Life in an age of death: War and the river in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The majority of literature on wars understandably focuses on the horrific aspects of war, such as death, destruction, displacement, and trauma. In this article, however, I want to highlight that life in war is not only brutal and disastrous but also is in some respects deeply joyful and at times even fun. This requires that we portray the horrific experiences of death and destruction but that we also ask: What kind of life emerges in these injured landscapes? Guided by this question, I argue that we cannot understand what war looks like and feels like if we do not understand the relationship between humans and other than humans. More specifically, I show how during the Bosnian War, in the devastated city of ruins, Bihać, shared experiences of joy, fun, and togetherness (communitas) materialized between the town's people and the Una River. Swimming in the river together provided the people of Bihać with an opportunity to create moments of play and laughter between life and death. As people in Bihać explained, these were moment‐by‐moment living situations, where generations blended and where divisions, superiority, and pride were broken down, however temporarily, and new undifferentiated bonds among people were created—communitas.

Sisterly intimacies: Islam, gift‐giving, and women's relations of care in Russia

“…Negative feelings might often become entangled with pleasure, excitement, purpose, and the pursuit of happiness. To that end, feminist anthropologists have provided glimpses into how marginalized communities around the world seek self-fulfillment and joy amid corrosive racism and patriarchy, while creating transnational intimacies and relationships of care with humans and more-than-humans to repair rifts in rapidly unraveling worlds (Williams, 2018; for postsocialist contexts, see Bloch, 2011;Hromadžić, 2022;Stout, 2014). 4 Contributing to these conversations, the affective formation of sisterly intimacies is distinctly postsocialist in nature, as it illustrates how negative feelings such as resentment about socioeconomic injustices and authoritarianism in today's Russia coexist with the affirmative feelings of longing for (religious) connectivity, the pursuit of collective well-being, and the search for an ethical (Muslim) living (Cherkaev, 2022).…”