Overview

Water potential is a significant natural wealth of most parts of the Balkans, and it has given rise to a surge in hydropower investments unparalleled across Europe. As part of the process, a dam was planned to be built on the Una River, which runs through the Bosnian town of Bihać. This prospect alarmed the city’s residents, culminating in a protest in 2015. The book begins with this protest, and it explores how the threat of dam construction transformed the seemingly apolitical love of the river into a powerful political force around which thousands of people mobilized: riverine citizenship. The book is based on interviews with participants, archival research, and over twenty years of ethnographic research. Azra Hromadžić focuses on the tension between ecological sustainability efforts in favor of renewable energy, on the one hand, and citizens’ historically shaped, deeply-felt, love for the river, on the other. She shows how the language and promises of green transition can mask the forces of capitalist accumulation that drive this change — whether in the form of building hydroelectric dams or promoting eco-tourism — and thus set in motion another cycle of environmental degradation, social dispossession, and economic exploitation.

Full Product Details

Author:   Azra Hromadžic
Publisher:   Central European University Press
Imprint:   Central European University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.40cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.590kg
ISBN:  

9789633867686

ISBN 10:   9633867681
Pages:   230
Publication Date:   10 September 2024
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction Riverine Citizenship: A Lived, Place-based Form of Politics  Thinking River as an Ethnographic Subject The Una and its People The Book’s Flow Chapter 1. The Una River Emeralds: Producing Ecologically Conscious Children in Socialist Yugoslavia Introduction Thinking about Children, Socialism, and Nature The Una River Emeralds and “Its” Children War, Children, and Ecology Reverberations: Contemporary Transformations Conclusion Chapter 2. Traversing the Una: Riverine Ethnography and the Senses Introduction Thinking about Senses Words and Images Sound Vibrations of the Una Perceiving Odors The River’s Structure The Una’s Subterranean World  Conclusion Chapter 3. Life in the Age of Death: War and the River Theoretical Inspirations Focusing on Bihać and the Una under Siege “We Were Naked in front of Each Other” The Return to Jotanovi Conclusion Chapter 4. “Ne damo Unu!” The Making of Riverine Citizens Introduction Thinking Eco-Populism Diverting Water and the Rise of Riverine Activism Abundance of Water and Excess of Suspicion Watershed: From Riverine Activism to Eco-populism “Ne Damo Unu!!!”: The Making of Riverine Citizens Conclusions Chapter 5. I Love the Una: On Love and Politics in Multispecies Relationships Introduction Thinking About Multispecies Love, Politics, and Justice A City in Love with the River Riverine Love: Heteronormativity, Romance, and Seduction Riverine Love as a Political Force Conclusion Chapter 6. “This tourism will kill us all!”: Eco-tourism, a Fragmented State, and the Slow Death of the River Introduction Una National Park: The Land of Water Magic “This tourism will kill us all!” Fragmented State, Betonizacija, and Elastic Borders Polluted Waters and Invasive Species The Una River Emeralds’ Children Conclusion Conclusion. In the end… Bibliography Index

Reviews

""This book is an extraordinary testimony to relations between the River Una and the Biscani in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina who live alongside her. It flows seamlessly from socialist childhood, through the river as a source of joy and escape during a deadly war, to collective action that defeated plans to build a damn and new threats emerging from the river's rebranding as a site of ecotourism. Riverine Citizenship is a meditation on multispecies love, never shying away from the painful, the destructive, and the violent, as rigorous and innovative as it is moving and poetic. It is a passionate plea for an expanded ethics of care and an inclusive ecological citizenship."" --Paul Stubbs

"""This book is an extraordinary testimony to relations between the River Una and the Biscani in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina who live alongside her. It flows seamlessly from socialist childhood, through the river as a source of joy and escape during a deadly war, to collective action that defeated plans to build a damn and new threats emerging from the river's rebranding as a site of ecotourism. Riverine Citizenship is a meditation on multispecies love, never shying away from the painful, the destructive, and the violent, as rigorous and innovative as it is moving and poetic. It is a passionate plea for an expanded ethics of care and an inclusive ecological citizenship."" --Paul Stubbs"

""This book is an extraordinary testimony to relations between the River Una and the Biscani in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina who live alongside her. It flows seamlessly from socialist childhood, through the river as a source of joy and escape during a deadly war, to collective action that defeated plans to build a damn and new threats emerging from the river's rebranding as a site of ecotourism. Riverine Citizenship is a meditation on multispecies love, never shying away from the painful, the destructive, and the violent, as rigorous and innovative as it is moving and poetic. It is a passionate plea for an expanded ethics of care and an inclusive ecological citizenship."" --Paul Stubbs ""From the depths and flows of its emerald waters, Azra Hromadzic has channeled the ethnographic sensorium of the 'one and only' Una into an insightful, poetic treatise on riverine love--love as affect, ethics, and politics. If we listen with her, we hear how joy can emerge in war and greed can color devotion. Above all, she offers us an anthropology of hope born from the entwined lives of a river and its people."" --Sarah Wagner

Author Information

Azra Hromadžic is Associate Professor and Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professors of Teaching Excellence at Syracuse University.

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