Cosmopolitan Imaginaries after War: Memory, Urban Space, and Reconfigured Diversity in Sarajevo

• In Event: Legacies of Diversity in a Post-Multi-Ethnic Space II: Between Memory and Practice

Abstract

Sarajevo has long been imagined as a cosmopolitan city, with its urban fabric reflecting a history of ethnoreligious coexistence under imperial rule and the two Yugoslavias. While this cosmopolitan imaginary continues to shape the city’s branding and memory discourse, demographic and socio-political transformations following the Bosnian War (1992–1995) have altered its ethnoreligious makeup and, to some extent, its social practices. Concomitantly, the arrival of rural internally displaced people and migrants from the Middle East has challenged this cosmopolitan imaginary. This paper examines how Sarajevo’s lost diversity is remembered, instrumentalized, or silenced within contemporary memory regimes, analyzing the tension between its enduring urban image and the realities of post-war reconfigurations in both the material and social landscape.

Author

• Gruia Badescu, U of Konstanz (Germany)