much of a caricature this may seem – are characteristic of wartime life. Povrzanović tellingly calls this practice/strategy of attempting to stick to ‘minimal normality’ (Maček 2000a) ‘imitations of life’ (Povrzanović 1997: 157). The unmaking of the world and the remaking therefore take place simultaneously. However, the object of my study is a post-war society, not a war-time society. Though my informants’ lives were still darkened by the shadow of the war, they no longer feared for their own lives. And despite their difficult social situation my informants still felt that in general things had improved since the end of the war. So, whereas in a situation of war it would be accurate to describe unmaking and remaking as simultaneous, in Stolac today people are more occupied with attempts at understanding, forgetting and forgiving. These forms of remaking are qualitatively different from the wartime ‘imitation of life’ which they superficially resemble. On the other hand, it is still important to acknowledge how destructive the tough post-war situation has been to people’s hopes and dreams, as well as their meaning-creating narratives, which are still severely damaged. In one sense, then, a process of unmaking is still going on.
Analysing the unmaking of my informants’ lives centres on two core aspects: the everyday world and epistemology. Firstly, by ‘everyday world’ I mean the non-conscious routine practices and categories one employs to make sense of events, including other people’s actions. Moreover, such non-conscious acts and categories can often easily become the object of conscious reflection. It is this domain that much phenomenologically inspired anthropology has tried to analyse and conceptualise. For instance, the non-conscious constitutes a central component in Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (1995) as well as Arthur Kleinman’s ‘local moral worlds’ (1992). For an overview see Jackson (1996). The everyday routine world has also been a focus of ethnomethodology. For example, Garfinkel’s studies (1963, 1967) have revealed the existence of an implicit everyday morality, a largely hidden taken-for-granted world with unwritten assumptions about the dos and don’ts of social life, which is the basis for people’s situational strategies. But Garfinkel’s work also reveals how seemingly minor and in a way imperceptible changes in people’s behaviour can radically disrupt the neat flow of social interaction, creating feelings of confusion. In a similar way, Goffman’s extensive studies of face-to-face interaction have shown that the individual’s use of social identities as well as the social expectations attached to such use (in sum impression management) is dependent on predictability in social interaction (the interaction order) (1971, 1974, 1983). In sum, the everyday world possesses a taken-for-granted-ness that is fundamental to processes of identification of oneself and the Other, and to avoid feeling bewilderment and confusion. And it is the damage to such everyday worlds with their predictable social routines and identities that constitutes a core element in many people’s war experiences.
The second aspect of the unmaking of the everyday world relates to the loss or failure of epistemological frameworks. As mentioned, Scarry’s work (1985) describes how the experience of torture is often non-communicative, because the categories and concepts its victims would normally use to communicate experience no longer suffice.1 This is why the victims of terror and war-related violence often state that they cannot describe what happened, that they do not have the words, or that strangers will not understand (Maček 2001, Mertus 1997, Povrzanović 1993, Perera 2001). The ability to communicate experiences of violence is restricted because the mental categories normally used for making sense of the world are themselves shattered by the unprecedented events of war and violence (Zur 1998: 159-91; Nordstrom 1997: 153-75). In sum the world’s unmaking forces its victims to redefine their social worlds from minor mundane practices to more overall values and ideals.
In the rest of the chapter, I will describe my informants’ experiences during and after the war in terms of four aspects of the unmaking of the world. The destruction of the everyday world, stories and communication, and finally the all-pervasive feeling of loss.
The destruction of the everyday world
In pre-war Bosnian life, a normal day did not start with the question whether you and your family would survive or have anything to eat and drink. But during the war basic subsistence suddenly became problematic. A central theme in my informants’ accounts from the war is how such fundamental aspects of everyday life became a question of life and death. Suddenly life was reduced to bare subsistence, and fear and desperation followed. I will present some of the recurrent themes in people’s accounts of wartime life.
Leaving everything behind
The imprisonment of the Muslim men of Stolac happened more or less overnight. But before the women and children were arrested they had had six weeks to prepare themselves, knowing all this time that they were at great risk of being driven out like their men. Valuables were therefore hidden, for instance buried in the garden, and when the soldiers came to fetch the women many had packed clothes, photos and food in rucksacks, and they had hidden money and jewellery on their persons. Even after all this preparation, many women recall the experience of having to leave everything behind as really horrible. Material possessions gathered over a lifetime, along with the dreams, happiness and expectations connected symbolically to these objects, were left behind. Repeatedly I heard expressions such as “We were forced to leave carrying only a plastic bag”. As one woman lamented “What can you put in a plastic bag?” To make matters worse Croat soldiers stole bags, jewellery and money from the women when they were searched before their actual expulsion from Stolac.
Violence
Both men and women experienced physical violence, including murder. They also experienced a constant threat of violence. These terrible experiences are central themes in their accounts of the war. For the men violence relates to the brutal interrogations before the internment as well as to the routine beatings of prisoners in the camps. Both the interrogations and the beatings killed several people. As a consequence of the visit of the Red Cross to some of the prison camps about three months after their creation, some of the most exhausted prisoners were allowed to leave – those who had lost the most weight. They were not allowed to return to Bosnia Herzegovina, but had to travel to third countries instead. Emir was one of these prisoners. When he was released, the Red Cross sent him to the small island of Korcula in Croatia. After about two months, Emir had recovered somewhat. As he concisely summed up: “There we were well, we were given food three times a day, we were not beaten, we had a bed to sleep in.” Aspects of life that had been natural and unproblematic a couple of month previously had suddenly become issues of conscious concern. The women experienced the physical violence when they were searched and robbed by Croat soldiers. Violence also marks their ten-kilometre march from the place where the Croat soldiers set them off to Blagaj, a Muslim-controlled area. It was hot, people were scared, and they had to carry heavy burdens – baggage, as well as children or disabled parents in some cases – while the Croat soldiers fired into the air. About nine old women lost their lives on this march, probably from exhaustion. The experience of violence also relates to the time the women spent in Blagaj. One woman, Anvere, occupied a basement. The area was shelled all day, so she and her children had to stay indoors, and they only dared to tend the small vegetable patch they had for cultivating some lettuce or cabbage at night, and then very hastily.
Hunger
A third experiential theme relates to the hunger and thirst people felt, the diseases they contracted, and the lack of treatment available. In the prison camps the prisoners were given one loaf of bread every two weeks, as well as some soup, and almost nothing to drink. The camps were extremely hot, and the constant thirst was unbearable. Some people urinated in a tin can, filtered it through a sock, and drank it. Aziz told me:
I was thirsty and nobody would give us water. They brought one milk-can of water to 500 people so everybody pushed and fought for the water. You opened your mouth,
