Identity and urban investment in Sarajevo : transnational flows of capital from the Persian Gulf and post-conflict imaginaries of belonging

• Main Author: Hartmann, Kristen M.
• Published: University College London (University of London) 2018
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.756186

This dissertation examines how transnational flows of capital from the Persian Gulf are shaping the urban landscape of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It seeks to answer the following question: what role are transnational flows of capital playing in urban redevelopment in Sarajevo? The thesis also investigates the following sub-questions: how do the residents of Sarajevo respond to such urban change? How is Sarajevo's changing urban space informing new conceptions of the sacred and the secular, of the East and the West and of the post-conflict identity of the city? What kinds of discourses are emerging in terms of identity? The thesis begins with an introduction followed by a literature review focusing on public space, sacred space, transnationality, and identity and Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After this, it discusses the methodology based on qualitative methods and discourse analysis for data interpretation. A chapter examining the history of the city spaces and its identity precedes the empirical chapters based on fieldwork undertaken in Sarajevo. The first empirical chapter analyses commercial developments especially in relationship to corruption and investor urbanism. The second empirical chapter explores sacred spaces in the city and the blending of the sacred and the secular in public space, and the final empirical chapter considers residential spaces and explores the construction of the Arab ‘other’. This thesis concludes that such transnational flows are urging the residents of the city to position themselves along the imaginary binaries of East/West, Sacred/Secular and Global/Local to come to terms with the processes in the city. It contributes to the literature on sacred space in the public sphere and identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Sarajevo, new additions to the urban landscape affect the relationship between the city dwellers and their identity, driving public debates about role of religion in public space.