SOAS Research Online

Abstract

As a religiously plural space, Bosnia was particularly vulnerable to the strong thrusts of ethno-religious homogenisation in the twentieth century. In this seminar, Dr HadžiMuhamedović considers the karst Field of Gacko in the south-eastern Bosnian highlands – where he conducted long-term ethnographic research – to raise questions about the spatio-temporal qualities of communal (inter-faith) relations and syncretic rituals. Journeying through conversations with his interlocutors in one of the world’s most politically polarised landscapes, he suggests that the echoes of the Christian-Muslim-Roma alliances in Gacko form a defiant grammar of home in the future tense. This seminar calls for an anthropology of proximity within and beyond the Bosnian Dinarides.