Hospitality as Diplomacy in Post- Cosmopolitan Urban Spaces Dervish Lodges and Sofra-Diplomacy in Post-War Bosnia-Herzegovina

Abstract

If the first step in developing an ethnography of everyday diplomacy requires re-scaling analytical focus on the forms of mediated exchange beyond the realm of the nation-state, this needs to be followed by an exploration of 'the sites' where everyday diplomacy actually takes place. One such 'site' which epitomises the quintessence of diplomatic practice is dining and commensality. By re-scaling this axiom beyond state-level diplomacy, I explore how the notion of sofra (table/dining etiquette) is deployed by a Muslim Dervish brotherhood in a post-cosmopolitan town in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina. I suggest that the notion of sofra embodies both a mode of being diplomatic as well as a site of everyday diplomacy. The sofra thus enables the brotherhood to stage ‘events of hospitality’ to forge and mediate relationships between various ‘others’ locally and transnationally.