Managing ambiguity. How clientelism, citizenship, and power shape personhood in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Berghahn 2017 (original) (raw)
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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 .
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