Suchergebnisse

This paper follows the almost contemporaneous emergence of the two primary antiwar initiatives in Belgrade and Zagreb to explore how they acted as hotbeds from which permanent human rights organizations appeared in the newly created nation-states. Drawing mostly upon in-depth interviews with antiwar activists from Serbia and Croatia, I argue that the dominant patterns of protest expansion were different in the two countries. While cooperation and tensions existed within both antiwar groups, the Antiwar Campaign of Croatia acted as a broker, leading toward the multiplication of civic initiatives; on the other hand, the Belgrade Center for Antiwar Action was characterized by ideological, professional, and personal divisions, which caused a rapid fragmentation of antiwar undertakings. This paper outlines the main reasons for such expansion patterns (scale-shift processes) and discusses them in the light of recent theoretical advances in political contention studies. Adapted from the source document.

The Belgrade-based activist group Women in Black has been for twenty years now articulating a feminist anti-war stance in an inimical socio-political climate. The operation of this anti-patriarchal and anti-militarist organization, which has resisted numerous instances of repression, has not been until now systematically approached from a social movement perspective. This paper draws upon a range of empirical methods, comprising life-story interviews, documentary analysis and participant observation, to address the question as to how it was possible for this small circle of activists to remain on the Serbian/post-Yugoslav civic scene for the last two decades. My central argument is that a consistent collective identity, which informs the group's resource mobilization and strategic options, holds the key to the surprising survival of this activist organization. I apply recent theoretical advances on collective identity to the case of the Belgrade Women in Black with the view of promoting a potentially fruitful cross-fertilization between non-Western activism and the Western conceptual apparatus for studying civic engagement. Adapted from the source document.

(Post-)Yugoslav anti-war contention has remained an under-theorised topic
almost twenty years after the end of the wars of Yugoslav succession. Rather
than focusing on the ?ontogenesis? of individual pacifist enterprises, this
paper examines the reasons for which (post-)Yugoslav anti-war activisms have
been marginalised in recent East European sociological scholarship. I argue
that a thorough appreciation of these phenomena requires a Yugoslav/regional
approach which has not been favoured by post-Yugoslav social science
scholars. This article also offers a critical reading of the existing
attempts to theorise (post-) Yugoslav anti-war activisms. It criticises their
failure to draw upon the rich conceptual ap?paratus of social movement
theories developed within Western political sociology over the last couple of
decades. In spite of the fact that the concept of ?social movement? may be
contested in the context of post-Yugoslav anti-war engagement on the basis of
its quantitative marginality, this should not deter (post-)Yugoslav social
scientists from applying and refining Anglo-Saxon social movement theories in
a culturally sensitive manner. Specific dynamics of anti-war activism
occurring within an armed conflict has not been sufficiently studied. This is
an important knowledge lacuna where regional sociologists could offer a
substantive contribution.

For the political principle defining the political will of fascism, survival of a national state (regardless of whether it already exists or is to be formed; in the latter case, this gives legitimacy to antagonism) is sufficient reason for the unconditional imperative of political activity. The concept of the state underlying the political activity of fascism is solely an empirical notion or a sensory concept of community. Another more paramount reason is transcendental, unfeasible, as it were. According to the same nation-building principle, another nation, within & without a particular state, is a priori suspicious, since it must be striving to create its own state by encroaching on another nation's state. Thus, this fascist political principle, which wants to turn this nationalist maxim into a constitutive principle, cannot ensure either internal (ie, a state) or external peace & perishes in a civil or world war. For antifascist activity, however, it is not central whether it takes place in this or that state. The basis of antifascism is the concept of the state that, in its most positive & purest form, came to the fore in bourgeois political thought. In it, the central concept of the state, considering the rationale for the existence of a state, is clean-cut & thus, general, although a possible historical existence of a state is empirical & particular. The fundamental motive of antifascism is not national & patriotic but primarily moral & political, & possibly (derivatively) patriotic. Which state deserves to exist is determined by external social conditions for the realization of the concept of freedom. This makes room for the formation of broader multinational unions, even federal states. The world federation is a bourgeois political ideal, whose realization represents the ultimate purpose of world history. Adapted from the source document.