Paper short abstract:

The Una River is famous for its emerald color, tourist potential, and for keeping Bihać's population safe during the 1990's war. My paper examines the socio- material life of this river and approaches its water as a potent site of vital politics, political imagination, and riverine citizenship.

Paper long abstract:

In June 2015, Bihać, a town in northwestern Bosnia-Herzegovina, was enveloped in a political protest. Thousands of people got together to object to the city's recent decision that gave concession to a joint Russian and Bosnian Energy Company to build a dam on the city's river Una. The Una River frames the Bosnian northwestern border with Croatia, and is famous for its beauty, fast currents, emerald color, water quality, tourist potential, and for keeping Bihać's population sane and safe during the 1990's war. Armed with love for the river and the political agency this emotion generated, the 2015 protest led to a politically significant outcome—pressured by the people, the city's government reversed its decision to grant the concession. This was the only reversal of a city government's decision, on any matter, in its postwar history. My paper emerges from this moment when the political rule stumbled, to examine water as a site of "vital politics" (Muehlebach 2017). Building on ethnographic observations, archival research, and interview data, this paper examines the assemblage of subjects, objects, histories and socio-cultural contexts that led to this political and social outcome.