Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.5673/sip.63.3.2
Ethnography of Everyday Life, Isolation, and Resilience in Tenja
Goran Dokić
orcid.org/0009-0006-5400-3372
; Martin-Luther-Sveučilište Halle-Wittenberg, Institut za etnologiju i filozofiju, Njemačka
Sažetak
This article ethnographically examines how everyday life in Tenja is shaped between its formal
proximity to Osijek and an experiential sense of distance. I employ the concept of relational
isolation, understood as a condition in which peripherality is not measured by geographical
distance but by relations to institutions, resources, and between generations, to analyse the
entanglement of infrastructure, affective landscapes, and everyday practices of care. The research
is based on fieldwork conducted in April 2025 and includes semi-structured interviews,
participant observation, and autoethnographic notes. The findings show how selective investment,
bureaucratic slowness, and symbolic politics of memory translate into experiences of
exhaustion, withdrawal, and prolonged temporariness, while everyday practices such as household
maintenance and informal networks of mutual aid produce a form of situated resilience
that ensures continuity and dignity, yet also reflects an ambivalent adaptation to existing constraints.
This resilience is neither spectacular nor publicly visible. Instead, it manifests in routine
gestures that enable the continuation of life under conditions of chronic uncertainty and
institutional neglect. The article connects debates on postsocialist peripherality, affect studies,
and everyday life research and proposes an operationalisation of relational isolation across three
domains: access to services, participation in decision-making, and affective orientation toward
space. In conclusion, it argues that development policies in suburban settlements must take the
community’s affective landscape into account in order to avoid reproducing spatial injustices
and to ensure long-term, sustainable support for local communities.
Ključne riječi
relational isolation; situated resilience; affective landscape; postsocialist periphery; infrastructure; Tenja
Hrčak ID:
344297
URI
Datum izdavanja:
27.1.2026.
Posjeta: 505 *