Article by Larisa Kurtović. “When All That Is Solid Does Not Melt into Air: Labor, Politics and Materiality in a Bosnian Detergent Factory” in PoLAR. Political and Legal Anthropology Review.

Abstract. Can futures be assembled out of ruins? This article engages this question through an ethnographic account of a workers’ struggle in northeastern Bosnia‐Herzegovina to restart production in a bankrupted factory almost destroyed by privatization. From 2011 through 2015, workers of Dita organized to challenge liquidation of the factory assets. Their struggle resulted in an unprecedented victory when production was restarted in 2015 and the factory reprivatized in 2017. Workers had to carry out their struggle amidst two opposing pulls: the need to draw attention to the processes of destruction that formed part of postwar privatization, and to simultaneously argue for the factory's continued value and viability. The analysis explores the openings and risks created by the ongoing anthropological debates on the centrality of matter—and especially ruins—to social life at large. It argues that where we locate potential and how we name embattled matter is not merely a theoretical but also a political question.