/he exists in a ‘de-divinised world’ and uses a language that has lost its reference, worships nothing (Rorty 1995: 21–22) and has the aim ‘of producing effects on your interlocutor… but not of conveying

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Raja: The Ironic Subject of Everyday Life 171 a message’ (Rorty 1995: 18). By displacing excess, raja also de-divinises its language: any signification of grandeur is silenced, brought down and deprived of its reference. As one interlocutor explains: Even respect and admiration are expressed in a slightly ironic manner. Like those raja who were sitting in a café and calling out when Ivo Andrić12 was passing by: ‘Hello, Bridge Over the Drina, is something written!?’ [Halo, Na Drini ćuprija, napiše li se štagod!?].13 This is not to demonstrate their own primitivism – well, that’s evident, har-har – but they also show that they recognised the great novelist, read his books, respect him in a certain way and that they were interested in what he was doing, while they were actually teasing him. Through such de-Subjectifying, the Subject becomes ‘one of us’, a ‘fellow sufferer’, or simply raja. However, the ironic subject cannot be equalised with Rorty’s liberal ironist. They share a number of discursive practices, but they operate on opposite poles. For Rorty, irony, as an endless sequence of re-descriptions, is the most private emancipatory practice by which the liberal ironist strives towards pluralism of individual self-accomplishments, limited only by the potential suffering of others. In contrast, irony for the ironic subject is a public practice of denouncing and repressing individual accomplishments for the sake (and hegemony) of the collective. Here, suffering could be just another target for irony, or even worse, a reason for avoiding the person: ‘When you are in the land of milk and honey, everybody is raja… but when things go bad, everybody begins, well, you know to… [avoid you]’. However, no matter how cruel such acts might be, raja follows the logic of displacement ‘for good or for bad’, because the categorical imperative is ‘One shall not-be-different from raja’. Consequently, to avoid being avoided, one should be (self) ironic even towards one’s own suffering. In the end, raja is constructed as a community of ironic subjects who reach the plane of consistency through a potlatch of re-descriptions in a context of irony and self-irony.

Just Kidding Around – No Kidding! Another important mechanism of raja, closely related to irony, is joking. ‘If you say “real raja”, it means primarily that he is fair, secondly that he is witty, that he knows how to make jokes at his own expense, that he is willing to pay rounds of drink, har-har…’. Being witty and able to joke at one’s own or someone else’s expense is one of the main features of a person considered to be raja. The complexity of the relation between raja and joking is hinted at in the following example. An interlocutor remembered a conversation he had with his close friend. He asked the friend to continue maintaining a website dedicated to a common interest after his death. The friend answered immediately: ‘You know what!

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172 Šavija-Valha Just die! And don’t worry! We’ll take care about everything’. Interpreting the conversation, the interlocutor continues: Well, that’s the real raja attitude! It is not even humour. It is not a joke at all! It is very serious… there are no secrets! There is no pretence! … I told you – it’s only up to you to die, and I will take care about what remains after you, I will help your wife and kids if needed! The anecdote and its interpretation open a wide area for grasping the meaning of joking among raja. Primarily, everything is an object of joking and there are no taboos in this regard, neither illness nor death. However, raja does not necessarily perceive joking as something exclusively fun. There is an aspect of seriousness, even compulsion involved. Reciprocal exchange is permanently at work and not being involved in joking means to be excluded from raja. Simultaneously, my interlocutors thought that joking ‘releases tensions’, ‘heals’, ‘creates cohesion’ and ‘provides a sense of security’. I find Freud’s (Freud 2008a) consideration of wit, jest and humour very instructive for understanding the role of joking in raja. For Freud, ‘wit-work’ enables a bypass to pleasure. For various psycho-social reasons, it eludes representations that are hindrances in communicative situations by replacing them with acceptable representations. In these terms, the Subject (who represents a hindrance for raja) is replaced with the corresponding representation of the ironic subject. Interpreting Freud, Baudrillard suggests that pleasure originates from interfacing representations which ‘until then had meaning only due to their separation’ (Baudrillard 2000:  229, italics in the original). In the simultaneity of these representations, a disintegration of the code, logos, reference and imperatives takes place. This liberation from repression of the Subject induces pleasure. Moreover, it opens a potential for the development of endless meanings, which are available for exchange (Baudrillard 2000:  229–230). With regard to raja, Subjects are deprived of power and, through the potlatch of wit and jest, they are drawn into endless symbolic exchange. Referring back to the above anecdote and its interpretation by my interlocutor, it is precisely both the disintegration of the code (‘die, you are not so important’) and the endlessness of reciprocity (‘we will take care of it’) that produce a sense of security and guarantee pleasure. Hence, being-in-raja means being in a situation of safety and pleasure. Another aspect of joking is important for considering raja. In his study on joking relations, Radcliffe-Brown argued that these are ‘standardized social relationships’, which are to be considered within ‘a theory of the place of respect in social relations’ (Radcliffe-Brown 1940:  196). As expressions of ‘permitted disrespect’, together with avoidance tactics, joking relations enable social conjunction in disjunctive social situations. In societies divided in certain ways, joking relations rely on ‘a pretence of hostility’ to enable ‘real friendliness’ (Radcliffe-Brown 1940:  196). Joking relations define ‘friendliness’ between two potentially antagonistic groups and are based on a form

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Raja: The Ironic Subject of Everyday Life 173 of reciprocal exchange of antagonism, which no side is supposed to consider as offensive. Such a structural situation corresponds to the one of raja. It is the area of heterogeneity, which permanently functions at the boundary of antagonism between particular–WEs understood as Subjects. The de-Subjectified excess of signification, displaced from the Subject, discharges itself in the potlatch of humorous discourse without taboos. Raja appears through this permanent circulation of wit, jokes, insults, through ‘a pretence of hostility’, but in fact – through friendliness. Accordingly, one could argue that by permanently producing the ironic subject and humorous discourse, irony, self-irony, joking and joking relations are important (if not crucial) discursive means of integration in the heterogeneous society of Sarajevo and, hence, they constitute raja as a community of everyday life.

All These Rajas – Transparency Local Raja, as a group of people, is not imagined as the aggregate of heterogeneous individuals acting as ironic subjects. Rather, it has a certain stable and even well-defined structure. An important element of the structure is territoriality: [Raja] is belonging to a group of people who live in a certain area, a very small one. It is usually a street: Raja from Zagrebačka Street. They see each other every day. Raja was born, raised and incarnated in Sarajevo’s mahale.14 Thus, raja is a group of individuals who primarily share a certain physical space of dwelling, be it a building, a street or a neighbourhood. The essence of the sharing is reciprocal exchange, which creates conditions for linkage and interdependence among individuals, as a system of ‘total prestation’. It is simultaneously a process of territorialisation of the space, which becomes a ‘property’ of raja marked by a set of common significations distinct from others: ‘Every [raja] has characteristics of their part of the city’. Thus, there are as many rajas as there are possible senses of belonging to a territory. In a context of spatial proximity and reciprocal exchange, the community of everyday life becomes fully transparent: ‘You can’t lie to anyone. Everybody knows everything about everybody, what a person possesses, how he breathes, how much he owes to the local store, har-har! But this is not gossip. Everybody practices that’. The other aspect of territoriality is that raja is also permanently de-territorialised due to various interests and activities of its members that are not necessarily linked to the territory of dwelling: ‘You can have raja for football and raja for the café, for the gym, to play music… raja for a bridge game, raja for going to poetry evenings, which discuss who is “the poet” nowadays,15 har-har!’

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174 Šavija-Valha However, de-territorialisation does not mean the dissolution of raja – quite the contrary. Following individual impulses, raja reassembles itself in junctions of common interests and activities of individuals from different territorial rajas. The junctions are areas of re-territorialisation, or emanations, of rajas, where they are constituted as a kind of fractal structure following the same paradigm of socialising.16 This is how raja proliferates in all available social contexts; or, all social contexts appear to be determined by the code and the codex of raja. Importantly, the requirement of ‘being first and foremost raja’ is much more important than whatever that particular raja is striving for. For example: being ‘skiing raja’ [raja sa skijanja] means that the passion for skiing is shared among a number of individuals; however, they get together primarily to socialise as raja and only collaterally to ski. Another important remark is that the junctions are a sort of information hub, points of information exchange that produce the general transparency of raja. This enables everybody to know everybody else in raja in one way or another: Raja could be seen as a number of sets… as in geometry… So you say raja from Alipašino or raja from Koševo.17 These sets cut through each other, some sets include the others, and then all of them belong to a third one. The scheme of these rajas would be very complicated. In the end, the circle is closed by Sarajevo’s raja [sarajevska raja], which includes all these rajas and all people in Sarajevo.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité! In radical terms, it seems that there is no social space beyond raja. Nonetheless, raja does not force individuals to participate. Yet, as the overarching principle of socialisation, which is re-territorialised in every context as socialising, it imposes itself as a certain social repression. Raja demands socialising and therefore involvement in competitive reciprocal exchange and, finally, in self-displacement. These practices are not only the imperative for being-in-raja. Being-in-raja is a precondition for appropriation of the ‘raja selfhood’, which is a precondition for social success. In these terms, raja as the community, as the structure, as the principle, enables its own reproduction, while being simultaneously beneficial to raja as individuals. As one interlocutor claims, ‘Sarajevo’s raja is a sui generis society’. In such a calculus, raja appears to be a useful instrument of everyday life, so it hides its repressive nature. Thus, raja has both a ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ perspective in its totalising effect. On the one hand, as a permanently challenging factor in the context of symbolic exchange, raja is highly inventive and it constantly produces new significations within the discourse of displacement.18 On the other hand, as these new significations actually serve to preserve the very structure, raja is also highly conservative. Any new signifier that appears on its horizon is potentially an excess. It always upsets by its potential for disturbance of the plane of consistency and destruction of the structure. So it is a priori displaced.

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Raja: The Ironic Subject of Everyday Life 175 Requiring that ‘one shall not-be-different’, raja perceives itself as a community in which everybody is ‘egal’, that is, as an egalitarian community. But this must not be understood in political terms. Quite the contrary, the state of egality appears as a result of denouncing every possible politics in its displacement. Yet, this process also involves levelling to the plane of consistency, which equalises everybody to become ironic subjects. Therefore, it could be suggested that raja might be perceived as an egalitarian community of ironic subjects. In contradiction to such egalitarian self-perception, raja also perceives itself as a ‘pack’, with ‘a pack leader’, or as a hierarchical community with two lines of subordination. The first one is related to generations: ‘being older’ means ‘having higher status’ and ‘being obeyed and followed’: ‘It’s unbelievable how we appreciate the elder raja. He sends you to a shop to buy him a drink or cigarettes… and you have no problem to do that… Hierarchy mattered, who is who’. The second line of subordination is established through various practices of socialising: Depending on the occasion, there is always someone who is leading the raja! He is not the ultimate leader of raja, but it depends on the situation… In my raja, I was the leader when it came to street fights… Someone other was the leader for some other actions. In this regard, an individual is invited to demonstrate that she/he is stronger, more intelligent, or more capable, by which she/he becomes leader of a particular raja and for a particular purpose. However, this type of hierarchy is highly competitive and it does not enable permanent positioning for any individual: ‘T is a highly humorous person… it gives him a right to lead in telling jokes. But, if there is a person better than him, he would sit down, keep silent, listen and laugh’. Moreover, any attempt at permanent occupation of the leading position is considered usurpation. As suggested before, such action is perceived as passing the threshold by imposing an excess of signification, and this violates the fundamental assumption of raja existence. Such behaviour automatically displaces potential pretenders from raja. As a result, raja disables any vertical signification, such as permanent authorities or excellence of any category. Actually, raja only respects excellence as displaced,19 so it is an anti-elite strategy. However, by displacing excellence, raja appears as an exclusive community, an elite. Thus, in the whole of its practices, raja is an anti-elite elite whose excellence lies in its structural possibility, capacity and practice to displace any excellence. Furthermore, as it occupies the whole of the social (public) domain, excellence is never real for raja – one can only pretend to be excellent. We can also consider raja’s omnipresent ‘urban vs. rural’ narrative from such an elitist perspective. Raja situates itself in an urban domain as the space of socialisation and progress. Raja’s opposite, papci,20 are situated in

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176 Šavija-Valha the rural domain, the space of animals, agriculture, primitivism and backwardness. However, this is usually a situational labelling of others. When any person, regardless of his/her qualities as raja, leaves the place of socialising, the likely comment would be: ‘Thank god, we finally got rid of that papak!’ Consequently, all raja who are not here and now are papci. Labelled as a primitive, dangerous and greedy individual, a papak represents a phantasm of the ‘dangerous Other’. In this regard, the urban versus rural narrative could be seen as the original myth of the ‘other’ for raja. The situational differentiation between raja and papci points to another important trait of raja as community. It is always in the present: raja is always here and now. It is socialising: without socialising, there is no raja, and during socialising people have to share the same time-space. Past and future are only possible as stories about the experienced and the anticipated socialising of raja.

Conclusion of Inclusion: Raja’s Trojan Wars Throughout this chapter, I have argued that raja is a certain transideological practice. If raja strictly applies the principle of displacement of all excesses of significations  – ethnic, religious, class, professional, and so on  – raja should also displace gender significations. In practice, however, raja is by no means a transgender community. Quite the contrary, it is a highly patriarchal community. Consciously or unconsciously, gender difference appears to be the primary and insurmountable excess of signification for raja: But, the feminine part of raja was interesting. We did not somehow [hang around] with them. Well, in my raja from Koševsko Hill… I know that there was one girl in raja. There were those female friends around… but only one in raja… my friend, she could drink herself to the point of death [lešila se živa]. She followed us! This means that only women are expected to exclude their excess of female significations and to appropriate the excess of male significations. Accordingly, the difference is not levelled but reproduced, and even reinforced, in a traditional register of the ‘male’ versus ‘female’ relationship, which also demonstrates the existence of a third line of subordination in raja. It is exactly in relation to gender differences where the ideological construction of raja becomes apparent. This rupture in raja’s otherwise totalising structure preserves the place of the Subject. Arguably, it could be a ‘Trojan Horse’ for any other Subject’s usurpation of raja’s domain, most probably by ethno-politics, which raja denounces as any other Subject, but with which it actually shares a patriarchal structure. As suggested above, raja as the re-territorialised community of everyday life is established and reproduced by reciprocal symbolic exchange, which functions as a discourse of excluding any excess of signification.21

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Raja: The Ironic Subject of Everyday Life 177 It unambiguously acts as the integrative factor in the heterogeneous society of Sarajevo. However, it is about social, not political integration. By putting her/himself within quotation marks, the Subject renounces his/her power in order to become raja. But the renouncement is only displacement into an ironic subject. All significations are actually preserved. Once a person leaves the scene of raja, she/he de-de-Subjectifies her/himself and restores power as a Subject. This permanent availability of power on the one side, and the totalising effect of displacing power on the other side, enables the co-existence of antagonism and cooperation of heterogeneous elements in a mode suggested by Močnik: ‘antagonism is the specific mode in which co-operation is performed’ (Močnik 2002: 84). And vice versa. In the end, raja has no ambition to appropriate any power (see Rorty 1995: 118). As long as none of its practices are meant seriously, maximum prosperity for the everyday life of the community is provided and raja would say:  ‘Peaceful Bosnia (Mirna Bosna)’.22 This maxim inevitably invokes the chronotope of a swamp and a kind of Bosnians’ and Herzegovinians’ (peaceful) resolution of the problem expressed through another joke: Two Bosnians, Mujo and Suljo suddenly found themselves in a swamp with mud up to their mouths. Mujo screamed in panic ‘Suljo, what should we do!’ Suljo answered very quietly with clamped teeth: ‘Mujo, don’t be a papak, make no waves!” Both the seductiveness of the ironic subject and its weakness can be found precisely here. On the one side, it is ‘totalitarian’ – for there is no social space, which is not ‘ironed’; on the other side, it cannot offer resistance once the powerful do not agree to the game of de-Subjectification. Raja only ‘irons’, namely renounces, power, so it has no power in itself to resist any external power. It expects from power to displace itself and to socialise into raja  – if not now, then at some time in the future. Until then, the powerful ones are papci.

Notes 1 The word ‘raja’ is a Bosnian–Croatian–Serbian transcription of the Arabic word ‘raya’, which means ‘flock’ or ‘herd’. During the Ottoman Empire, the word was used to denominate all subject people (Malcolm 2002: 49). Nowadays, beside the meanings I describe in this chapter, it is still used as a synonym for common people. 2 On the basis of my ‘native’ knowledge, I suggest that raja is a wider urban phenomenon in BiH. However, this chapter considers only raja from Sarajevo [sarajevska raja]. 3 For the notions of ‘ontological’ and ‘ontic’, see Heidegger (2010). 4 For the term ‘total prestation’, see Marcel Mauss (1966). 5 One could suggest that ‘mother’ in this utterance functions as a metaphor for family, home, privacy and, extrapolating from that, for the whole chain of signifiers situating the person in various social strata linked to her/his individual affiliations and statuses.

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178 Šavija-Valha 6 However, as noticed above, if not complying with the requirements of raja, the person will have to leave raja, literally. 7 As Vlaisavljević (2007:  86)  argues, ethno-religious and/or national identities as seen in BiH now are basically consequences of these acculturations and assimilations. 8 For a historical perspective, see Donia and Fine (1994), Malcolm (2002), Velikonja (1998) and Stavrianos (2002). For a detailed analysis of the processes of the identity construction, see Šavija-Valha (2013). 9 The terms particular–WE and general–WE refer to a notion of ‘we–intentions’, which was introduced by Wilfrid Sellars (1968: 177–229) pragmatically to describe morality in terms of ‘our actions’, or the things that ‘we’ do, unlike others. As Richard Rorty points out, ‘we–intentions’ define ‘us’ against ‘others’ (Rorty 1995: 59–60). I find this a very useful analogy for describing the way in which identities in BiH operate. 10 This distinction refers back to Redžić’s suggestion of a coincidence of ethno– religious and class differences (Redžić 1990: 154). 11 Hutcheon plays with the same root for both ‘irony’ and ‘iron’ (as a ‘household pressing and smoothing device’). She points out the possibility of ‘the appropriation of irony’s transgressive, provocative and subversive potentialities into women’s domains’ (Hutcheon 2005: 34). 12 Ivo Andrić, Bosnian novelist and Nobel Prize winner, whose most famous book is The Bridge Over the River Drina. 13 A virtually untranslatable phrase due to the absence of a subject, which floats as unsaid. 14 Mahale (Arabian mähallä) are residential areas surrounding the city centre. 15 This phrase ‘who is “the poet” nowadays [ko je danas pjesnik]’ indicates relations of raja towards elites. ‘The poet’ in this phrase denominates a person from the field of poetry, who has the full support and patronage of the currently ruling elites, and who is likely to make decisions on the destiny of other individuals from the field. However, the temporal marker ‘nowadays’ indicates that this is not a permanent position, so that the support can be withdrawn at any time, so she/he could easily be pushed back to raja. Thus, regardless of current status, she/he is in the ironic position of ‘the poet’, as any other member of the elite. 16 For the concepts ‘territorialisation’ and ‘re-territorialisation’, see Deleuze and Guattari (2004: 342–386). 17 Residential quarters of Sarajevo. 18 An important result of this inventiveness is an enormous cultural production in literature, film, theatre and music, which has promoted the phenomenon of raja and its discourse throughout the Yugoslav region. 19 As in the case of the anecdote on Ivo Andrić. 20 ‘Papak’ [pl. papci] could be translated as ‘hoof’, especially as ‘cloven hoof’. 21 Except for the gender one. 22 The phrase is used throughout the region and in the (Slavic) languages of former Yugoslavia to signify the result of any kind of deal that is equally beneficial for all sides involved.

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10 Excavating the Common Ground Bosnian Pyramids and Post-National Communities Larisa Jašarević Loaded with buckets, pickaxes and shovels, supplied with water and snacks, volunteers ascended the Pyramid of the Sun, under the eager August sun. They set out for a day of work. The road at first took them up some steep, tight streets of the neighbourhoods whose houses huddled closely to the road, and whose residents were used to the annual traffic of summer visitors, before it rose above the settlements and pavement, over sharply angled sides of the hill, and, narrowing into paths through trees and shrubbery, it finally delivered them at the open trenches. There, they split into teams and applied to the tasks of clearing vegetation and dirt to expose the surfaces and cracks of the presumed structure beneath. What was below their feet was propositional and shifting. Although it was declared a pyramid in 2005, and disputed and denounced as such ever since, theories about the pyramidal Visočica hill are too plural to be reduced to a simple distinction between a natural formation and an ancient pyramid, between a genuine archaeological something and a real hype. This was the most significant among many archaeological digs active in the summer of 2012 around the town of Visoko, in the wider area referred to as the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids. I watched a team of eight  – two Scandinavians, and five men and one woman who travelled separately from Spain  – invest themselves in widening of two cracks they discovered on the very first day of their deployment. Between and beneath some massive, loosely connected, sun-lit rocks, the holes flashed darkened invitations:  a possible entry into the pyramid. The volunteers pounded their pickaxes until the tool heads fell off. They strategised how to remove the debris and, joining hands, wedging in their backs, shouting, laughing, cursing, cheering in the heat of the effort, in the excitement over the rocks’ yielding, pulled and pushed and yanked in whichever way, undoing the progress and redoubling the effort. Five among them were construction workers who had their ways with stone, concrete and tools; the other three, including two IT technicians, followed their lead. The effort was plain to see on the men’s bodies stripped to the waists, dripping with sweat. Intense, loud activity of hammering, grunting, joking suddenly got diverted by a glimpse of another finding:  some intricate markings were showing through the dirt, lodged between the layers of rock. The collective attention folded around the detail, focusing in, as they proceeded anxiously, hesitantly, to uncover it. When, some time later, a gorgeous leaf fossil surfaced, the

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180 Jašarević team was stunned: by what came out of their collective toil, by their sheer luck, as well as by the evidentiary, dating potential that the material – they were guessing – will hold in the hands of the lead archaeologist. Standing with me on the edge of the trench was R, a self-appointed spokesperson for the Spanish volunteers and an influential blogger in the Spanish-speaking cyberspace. R1 was impressed:  ‘And these are ordinary people! They came searching for the truth’. La gente pobra (poor people) is how the Spanish among some 40 formal volunteers in this shift described themselves: as the poor folk most affected by the global economic recession. Since the Spanish property bubble burst in 2008, the construction workers have been out of regular work. One was collecting unemployment benefits, another was applying his woodworking skills to custom-made home furnishing contracts, and the third one was picking up odd jobs and planning to move to the countryside in some sort of subsistence economy unless the Spanish economy would bounce back. Each one had decided on the spur of the moment to volunteer at the pyramids for 2 weeks, well aware of the ironies of performing trabajo gratis (unremunerated labour), in the midst of a financial crisis – personal and national. Disappointment followed the initial discoveries. The promised rental of the electric drill that was required to widen the crack fell through, halting the search for the entrance and exposing ambivalence and messiness of the project’s formal organiser:  the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation. While they neither found the pyramids nor personally experienced any unusual phenomena commonly attributed to the sites in the valley, these Spanish volunteers told me that they found something precious and entirely unexpected: each other.

Pyramids in Central Bosnia: An Odd Siting This chapter may come as a surprise, at best, or out of place, at worst, in the volume that concerns social life in ‘mature Dayton BiH’. The editors have given us compelling reasons for using this ‘spatiotemporal label’ as well as for thinking through a handful of chronotopes marking experiential specificity and historical currency of the place that, otherwise, tends to be somewhat stuck in generic representations of ethnonational conflict, reconciliation, transition and such. Coming at the tail end of this book and minding a popular science project, I raise a slight objection to the list of proposed chronotopes, suggesting that the unusual appeal of the pyramids and recurrent gatherings in central BiH cannot be easily folded into the conventions of the research genre that (1) foregrounds the space of nation-state even as it deconstructs the ethno-national aspirations and affiliations; and (2) frames the narrative by discrete markers of recent events and local histories, although it asks about trans-historical trends and entanglements. This is not a polemical objection that seeks to undo or redo the volume’s propositions, all of which are grounded in admirable ethnographic observations. Rather, it is a question

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Excavating the Common Ground 181 raised over the inventory of situated temporalities that, I worry, may foreclose research possibilities in BiH, if taken too much for granted. In other words, I write from the vantage point of a curious project that sits uneasily with the series of ‘when and wheres’ proposed in the volume’s opening, to suggest that the pyramid’s apparent misplacement in the local landscape need not confirm the obvious (it is an oddity, a joke, a scam, or a fantasy), but could open up further our indices of reference and relevance for research objects that are oddly sited anywhere because of their transnational, global, planetary, or universalist orientation. In central BiH, on the grounds of a promissory public science project that advertises radical participation, I  have observed some unexpected communities as they emerge and fail, recur and fade away, rearrange and regroup elsewhere. What draws people to Visoko valley is a controversial proposition that the natural landscape disguises and conceals archaeological, architectural and technological treasures. What sustains collective attention, however – even as the excavation efforts dwindle or disappoint  – is a bunch of blurry research objects whose nature remains indecisive under the scrutiny of conventional and inventive investigative technologies and methodologies. Overlooking many features of the pyramids project, this chapter seeks to describe gatherings and affiliations it inspires, while proposing several ways of reading these socialities in the light of their irreducible particularity, as well as within the context of ‘mature Dayton BiH’ or more generally, within the greater field of global knowledge production. In a preview of the story that follows, let me say that I will first dispel two misconceptions of the Bosnian pyramids most commonly found in the media, in lay, or professional commentaries. One imbues the excavations with ethno-national passions that search for treasures of ethnic heritage and founding myths, and the other dismisses the project as simply a fraud, duping the gullible, mostly international, participants and publics. Next, I deal briefly with the more general problem of scientific knowledge and denunciative claims, because we can treat the Visoko project seriously only if we question the presumed authority and obviousness of modern science. Having thus cleared some conceptual grounds, the rest of the chapter draws the reader closer to some sites and events of gathering and dispersing. It attends to the shared intensities of being, thinking and working together and lavishes attention on the kind of stuff that clutters and animates collective efforts. The communities that form and expire on the common grounds of an uncertain project may be unexpected and unintended in contemporary BiH, but they raise issues of a broader significance, in my view, insofar as they point towards tendencies and sentiments that are non-national and non-local to begin with.

Post-National Excavations Since the announced discovery of the pyramids in 2005, the Visoko area has drawn scores of volunteers, visitors, researchers and tourists from across BiH, ex-Yugoslav neighbourhood and from further afield:  Europe, parts

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182 Jašarević of Asia and Latin America, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Beyond the visits and field investigations in Visoko, Bosnian pyramids are multiply investigated and assembled – as a research object and a problem – at a distance, through all sorts of regional and global, virtual and travelling arrangements. In a variety of virtual, national, or international venues, former visitors, volunteers and supporters mobilise around the project and recruit participants and resources through public lectures or enthusiastic accounts of their personal experiences. Some address their congregations, others speak to their friends or sympathetic strangers; others still advertise the investigations to their professional associates, patients, clients, or fellows in intentional communities. Similarly, many online niches and networks had sprung up devoted to collecting and evaluating evidence, to venturing interpretations and otherwise collaborating, discussing, or disputing the pyramids. All kinds of field findings, from organic matter to found artefacts, from air and soil samples to records of electromagnetic resonance, from maps to geospatial surveys, are circulated and analysed. Samples are said to travel to laboratories from Ukraine to Italy, and lab findings are in turn advertised and questioned. Involved in the data collection, analysis and publication is a range of private businesses from media outlets to geospatial consultancies and interested parties and intermediaries:  from engineers to investors, from inventors to alternative medical therapists, from Sarajevo to London to Fairfax, VA to Abu Dhabi. Put simply, in addition to inbound traffic of visitors and technologies to Visoko, field investigations in the valley generate still more massive outbound traffic of research materials and artefacts. Much of the evidence, of counterarguments, publications and narratives are also generated neither ‘here’ nor ‘there’, but in the back-and-forth of travelling, wondering, posting, arguing, commenting and suspecting. While international and national academics loudly denounced the pyramids and local lobbies urged the federal government to cease the financial support of the project (see Jašarević n.d.), the non-governmental Sun Foundation that organises international volunteering in 2-week shifts from May to September, cited hundreds of thousands volunteered labour hours in 2007 as a proof of its ability to mobilise international support and effectively run an archaeological dig. What to make of these collective energies? Gatherings in Visoko are not working towards a local history, nor are they digging for some ethno-national origins, although a number of international observers hastily depicted the Bosnian pyramids as artefacts of ethnically specific claims. A  2009 article in the Smithsonian, for instance, confidently states that many Bosnians have embraced pyramid theories and ‘particularly those from among the country’s ethnic Bosniaks (or Bosnian Muslims)’. The article further claims that the ruins of the medieval town of Visoko on the very top of Visočica hill, and the pyramid whose walls are being excavated on the side of the mound, together create ‘icons’ of ‘considerable symbolic resonance for Bosniaks. The belief that Visoko was a cradle of European civilisation and that the Bosniaks’ ancestors were master builders who

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Excavating the Common Ground 183 surpassed even the ancient Egyptians has become a matter of ethnic pride’ (Woodard 2009). The author seems unaware of the fact that medieval history figures little among most lay Bosniaks and that regions tend to be inwardly focused on their cultural-historical legacies, making it rather unlikely for the ruins of one of several medieval Bosnian courts in central BiH to signal any unifying national power to the Bosniaks as a whole; let alone the fact that devout Muslims are more inclined to think historically of the eastward connections that blossomed during Ottoman BiH. Moreover, people from central to northeastern BiH I talked to argued for and against the pyramids on the basis of their scientific credibility, their technological and therapeutic significance, and their potential for the tourist industry, rather than their ethnic merits. The Smithsonian cites two North American academics, an anthropologist and a ‘Balkan specialist’, both of whom are making assumptions:  the pyramids are ‘narratives common to the former Eastern block’, ‘symptomatic of a traumatized society’, and are told by ‘people desperate for self-affirmation and in need of money’. The pyramid discoverer, Osmanagić, is quoted as saying that the pyramids precede any of the regions’ three dominant ethnicities and religions, but his words read as disingenuous or unconvincing, preceded as they are by citations of authoritative doubters as well as by a quick survey of his other outlandish theories about secret realms: from world-historical to extraterrestrial. The journalist and the academics are jointly inscribing the pyramids in the ethno-national rhetoric, as if the nationalist affects – themselves irrational – readily explain all kinds of ‘desperate’, insensible attachments. The pyramids, I suggest, are appealing precisely in non-national or deliberately post-national terms. The excavations proceed under the banner of relevant and cosmopolitan science rather than any state; the inquiry aims at ecological and technological implications of the pyramids proposal; the participation hoped for refers to democratised access to research and knowledge production; and no one I met is content with finding a ‘cradle of European civilisation’ – at stake is no less than the search for more universalist, global history of the human species (see Jašarević n.d.). While I cannot unpack these condensed propositions here, I hope to paint an image of socialities that well up around aspirations and causes that cannot be pigeonholed into national geographies of belonging. The article in the Smithsonian, conveniently, also ventures the other, complementary depiction of the pyramids as a case of popular delusions: a ‘mania has descended upon Bosnia’ (Woodard 2009: 2). Woodard’s explanatory brew includes staple articles of pop-psychology and journalist criticism, as well as the authoritative scepticism of accredited archaeologists: the cunning of the principal project instigator, Osmanagić, ‘the charlatan’, crowd psychology, pseudo-archaeology and fringe publics. Painted in the background is a stock image of an opportunist, small-town tourist industry where entrepreneurs of Visoko cashed in by marketing the pyramid image onto anything, from flip-flops to pizzas Woodard 2009: 2).

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184 Jašarević Again, observing the site with an ethnographic patience gleans a more complicated image, whose contours I am going to sketch out with two brief points. First, the pyramids initially mobilised Visoko residents, Visočane. People participated in self-organised work brigades that applied themselves to excavations and ground clearing, while others fed them and rooted for them, and many more still monitored work progress and took seriously the promise that pyramids could surface or, at least, turn around the depressed urban economy. So many Visočani I talked to have stories of their involvement with the pyramids in the early days and over the first few years, stories which were told in the wake of a disappointment with the project’s organisation that decidedly set over the town’s inhabitants by 2010. While the pyramids still figure in Visoko everyday lives, participants mostly come from elsewhere in BiH or further afar. The cause for engagement and the idea of the pyramids have been changing from year to year and from hands to hands, but there never has been a moment when the project’s scope was distinctly ‘local’ or ‘national’. Second, attracted to the project were mostly people who were intermittently enthusiastic and sceptical, yet consistently inquisitive and curious. This is why the Sun Foundation’s boast about the ‘hours of volunteered labour’ inadequately grasps the collective expenditures, sentiments and commitments to the inquiry that made the Visoko resarch project a vital undertaking for the many involved, but that also continuously undermined the formal project with the keen and constant questioning of all the tasks and premises. Volunteering was an exercise in explorative curiosity, rather than regimented work. It generated pleasures of theoretical inquiry and intensity of togetherness, rather than value. People volunteered their time off from school, work, or unemployment. They spent their savings to join in the exploring and surveying, ground clearing and excavating. They came to ‘see for themselves’ what was there and to try their hand in field research as well as in speculating, theorising, trying and testing the hypotheses and rumours about the hidden, the evident, or revealed wonders of the valley. People worked enthusiastically and playfully. They shared meals, nursed each other’s injuries, comforted and confided in each other. Some played and partied hard, speculated, fell in love, argued and made up. All took part, more or less deliberately, in composing temporary communities grounded in the collective commitment to research and to science, of sorts.

Excavating the Common Ground What kind of science is being invoked, practised or aspired to among the participants? Put differently, as conventional accounts of the pyramids, including the Smithsonian article, usually dismiss the project as a case of pseudo-science, how do we approach ethnographically a ‘science’ that is so readily denounced as false? Pseudo-science is a ready-made rubric of denunciation (see Gordin 2012; Stengers 2000, 2003) that confidently arbitrates in the long dispute over

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Excavating the Common Ground 185 demarcation between science proper and improper means of inquiry. Those who use it are more or less unreflexive about the general uncertainties of the scientific enterprise everywhere (see Pigliucci 2010; Fagan 2006). Most of all, the charge of pseudo-science, fired from the hip, muffles the sounds and meanings of the key word – ‘science’ – that animates the pyramids endeavour. Of limited use is also a more generous term of citizen science, which grasps a growing trend in a participatory scientific research, particularly in the ecology and environmental sciences. Citizen scientist has been defined as ‘a volunteer who collects and/or processes data as a part of a scientific enquiry’ (Silvertown 2009: 467). Although citizen science initiatives are often a response to popular anxieties about democratic knowledge production, the terms of inquiry, objects of concern and relevant questions are exclusively articulated by professional scientists (see Irwin 2001:  14). Conversely, participation in the Bosnian pyramids project entails a conflicted relationship with science, as the field of institutionally legitimated ideals and practices, and proceeds under the sign of participants’ exclusion from normative citizenship:  the mainstream public whose commitment to modern reason and consensual reality can be counted on. Moreover, gatherings around the pyramids in BiH explicitly question the relevance of science to the wider community. They tend to wonder how a popular orientation towards scientific research could reform knowledge practices, contribute to a better life on planet Earth, and bring about a more inclusive and nurturing community that transcends parochial distinctions of class, race and nationality. Participants come together on no other grounds except the appeal of a participatory research project whose matters of concern do not add up to a coherent project. Moreover, the more attention is focused the more the overall project blurs, revealing multiple objects and many possible ways of framing them, which sometimes overlap and clash but often simply co-exist, discretely related. Such a blurred object of collective attention is kindred to Susan Leigh Star’s (Star 2010; see also Star and Griesemer 1989) ‘boundary object’, which lends itself to multiple scientific investigations and pragmatic arrangements, whereby collaborators attend to the various features of the object of inquiry. They work without agreement, but also without conflict, she suggests, because the overall nature of the object is never in question. In the case of the Bosnian pyramids, however, the nature of the project and its constitutive objects themselves are scrutinised both by the participants and onlooking critics: are they real or do they exist only in wild imagination? If indeed real, what is it and how can it be evaluated, known and confirmed?

Controversy ‘At first I thought, “Who are these people? Fruitloops!” I’m a scientist, that’s how I think’, Sana recalls aloud the first time she volunteered her labour to the archaeological digs in the Visoko valley. She heard of the pyramids in

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186 Jašarević the summer of 2007 when she travelled from Australia to an international conference on DNA forensics in nearby Croatia, and toured the region afterwards, stopping by the archaeological site at the urging of a friend. The summer of 2012 was the second time she was spending 2 weeks of her vacation in BiH, doing hard manual work and participating in the intense and tender sociality of her fellow volunteers. We are underground, somewhere along the 900 metre-long maze of tunnels that volunteers have excavated, bit by bit, over the years. Sana is working next to a paramedic from Slovenia; they met in last year’s shift and were thrilled to reunite. The space is dark, except for the narrow streak of flashlight from Sana’s helmet, and confusing: exit signs do not reliably lead to the surface, but rather send one on a detour of passages that change suddenly in width and height, so that one ducks – grateful for the helmet – squeezes by, crawls through, or hesitates in front of entrances to smaller, side tunnels. Sana is pushing a wheelbarrow between two meeting spots:  at one she receives a cartful of gravel and dirt, and at the other she swaps the load for an empty cart with a volunteer who drives it onwards. I tag along. The work of clearing rubble from the tunnels is organised in a line that begins with volunteers assigned to break open the passages with pickaxes or hammers and load the rocks onto wheelbarrows, which are then taken outside, changing hands along the route. Tourists come through on guided tours, walking cautiously over the slippery ground, avoiding the walls that crumble at the slightest touch. The tunnels are still, cool and damp: a sensuous world apart from the hot, bustling surface where a myriad of loosely related pursuits preoccupy volunteers, visitors and the foundation staff throughout the excavation season. Allegedly, Ravne tunnels are a part of a vast underground network that connects the valley and leads to the Pyramid of the Sun. Ravne passages have been cleared with this trajectory in mind, but the many (in)directions of their excavations also spoke of conflicting and haphazard project objectives. By 2014, the tunnels became the primary research focus. Emphasised are their engineering features, the several megaliths they enclose, and the subtle as well as medicinal influences they reputedly emanate. The Bosnian pyramids have always been advertised in compound terms mixing archaeology with off-the-record mystery; ideals of interdisciplinary methodology with calls to reform modern sciences; high technology with uninhibited invention; and artefacts with various intangibles, which nevertheless lend themselves to recording and evaluation. If the controversial statements about the project were initially cautious, they boldened in the face of academic opposition and media campaigns that pitched the project beyond the pale, in the realm of crowd delusions. Sana, a hard scientist and pyramid volunteer, lives the controversy surrounding the project. Having noticed that a long-injured shoulder stopped hurting after the first spell of volunteering in the tunnels, she began translating between the volunteers’ language of mysterious influences and therapeutic energies and the scientific language of molecular vibrations. ‘I thought

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Excavating the Common Ground 187 to myself’, she says, ‘Wait a second, everything I do is based on the fact that molecules vibrate. There is energy, we know that’. Sana shifted from thinking of volunteers as ‘fruitloops’ to making friends with the kinds of people, she says, that she would otherwise never have met. But she also narrates a more subtle shift from thinking as a scientist, matter-of-factly, to filtering out statements that science or commonsense would dispute: she no longer speaks of the pyramids to her family – who would think her ‘mad’, she worries – nor to her colleagues in the forensic lab who wondered aloud, upon seeing the Sun Foundation’s website: ‘What are you doing there?’ The language of healing energies featured on the web, she realised, will not convince any scientist nor convey the fact that metaphysical and mysterious phenomena existed within the techno-scientifically minded project. The pyramids have reformatted her map of the world, dividing it into realms charted by science and oceanic spaces outside it. A comfort with vagueness becomes a counterpoint to scientific claims to precision. ‘There is definitely something here’, Sana says. For many others involved with the pyramids, energy is only an initial proposition that invites further speculations. A man that everyone knows as Zombi, who acted as the foundation’s lead person at the Ravne tunnel excavations until 2013, advised me: ‘When you write, open up brackets and leave them blank, because we don’t know yet what is here…’. The uncertainty excites the collective efforts, but it can also curtail the focus to finite micro-projects (the fossil leaf) or recommend an immersion in the work-play for its own sake. At a new site just marked on the slope of what has been named the Pyramid of Love, one day in 2012, a small youthful team was making the first marks on the landscape. Carving steps into the top soil, so as to render the site more accessible, were a newcomer from California, a young woman from London, and her close friend, a Bosnian-born man living in Norway, the team leader who was an agricultural engineer from Croatia, and the ethnographer. All joined volunteering informally – this was no longer possible in 2013 – except for the engineer, who simply outstayed his registration for a volunteering session. The Californian was handling a pickaxe; the tool animated his whole body, tensing it, bending it, stretching it, rustling his long, braided hair, upsetting the bright beads around his neck and wrists, and enlivening the foliage of pink, orange, and green tattoos across his arms. Between the blows, he casually asked:  ‘What are we digging here?’ ‘Pyramids, dude’, the Croatian engineer answers. We laugh.

Uncertain Enterprise The vagueness of the project has been fabulously effective. What exactly is being excavated is uncertain: buried ancient pyramids is only one among the competing propositions, and even the ‘pyramid’ earns multiple definitions around the basic, controversial premises:  pyramidal forms are a global phenomena whose engineering and orientation point to technological rather than merely symbolic or ritual design (see Jašarević n.d.). It is the prospects

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188 Jašarević of contemporary applications of what are termed ‘ancient technologies’ that stimulate collection of various kinds of data outside the interest of conventional archaeological methodology, such as electromagnetic fields at the sun pyramid, the sound phenomena and negative ions in the Ravne tunnels, as well as interactions of underground radiation with personal energy. Teams of independent or invited researchers, therefore, deployed or referenced a motley of devices, from dousing rods to radars, from polycontrast interference photography to hyperspectral and geospatial imaging to meditational insight (see Jašarević 2013). Like technology in general, the participants propose, ancient technologies are obscured by technical codes and secrets and are illegible within the modernist distinctions between artifactual and natural, sacred and technical. Composite objects, the pyramids are therefore situated within a more broadly significant landscape, where many discrete objects and sites are themselves charged. It is here that Star’s notion of a boundary object offers some analytical insight. Star, of course, is interested in much different research settings – from nineteenth-century British medical archives on brain studies to a ‘virtual lab’ emerging in the 1990s through a cooperation of computer scientists and worm biologists. Nonetheless, from within the domains of science proper, Star argues that consensus is not a necessary condition for successful cooperation, and that work proceeds around a ‘boundary object’, which sits, poorly defined, between communities of practice, each of which tacks back and forth between the loose, global definition and the more specific, local one, defined in the course of micro-action (Star 2010:  608; see also Star and Griesemer 1989). A  simple example is a map, which need not be accurate in order to be useful as a common point of reference and an object of communication ‘without actually demarcating any real territory’ (Star 2010: 608). Research objects, thus, are more generally multiple and undecided but, Starr insists, this is not a multiplicity of meanings but rather a manifold materiality that sits in between the collaborators. Emphasising materiality, Starr underlines the reality of the challenge that such collective efforts negotiate, and yet conflicts do not arise because work does not require substantial definitions of the objects. The reality of boundary objects derives ‘from action not from a sense of prefabricated stuff or “thing”-ness’ (Star 2010: 603). Such definition of materiality already makes possible a more patient reading of objects related to the Bosnian pyramid claims, but what is needed here, I dare propose, is investigation of two families of objects. On the one hand, there are blurred research objects attracting investigative attention but that do not act fully, not all the time, not for everyone, not to the degree or in the form that can be confidently detected. Included here are impressive satellite and hyperspectral images, as well as areal shots of the area, wielded frequently in the hands of the pyramid detractors or sympathisers showing absolutely nothing evident to the untrained eyes. Similarly, geological maps in the area show the Bosnian pyramids valley to be nothing out of the ordinary, but the maps entirely obscure the historical conditions of their production

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Excavating the Common Ground 189 (see Jašarević 2013). Pyramids, thus, are objects present latently and simmering with potential. Their detectable qualities and buried traces register inconclusively but persistently, as a recalcitrance to be either dismissed or defined. Perhaps we could think of blurring, the act of objects coming in and out of focus depending on the metrics and technologies, as a form of material relevance. Especially as everyone involved keeps fine-tuning their lenses and wondering what is there in the valley while hoping that the buried truth of the pyramid-related promises, or else the fakeness of it all, will be uncovered, eventually. On the other hand, there is the family of more homely objects that regularly take part in composing socialities on a more quotidian basis within the context of volunteering, which is itself a time and space of exception. I turn to the implications of such human and thingly cohabitations in the next sections.

A Communal Experiment In the summer of 2012, Dragon Nest (Zmajevo Gnijezdo) was the home of a lively, ongoing experiment in nesting a community at a foothill of a pyramid. Tucked between a forest and a riverbed, it housed volunteers with different stakes in the pyramids research project, of conflicting dispositions and various professional and class backgrounds. Dragon Nest accommodated collective rhythms of volunteers and visitors who came in the summer to work and play for a few weeks on the Bosnian pyramids project, and tended to linger longer than anticipated or to leave only reluctantly, responding to the duties of a life elsewhere, promising to return. Volunteers who lodged elsewhere, hung out at Dragon Nest after work. Igor, a volunteer from northeastern BiH, who extended his visit indefinitely, negotiated the house rental, while R.B., the foundation’s resident archaeologist at the time, footed the bill. They opened the doors to the community-to-be, counting on people’s contributions to afford the monthly rent. Settling in required major cleaning and repairs but, Igor fondly remembers, there were plenty of willing hands: a van of hippies touring the region dropped by the pyramids and pledged their help. Some 14 people, from teenagers to middle-agers from all over Europe pitched their tents in the yard and applied to the tasks of cutting the grass, cleaning the carpets, painting the walls and ritually purifying and energising Dragon Nest, until their bare, spontaneous joy and a penchant for splashing naked in the river scandalised the villagers in the area. And they left. Traces of the initial settlers remained as the house filled and emptied over the summer:  in the bathroom, for instance, on the wall tiles adorned with swirling patterns, hand-painted in acrylics that sat stashed in a corner next to a jar of brushes, ready for someone further inspired. The water tank read: ‘You are here and now. Respect this place’. It was a ‘runaway toilet’, a sign on the bathroom door warned, but it took a flushing to understand what it meant: the water from the tank dropped onto the squatting toilet, sprung back, fountain-like, flooding the bathroom floor. The residents learned to

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190 Jašarević flush with one foot in the hallway. Toilet breaks, in short, were eventful. When the water fixtures gave out, which happened often given the crankiness of an aged water pump, the residents took baths in the river and worried together about the plumbing and their bodily waste. The house, however, was not a museum to the founding effort, but a palace of trials – its surfaces drew and collected the touches of subsequent decorators, residents and guests. New marks adhered and disappeared, artefacts joined permanent collections, furniture moved around, spaces were re-purposed and objects were randomly crafted into an art or a joke. At the bar, for instance, a few unusually shaped stones that someone touched up with a black marker, posed as a lighter and a cell phone that residents solemnly passed to each other whenever they remembered to have a laugh, which was as often as the smokers displaced their lighters or callers emptied out their cell phone credit. Dragon Nest housed the simple joys of experimenting and living together. With a handful of volunteers still awake long into one August night, R.B. doodled on a piece of paper, mapping out his vision of the ancient technologies operative in the valley’s pyramids. They contemplated the significance of the pyramids’ positions, of the underground waters crisscrossing the entire valley and of the detected electromagnetic phenomena, as well as strategised about best ways to enter the structures. Thus mapping uncertainty is not unlike the Star’s map that need not reference a real territory in order to foster cooperation, except that this joint thinking relies on intense and spontaneous, not only effective, affiliations. Earlier in the evening, one Lorenzo made dinner for everyone, the residents and the visitors. He fussed over a simple tomato sauce, which was almost done, except that the flavour was missing something. He asked for help: he offered a dipped wooden spoon to R.B., who smelled it, sipped it, suggested more pepper and passed it on. The spoon moved from one nose and lip to another, consecutively teasing nostrils and touching lips, which, cautioned by the whiff of heat, parted with anticipation and deliberation. Here was another rite of gathering around a shared object that was on trial and whose qualities were diversifying with each singular encounter between the spooned flavours and distinct taste buds and tasting talents. The spoon arrived and departed one person at a time and circled the table in a dance of giving, licking, taking, guessing and passing finally back to Lorenzo, emptied. The sauce on the stove, awaiting final touches, was a finite origin and an end of this collective handling. Dragon Nest converted the banal or private daily rites  – brushing teeth, keeping clean, cooking, or doing the laundry  – into luxuriously inventive occasions for bonding under unusual circumstances.

A Founding Effort The house also housed a predictable tension. Its residents were weary of any foundational act that would discipline spontaneous energies with working regimes and routine arrangements. Sooner or later, though, everyday life

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Excavating the Common Ground 191 tended to make someone practically minded:  garbage had to be disposed, water pump fixed, groceries bought, communal meals cooked, money collected and sensibly spent. When Dragon Nest’s host, Igor, who travelled from northeastern Bosnia to work on the pyramids 2 years in a row, would tire of acting as ‘the resident adult’, he instigated some revolving duties and a few norms of conduct. His tentative reforms were subjected to collective evaluations:  decisions waivered, action plans expired or were resurrected. A sign above the kitchen and dining area at first warned: ‘Take your shoes off’, directing, for a while, the foot traffic to a shoe lot, before capitulating to the rule breaking and disappearing, only to be reinstated, in a different tone: ‘No shoe space (flower, flower, smiley)’. Under this new banner, one August evening in 2012, the Dragon Nest residents and the volunteers residing elsewhere, sat at the kitchen table for hours to draft a founding charter. R.B. and some seasoned volunteers had long been dreaming of an association that could engage more equitably with the Sun Foundation and better represent volunteers’ concerns. Drafting followed the same mode of thrill and hesitance textually to articulate and, eventually, to bind the elastic cohort legally. The key terms of the charter were scrutinised and disputed at length: ‘Who is a volunteer?’ ‘What do we mean by work?’ ‘What is our project?’ The foundation was unsympathetic to this kind of scrutiny and operated with more practical categories:  a volunteer was formally registered, compliant with the given work plans, residing in designated quarters and, as of 2013, paying a daily volunteering fee. Volunteering, according to the foundation, worked under the principal pyramid hypothesis. On the ground, however, many volunteers never formally registered, but rather dropped by or stayed beyond the initial time commitment. Some questioned the assigned tasks and developed their own research interests and methods. Most of all, they cared to nurture an open research community, but when the opportunity arose to establish it, late at night around the kitchen table, the progress was slow and detours many, leading one participant to complain aloud: ‘This community is born out of frustration’.

Inoperative Communities The charter was drafted, reviewed by other volunteers, celebrated and, eventually, turned down by the Sun Foundation. Dragon Nest did not outlive the summer. Its failure to endure or reappear as much as all the exuberance, inventiveness, differential interests, and founding trials are the prime clues to the nature of the communities that gather around the Bosnian pyramids project. This community ideally frustrates its members, as much as anyone else, who would try to still it with definitions and commitments. It remained inoperative, haphazardly upholding and upturning the ideals of productivity and utility. It worked, though, on the premises of a vague project. While Dragon Nest folded, the charter writers and other volunteers remained virtually connected and committed to the Visoko valley, outside of the formal interpretive efforts

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192 Jašarević of the Sun Foundation. Volunteering with the Sun Foundation appeared to be a more straightforward affair the following year, although doubts and challenges persisted, sometimes in the form of volunteers’ labour strikes. Some former Dragon Nest residents returned to the archaeological sites in Visoko the following year, under different arrangements. Dragon Nest and less intended gatherings occasioned by the project put into practice an idea of a community that some post-foundational political philosophers, Jean-Luc Nancy among them, dream of when they dream of the more expansive (because pervasive and unrecoverable) sway of the political dispositions over the formal politics that tend to trade off social interests for strategic alliances and working compromises. Nancy sometimes defines this community as ‘inoperative’ (Nancy 1991), formed for no explicit purpose around the sharing of experiential, existential, or civic events and dispersing before it could be effectively mobilised. The communities occasioned in central BiH are fleshlier, messier, as well as utterly cluttered with stuff. As this ethnographic narrative suggested, those who gather around the pyramids alternately scrutinised their commitments to a collectivity and strategised how best to remain connected. All along, the gatherings are mediated through material things so substantially that we ought to make some room for the eventfulness, not only sensuousness, of the communities’ material environment.

Times of Experiment, Spaces of Popular Science Previous pages showed how the circumstances of a controversial, popular science project gather temporary and contingent, yet intense communities. While pyramid-related affiliations gather and disperse, the blurred research objects and the ongoing research project reproduce an effective presence, one that inspires engagement, provokes a response, makes people wonder. In the near shadow of the pyramids, Visoko residents lived with the evident intractability of the controversial claim that lost the appeal of a fresh promise, but at the same time retained the question mark over the obviousness of ancient and modern technologies. In ending, I  wish to take a stock of descriptions that suggest ways of investigating contemporary Bosnia in spaces and times that are not primarily oriented to the chronotope of nation-state and its formal history. There are the aspirations to a globally relevant science organising group endeavours with a different historical horizon, one concerned with scientific modernity, its limitations and its anticipated, post-modern, post-secular transcendence. Moreover, a popular science project is mobile and takes place across transnational locations, virtual and otherwise. Then there are the seasons and dynamics of a research project and of numerous spontaneous trials in volunteering and exploring. Project-based communities that I encountered entail a different sense of event, duration and closure while their regular gatherings in Visoko also mark the residential calendars with seasonal reminders of the

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Excavating the Common Ground 193 town’s global entanglements and of repetitions of the sustained, collective effort. And while Visoko residents, and to a lesser extent the Sun Foundation, are moored in the intricate local and regional dynamics of electoral politics and lucrative party affiliations, the post-national premises of the pyramids project are equally real, generating multiple spatial and temporal conventions of their own. There are also space times of intensity and of experiment that materialise in zones that are neither familial nor private, are at once mundane and exceptional – a kitchen, a toilet, a trench. The pyramids of central BiH form a peculiar anthropological problem, but a retinue of keywords and research objects, I  think, is more generally relevant if we cast our gaze to things that refuse to sit still within the frame of geopolitical imaginary. Put into ethnographic terms, this chapter makes the pyramids into a methodological signpost that says simply: there are no subsidiary times spaces in the research field.

Note 1 I reserve first name initials for the interlocutors who were prominent in the project or kept a highly visible public profile, whether in relation to the pyramids or otherwise. For the most part, I use pseudonyms unless the interlocutor is so closely and specifically engaged with the project that it is difficult not to name them or to anonymise their contributions and opinions.

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Commentary Svjetlana Nedimović Political science corrupts. Be it theoretical or empirical, it corrupts its faithful servants into modelling social reality by throwing over the daily commotion a rather neat web of concepts and turning the chaos of particulars into institutions, collective identities and rationalisable actions. This, however, political scientists do not necessarily grasp until they clash with ethnographic studies, if ever they do. And even once they clash with those, their urge may well be to dismiss the work that easily disrupts neat structures without any evident purpose. Political work or praxis corrupts even more. Regardless of its ideological matrix, it pushes actors towards instrumentalisation of the life-world: of situations, events, moments, individuals, collectivities. Once confronted with ethnographic studies that seek to recover the worth of singular occurrences as such, political workers may well experience the urge to dismiss these insights as naive and pointless. Much of the literature on BiH over the last decades  – academic and non-fiction alike – has fallen prey to these two frameworks of understanding the country’s social reality. Even the rare excursions into multiple interlaced realities of social life and human experience beyond the two deal primarily with topics generated by the mainstream: identities, culture of memory, transition and so forth. In that sense, the two papers in this section reveal not only some of the fine fabric of BiH reality, but an entirely different reality of networks and communities in post-war BiH, which appear to stand dominant understandings on their head. In the piece by Nebojša Šavija-Valha, the marginalised concept of raja is recovered as an undercurrent of mainstream narratives of post-war BiH where only kinship ties and ethnic belonging matter. Strikingly, however, raja does not confront the primacy of ethnic identification with the centrality of the (civic) individual, which is the dominant dichotomy in recent political analyses, but with the centrality of the group requiring that every excess of individual personality is abandoned for the sake of entry. In raja, one peculiar collectivity which shapes everyday urban life is opposed to the collectivity that shapes political life – but this is opposition without opposition insofar as raja never leaves its own ironic discourse: ‘Raja only “irons”, namely renounces power, so it has no power in itself to resist any external power; it expects from power that it displaces itself and socialises into raja – if not now, then some time in the future’. This generates a transgenerational survival strategy in a society seized by ethnic identities, but at the same time perpetuates the ethnicised political reality.

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Commentary 195 Larisa Jašarević’s piece moves even further away from the mainstream narratives of BiH, offering an inspired insight into a radically fluid community, which has been shaping, without ever acquiring a shape, around ‘controversial’ archaeological excavation work on the so-called Bosnian pyramids. The ‘inoperative community’ emerging seems as far as possible from all analytical interpretations of BiH reality and social groups assumed or observed. All about it challenges the standard notions of community with which the dominant patterns of knowledge production in BiH operate – there is touching and sharing, there is being-in-community, but the community itself is not there for anything strategic or purposeful, not even for maintaining itself. It exists without continuity and fixed meanings. And then it exists no longer. Both pieces point to the limitations of the dominant narratives on BiH society regarding everything that remains outside of their analytical nets. At the same time, they point to the limitations of the occurrences that they narrate. In both cases, these limitations are of a political nature. The paths of the two pieces do, however, part at some point. The piece by Nebojša Šavija-Valha communicates with the dominant political reality and does not entirely escape its normative grip – by the standards of mainstream politics, raja is a political subject aborted. Larisa Jašarević’s study, on the other hand, rejects closure into any categories of mainstream political reality. Her text speaks for the political, which is political in its dislocation from politics proper – the political that does not confront, nor does it oppose, but abandons politics proper altogether. But politics proper does not easily release its grip over social reality. If raja is politically impotent towards the political elites, the volunteers’ community is politically impotent towards those who benefit from their seemingly nonstrategic, in some cases even performative, work. However, the consciously ironic distancing of raja from papci, as well as the inability of volunteers to go beyond being-in-common to acting-in-common – which finally breaks them up – reveal that political praxis is not alien to these communities even if they resist expansionism of political instrumentalisation in society. The political is there in the nucleus of these communities, yet it remains frustrated and unrealised precisely because there is no space for direct confrontation with dominant patterns – either they remain on the margins, or they are absorbed by the space ruled by dominant political actors. The words of this judgement, of course, are not themselves immune to corruption, in particular corruption by political praxis. Nevertheless, they point to the paradox haunting the undercurrents of BiH society. And this is at the same time the paradox haunting ethnographic studies of the undercurrents: in order to contribute properly to and challenge the mainstream production of knowledge in and on this part of the world, they will have to move from dislocation strategies to direct encounters. Direct encounters here would mean explicit contextualisation: relocating the dislocated into the mainstream reality and reading its meanings. What remains of the ethnic interpretation of the Bosnian pyramids when confronted with the communities that partake

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196 Nedimović of their material reality without ever being materialised themselves? What remains of the ethnically homogenising collectivities that fail to produce solidarity networks such as raja? If, however, ethnographic studies stage such direct encounters, they actually accept the rules of the game designed by mainstream political narration and actively resisted by the interests and agendas of ethnography. Paradoxes cannot be resolved, of course. But they can be used to create fractures in monolithic representations of social reality. In order to do so, rather than just dislocate its dissonant insights and keep them on the margins, ethnographic research should however go the full circle  – it should seek to disturb by returning to the political, both by acknowledging and explicating the different instances of the political in the occurrences that are studied, and by relating it to the ‘political’ proper.

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Afterword Afterwards: Beyond Regionally Based Theoretical Metonyms Michelle Obeid What does life look like 20  years after war? In the absence of everyday violence, what does the ‘return’ to some sense of stability and ‘normality’ entail? And what social, economic and political conditions exist for the reinstatement, or rather the construction, of a life deemed ‘normal’ or ‘good’? How do experiences, memories and epistemologies of a violent, and before that socialist, past linger on and shape the present and the future? The contributors to this volume tackle these questions with great ethnographic depth and sensitivity and present us with a diverse and complex picture of life in ‘mature Dayton’ BiH. As an anthropologist who is a citizen of Lebanon and who began her anthropological project in the immediate years after the end of the war in that country, I  am struck by the curious resonance of experiences, affects and aspirations evoked in this volume. The observations I  make below are therefore embedded in my knowledge of another region and, admittedly, my incessant desire to unseat dominant concepts that seem to have set in stone our understanding of the complexities of certain societies and the language we use to explain them. A set of rigid intellectual assumptions about the ‘war’, ‘post-war’ and essentialised, ahistorical forms of belonging, such as sectarianism, have rendered social life in Lebanon not only monolithic, but also incapable of change. In fact, one might even say that sectarianism (or confessionalism) has become a ‘theoretical metonym’ (Appadurai 1986; Abu-Lughod 1989) for Lebanon in a way that ‘ethno-nationalism’ has for BiH. Lebanon and BiH, while sharing the experiences of an Ottoman past, are, of course, very different places with different histories, geographical, linguistic and cultural particularities. Yet, I see some major continuities making a strong claim for a potentially inspiring cross-regional and comparative conversation. I therefore take this opportunity to pull out of this volume a few achievements that I think trump some tired tropes that have overstayed their welcome, and that point to new directions for understanding ‘afterlives’ of conflict.

Against Freeze-Framing The volume encourages us to reconsider the manner in which we think about time, especially when it comes to understanding societies that have

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198 Obeid undergone violent conflicts. Landmark events such as peace agreements naturally tend to divide time into ‘before’ and ‘after’. But periodising life in this manner risks collapsing the messiness and undulations of social life into still characterisations. I  think of this type of temporal reasoning as ‘freeze-framing’, a process that gives the illusion of stillness of a ‘phase’. This is something evoked in emic discursive understandings and renditions of people’s lived histories (as pointed out, for example, by Čengić whose interlocutors aligned their narrative positionalities according to time fractured as ‘before, during and after the war’). Yet, one of the strengths of this volume is the sensitive exploration of how past, present and future bleed into one another, despite epochal discourses. People’s practices and aspirations in the now build on and reference a past they knew and experienced as they forge, anticipate and ‘yearn for’ (Jansen 2015) particular futures. Freeze-framing, nevertheless, tends to characterise scholarship and mainstream reflection on post-conflict societies in general. In this reasoning, ‘before the war’ comes to stand, sometimes romantically, for a time when things were better, when life was safer, and when the [socialist] state looked after its citizens. Along similar lines, ‘during the war’ becomes a legitimate excuse for the suspension of services, the breakdown of the state and relationships, carnage, displacement, loss of hope and morality, while ‘after the war’ is imagined as the ‘turning around’, or at least negation of, the war and the time for the normalisation of life. Freeze-framing may show us an obvious perspective, but one wonders what is obscured by such selective foregrounding in the production of knowledge about a place, one that, as the volume suggests, should be co-constituted emically and etically, and therefore critiqued on that same ground? Thinking about Lebanon, recent ethnography has also begun to challenge the taken-for-grantedness of categories in academic, mainstream, media and political discourses that freeze-frame ‘war’ and ‘post-war’. Having to rethink ‘post-war’ is less surprising in the Lebanese context, considering that since the signing of the Ta’if peace agreement in 1990, the country was meant to follow a roadmap for ‘civic peace’ at the heart of which was the project of rebuilding the state. Yet, short of two decades of ‘peace’, the country entered into a state of ongoing instability that warrants a revisiting of the ‘post’ in post-war: we saw high profile political assassinations (including that of the Prime Minister), a war with Israel, violent clashes in the capital and Palestinian camps, bombings, political riots and, more recently, attacks by Islamic State militants. More interestingly, many scholars have begun to revisit the designation of the 1975–1991 period as ‘war’. How different was the so-called period of war from the post-war, considering not just the episodic outbursts of violence but the familiar anxieties, uncertainties, lack of security and lack of services that people experience along with them? Was the period we know as ‘war’ perhaps ‘normal life’ all along? How can we differentiate between violent outbursts and non-violent zones in between  – what do we even call them:  ‘not-war’ (Hermez 2012; Nordstorm 2004)? These questions also allow us to unravel

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Afterword 199 realities that do not fit too neatly with their rubrics, such as pre-war inequalities, frustrations, disappointments and contradictions or the possibility of a rich inter-ethnic, inter-sectarian sociality, acts of solidarity and cooperation in the midst of a sectarian or ethno-national war. In this vein, the editors of this volume are right to complicate the ‘Dayton’ period by taking seriously the substantial passage of time since the signing of the agreement. The coining of the expression ‘mature Dayton BiH’ in the Introduction brings to the fore, and makes more visible, the scalar transformations at local, national and global levels that shape and drive people’s lives in the present. It gives us a sense of how ‘people engage with what they consider their predicament in Dayton BiH as it lasts over time’ (this volume, p. 19). The immediate period after Dayton held different imaginaries, affects, aspirations, evaluative frameworks and realities from the time of research captured in the volume (2008–2014). By spatio-temporalising1 mature Dayton BiH, the contributors situate everyday struggles to find jobs, to look after families, to feel secure and existentially mobile (Hage 2005), to ‘produce consensus’ (whether through silence or speech, Jouhanneau; Čengić) and to forge political and social relations in particular (Bakhtinian, chronotopic) ‘time-spaces’. There is not one time-space (a frozen frame) in which people operate. The ‘labyrinth’, the ‘waiting room’ and the ‘swamp’ are but a few chosen representations of life in BiH, and the authors extend the invitation to locate further expressions of the complicated, contradictory realities and how people experience them. In this spirit, I frame this afterword as ‘afterwards’ to highlight at once the plurality of experiences we can gauge at different spatio-temporal junctures and the lenses we as researchers ought to deploy to understand these ‘afterlives’. The idiom of matureness, moreover, is a welcome and necessary political intervention that the editors deploy to contest the infantilisation of societies emerging out of conflict. Think of patronising expressions such as ‘young democracies’ and how they simulate an ongoing need for ‘monitoring’ that claims to justify international regimes of ‘parenting’. While these terms animate the realm of international politics and development, the contributors break them down by showing us their mundane manifestations. What does it mean in the BiH context to teeter on the peripheries of the EU in a time experienced as ‘permanent temporariness’? How does the experience of living under an international gaze translate in everyday dealings, relationships and resources? And how does internationalism carry an air of superiority that becomes at once coveted as a way of living, a savoir vivre, and contested as a system of inequality lurking behind modernist and developmentalist ideologies (Koutková).

Recasting Social and Political Relatedness I wish to draw again on the similarities between Lebanon and BiH. Post-war political processes in Lebanon, in spite of loud slogans promising the ‘institutionalisation of the state’, ‘social justice’ and ‘accountability’, have

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200 Obeid failed to dislodge a regime of connections known as wasta (another word for veze and štele) from ‘the political’. Like Dayton, Ta’if, the Document of National Understanding signed in Saudi Arabia, was the agreement that marked the official end of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). And like Dayton, it introduced a peculiar power-sharing system, also a ‘consociational democracy’, that remains rooted in sectarian divisions and clientelistic modalities that stifle aspirations for ‘equal citizenship’. I remember a striking critique of this unequal regime of relations in the mid-1990s, presented by one satirical playwright who invented the character of the ordinary citizen  – in his play, there is but only one left in a society that is built on opportunist subjectivities and where everyone is connected in ‘extraordinary’ ways (a scene that befits a Sarajevan-raja-type irony, Šavija-Valha). The play explored how this lonesome ‘ordinary citizen’, like the ‘little Bosnian person’ in the Introduction, comes to bear the brunt of his ordinariness, brought upon him by his own obtuseness and naive moral principles that render him dis-connected while everyone else around him flourishes. No doubt these relationships foster inequalities, crystallise hierarchies and nurture a sense of injustice. Even people who rely on them could not disagree. What is remarkable, however, is the persistence in scholarly and mainstream analyses to lock clientelistic forms of relatedness such as wasta, veze and štele in time and space. Whether in Lebanon or BiH, analysts have tended to reduce the deployment of family, party or sectarian/ethnic group connections to primordial and backward ways of being. Ahistorical and unchanging, and even constituting some sort of peculiarly local, non-Western, form of pathology (Koutková; Stubbs), these relationships become the emblem of societal failure to achieve progress. The underlying assumption that drives this line of thinking is that for the realm of politics to function, personal relations need to be weeded out of political processes. Such representations obscure the reconfiguration of these relations, their twisting and turning genealogies, and their complex embeddedness in the ever-shifting realm of the political. They also risk conflating ‘the politicised’ with ‘the political’ (Jouhanneau; Henig). As Henig elegantly put it, any ethnography of ‘the rough ground of the political is first and foremost a matter of sociality whereby relations between friends, neighbours and foes, or between the individual and the state are negotiated in day-to-day struggles for life’ (this volume, p. 48). Perhaps then, we are better off recasting the political: ethnography has always been in a very good position to challenge longstanding essentialisms and to point to versatile ways of understanding how political and social relatedness operate. What dynamics could we then uncover, if we begin to animate and complicate these categories? The ethnography in this volume succeeds in historicising and contextualising these relationships, detecting where they thrive and tracing where they fail. Patronage and social connections proliferate because, at some level, they act as a buffer against a hole created by the absence of some state spaces and the reconfiguration of the state, through peculiar forms

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Afterword 201 of neoliberalisation. Family, community and other personal relations find themselves taking on from where the state withdraws.2 The downsizing of the state in its conventional responsibilities of social protection and the material and affective ramifications this has on individuals and families are points well made in this volume (Brković; Hromadžić). The message from these ethnographies is that these relationships, often deemed ‘corrupt’ by international observers and locals alike, are embedded in already existing social and political constellations; they are ‘homebred’ (Kurtović, this volume, p. 144), ‘context-specific way of performing the new requirements’ such as ‘being flexible’ in a neoliberal world (Brković, this volume, p. 107), even if the ‘governance through patronage’ model may not survive in the face of pressures and shortages of resources, as the February 2014 protests suggest (Kurtović, this volume, p. 144). These relationships emerge situationally, and spatio-temporally, to use the framework of the volume, precisely out of the social, economic and political conditions at play in mature Dayton BiH. Perhaps what we are seeing here is the expansion and even professionalisation of the intimate, in a way that resembles anthropologist Suad Joseph’s (Joseph 1997) argument for Lebanon, where state and non-state spheres collapse in a manner that makes (patriarchal) kinship and personalistic relations (ethnic identification included) fundamentally linked to the state-building enterprise. One might use Joseph’s argument to bring into question the discourse of ‘private versus public’ as a ‘presumed universal necessity in Western classical liberalism for the development of citizenship, civil society and democratic nation statehood’ (Joseph 1997:  74). This is interesting when we consider some of the Western-centric scholarly arguments in the 1990s, particularly on civil society. Writing about the Arab World, Norton for instance, was ‘doubtful that civil society… is sufficiently diverse or mature to lend durability to open, participant systems’ (Norton 1995: 9; emphasis added; note the repetitive infantilising trope). It was precisely the intertwinement of the personal with the political that prompted this kind of analysis.3 The ethnographic details in this volume extend Joseph’s inquiry by taking to task grand universalising concepts and projects such as ‘post-war democratisation’ or ‘development’, at least in terms of their Western classic liberal frameworks: where is the thin line between ‘nepotistic’ veze and ‘neutral and professional’ networking (Koutková)? Why is ‘voting strategically’, and particularly for an uncle or a friend, not considered valid, democratic political participation (Čelebičić; Kurtović)? By disputing the timelessness and rigidity of patron/ client relationships, these questions analytically embed these relations in their social worlds. They also contest widespread discourses of political apathy and instead take seriously the terms on which agency works in social and political life, just as they challenge the limiting versions of ‘progress’ that impose themselves on societies grappling with the end of a war under the gaze of internationalist agendas.

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202 Obeid By the same token, the volume is able to ask not just how, when and why certain relationships like patronage work, but what we overlook when we limit ourselves to the prism of patronage. What other socialities exist outside of these clientelistic frameworks? And what dynamics and loyalties characterise and govern these relations outside of identitarian affinities? We then begin to locate forms of relatedness that are unexpected but not necessarily exceptional, as dominant paradigms would have us believe. A ‘community’ could form ‘for no explicit purpose around the sharing of experiential, existential, or civic events’ and could disperse ‘before it could be effectively mobilised’ (Jašarević, this volume, p. 192), no less. The community Jašarević explores is ‘inoperative’, nevertheless cooperative, and converging around work, play and ‘boundary objects’. Similarly, raja is a community that is based on heterogeneity and difference, yet membership demands socialisation through observing certain codes and cultivating a particular type of an ironic ‘raja-selfhood’ (Šavija-Valha). These socialities transcend ethno-religious, kinship and ethno-national identification. In some cases, they deliberately reject them. By ‘shading’ and disentangling ‘knots’, this volume unravels the complicated struggles and ‘labours’ (affective, relational, political) taking place at multiple layers  – individual, family, neighbourhood, city and state  – at the interchange of particular ‘time-spaces’ in BiH. To return to my first observation about comparison, the themes discussed here shed light on certain ‘universalities of condition and experience’ (Guyer 2004: 501) of ‘post-war’ living under neoliberal restructuring, in the shadow of shrinking states and international intervention (whether in the form of military or aid) and in the aftermath of violent conflict. The volume succeeds in activating an interdisciplinary dialogue between ethnographic and non-ethnographic perspectives on BiH, and this is commendable. I take this opportunity to invite a further step towards cross-regional interchanges that are likely to draw out ethnographic convergences and interlace concepts without compromising the specificities of a place. In other words, comparative ethnography can constitute an ‘explanatory repertoire’ (Hilgers 2011: 361) for time-spaces in the ‘afterwards’ of violence and peace. This rich volume makes a case for transcending lingering ideas of regional exceptionalisms and engaging in a process of theorisation that challenges ‘theoretical metonyms’ as well as borders; aspects, to my mind, that constitute the heart of the anthropological project.

Notes 1 Nancy Munn considers temporalisation as the ‘symbolic process continually being produced in everyday practices’ (Munn 1992: 116). 2 Bockman suggests that new neoliberal ways of governance involve entities beyond the state that practice governance but move ‘through the state in new ways’ (Bockman 2012: 311). 3 See Antoun (2000) for an ethnographically grounded response.

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Index

Aeroklub Sarajevo 165 agency 100–1, 129, 133, 201 Ajanović, Irfan 34, 35 Al-Mohammad, H. 48 ARBiH (Armija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine) 38, 65, 73n8, 155n4 auto-anthropology 24–5 AVNOJ (Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia) 145 Baker, C. 113 Bakhtin, Mikhail 3–4 Balčak (Vešović) 64 Banja Luka 79, 81 Barakat, S. 113 Batković war camp 31, 37, 38 Baudrillard, Jean 172 Begić, Aida 45n18 being stuck, sense of 15–18, 19, 140 Berdahl, D. 50, 51 Bihać 91n3; see also elder care; young people’s electoral engagement ‘Bosniak’ defined 25n4 Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids see pyramids, Bosnian; pyramids volunteer community Bougarel, X. 10, 66, 67 boundary objects 185, 188–9 Bovensiepen, Judith 47 Brčko district 6, 45n1; see also logoraši (camp detainees) Brdo village see villages, rural Cambodia 33 cantons 6, 56, 57 Centre for Investigative Reporting, 149 Centre for South-Eastern European Studies 2 China 107

chronotopes 199; contradictions 21–3; defining 3–4; labyrinth 16–17, 19, 47, 56, 58; objection to 180–1; round table for negotiations 6–8, 10, 11, 18–19; swamp 14–15, 19, 47, 52, 56, 177; uses 18; waiting room 17–18, 19, 22, 23; see also spatiotemporality; time-spaces citizen science 185 civic demonstrations (2014) 4, 27n15, 71–2, 144, 150, 157, 201 civilian war victims: commemoration 31; compensation 66; official status 37, 38; silence 33; see also logoraši (camp detainees) Civil Service Agency 149 Clarke, J. 101 Coles, K. 111, 113, 133 Collier, J.S. 95–6 combatants see soldiers communities 201–2; discursive 168; inoperative 192; ‘international’/‘local’ binary 112; of knowledge/experience 64; political clientelism 154; social protection, responsibility for 95, 96–7, 99, 104; stifling 137; we-intentions 169; see also pyramids volunteer community; raja; villages, rural comparative ethnography 202 constituent peoples 6, 7 corruption 194; see also political clientelism/patronage; veze/štele Crapanzano, V. 134 credit 13–14 Croat–Bosniak relations 146 Croat Defence Council 146 Croatia 83–4, 137, 145–6, 151 Croatian Defence Council (HVO) 62, 65, 73n8, 155n4

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222 Index Das, V. 66 Dayton BiH 5, 6, 7–8; see also Mature Dayton BiH Dayton constitution 5, 6 death–social order relationship 47, 152–3 Deleuze, Gilles 167 Delpla, I. 9 Democratic Front (DF) 157 discursive communities 168 displacement: in raja 166–7, 170, 171, 174, 175, 176, 177; in war 5, 61, 81–2, 91, 145, 151 Djeca (Begić) 45n18 Dodik, Milorad 44, 138, 139, 156n10 Dragon Nest, Visoko 189–92 Dubioza Kolektiv 128 East Timor 33, 47, 113 economic crisis, global 15, 148 economic inequalities 51–5, 57 elder care 90–1; affective labour 88–90; commentary on study 122–3; emotional responses of elderly 82; labouring for minimal profit 87–8; loving labour 79–80, 87–90; nursing home fees 81–2; post-war humanitarian aid 84–5; post-war private care 86–7; post-war state’s abandonment 85–7; state-privatnik agreements 86–7; traditional approaches 82, 84; in Yugoslav social system 83–4 elitism 9, 12–13, 169 emic understandings/representations 11, 13, 14, 22, 121n2; see also native’s point of view employment factors: NGOs’ help 147–8; OSCE mission 114, 115–20; political clientelism 129–30, 134, 137, 142, 147–8, 149–50; veze/štele 114, 154; volunteer work 100 epistemic power 72 ethnic cleansing 5, 34, 79, 81, 145 ethnonational categories: contextualising, in social practices 8–11; in Dayton constitution 6; ethnographic deconstructions 8; foreign media’s fixation 4–5; scholarly work’s fixation 7–8 ethnonational divisions, pre-war 26n5 ethnonationalist parties, success of 157–8 ethno-religious groups 168–9 etic understandings/representations 11, 14, 22 EU accession 1, 6, 11–12, 16, 17

exile: unemployment-produced 143, 146, 151, 153–4; war-produced 5, 61, 81–2, 91, 145, 151 family: care for disabled children 105; elder care 81–2, 82, 84; employment, help securing 147; as place for confined memories 42–3; and voting behaviour 137, 139; war-produced fragmentations 81–2 Federation of BiH 6, 45n13, 71, 146 Fink, J. 101 foreign reporting 4–5 Foucault, Michel 75, 168 Frankfurt School 75 freeze-framing 197–8 Freud, Sigmund 166–7, 172 future, short-term/long-term 132 Ganić, Ejup 35 gender 8, 45n17, 63, 176 genocide 5, 10, 34, 35, 36 geography, symbolic 11–15 Gershon, I. 100 Gilbert, A. 110, 113 Goffman, Erving 33 Goldstone, Richard J. 35 Greenberg, J. 128 greyness 25 Guattari, Félix 167 Guyer, J.I. 132 Hage, G. 132 Hart, Kimberly 49–50 HDZ (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica) 142 Helms, Elissa 52 heterogeneity 164–5, 173, 202 hierarchies: moral 41–2; in raja 175; socio-economic 52, 55, 57; of suffering 52 hope, dated 132–3 Husanović, Jasmina 66 Hutcheon, L. 168, 170 HVO (Hrvatsko vijeće obrane) 62, 65, 155n4 identity 60, 113–15, 168–9; see also narrative positionings; raja in-betweenness, spatial/temporal 11–12, 16 individual–state relationship: abandonment 47, 56–8, 80, 85–6,

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Index 223 96, 200–1; in day-to-day struggles 48; expectations 83, 86, 97–8; rural villages 52, 56–8 ‘Informativni razgovori’ (Kabil) 66 instrumental power 72 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) 5, 34, 35 internationality/locality practice, OSCE: adopting practices of ‘other’ group 113–15, 120–1; categories of practice 115, 120–1; commentary on study 123–4; employment practices 115–20; goal of OSCE 110–11; Human Dimension structure 111; ‘international’/‘local’ binary 113; internships 111, 117–18; ko fol (as if) logic 110, 116, 120–1; power and privilege 110–13; restructurings 110; Sahib (Veličković) 120; terms of reference (ToRs) 116; transparency 116–17; veze/štele 109, 114, 115–20 interpersonal relations 9–10, 95, 135–9, 169, 172–3, 199–202; see also political clientelism/patronage; veze/štele irony 1; see also raja Irony’s Edge (Hutcheon) 168 Italy 96 Jajce 142–3, 145–8, 151–3 joking 1–2, 88, 137, 163, 166, 171–3, 177 Joseph, Suad 201 Kabil, Namik 66 Kaneff, Deema 47 Kapisazović, Z. 113 Karađorđevo Agreement 145 Karadžić, Radovan 45n8 ko fol (as if) logic 110, 116, 120–1 labyrinth chronotope 16–17, 19, 47, 56, 58 Lebanon 197, 198, 199–200, 201 Ledeneva, A. 102 Letu štuke 15 Lewis, G. 101 living standards 13–14, 27n14 locality, social practice of see internationality/locality practice, OSCE logoraši (camp detainees): association president 31–2, 36; association registration process 37–8; commentary on study 74;

confined memories 42–4; consensus production 40–2; financial help 38; hierarchies 41–2; information preserve 36–9; interaction rituals 44; motives for joining associations 37, 38–40; politicalisation 34–5; politika, avoidance of 39–40, 44; situated silences 40–2 loving labour 79–80, 87–90, 91 Lubkemann, S.C. 72 Luka war camp 31, 32, 40, 41 Maček, I. 61, 64, 66, 67 Madrid’s International Plan of Action on Aging 86 Maglajlić-Holiček, R.A. 96 Mature Dayton BiH: chronotopes see chronotopes; European semiperiphery 21; freeze-framing 197–8; permanently temporary 19–20; socio-political configuration 134, 140; spatio-temporalising 199; unpredictability–changelessness paradox 131–2; use of term 3 Mauss, Marcel 165, 166 memory 9, 63–6; see also logoraši (camp detainees) metamorphoses of sociality 48–9 Milošević, Slobodan 145 Mladić, Ratko 45n8 Močnik, R. 177 moral capital 72 Mosse, D. 118–19 Muehlebach, A. 69, 96 Nancy, Jean-Luc 192 narrative identity 60 narrative positionings: commentary on study 74; friend–enemy identification 64; gendering 63; insecurity 68–9; modalities 60; ‘normal life’ 68, 70; The One Who Is Owed 66–70; The One Who Knows 63–6; The One Who Stayed Put 61–3; Plenum 70–2; post-war realities 70; temporalities, war-related 60 native’s point of view 10, 23–4; see also emic understandings/representations neoliberalism 12–13, 47, 52, 95–6, 97, 100–1, 200–1 networking 107, 110, 114, 115–20, 124, 154; see also veze/štele The New Bosnian Mosaic (Bougarel, Helms, Duijzings) 10

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224 Index NGOs (non-governmental organisations) 7, 127, 128, 147–8 Norton, A.R. 201 Ong, A. 107 opportunities, lack of 57, 131–2 OSCE mission see internationality/ locality practice, OSCE Osmanagić, Semir 183 Our Party (Naša stranka) 134, 158 Paranoja (Letu štuke) 15 Peluso, D. 48 pessimism 75 plane of consistency 167, 170, 171, 174, 175 Plenum of Citizens of Sarajevo for Social Justice 71–2 political clientelism/patronage: commentary on study 157–9; as governmentality method 154; instability 154–5; Jajce, example of 142–3, 147–8; outsideness, consequences of 151–3; as political participation 154; post-war intensification 143, 144, 148–50, 200; protestors and activists 150; use of public funds 149; young people’s use 129–30, 133–5, 137–9 political elites: benefiting from neoliberalisation 12–13; endurance 157; ethnographic research 9, 12–13; power 9, 144, 169; societal hope 133; see also political clientelism/patronage political science 194 politics: avoidance of 39–40, 41; change/ changelessness 129, 130, 131–2, 133, 134, 135–6, 139, 157; politika 40; in pyramid volunteers 195–6; in raja 195–6; rough ground of 47, 48, 49, 57, 59, 200; see also political clientelism/ patronage; young people’s electoral engagement poverty 146–7 power, instrumental and epistemic 72 precariousness 15–16, 20, 46–7, 107, 113, 143, 153 ‘private versus public’ discourse 201 privatisation 12–13, 86, 91, 107, 144, 145 professionalism 110, 119, 120 pyramids, Bosnian: ancient technologies 187–8; boundary objects 188–9; energy 186–7; ethno-national rhetoric 182–3; mystery/controversy 185–7;

non-national/post-national appeal 181–4; as oddity 180–1; popular science projects, times/spaces of 192–3; pseudo-science denunciation 183, 184–5; Pyramid of Love 187; Ravne tunnels 186; uncertainty/ vagueness 187–9; see also pyramids volunteer community pyramids volunteer community: camaraderie 180, 184, 185, 187, 189–90; citizen science 185; commentary on study 195; Dragon Nest 189–92; inoperative communities 191–2; local people’s involvement 184; Spanish volunteers 179–80; Sun Foundation–volunteers relationship 191–2; volunteers’ charter 191 Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 172–3 raja: antagonism and cooperation 177; anti-elite elite 175; commentary on study 194; competition and rivalry 166; defining 164, 177n1; de-/re-territorialisation 173–4; displacement of excess 166–7; egality 175; gender differences 176; heterogeneity 164–5; hierarchy 175; identity 169–70; irony 167–71; joking 171–3; levelling 165, 175; socialising 165–6, 174, 176; study methodology 163–4; territoriality 173; transparency 173; urban vs. rural narrative 175–6 ‘Raja or a Death of the City’ (Aeroklub Sarajevo) 165 Rašidagić, E.K. 96 Read, R. 96 Redžić, E. 169 Republika Srpska (RS) 6, 27n13, 34, 81, 85, 96 research: in-betweenness 11–12; ethnographic 8–10, 21–5; identitarian fixation 6, 7–8; post-war transformations 12–13; post-war ‘when’ of BiH 5; round table for negotiations chronotope 6–8; urban-centric 50 returnees 9, 67, 146, 151 Ricoeur, Paul 60 roads 57–8 Rorty, Richard 170–1 rough ground of politics 47, 48, 49, 57, 59, 200 round table for negotiations chronotope 6–8, 10, 11, 18–19 rural life see villages, rural

225

Index 225 Russia 96, 102 Ruud, A.E. 137

swamp chronotope 14–15, 19, 22, 23, 47, 52, 56, 177

Sahib (Veličković) 120 Sarajevo 34, 39, 51, 61, 67, 71–2, 112; see also internationality/locality practice, OSCE; narrative positionings; raja Schütz, Alfred 48–9 SDA (Stranka demokratske akcije) 34, 36, 139 SDP (Social Democratic Party) 139, 157 SDU (Socijaldemokratska Unija) 134, 135, 137 self 101 self-deprecation 1–2 semiperiphery, European 11–12, 14, 21, 25 Serbia 5, 84, 137 services, state-provided 56, 57, 83, 86, 96, 105, 106, 107, 158 Shoshan, N. 69 silence 32–3, 40–4, 60 Simonović, Kosta Kole 31 Sjećaš li se Sarajeva? (Kreševljaković brothers) 64 Smithsonian 182–3 SNSD (Alliance of Independent Social Democrats) 141n11 socialism 69, 82–4, 105–6, 198 social protection: for disabled 95; for elderly 83–4, 85 (see also elder care); internationally supervised transformations 100–1, 202; neoliberalisation 95–6; social model 95, 96, 102; state’s changing role 96–7; veze/štele 97, 101, 102, 106–7; Yugoslav model 82–3, 105–6 society, decent/non-decent 132 soldiers: disadvantages 67; motivations for fighting 65; narrative positioning 65, 66–70; newcomers, criticisms of 67–8; politicians, criticisms of 67; rights and benefits, post-war 42, 66 Sorabji, Cornelia 39 spatiotemporality 3–4, 11–12, 16, 192–3, 197–9, 202; see also chronotopes Star, Susan Leigh 185, 188 Stefansson, A. 67 štela see veze/štele sub-polities 5–6 suicide of Sakib 46–7, 49 Sušica war camp 35 Šuti i trpi (Dubioza Kolektiv) 128

Ta’if Agreement 198, 200 temporalities, war-related 60, 197–9 terminology 25n1, 25n4, 76 Thelen, T. 96 time-spaces 3–4, 11–12, 16, 192–3, 197–9, 202; see also chronotopes Tito, Josip Broz 82 Todorova, M. 11 transparency 109–10, 116–17, 173, 174 Tuđman, Franjo 145 Turkey 49–50 unemployment: leading to exile 143, 146, 151, 153–4; and popular de/ mobilisation 155n7; protests about 150; scale of 13, 27n14, 57, 146, 149 unpredictability 131, 140 urban vs. rural narratives 8–9, 50, 175–6 Veličković, Nenad 120 Vešović, Marko 64 veze/štele: freeze-framing 200; in OSCE mission 109, 114, 115–20; political clientelism 142–3, 147, 158; in rural villages 52; for social protection 96, 97, 98, 101–7; vs. networking 110, 114, 115–20, 124; see also interpersonal relations villages, rural: abandonment by state 56–8; commentary on study 74–5; economic inequalities 51–5; hierarchies of suffering 52; individual–state relationship 52, 56–8; research concerns 58–9; rough ground of politics 48–9; self-interest, pursing 53–5; suicide of Sakib 46–7, 49; village perspective 49–51 Visočica hill 179 Visoko see pyramids, Bosnian; pyramids volunteer community voter turn-out 157–8 voting see young people’s electoral engagement VRS (Vojska Republike Srpske) 37, 61, 92n3 waiting room chronotope 17–18, 19, 22, 23 war, 1992–1995: BiH viewed against background 4–5; camp detainees see logoraši (camp detainees);

226

226 Index ethnic cleansing 5, 34, 79, 81, 145; fragmentation, familial 81, 82, 84, 90–1; genocide 5, 10, 34, 35, 36; labyrinth chronotope 16; memories 9, 42–4 (see also narrative positionings); overview 5; spatio-temporalising 198; war crimes 10, 32, 34, 36, 70 (see also logoraši (camp detainees)) Washington Agreement 146 wasta 200 we-intentions 169, 178n9 ‘when’/‘where’ of BiH 3, 5, 10, 12, 20, 23; see also chronotopes witnesses of war crimes see logoraši (camp detainees) Woodward, S.L. 183 World Cup (Brazil 2014) 4–5 young people’s electoral engagement: commentary on study 157–9;

dated hope 132–3, 139–40; immediacy of the effect 133–5, 140; importance for the future 128–9; interpersonal relations 135–9, 140; private hope 133; propaganda 133; reasons for not voting 127–8; responsibility/ irresponsibility 129–31; unpredictability–changelessness paradox 131–2, 140; ‘Youth & Elections 2010’ campaign 127, 128 Yugoslavia, social protection 69, 82–4, 95, 105–6, 198 ZABiH (Stranka za BiH) 129, 130, 137 ZABOLJITAK (Narodna stranka radom za boljitak) 130, 135 Zaviršek, D. 83, 105, 106