Naslov
“Those Who Are Not Crazy Become Crazy, Those Who Are Crazy Become Even Crazier”: Container Life in Croatia

Autori
Peternel, Lana ; Podjed, Dan

Kolaboracija
Bilateralni slovensko-hrvatski projekti

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Izvornik
Book of Abstracts / Hlynsdóttir, Eva Marín - Reykjavik : University of Iceland, 2023, 67-67

Skup
The European City: A Practice of Resilience in the Face of an Uncertain Future

Mjesto i datum
Reykjavík, Island, 22.06.2023. - 24.06.2023

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
Banija ; containers ; crisis ; Croatia ; earthquake ; isolation ; natural disaster ; Petrinja

Sažetak
Containers mediate our lives. People use them for many purposes, such as transporting goods or waste and designing glamorous temporary structures like football stadiums or tourist resorts. In anthropology, however, containers are also symbols of liminality ; they are sites for migrants and the homeless, for invisible and neglected objects and people. This paper explores how containers underscore the infinite liminality of our reality and reveal individual, political, and social dynamics in times of permanent crisis. Based on ethnographic research in the Banija region of Croatia, the paper explores the perspectives of local people and their reflections on living in containers in the face of the aftermath of a powerful earthquake that struck them during the Covid-19 pandemic in December 2020. It presents the region’s double periphery status and long-lasting liminality, and puts a special focus on the people whose homes were destroyed first by the war in the 1990s and later by the earthquake. During the natural disaster, many people whose houses were in poor condition due to the war fled their unsafe homes and continue to live in 20-square-metre containers nearby. From their perspective, the containers were supposed to be a temporary solution, but instead they have become permanent dwellings, exacerbating the contradictions of the crisis and making normal life impossible. In this paper, we present different perspectives of life in the containers, from the individuals and families who inhabit them to the positions of politicians at different levels, who blame each other for the situation or try to demonstrate their efficiency by providing additional containers. In this way, we try to present the “container life” as a relevant metaphor for today’s world, where the problems related to unwanted materials or problematic situations are solved by hiding them in containers and "throwing them away", so they disappear.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Etnologija i antropologija

POVEZANOST RADA