Intangible Borders

Abstract

This article discusses the ways in which the internal ethnic division of Bosnia and Herzegovina is mediated through everyday urban infrastructure in the border zone between Sarajevo and East Sarajevo. It elaborates on how street names, scripts and colours operate as tools for the delineation of ethnic territories and the inscription of place identity purified of symbols of hybridity or difference. It also discusses how such discursive boundaries are embedded in everyday urban life and shape people’s action and interaction in public space. The article argues that, through violence, the ethnic division that the war was fought for has transformed into an ongoing “cold war” through meanings of place. Opposing spatial discourses maintain the city’s ethnic boundaries by constructing exclusive place identities and keeping “others” at bay. The article highlights the potency of the apparently intangible elements of architecture and urban space in mediating and negotiating socio-spatial borders in the cityscape.