Localizing geopolitics: Disaggregating violence and return in conflict regions

Critical geopolitics began as a critique of Cold War geopolitical discourses that imposed homogenizing categories upon diverse regional conflicts and marginalized place-specific structural causes of instability and violence. This critique is still relevant. Implicit within it is the promise of a more geographical geopolitics that, arguably, has not been realized by research. Using Bosnia–Herzegovina as an example, this paper examines the challenges of developing a critical geopolitics grounded in the study of contested geopolitical regions and places. Reviewing anthropological and other place-sensitive studies of violent population displacement and post-war returns in Bosnia–Herzegovina, the paper considers some conceptual dilemmas and questions raised by attempting to create a grounded critical geopolitics.