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Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the Bosnian conflict scenario and covers the persisting rhetoric of humanitarianism that underpins post-war financialization and dispossession in the country.

Paper long abstract:

Mary Kaldor defined the conflict in Bosnia an archetype of global war in which, the fragmentation of political and military power on ethno-nationalist basis, has generated a low intensity warfare with destructive power over local material assets and social networks. Warfare has also reshaped everyday economy on the basis of global humanitarianism and foreign aid that had been increasingly financialized in the conflict aftermath. Donations which flew into the country at multiple levels (state and sub-state institutions, municipalities, etc..) had been replaced by loans provided by multilateral financial institutions and by foreign commercial banks that took control of the credit market in the country. In this scenario of peripheral financialization, financial institutions offer temporary solutions to an "enduring economic emergency" caused mainly by the destruction and the uncertain privatization of the productive system. At a micro level, the paper will look into persisting humanitarian narratives that foster the structuring of the post-war credit system to "help" the local population bearing the social and material costs of a "privatized reconstruction". It will also cover the humanitarian rhetoric underpinning the planning and selling of consumer credits products by financial institution in fact profiting from "private help" (social collateral - guarantors- and collateralization of remittances). Drawing on ethnographic data, the paper will highlight how post war financialization and dispossession are supported by a market-based humanitarianism proliferating from deregulation, from intersections between formal and informal dynamics and from the twist between micro and macro over indebtedness in the country.