Labours of Representation : A Bosnian Workers’ Movement and the Possibilities of Collaborative Graphic Ethnography

Collaborative graphic ethnography can generate new ways of identifying, materializing, and documenting political possibility in what otherwise seems like an overdetermined world, and in doing so, offers a model for practicing anthropology differently. We come to these insights through our work in the embattled Bosnian detergent factory “Dita,” located on the outskirts of the post-industrial city of Tuzla, whose workers scored an unprecedented victory when they managed to preserve their factory and restart production despite the threat of bankruptcy and liquidation. In researching and telling the story of their struggle and victory through this innovative format, we build upon the historical popularity of comics in former Yugoslavia, as well as contemporary experimentation with the form among anti-corruption activists in Bosnia-Herzegovina. We explore ethnographic and political affordances of sequential art and the graphic form for an engaged or activist anthropology, including its capacity to visualize and materialize the immaterial and overlooked aspects of politics, mitigate anthropology’s extractivist tendencies, enlist the imagination and participation of readers in directions both hoped for and unanticipated, and engage and animate multiple local and international publics.L’ethnographie graphique collaborative peut générer de Nouvelles manières d’identifier, de matérialiser, de documenter la possibilité politique dans ce qui semble être un monde surdéterminé et, ce faisant, offre un modèle pour pratiquer différemment l’anthropologie. Nous sommes arrivés à ces conclusions grâce à notre travail dans l’usine bosniaque de détergents « Dita », située à la périphérie de la ville post-industrielle de Tuzla, dont les travailleurs ont remporté une victoire sans précédent lorsqu’ils ont réussi à préserver leur usine et à relancer la production malgré la menace de faillite et de liquidation. En recherchant et en racontant l’histoire de leur lutte et de leur victoire à travers ce format innovant, nous nous appuyons sur la popularité historique de la bande dessinée en ex-Yougoslavie, ainsi que sur l’expérimentation contemporaine de cette forme graphique par les militants anti-corruption en Bosnie-Herzégovine. Nous explorons les possibilités ethnographiques et politiques de l’art séquentiel et de la forme graphique pour une anthropologie engagée ou militante, notamment sa capacité à visualiser et à matérialiser les aspects immatériels et négligés de la politique, à atténuer les tendances extractivistes de l’anthropologie, à solliciter l’imagination et la participation des lecteurs dans des directions à la fois espérées et imprévues, et à engager et animer de multiples publics locaux et internationaux

Contesting Postwar Mostar

This chapter employs negotiating agency on postwar Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina) to understand acts come about in its urban conflicts over peace(s). The first line of analysis uses a feature film about the city to explore the negotiation between Slavko (who wants to act in line with the coexisting peace) and a world that enforces the ethnonational—Bosniak and Croat—peace(s). The generated insights on how difficult it to pursue coexisting acts in an ethnonationalist world are then contextualised in non-fiction Mostar where two foci emerge: compliance with as well as resistance towards the ethnonational peace(s) by people supporting the coexisting one. The second line of analysis subsequently explores how the ethnonational grip on employment and the segregated education system drives people towards ethnonational acts while the third line of analysis explores how students at the Old Gymnasium as well as activists at Abrašević manage to negotiate coexisting acts