Carna Brkovic | Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (original) (raw)

Books by Carna Brkovic

Exploring recent configurations of social relations in post-socialist, post-war, post-Yugoslav Bo... more Exploring recent configurations of social relations in post-socialist, post-war, 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.

Special Issues by Carna Brkovic

Berliner Blätter, 2024

In recent years, the politics of gender and sexuality have turned extremely hostile across Europe... more In recent years, the politics of gender and sexuality have turned extremely hostile across Europe. Long fought for rights and antidiscriminatory politics have come under heavy attack, while Gender Studies programs have been banned. In tandem, feminist arguments are being instrumentalized by right-wing movements and gender/sexuality are used as markers of both progress and backwardness within the postsocialist European landscape reproducing old and creating new hierarchies within the societies and between them. »Troubling Gender« brings together queer/feminist voices and ethnographic analyses from the Eastern and Western European contexts seeking to make sense of these developments and of their local and regional articulations; it examines the possibilities for solidarity across different positionalities and engages with diverse histories of struggle.

Social Anthropology, 2023

There has been an increase of anthropological interest in small-scale humanitarianisms that make ... more There has been an increase of anthropological interest in small-scale humanitarianisms that make situated claims to universality. The articles in this collection demonstrate that some genealogies of such situated universalisms have been explored more than others. Focusing on vernacular humanitarianisms, the goal is not to celebrate the standpoint of 'radical alterity' but rather to acknowledge that imagining and recognising similarities of people's experiences is not reserved for the Western European epistemology. Anthropological research of small-scale humanitarianisms points to situated, alternative and sometimes even decolonising visions and practices of 'the humanity' understood as a framework for imagining and recognising broadly shared experiences. Th is collection asks how vernacular humanitarianisms are performed in everyday life, enabling particular forms of ethics, power and inequality. Th us, it keeps possibilities of social critique in sight and moves a conversation towards an ethnographically attuned perspective that explores the role of vernacular humanitarianisms in various projects of governance.

Comparative Southeast European Studies, 2021

Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics, 2021

Special issue "Grassroots responses to mass migration in Europe"

Articles by Carna Brkovic

Focaal, 2024

What does transnational humanitarianism look like when considered from the perspective of a "Glob... more What does transnational humanitarianism look like when considered from the perspective of a "Global East"? Ethnographically studying the disappointment and awkwardness generated by two transnational humanitarian projects illuminates a sense of suspended agency among Montenegrin citizens that was developed aft er the end of the Cold War. Montenegrins are oft en simultaneously included in the racialized and class-based humanitarian discourses of the Global North and excluded from actual participation in transnational humanitarian projects due to structural constraints. The article suggests that suspended agency emerges when there is both a sense of belonging to a certain humanitarian endeavor that should enable particular kinds of action (e.g., transnational humanitarianism) and a lack of infrastructure capable of sustaining such a sense.

Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 2021

I propose an alternative conception of freedom in an actually existing liberal order by focusing ... more I propose an alternative conception of freedom in an actually existing liberal order by focusing on how gay men in Podgorica, Montenegro maintain love and kinship relations. For theorists of late liberalism, the demands of liberal freedom and those of social relatedness have been seen as opposed. By contrast, in Podgorica we can trace a notion of non-autological freedom understood as an ability to engage in a certain practice while thinking through its conditions and constraints from multiple perspectives and in a way that my interlocutors saw as respectful of others. Linking anthropological discussions of freedom with a focus on ordinary ethics, I offer an understanding of freedom as a relational category practised through an open and shared deliberation and imaginative identification, which echoes Polanyi’s notion of social freedom. Gay men who pursued love and sexual fulfilment as well as stringent family expectations did not enact freedom as always-already individualised subjects who made autonomous choices; they came into being as particular socio-moral persons by deliberating either collectively, through an actual conversation, or by engaging in imaginative identification with others. By placing both relationality and deliberation at the heart of freedom, this article contributes to anthropological discussions about this concept.

Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 2020

Under what conditions does European anthropology emerge today as an intellectual project? Europea... more Under what conditions does European anthropology emerge today as an intellectual project? European anthropology takes shape only provisionally, as a fractured, heterogeneous and uneven field, for the duration of time-limited research projects and meetings with Europe-wide participation. In the currently dominant socioeconomic conditions of academic life, European anthropology as an intellectual project has little chance to develop, except as an accident. And yet, with more institutional stability for researchers and their conversations , European anthropology could be turned into a more inspiring intellectual endeavour that challenges the classic Anglo-Saxon way of understanding anthropology as a conceptual translation between 'our' modern and 'Other' worlds; it could also help us to reimagine the world anthropologies framework through the postsocialist and postcolonial lens as something other than a 'family of nations'.

Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 2020

This article opens a conversation between anthropological studies of the Mediterranean and of pos... more This article opens a conversation between anthropological studies of the Mediterranean and of postsocialism in order to propose the notion of a "scalar gaze" as an analytical approach useful for capturing veering practices in their social complexity. The article argues that favors (veze/štela, lit. relations, connections) in contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina were a practice through which people fulfilled the demands of capitalist economy to be active, rather than a pre-capitalist excess that prevented "proper" development of the country into a neoliberal democracy. Zooming in and out and looking sideways between moral reasoning, internationally supervised structural changes of the job markets, and electoral politics, this article explores how the relational labor of favors reproduced moral selves, as well as hierarchy and inequality.

Terrain, 2019

Post-Yugoslav artists relatively often claim that the major international successes of Yugoslav f... more Post-Yugoslav artists relatively often claim that the major international successes of Yugoslav films were the result of novel artistic approaches developed to circumscribe state censorship. Some filmmakers say that socialist censorship was better than being ignored, like they feel today. This article explores the preference for socialist censorship articulated by filmmakers from Serbia, suggesting that it needs to be situated in the change of the regime of visibility after the Cold War. The “regime of visibility” conventionally refers to the conditions of visibility within one particular social context, for example within a particular country. The post-Yugoslav preference for censorship indicates that there are also regimes of visibility that operate transnationally, regulating what can be seen and known across the borders of particular societies. In the Cold War regime of visibility, Yugoslav socialist “censorship without censorship” illuminated Yugoslav films in a way that made them visible in the West. The post-Cold-War shifts in the mechanisms of recognition made censorship preferable in comparison to the contemporary sense of invisibility.

Südosteuropa. Journal of Politics and Society, 2018

This article ethnographically follows the everyday life of a homo sacer—a young Roma woman who ha... more This article ethnographically follows the everyday life of a homo sacer—a young Roma woman who has lived her whole life in a camp for displaced persons. The camp has been built for Roma, Ashkalias, and Balkan Egyptians who in 1999 fled from the violence in Kosovo to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. The key aim of the article is to see what happens with the concepts of ‘homo sacer’ and ‘bare life’ when ethnographically engaged in the context of Southeastern Europe. The article argues that ethnographic fieldwork in urban settings reveals in what way a homo sacer has an everyday life and a complex sociopolitical existence, and that camps are urban formations that can be related to very different sociohistorical and political projects.

This article's concern is epistemological in that it seeks understanding of the nature of ethnogr... more This article's concern is epistemological in that it seeks understanding of the nature of ethnographic knowledge production. Its background assumption is that decolonization of anthropology requires decolonization of anthropological epistemology. The article argues that anthropology is not so much a study of the 'Other', but an effort to acquire knowledge by translating across some sort of socio-historically established difference. Anthropologists do not acquire knowledge necessarily by translating between modern, Western European, and nonmodern, 'Other' conceptual arrangements. Instead, the anthropological production of knowledge requires an effort to figure out the relevant differences and similarities between an anthropologist, their interlocutors, and their audiences, as well as a translation across these differences and similarities. In order to demonstrate this point, the article focuses on 19th-and 20th-century ethnographic discussions of rural joint families called zadruga in the Balkans. Through a critical reading of two works on zadruga, it demonstrates that anthropologists in the Balkans were epistemologically eclectic, in that they could make use of strategies of both 'anthropology abroad' and 'auto-anthropology', or combine and reverse them. While this instance of epistemological eclecticism is the result of widespread uncertainties concerning the status of the 'modern' and the 'non-modern' as organizational categories in the Balkans, it has direct implications for the production of anthropological knowledge generally.

it came as a complete shock because they thought it would never happen; but once it had happened,... more it came as a complete shock because they thought it would never happen; but once it had happened, it was not really a surprise at all. The United Kingdom has had a tempestuous relationship with the European Economic Community (EEC) and then the European Union (EU), ever since it joined in 1973. The discussions against this huge European border experiment (one of the most radical border experiments I can think of) have been unceasing, and came from left and right (and of course from anarchists), from the centre and the peripheries, from populists and internationalists. Those in favour of whatever 'Europe' might mean were always much less newsworthy. Anthropologists were among many who lined up to critique everything about the politics, economics, ideology, structure and especially the bureaucracy of the EU (and some of them have contributed to this Forum). Yet once the referendum result was published, I realised that there is also much material in my field notes that shows that people did not really mean that the EU should cease to exist. Like the constant complaints against the habits of one's closest kin, roiling against the EU is serious, but it does not really mean disavowal or divorce. Until, apparently, it does. This Forum represents the immediate reactions of 24 colleagues in anthropology about 'Brexit'. The commentaries were all written within five days of the news coming out. Apart from having to trim the texts for space reasons, they have been left as they are, documents of immediate, often raw, reactions. In that sense, these texts are as much witness statements as they are observations; as much an echo chamber of all the endless discussion that came in the aftermath of the result as it is considered observation; as much an emotional reaction as it is analysis. I did ask all contributors to think about how to engage their knowledge of anthropology in addressing this issue. As their responses describe, there are many hugely serious and frankly alarming political, economic and ideological challenges facing both Europe and the world at the moment that have become entangled with Brexit. So this is not the time to sit back and say nothing. Others have been speaking out too, of course, including Felix Stein's Social Anthropology (2016) 0, 0 1–25.

Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 2014

Through an ethnographic focus on humanitarne akcije in Bosnia and Herzegovina – a local form of ... more Through an ethnographic focus on humanitarne akcije in Bosnia and Herzegovina
– a local form of raising monetary donations to people who need medical
treatments abroad – this paper explores humanitarianism and its understandings of
life. Ethnographically tracking the course of a humanitarna akcija organised in one
Bosnian town, this paper makes two related points. First, it ethnographically demonstrates
that lives of the ‘helpers’ and ‘helped’ in humanitarne akcije were understood
as immersed in the intense talk and gossip of the town and as exposed to the sociopolitical
environment troubled in the same way. Comparing this understanding of life
with the international humanitarianism, this paper suggests that the notion of ‘bare
life’ in international humanitarian projects in emergencies may be the product of
the separation of infrastructures, which enable and manage lives of the ‘savers’ and
‘saved’. Second, those who needed help through humanitarne akcije strongly criticised
the lack of organised health care and social security in Bosnia and Herzegovina that
pushed them to initiate humanitarne akcije. They criticised less how other people perceived
them (the terms of their sociocultural recognition) and more the shrinking public
health-care insurance, unavailability of medical treatments, unequal allocation of
medicines, tissues and organs, and so forth (the unjust redistribution of resources).
Their dissatisfactions imply that humanitarianism as an industry of aid can be criticised
for failing to intervene in the global regimes of unequal redistribution of resources in a
transformative way.

This paper explores how the boundary between humanitarianism and politics was reproduced in the e... more This paper explores how the boundary between humanitarianism and politics was reproduced in the everyday life in a Bosnia and Herzegovina town. It addresses the use of (post)Yugoslav ideas about humaneness as an apolitical core surrounded by layers of socio-political identities in the course of humanitarian actions. The paper suggests that the depoliticization of humanitarian actions allowed people to distance themselves from the hegemonic understanding of politics as interest-oriented management of ethno-national groups. Those who needed humanitarian help relied on depoliticizing discourses of humaneness to assert their (political) claims to survival and wellbeing in the context marked by the dominance of ethno-nationalist rhetoric.

Social Anthropology, Aug 2015

This article ethnographically outlines how one woman politician in a town in Bosnia and Herzegovi... more This article ethnographically outlines how one woman politician in a town in Bosnia and Herzegovina used
favours to help ‘get things done’, becoming perceived as a ‘goddess’ who ‘spent herself’ for the sake of others.
The article suggests that such people managed to gather power through the paradox of keeping-while-giving
(Weiner, 1992. Inalienable possessions. The paradox of keeping-while-giving. Berkeley: California UP). People
able to grant numerous favours in multiple public and private arenas kept aside the position of the person able
to manage ambiguity, which was part of the new ad hoc, flexible forms of governance, exercised by both the
international and the local actors in the country.

Contemporary Southeastern Europe , 2014

This article discusses “humanitarne akcije,” a practice present across former Yugoslav states, wh... more This article discusses “humanitarne akcije,” a practice present across former Yugoslav states, whereby relatives of people who need expensive medical treatments abroad, raise large sums of money. Ethnographically exploring three humanitarian actions organized in a town in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2009 and 2010, the article critically engages with an issue of how survival and wellbeing were enabled in this context. The simultaneous postwar and postsocialist transformation of healthcare and social security systems in Bosnia and Herzegovina created gaps, in which many people were left without support. The article suggests that survival and wellbeing did not primarily depend on citizenship, ethnicity, nationality, residence, or some other category of identification and differentiation, but on the skill to generate a large network of relations in varied ways. Humanitarian actions can be understood as enactments of a moveopticon – an arrangement in which people have to be known and knowable in order to maintain survival and wellbeing and which does not have a single unifying centre where knowledge is gathered and control organized. Instead, in a moveopticon, people have to keep moving, since survival and wellbeing largely depend on the compassion and goodwill of people and public officials one meets along the way.

Südosteuropa. Zeitschrift für Politik und Gesellschaft, 2009

Book Chapters by Carna Brkovic

Humanitarianism: Keywords, 2020

Berliner Blätter, 2024

Social Anthropology, 2023

Comparative Southeast European Studies, 2021

Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics, 2021

Special issue "Grassroots responses to mass migration in Europe"

Focaal, 2024

Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 2021

Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 2020

Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 2020

Terrain, 2019

Südosteuropa. Journal of Politics and Society, 2018

Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 2014

Social Anthropology, Aug 2015

Contemporary Southeastern Europe , 2014

Südosteuropa. Zeitschrift für Politik und Gesellschaft, 2009

Humanitarianism: Keywords, 2020

Everyday Life in the Balkans, 2018

LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in the Post-Yugoslav Space On the Rainbow Way to Europe

In this chapter, we present the chronology and dynamic of LGBT activism in Montenegro, suggesting... more In this chapter, we present the chronology and dynamic of LGBT
activism in Montenegro, suggesting that it has been firmly intertwined
with the “Europeanisation” of the country. Making "homosexuality" appear inseparable from "Europe" , is potentially problematic: it positions non-heterosexual practices and people as not quite legitimate parts of the Montenegrin polity. We argue that the real challenge for improving the position of LGBT people is to destabilise this conceptual link and to make homosexuality a legitimately Montenegrin political issue. As long as public officials and state institutions engage with LGBT concerns because the EU requests it of them and because it is presumably a European "thing to do" — rather than because of people who live in Montenegro and experience various forms of oppression on the basis of their sexuality and gender— non-heterosexual sexual practices will not be perceived as constitutive of the political and social life of Montenegro.

Mirroring Europe. Ideas of Europe and Europeanization in Balkan Societies, 2014

The Ambiguous Nation. Case Studies from Southeastern Europe in the 20th Century, 2013

Zeitschrift für Volkskunde

Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, 2021

U ovom radu iz feminističke perspektive promišljam uslove pod kojima određeni korpus tradicionaln... more U ovom radu iz feminističke perspektive promišljam uslove pod kojima određeni korpus tradicionalnog znanja može postati prepoznat kao kulturno nasljeđe. Polazim od shvatanja snova kao jedne vrste društvene tehnologije koja pokreće imaginaciju, te koja nam omogućuje da artikulišemo svoj odnos kako prema krupnim društvenim pitanjima, tako i prema konkretnim konfliktima u svom svakodnevnom životu. U radu preispitujem zašto i kako značaj koji tumačenje snova ima za njegovanje društvenih veza uglavnom ostaje nevidljiv – te time i odsutan iz diskursa i praksi koje se tiču kulturnog nasljeđa. Takođe postavljam pitanje kako je došlo do toga da žene vladaju svakodnevnim folklornim znanjem o snovima, a da ih nema skoro ni u jednom sanovniku ili sanjarici kao autorke ili izdavačice. Kako je došlo do toga da muškarci u kontinuitetu od XIX do XXI vijeka kodifikuju i objavljuju u formi sanovnika i sanjarica nešto što je sasvim izvjesno bila i ostala sfera ženske folklorne prakse i korpus ženskog folklornog znanja?
Tvrdim da dio odgovora na ovo pitanje leži u dominantnom režimu
vrijednosti u kome su aktivnosti uložene u održavanje i reprodukciju svakodnevnog života uglavnom prezrene. Moja teza jeste da su različita folklorna znanja o snovima tokom vremena postala rodno određena zbog dominantnog režima vrijednosti u kome se produktivni rad – onaj rad koji rezultuje nekim konkretnim proizvodom – vrednuje, dok reproduktivni rad – rad potrošen na obnavljanje života i društvenih odnosa – ostaje uglavnom nevidljiv.
Ovakav režim vrijednosti nije crnogorski, pa ni balkanski specifikum.
Međutim, doprinos većine žena njegovanju i obnavljanju društva će ostati
uglavnom nevidljiv sve dok ne potražimo načine da reproduktivni rad vrednujemo kao važan dio kulturnog nasljeđa.

Ovaj tekst predstavlja prerađeni uvod u tematsko izdanje časopisa "Komparativne studije jugoistoč... more Ovaj tekst predstavlja prerađeni uvod u tematsko izdanje časopisa "Komparativne studije jugoistočne Evrope" koji postavlja pitanje kako možemo razumeti rodno određene prakse u Crnoj Gori izvan balkanističkog diskursa. Argument je da rodno određene prakse u Crnoj Gori, poput selektivnih abortusa, možemo razumeti samo ukoliko uzmemo u obzir složene načine na koje materijalni i ekonomski procesi postaju isprepletani sa socijalnim i kulturnim logikama, istovremeno ojačavajući stare stereotipe i kreirajući nove prostore za borbu i promenu. Sugeriše se da su prakse roda u Crnoj Gori zasnovane na specifičnim srodničkim i svojinskim odnosima, koje istovremeno perpetuiraju, kao i da žene u Crnoj Gori nisu niti potlačene niti slobodne kao što mogu delovati iz liberalno-feminističke perspektive. Svako ko razmišlja kako da artikuliše kritiku i podstakne promene u rodno određenim praksama u Crnoj Gori treba da uzme u obzir kako srodničke povezanosti, očekivanja vezana za nasledstvo, kao i državne i javne rodne politike oblikuju mogućnosti za individualne ili kolektivne akcije.

Glasnik Etnografskog instituta, 2017

Preko duge u Evropu ispituje mnoštvo političkih, društvenih i kulturnih implikacija sve relevantn... more Preko duge u Evropu ispituje mnoštvo političkih, društvenih i kulturnih implikacija sve relevantnije simboličke povezanosti evropeizacije, LGBT aktivizma, prava LGBT osoba i neheteronormativnosti. Nakon agresivnog etnonacionalizma, ta pojmovna mešavina stvara višestruku diferencijaciju između zemalja bivše Jugoslavije i EU, ali i unutar postjugoslovenskog prostora i regionalnih aktivističkih „scena”. Sprega evropeizacije i pratećih, ideologijom zadojenih pojmova evropske modernosti, slobode i demokratije, s jedne, i „gej borbe”, s druge strane, ima prilično ambivalentan efekat: naime, ta veza zadaje težak udarac represivnom poretku patrijarhalnih rodnih odnosa, jer „nenormativne” seksualne identifikacije izvlači iz isključivo privatnog prostora, ali i remeti delovanje aktivističkih inicijativa na lokalnom nivou i otuđuje borbu za neheteronormativnu emancipaciju od domaće političke arene. Tako se, tamo gde EU još nije u potpunosti stigla, stvara „disciplinarni gej subjekt sposoban za evropejstvo” i proizvodi „međunarodno-domaća javna sfera” povlašćenih glasova u kojoj zapadne ambasade i njihovi predstavnici počinju da promovišu politički program vezan za prava LGBT osoba koji se obavezno ne podudara s lokalnim problemima niti ih povezuje s drugim izvorima opresije.

Ovaj zbornik, zasnovan na opsežnim etnografskim istraživanjima, nudi briljantnu analizu kompleksnog odnosa između LGBT prava i evropskih integracija, i predstavlja značajan doprinos ne samo literaturi o aktivizmu na prostoru bivše Jugoslavije, već i sociološkoj građi o LGBT aktivističkom delovanju uopšte. U tom smislu, Preko duge u Evropu će biti korisna referenca svima koji se bave studijama roda i društvenih pokreta.
Džil A. Irvin
Univerzitet Oklahome

Ovaj izrazito originalan zbornik ne predstavlja samo pionirski doprinos istraživanjima LGBT aktivizma, nego nudi i odličan primer kako se političkim i društvenim konfliktima u jugoistočnoj Evropi može pristupiti na teorijski utemeljen i angažovan način. Rezultat takvog pristupa je knjiga koja je impresivna i po širini empirijskog zahvata i po akademskoj rigoroznosti individualnih priloga.
Erik D. Gordi
Univerzitetski koledž London

Genero, 2010

Feministička debata istok/zapad, otpočeta ranih 1990-ih godina, ukazala je da pojmovi feminizma ... more Feministička debata istok/zapad, otpočeta ranih 1990-ih godina, ukazala je da pojmovi feminizma
nastalog kao odgovor na kontekst „zapadnih“ država nisu primenljivi na „istočnoevropski“ kontekst
na jednostavan način. Protivljenje feminizmu u zemljama istočne i jugoistočne Evrope može biti
iskorišćeno kao povod za ponovno promišljanje i kontekstualno prilagođavanje bazičnih političkih
koncepata, poput „javnosti“. Etnografska skica razgovora o menopauzi u gradu na granici Bosne
i Hercegovine i Srbije ukazuje na postojanje jedne vrste „neformalne“ javnosti i isprepletenost
„ličnog“ sa zvaničnim medicinskim preporukama i praksama.

Decoloniality in Eastern Europe: A Lexicon of Reorientation, 2023

Kuckuck. Notizen zur Alltagskultur, 2022

Berliner Blätter, 2022

This paper retraces the political imagination that serves as the background of an activist-artist... more This paper retraces the political imagination that serves as the background of an activist-artistic-scholarly project called Mostar's Hurqualya that commemorates the socialist heritage of the Partisan Memorial Cemetery in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The main proposition of the paper is that postsocialist political imagination presents an epistemological and political project of re-describing the failures-those of socialist modernity as well as of the contemporary postsocialist moment-in a way that acknowledges disappointment, but still makes it possible to act. With its focus on redescribing failures, it might be different from a decolonial political imagination, understood as a project of prescribing new models, blueprints, and examples for how to organize reality beyond the hegemonic concepts and institutions that have been developed within the modernity/coloniality nexus. While postsocialist and decolonial political imaginations are interwoven in complex ways since both are critical epistemological and political projects, there are also differences between them.

Blog for American Anthropologist website

This post is part of a series linked to the workshop “Assessing the Anthropology of Humanitariani... more This post is part of a series linked to the workshop “Assessing the Anthropology of Humanitarianism: Ethnography, Impact, Critique”

Vernacular humanitarianism in former Yugoslavia

Introduction to Allegra themed section on vernacular humanitarianism

Journal of Anthropological Research, 2019

Managing Ambiguity is a careful, layered, and analytically rich yet jargon-free anthro-pological ... more Managing Ambiguity is a careful, layered, and analytically rich yet jargon-free anthro-pological account. The book explores the emerging contours of social protection in Bosnia and it courageously delves into the maze of everyday sociality, state bureaucracy , and social welfare-a domain of social and political fields often ignored by the majority of contemporary anthropologists of the region. The book is atypical for a young scholar who is writing her first manuscript based on dissertation research; whereas the majority of first books in anthropology are heavily ethnographic, Brković's work is equally analytical and ethnographic. Using ethno-graphic data gathered during her fieldwork in a Town (pseudonym) located in eastern Bosnia, the author gracefully yet fiercely challenges contemporary discussions about neoliberal reconfigurations of welfare; geographical hierarchies and semi-peripheries; oppressive yet normalized ambiguities; located social personhoods (s kim si, takav si); expectations of community kindness and care via humanitarian actions (humanitarne akcije); ethical, passive, and stubborn citizenships; favors, clientelism, and flexible gover-nance; and what the author calls "moveopticon," in which people "have to move to sur-vive" (p. 148). Brković thoughtfully, patiently, and methodically ties these different dimensions of social life together, arguing that "neoliberalization converged and merged with clientelism in a postwar, post-socialist context; that is, neoliberal restructuring of the state responsibilities for survival and well-being and related insistence on local community, flexibility and self-responsibility were translated into clientelist modes of relating and back, and this has produced particular ways of gathering [and manag-ing] power" (p. 10). This approach to clientelism, as intimately linked to contemporary techniques of flexible governance in much of the world, allows us to see that these processes are not a form of another "Balkan anomaly" and lagging behind the "West." Rather, employment of veze and štele (favors, connections) do not hinder the "system" but allow Bosnians to make relations, reproduce social personhood (p. 6), and reestablish power relations (p. 7). The book's chapters, organized around three main concepts-person-hood, citizenship, and power-convincingly show different dimensions of these processes and demonstrate how neoliberal transformations of social protection and welfare create ambiguities that are either managed (by those better positioned in relation to power) or negotiated (by those with less power) through favors (p. 129). This deeply analytical and layered analysis is a great gift to scholars interested in the Balkans in general, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in particular. While the majority of us have been using, citing, probing, and "massaging" numerous concepts employed by Brković, her book does something "magical"-it rearranges and reconnects peoples

American Anthropologist

This ethnography of "getting by" in the Republika Srpska offers a range of perspectives on the co... more This ethnography of "getting by" in the Republika Srpska offers a range of perspectives on the contemporary Western Balkans. Brkovic engages with a wide set of literature on sociality and modes of citizen interaction with institutions and political structures. The book marks a refreshing break with the rigid demarcations of "gatekeeping concepts"-whereby anthropologists of Southeast Europe and, in particular, the former Yugoslav space are expected to contribute to literatures on ethnonationalism, collective violence, the politicization of history and memory, and trauma and reconciliation. In addition to acknowledging this expectation, Brkovic also refers to negative reactions to her decision to pursue research in Republika Srpska as opposed to the more populous Federation. This is hardly surprising, given professional anthropology's tendency to align with victims rather than perpetrators of state violence. Republika Srpska owes its existence to the military successes of Bosnian Serb forces, who enjoyed the backing of the Yugoslav National Army and its successor structures throughout the period from 1992 to 1995. Brkovic acknowledges that the town where she focused her fieldwork, Bijeljina, was the site of Serbian paramilitary massacres of Muslims in 1992. Reflecting the author's primary engagement with British social anthropological traditions, Managing Ambiguity foregrounds social personhood, showing how "individuals" are in fact networked, connected, obligated, and interpellative selves-in-suspension. The particular field of action that the author explores is the domain of care for others, tracing the ways families needing special medical or other therapeutic care beyond the capacity of local providers mobilize financial support. Successful families appeal to any and all possible resources in this effort, and Brkovic shows the key role of relationship-building through Ratka, an influence broker connected both to the ruling political party as well as a charitable organization. Among the suggestive and thought-provoking metaphors in this richly referenced work is that of navigation , traced back to a 1993 book chapter by Edward Hutchins. Brkovic takes that metaphor into the world of social relations-where the book also speaks to more recent anthropological approaches to the impacts of capitalism and neoliberalism on self-fashioning, including works by Elizabeth Dunn, Alena Ledeneva, and Ilana Gershon. In Republika Srpska, though, Brkovic identifies a common yearning for "normality" that includes, as she puts it, a world in which "welfare would be framed as an unambiguous citizen right-rather than as a prize for being a proactive, self-sufficient welfare subject" (p. 114). This observation is backed by a range of empirical data-which includes testimony from job seekers Petra and Zoran as well as families associated with the religious welfare organization The Sun-indicating that these citizens know how to leverage different kinds of cultural and social capital to achieve personal ends but assert that they would prefer that they did not need to do so. Only those who appear to control the web of connections and favors and accrue power through them (those, like Ratka, for whom Brkovic uses Janine Wedel's [2009] term "flexians") do not view them as corrosive or inimical to a preferred mode of relations between polity and citizen. Brkovic fieldsite exhibits a similar, overlapping range of attitudes and strategies toward the precarity of shrinking social safety nets and straitened paths of socioeconomic mobility that anthropologists have documented globally. There is some irony that these impacts of economic globalization are felt even in Srpska Republika, whose elected political leaders persistently flirt with the prospect of seceding from Bosnia-Hercegovina. But the familiarity of the dilemmas faced by town residents, and their recourse to instrumentalization of affective ties, accords with Brkovic's agenda to correct the stereotype of the Balkan "other," which took such deep

Bosnia has always been in the focus of sociological and ethnographic research, providing rich emp... more Bosnia has always been in the focus of sociological and ethnographic research, providing rich empirical material in numerous domains from political science through nationalism studies to history. Also, based on this research, a vast number of theories were developed regarding informality, clientelism, the consequences of power sharing, interethnic relations, conflict and conflict management, or the image and memory of the Balkans. Similarly, in the past almost 30 years, a vast number of literature focused on the consequences of post-socialist transition, asking questions regarding how Central and Eastern European countries managed to overcome the challenges of post-socialism and what were the peculiarities of transition to capitalism and democracy in the region. Managing Ambiguity: How Clientelism, Citizenship and Power Shape Personhood in Bosnia and Herzegovina by Čarna Brković continues and breaks with this tradition at the same time. On the one hand, relying on exquisite empirical material, she continues the finest anthropological tradition that focuses on the complex concept of favours, informality, and clientelism. By putting it in the context of the state welfare system, it presents how these shape social and power relations in a Bosnian town. On the other hand, with theoretical thoroughness, she rejects the Central and Eastern European specificity and the groundedness in post-communist transition, criticizes the orientalizing aspects of research in the topic, and formulates general conclusions on the challenges of the globally observable neoliberal transformation of the state .

Europe and the European Union are unavoidable, if ambiguous, political references in the post-Yu... more Europe and the European Union are unavoidable, if ambiguous, political references in the post-Yugoslav space. This volume interrogates the forms and implications of the increasingly potent symbolic nexus that has developed between non-heterosexual sexualities, LGBT activism(s) and Europeanisation(s) in all of the Yugoslav successor states.

Contributors to this book show how the long EU accession process disseminates discursive tools employed in LGBT activist struggles for human rights and equality. This creates a linkage between “Europeanness” and “gay emancipation” which elevates certain forms of gay activist engagement and perhaps also non-heterosexuality, more generally, to a measure of democracy, progress and modernity. At the same time, it relegates practices of intolerance to the LGBT community to the status of non-European primitivist Other who is inevitably positioned in the patriarchal past that should be left behind.

This meticulously-researched, edited volume offers a brilliant analysis of the complex linkages between LBGT rights and European integration, and their implications for activists, citizens, and officials alike. It is a major contribution to the literature on activism in the post-Yugoslav space as well as LGBT activism more broadly. A must read for students and scholars of gender studies, European studies, and social movements.
Professor Jill A. Irvine, University of Oklahoma

This strikingly original collection represents not only a pioneering work in LGBT studies, but also offers a powerful case for engaging the study of post-conflict Southeastern Europe with enhanced theoretical depth and wider social engagement. The result is an impressive and useful volume both in terms of the scope of its coverage and the scholarly rigour of the individual texts.
Professor Eric Gordy, School of Slavonic and East European Studies
University College London

This thesis follows a variety of practices in the field of social and health protection in Bijelj... more This thesis follows a variety of practices in the field of social and health protection in Bijeljina, a border town in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where I completed a year of fieldwork during 2009 and 2010. I explored how people gained access to public services and provisions, and also considered how they pursued social and healthcare protection beyond state-funded institutions. Throughout the thesis, I treat these practices as a form of navigation through what I refer to as social and political space. I argue that navigating one?s way through the fields of social and health protection in Bijeljina encompassed the pursuit of personalised relations as well as attempts to fit into institutionalised rules and categories. Instead of assuming what the proper 'state? roles were, and consequently approaching the ethnographic material in terms of how well it fits in to a certain model, I explore in what way the boundary between the 'state? and 'that which is not the state? was const...

Anthropology Matters, Aug 28, 2017