When you follow the river, new constellations of the political come into view. This talk examines how rivers in Bosnia and Herzegovina become sites where the afterlives of war, the NATO‑brokered peace de/industrial complex, and global border regimes converge to produce fluvial necropolitics and new kinds of solidarities. Through three ethnographic scenes—military/industrial toxic dumping on the Neretva; refugee deaths and solidarities along the Serbian border on the Drina; and the lethal 2024 landslide on the Neretva—I show how rivers are simultaneously harmed, weaponized, and mobilized. Methodologically, I propose thinking from Bosnia, foregrounding a shared present that exceeds ethnic and national boundaries, and pairing ethnography with autoethnography to illuminate how people understand, endure, and resist the multi-scalar assaults on ecologies of living.

About the speaker

Saida Hodžić is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University and the organizer of the Refugees Know Things project. Her book The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs (2017) examines imperialism from the South. She studies and writes about the afterlives of war, dissent, survivance, and solidarity.

Host

Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies