Sarajevo Under Siege
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Sarajevo Under Siege offers a richly detailed account of the lived experiences of ordinary people in this multicultural city between 1992 and 1996, during the war in the former Yugoslavia. Moving beyond the shelling, snipers, and shortages, it documents the coping strategies people adopted and the creativity with which they responded to desperate circumstances. Ivana Maček, an anthropologist who grew up in the former Yugoslavia, argues that the division of Bosnians into antagonistic ethnonational groups was the result rather than the cause of the war, a view that was not only generally assumed by Americans and Western Europeans but also deliberately promoted by Serb, Croat, and Muslim nationalist politicians. Nationalist political leaders appealed to ethnoreligious loyalties and sowed mistrust between people who had previously coexisted peacefully in Sarajevo. Normality dissolved and relationships were reconstructed as individuals tried to ascertain who could be trusted. Over time, this ethnography shows, Sarajevans shifted from the shock they felt as civilians in a city under siege into a «soldier» way of thinking, siding with one group and blaming others for the war. Eventually, they became disillusioned with these simple rationales for suffering and adopted a «deserter» stance, trying to take moral responsibility for their own choices in spite of their powerless position. The coexistence of these contradictory views reflects the confusion Sarajevans felt in the midst of a chaotic war. Maček respects the subjectivity of her informants and gives Sarajevans' own words a dignity that is not always accorded the viewpoints of ordinary citizens. Combining scholarship on political violence with firsthand observation and telling insights, this book is of vital importance to people who seek to understand the dynamics of armed conflict along ethnonational lines both within and beyond Europe.
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Sarajevo Under Siege
Cynthia Keppley Mahmood, Series Editor
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Another encounter with a Sarajevan Croat ended with my summary dismissal. He was a sociology professor who had done some work on war, so a mutual acquaintance suggested that we meet. The man treated me as if I were his student and told me in no uncertain terms that I could not do research on religious questions in Sarajevo. I never understood why, and I felt bad after this conversation. Later, when I transcribed the interview, I saw something I did not remember. In telling me of his time as a student in Zagreb, he emphasized how arrogant the Croatian Croats were toward him, a Bosnian Croat, and how the Croatians always thought that they understood Bosnia, although they did not. His comment condemning my interest in religions in Sarajevo came in this context. Again I was identified as a Croatian Croat, but this time characterized as an ignorant and arrogant person, thinking that the explanation of the war in Bosnia could be found in religious questions.
Those Muslims I became closest to, because of mutual sympathies and proof that we were willing to help each other, often said, “Look at you, you are like one of us,” although it was obvious to all of us that I was neither Muslim nor Sarajevan. This exclamation came usually when I did something in a way that they were used to. For instance, I preferred to drink coffee out of a fildžan (a small coffee cup without a handle) rather than out of a šoljica (demitasse, a small coffee cup with a handle). Traditionally, a fildžan is a Muslim coffee cup, and a šoljica a Christian one. To ask a non-Muslim guest what she would prefer had always been a matter of politeness, an adaptation to the frequent social interaction among members of different ethnoreligious communities. In the former Yugoslavia, the rest of Europe was perceived as a sociocultural ideal. Since the Italians and the French drank coffee out of demitasse cups, secularized people tended to see the fildžan as backward or slightly exotic. During the war, some anti-Muslim citizens regarded using a fildžan as a primitive custom, and in some homes I was told with a chilly tone that they did not have any fildžani. In Muslim houses, by choosing the Muslim coffee cup I demonstrated to my new acquaintances that I was open to them and accepting of their customs. Of course, I had absolutely no idea beforehand that this mattered; it was just a natural part of my anthropological attitude and curiosity to learn new customs, as I tried to explain. But, whatever my intentions were, by adopting simple everyday ways, I was also signaling national sympathies.
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