Who Sows Hunger, Harvests Rage: Theorising February Protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Framework of Anthropology of Food
Abstract
The beginning of February, 2014 in Bosnia and Hercegovina begun "on a revolutionary note". Mass protests were triggered by an outrage of fired factory workers, who mobilised themselves and walked into the streets of Tuzla.
In couple of days demonstrations quickly spread to other bigger cities in the Federation and partly to Banja Luka the capital of Republika Srpska. On Friday, 7, the protests escalated in violent clashes with police forces and the buildings of cantonal governments in Sarajevo, Tuzla, Zenica and Mostar were set by the radical cores on fire.
This presentation aims to analyse these events in a larger socio-economical contexts of contemporary BiH with a focus on the topic of food. The studies of social life of things proved to be useful when approaching complex social issues and impacts of macrostructural forces on local communities (e.g.
Collingham 2006, Bourdieu 1984, Miller 2005, Mintz, 1985). However, in the "realm of things", food is of a special significance as its primarily function is the nourishment of the body, therefore, assurance of the survival (see Counihan 1999, Farquar 2006, Lupton 1996).
The reference to food also appeared in February protests in BiH. Some media represented these events as an explosion of anger of the people, who said enough to the "corrupted establishment of the country"; in Srebrenica some of the poorest spoke of the anger of hungry people at the powerful rich political elites.
Graffiti sprayed on the Building of Cantonal Government in Sarajevo sometime in spring 2014 fittingly summarises the message of the radical protesters: "Who sows hunger, harvests rage!"