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ABSTRACT
This article looks at everyday encounters in Mostar to investigate how boundaries are enacted and displaced by its dwellers. Drawing on participant observation in two cafes, it considers boundaries not only in their spatial capacity, but in a confluence of space and time. It reflects on how owners and customers mobilize the idea of the pre-war city as a space of interethnic tolerance to criticize the contemporary city. It discusses how the creation of temporal boundaries complicate the narrative of the divided city and sheds light on attempts to restore places of co-existence in sharp contrast to the prevalent social order.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank João Pontes Nogueira, Jef Huysmans, Giulia Carabelli and Aleksandra Djurasovic.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Renata Summa holds a PhD in International Relations from PUC-Rio and was a visiting PhD student at Open University, UK. She holds a M.A. in International Relations from Sciences-Po Paris and a B.A. in Journalism from the University of São Paulo. She teaches at the Institute of International Relations of PUC-Rio and was a visiting researcher in Graz under the Coimbra Group Scholarship Programme for Young Professors and Researchers from Latin American Universities. Her research interests are the following: urban conflicts, borders and boundaries, Bosnia and Herzegovina and everyday approaches in International Relations.
Notes
1 Before Socialism and during the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, Mostar was divided into Mahalle (neighbourhoods) along the ethnic lines. Christians and Muslims lived separately but met in Charshiya (city center). It was said that they lived ‘one next to another’ not ‘one with another’. Only later, in Socialism, multifamily housing projects were built and people of all ethnic groups were housed together.
2 ‘A kafana is a coffee shop, bar, restaurant, or any other place where you can spend a lot of time doing nothing, while consuming coffee or alcohol’ (Hemon, Citation2011, Mapping Home). Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/12/05/mapping- home
3 Šerbedžija i Sokolović pocasni mostarski ‘boemi’. ‘Dnevni List’, Mostar, 16 February 2011.
4 Josip Broz Tito, the former president of Yugoslavia (1953–1980)
5 Velež is a local football club supported mainly by Bosniaks and the Red Army, a leftist group nostalgic of Yugoslavia and Tito, but also by some Croats who still cherish a particular idea of Mostar through time.
6 Interview with G. 17 September 2015 at Boemi Kafana.
7 The word in Bosnian, granica, is the same for both ‘border’ and ‘boundary’.
8 Interview with S. 18 April 2015 at Boemi Kafana.
9 Interview with S. 18 April 2015, at Boemi Kafana.
10 Interview with G. 18 April 2015 at Boemi Kafana.
11 Interview with Z. 19 April 2015 at Mostar Old Town.
12 Perspektiva – Mostar – druga epizoda (2nd episode). Retrieved from http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/media/video/perspektiva-druga-epizoda-mostar/26849554.html (00:21:11).
13 Interview with G. 18 April 2015 at Boemi Kafana.
14 Interview with A. 18 April 2015. At Club Aleksa, Mostar.
15 Gojko BERIĆ, Spanski Trg «Oslobodjenje » 28 May 2015. http://www.oslobodjenje.ba/kolumne/spanski-trg
16 On the Old Gymnasium, please refer to Hromadzic Citation2015.
17 Interview with V. 6 May 2015, at the Old Gymnasium Building.
18 Interview with A. 18 April 2015. At Club Aleksa, Mostar.
19 Interview with A. 18 April 2015. At Club Aleksa, Mostar.
20 For more on the subject of inclusion and exclusion in BiH post-conflict society based on one’s experience during the war, please refer to Ullen (Citation2013).