Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.15378/1848-9540.2015.38.01

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

Azra Hromadžić ; Department of Anthropology, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA
Jason Danely orcid.org/0000-0001-8027-9328 ; Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
Miloš Milenković orcid.org/0000-0001-5534-3375 ; Odeljenje za etnologiju i antropologiju, Filozofski fakultet Univerziteta u Beogradu, Beograd, Srbija
Sonja Podgorelec orcid.org/0000-0002-9337-9966 ; Institut za migracije i narodnosti, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Tihana Rubić orcid.org/0000-0003-2744-8852 ; Odsjek za etnologiju i kulturnu antropologiju, Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Željka Petrović Osmak ; Etnografski muzej, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Paul Stubbs orcid.org/0000-0002-0318-4306 ; Ekonomski institut, Zagreb, Hrvatska

Abstract

This article delves into Bosnia-Herzegovina, and especially into the town of Bihać, 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 Bihać, 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.

Keywords

care; aging; the state; family; semi-absence; socialism and postsocialism; war and postwar

Hrčak ID:

149633

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/149633

Publication date:

18.12.2015.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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