A Good Deed is Not a Crime: Moral Cosmologies of Favours in Muslim Bosnia

Scholars often conflate the act of doing a favour with notions of corruption, nepotism, or bribery. This chapter seeks to demonstrate the need for differentiation between these concepts, their immoralities/moralities, values, and the ethical conduct they entail. It explores the relationship between corruption, bribery, favours, and the Muslim moral imagination in post-war Bosnia. Specifically, it juxtaposes and analytically distinguishes some of the normative discourses on illicit economic practices with situations of doing favours in three ethnographic contexts. It argues that the negotiation of the line between morally (halal) acceptable conduct or immoral (haram) conduct in the day-to-day struggle for life is not a morally clear-cut matter for villagers, but a matter of constant evaluations and judgements. Hence, the chapter suggests that the use of personal connections, pilfering, and petty bribery should be understood as being part and parcel of the ‘ordinary ethics’ of life.