Description
Book SynopsisLarisa Jasarevic offers an unforgettable look at the everyday experiences of people living in post-socialist, post-war Bosnia. Not at all existing on the world's margins, Bosnians today are concerned with the good life and are as entangled in consumer debt as everyone else. The insecurities of living in an economy dominated by informal networks of trade, personal credit, and indebtedness are experienced by Bosnians in terms of physical ailments, some not recognized by Western medical science. Jasarevic follows ordinary Bosnians in their search for treatmentfrom use of pharmaceuticals to alternative medicines and folk healers of various kinds. Financial well-being and health are woven together for Bosnians, and Jasarevic adeptly traces the links between the two realms. In the process, she addresses a number of themes that have been important in studies of life under neoliberalism in other parts of the world.
Trade ReviewFor scholars working on health and medicine across any number of disciplines, subfields, and regions, this book can serve as an example of how to make use of these conceptual categories without being beholden to them. Perhaps most of all, the book provides a service by moving beyond the emphasis on ethnicity that has dominated most academic work on the Balkans since the 1990s.
* Social History of Medicine *
Jašarević's work provides fresh and distinct insight into the connections between medical anthropology and political economy, and thus is a necessary read and a great inspiration for all scholars looking to approach their own research from a sideways approach.
* Suedosteuropa *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Introduction: Oddly Bodily Lives in the Market
1. Just Surviving: Living Well Since the Better Life
2. Insanely Generous: Making Wealth in an Economy of Debt
3. On the Edge: Worries in Common and Circumstantial Communities
4. Medical Detours: Materiality and Magicality of Quotidian Cures
5. Strava: Distant Bodies at Hand
6. What if Not For Real? Troubles with Medical Efficacy
Bibliography
Index
