This presentation will look at Sarajevo and Mostar in order to understand how boundaries are enacted and re-employed, shifted and displaced in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. It will be argued that boundaries are dependent on practices, which confers upon them a precarious status and indicates that they might be changed. It is thus looking at the everyday that we make sense of those boundaries, knowing, however, that they are permeated with contradictions and may be enacted in different ways by different people. The everyday, which usually receives our ‘daily inattention’, will be considered here a relevant analytical category through which undertake this research. We will thus look, more specifically, at ‘everyday places’ within these cities, such as schools, streets, squares, cafés, coach station and shopping malls, which might be enacted as the very (ethnonational, local/international) boundaries or the arena in which those boundaries are diverted and displaced. The aim is to provide for an alternative account to more official narratives about ethnonational divisions, as well as questions clear-cut distinctions between the local and the international in post-Dayton BiH.
Renata Summa holds a PhD in International Relations from PUC-Rio and was a visiting PhD student at Open University, UK. She holds a M.A. in International Relations from Sciences-Po Paris and a B.A. in Journalism from the University of São Paulo. She teaches at Getulio Vargas Foundation and at the Institute of International Relations of PUC-Rio, where she is also the adjunct coordinator for the undergrad program. She is currently visiting researcher in Graz under the Coimbra Group Scholarship Programme for Young Professors and Researchers from Latin American Universities. Her research interests are the following: urban conflicts, borders and boundaries, Bosnia and Herzegovina and everyday approaches in International Relations.