Yearnings in the Meantime: Normal Lives and the State in a Sarajevo Apartment Complex

263 Pages·1.769 MB·English

by  Stef Jansen

Yearnings in the Meantime
DISLOCATIONS
General Editors: August Carbonella, Memorial University of Newfoundland,
Don Kalb, University of Utrecht & Central European University, Linda Green,
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The immense dislocations and suffering caused by neoliberal globalization, the
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YearningsintheMeantime

‘Normal Lives’ and the State in a
Sarajevo Apartment Complex
_
Stef Jansen
berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2015 by
Berghahn Books
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© 2015 Stef Jansen
All rights reserved.
Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jansen, Stef.
Yearnings in the meantime: ‘normal lives’ and the state in a Sarajevo
apartment complex / Stef Jansen. -- First Edition.
pages cm. -- (Dislocations; Volume 15)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-78238-650-6 (hardback: alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-78238-651-3
(ebook)
1. Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina)--Social conditions--21st century.
2. Ethnology--Bosnia and Herzegovina--Sarajevo. 3. Yugoslav War,
1991-1995--Bosnia and Herzegovina--Sarajevo. I. Title.
HN639.S37J36 2015
306.0949742--dc23
2015003140
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78238-650-6 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-78238-651-3 (ebook)
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements x
Introduction [or, Towards an Anthropology of Shared Concerns] 1
Part I: Figuring ‘Normal Lives’
Chapter 1 ‘Normal Lives’ 33
[or, Towards an Anthropology of Yearning]
Chapter 2 Waiting for a Bus 59
[or, Towards an Anthropology of Gridding]
Chapter 3 Wartime Gridding for ‘Normal Lives’ 87
[or, Towards an Anthropology of Hope for
the State]
Part II: Diagnosing Daytonitis
Chapter 4 First Symptom: ‘There Is No System’ 123
[or, Towards an Anthropology of an Elusive
State Effect]
Chapter 5 Second Symptom: ‘We Are Pattering in Place’ 157
[or, Towards an Anthropology of Spatiotemporal
Entrapment]
vi | Contents
Part III: Living With Daytonitis
Chapter 6 C onviviality in the Meantime 189
[or, Towards a Critique of Dayton Non-politics]
Epilogue Shovelling and Numbering for ‘Normal Lives’ 221
References 233
Index 243
IllustratIons
0.1 The logo of the 1984 Olympic Winter Games on a central 3
Dobrinja apartment block
0.2 A Dobrinja building several years after reconstruction 4
0.3 A central street in Dobrinja, a key site for shops, 15
services and the korzo [evening stroll]
0.4 The small stream Dobrinja, which runs through the 15
middle of the settlement, another favourite for a stroll
2.1 Map of Dobrinja and a part of Istočno Sarajevo 60
2.2 The okretaljka in Dobrinja 62
2.3 A trolleybus waiting at the okretaljka 62
3.1 The mosque in Dobrinja and the Serbian Orthodox 88
church at the far edge of Dobrinja, just inside Istočno
Sarajevo
3.2 One of Dobrinja’s primary schools, reconstructed after 89
the war
3.3 The entry to the main premises of Gimnazija Dobrinja, 90
in former storage and commercial spaces on the ground
floor of an apartment building, in use until late 2010
3.4 Building works for the new Gimnazija premises in 117
Dobrinja
4.1 One of Dobrinja’s local commune (MZ) secretariats, 124
on the ground floor of an apartment block
– vii –
viii | Illustrations
4.2 Organigram of Dayton BiH government institutions 140
4.3 One of Dobrinja’s boilers for collective heating 142
5.1 Country sticker, in the blue-yellow EU colours: 176
‘I too would like [to move] into Europe’
PrefaCe
I never see the dawn, said Marco, his voice rattling in his throat, that I don’t
say to myself perhaps… perhaps today.
—John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
While I am revising this manuscript for publication in the winter of
2014, something special is happening in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A sudden revolt has rocked a series of towns and its reverberations
continue in protests and citizen plenums. Key demands concern
social justice. Most of the fury is directed at the inequality between
‘politicians’ and ‘ordinary people’, the privileges enjoyed by a cor-
rupt, criminal ruling caste organised through political parties and the
privatisation process that has cemented these. Many of the demands
revolve around the need to establish a fair and functional ‘system’
that will finally allow people in Bosnia and Herzegovina to ‘move
forward from the dead point’ and live ‘normal lives’. This is the first
time since the early 1990s that the country sees such attempts to for-
mulate the beginnings – however fledgling – of a more or less univer-
salist political agenda on redistribution – one that does not focus on
constitutional and territorial issues of recognition and representation
through an identitarian prism. Within hours of the first demonstra-
tions, friends were telling me I would need to add a third part to the
epilogue in this book.
I have not written this epilogue, partly because I am too busy on
the street protests and in the plenum in Sarajevo. Priorities... In this
preface I therefore merely flag the possibility that this entire book on
‘normal lives’ and ‘the state’ in Bosnia and Herzegovina has itself,
totally unexpectedly, become a preface. Hindsight will show if this
is indeed the case and if the Meantime may be reaching its long-
yearned-for end.
– ix –