Whose death, whose eco-revival? Filling in while emptying out the depopulated Balkan Mountains

Author(s)

Ivan Rajkovic

Abstract

When environmental activists in Serbia encountered decarbonization in form of predatory hydropower, they launched a massive campaign against an actual degrowth that plagued their depopulating lands. This bridging of environmental and reproductive concerns helped to create a broad ecopopulist alliance that saved the local rivers, and yet it sneaked in another quasi-uni-versalist subject—urban, middle-aged, and male—who assumed a central role in the countryside eco-revival. As they “bring life back” to the “dying” Balkan Mountains, I argue, revivers also erase the ways of life that still thrive in their aging abodes. Such duality reveals emptiness as a problem space that is necropolitical inasmuch as it is vitalist. To direct the further flow of life means to decide who can survive—and who is anyhow destined to expire.

Organisation(s)

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Journal

Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology

Volume

2023

Pages

71-87

No. of pages

17

ISSN

0920-1297

Publication date

06-2023

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

504017 Cultural anthropology

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Anthropology

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/ede747c1-0829-4a6a-bb67-3966c96d28d0