Depoliticization “from Below”: Everyday Humanitarianism in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

This paper explores how the boundary between humanitarianism and politics was reproduced in the everyday life in a Bosnia and Herzegovina town. It addresses the use of (post)Yugoslav ideas about humaneness as an apolitical core surrounded by layers of socio-political identities in the course of humanitarian actions. The paper suggests that the depoliticization of humanitarian actions allowed people to distance themselves from the hegemonic understanding of politics as interest-oriented management of ethno-national groups. Those who needed humanitarian help relied on depoliticizing discourses of humaneness to assert their (political) claims to survival and wellbeing in the context marked by the dominance of ethno-nationalist rhetoric. Kljucne rijeci humanitarianism, depoliticization, redistribution, recognition, Bosnia and Herzegovina