RESEARCHING INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT Working Paper No. 11, 2021
Hundreds of thousands of Bosnians were forced to flee their homes during and after the conflict i... more Hundreds of thousands of Bosnians were forced to flee their homes during and after the conflict in the early 1990s. Although most have sought refuge abroad, many internally displaced persons (IDPs) have embarked on an intra-state odyssey for a new place they would call home. However, did they succeed in that quest? This paper endeavors to answer this question (auto)ethnographically by following the story of the construction and reconstruction of the meaning of author's family 'home' from 1987 to the present. Creating a tripartite theoretical basis composed of the concepts of homelessness, homing, and home, this research explores what home was to the author's family, how the understanding of this concept varied during the war and postwar period, and how the experience of being an IDP redefined the notion of home. By juxtaposing the parents' experience on one side, and the children's on the other, this study provides pioneering insight into transgenerational cleavages of understandings of what home is to those who were growing up as IDPs in Bosnia. Deeper analysis and presentation of findings is generated through poetic inquiry and presented in the form of three research-poems: 'Home Made of People,' 'Fragments of Home(s),' and 'Home (making) as a Family'. Analysis unravels the robust, multilevel modifications that reconceptualization of home went through. The assemblage of changes, ignited by the loss of Bourdieusian habitus, consists of not just a vital shift in the emotional and cognitive-moral understanding of what home is, but also in the gendered shrinking of the meaning of home coloured by the transgenerational transfer of failed homing(s).
Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography SASA , 2021
The rapidly burgeoning literature surrounding COVID-19 pandemic fetishistically and prematurely t... more The rapidly burgeoning literature surrounding COVID-19 pandemic fetishistically and prematurely tried to catch the academic momentum, taking almost an a priori, non-debatable, starting point of the conceptualization of the pandemic as the ?new normal?. In Pandemic: COVID-19 Shakes the World and Pandemic! 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost, Slavoj Zizek frames the pandemic as multiple global crises, arguing it will aggressively and drastically rupture the global societal norms and dynamics creating a new order. However, did it? This essay debates this question through the theoretical lenses of Badiou?s Event. It starts by laying down the fundamental theoretical principles and mapping the necessary criteria needed to be fulfilled in order for a happening to be named an Event. Further, it navigates through ideas and arguments presented in Zizek?s publications localizing the pandemic?s global characteristics. Finally, it theoretically deconstructs them providing us with the fundamental answer...
RESEARCHING INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT Working Paper No. 11, 2021
Hundreds of thousands of Bosnians were forced to flee their homes during and after the conflict i... more Hundreds of thousands of Bosnians were forced to flee their homes during and after the conflict in the early 1990s. Although most have sought refuge abroad, many internally displaced persons (IDPs) have embarked on an intra-state odyssey for a new place they would call home. However, did they succeed in that quest? This paper endeavors to answer this question (auto)ethnographically by following the story of the construction and reconstruction of the meaning of author's family 'home' from 1987 to the present. Creating a tripartite theoretical basis composed of the concepts of homelessness, homing, and home, this research explores what home was to the author's family, how the understanding of this concept varied during the war and postwar period, and how the experience of being an IDP redefined the notion of home. By juxtaposing the parents' experience on one side, and the children's on the other, this study provides pioneering insight into transgenerational cleavages of understandings of what home is to those who were growing up as IDPs in Bosnia. Deeper analysis and presentation of findings is generated through poetic inquiry and presented in the form of three research-poems: 'Home Made of People,' 'Fragments of Home(s),' and 'Home (making) as a Family'. Analysis unravels the robust, multilevel modifications that reconceptualization of home went through. The assemblage of changes, ignited by the loss of Bourdieusian habitus, consists of not just a vital shift in the emotional and cognitive-moral understanding of what home is, but also in the gendered shrinking of the meaning of home coloured by the transgenerational transfer of failed homing(s).
Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography SASA , 2021
The rapidly burgeoning literature surrounding COVID-19 pandemic fetishistically and prematurely t... more The rapidly burgeoning literature surrounding COVID-19 pandemic fetishistically and prematurely tried to catch the academic momentum, taking almost an a priori, non-debatable, starting point of the conceptualization of the pandemic as the ?new normal?. In Pandemic: COVID-19 Shakes the World and Pandemic! 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost, Slavoj Zizek frames the pandemic as multiple global crises, arguing it will aggressively and drastically rupture the global societal norms and dynamics creating a new order. However, did it? This essay debates this question through the theoretical lenses of Badiou?s Event. It starts by laying down the fundamental theoretical principles and mapping the necessary criteria needed to be fulfilled in order for a happening to be named an Event. Further, it navigates through ideas and arguments presented in Zizek?s publications localizing the pandemic?s global characteristics. Finally, it theoretically deconstructs them providing us with the fundamental answer...
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