"Where were they until now?" Aging, Care and Abandonment in a Bosnian Town

Abstract

This article delves into Bosnia-Herzegovina, and especially into the town of Bihac, to ethnographically examine the changing nature of the state and family, as visible through practices of elder care. I use my ethnographic data gathered at a nursing home Vitalis in Bihac, and especially the predicament of an elderly Bosnian woman whom I call Zemka, to argue that both the state and family in postwar and postsocialist Bosnia-Herzegovina materialize as semi-absent. In the process of unpacking these multiple semi-absences, I reveal the lived effects of changing postwar and postsocialist state, and altering kinship relations as they affect ordinary people.