Abstract
In this presentation, I discuss the topic of food provisioning in armed conflicts. I mostly focus on the everyday life self-provisioning strategies of the civilian populations in Sarajevo and Srebrenica during the 1900's war in the former Yugoslavia.
As Redžić amongst others points out, war leads to shortages of food, water and medical supplies and therefore generates undernourishment as well as acute and chronic hunger (Redžić, 2010). In armed conflicts strategies of food provisioning become universally the biggest issue (e.g.
Collingham 2012, Redžić, 2010). Using the perspective of social anthropology, I examine how activities around food provisioning and preparation, which might seem relatively banal in peacetime, often become challenging and possibly dangerous tasks in wartime.
The people trapped in enclaves and besieged cities often risked their lives during their quests for food. Despite the threat of being killed by projectiles, grenades and snipers, people would go and pick coltsfoot, dandelion, nettles and many other edible plants to improve their war diets.
In some of these cases, such activities can be read as "heroic acts", when one decides to risk his/her life in order to feed and thus increase survival chances of others.