Daytonitis in Practice

(Post-)Socialist (Dis-)Continuities in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Energy and Environment Sector

Abstract

The aim of this ethnographic paper is to map the traces of temporality in everyday practices of energy and environment professionals in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). In line with current anthropological research in the region, we aim to illustrate how clear divisions of time in BiH between post-socialism, post-war and an undetermined Europeanization process do not adequately address the nuances of multiple temporalities the interlocutors reference. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in state institutions, we attempt to understand what living in the post entails for civil servants in BiH’s energy and environment sector. Specifically, we look at how temporal markers relate to the Dayton Meantime (Jansen 2015), especially in the context of Europeanization and Yugostalgia. Discussing the analytic productivity of postsocialism, working out certain (dis-)continuities, we focus on how civil servants employ references of Europeanization and Yugostalgia as temporal markers through which they make sense of their past, present and future.