The Unexpected and The Confusing: Method and Theory in Sarajevo Under Siege

Authors

  • Ivana Maček

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14672/ada2015306%25p

Keywords:

Anthropology, Ethnography, War, Bosnia, Sarajevo

Abstract

In this article I will explain how anthropology of war can make good use of a combination of philosophical and sociological methods, namely phenomenology and grounded theory. The case that will be analyzed is the siege of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capital Sarajevo in the early 1990s. I start the article by giving a short background to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one in the series of wars that accompanied the dissolution of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. After that I move to Sarajevo and my fieldwork ethnography during the war, showing methodological approaches I have used to collect data and make meaningful interpretations both scientifically and locally, that is to Sarajevans as well as to my colleagues, and other international experts.

Author Biography

Ivana Maček

Ivana Maček è professore associato presso il Dipartimento di Antropologia Sociale dell’Università di Stoccolma, Svezia. Si è interessata al coinvolgimento della Svezia in zone di guerra, alla trasmissione intergenerazionale delle esperienze di guerra tra i bosniaci in Svezia e a questioni di metodologia della ricerca antropologica. È autrice di “Sarajevo Under Siege: Anthropology in Wartime” (2009, PENN) e curatrice del volume “Engaging Violence: Trauma Memory and Representation” (2014, Routledge).

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Published

2015-03-16

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1 N.S. (2015)

Section

Articles

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