This article was downloaded by: [Bojan Bili] On: 28 September 2012, At: 06:45 Publisher: Routledge Informa

Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cnap20

Not in our name: collective identity of the Serbian Women in Black

Bojan Bili
a a

School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, London, UK Version of record first published: 06 Jun 2012.

To cite this article: Bojan Bili (2012): Not in our name: collective identity of the Serbian Women in Black , Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 40:4, 607-623 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2012.692510

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-andconditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Nationalities Papers Vol. 40, No. 4, July 2012, 607 623

Not in our name: collective identity of the Serbian Women in Black

Bojan Bilic
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, London, UK (Received 10 August 2011; nal version received 20 March 2012) 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 groups 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. Keywords: Women in Black; Serbia; collective identity; anti-war activism

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

On 12 October 2010 the Belgrade-based Women in Black (WIB) reported that two young men invaded their organizations headquarters and attacked both men and women activists with a hammer. They were, according to the report, shouting and calling for the faggots among the present. Given that the incident occurred on the same day as another extremely violent occurrence the Belgrade Gay Pride Parade WIB concluded that the attack was related to the support the group has been giving to the rights of the LGBT population in Serbia. They called upon the Serbian authorities to nd and punish the perpetrators (Tanjug). A few hours later, WIB were in the rst line of activists carrying banners against homophobia in a heavily policed human rights demonstration in which more than a hundred policemen were injured.

This has been one of the latest incidents in a twenty year long history of (repression towards) the Belgrade-based WIB an indisputably singular phenomenon on the Serbian civic scene. Active for exactly two decades, since the very beginning of the wars of Yugoslav succession, the members of this group have staged more than 700 street performances, campaigns and demonstrations in Serbia and throughout the region an achievement that would be extraordinary even in countries with longer activist traditions and more liberal political cultures. From its very inception, this organization has been led by two slogans: Always disobedient and Not in our name, both of which reect their strong and consistent political

Email: bojan.bilic.09@ucl.ac.uk

ISSN 0090-5992 print/ISSN 1465-3923 online # 2012 Association for the Study of Nationalities http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2012.692510 http://www.tandfonline.com

608

B. Bilic

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

stances characterized by the prex anti. They are anti-patriarchal, anti-nationalist and antimilitarist as well as anti-homophobic and anticlerical (secular). The Belgrade WIB represent an essential part of a small, but vibrant community of activists and human rights defenders that became prominent in the early 1990s, immediately prior to and during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Many of these initiatives and groups have waxed and waned, faced with internal tensions, constant regime repression and an inimical societal atmosphere fraught with poverty and fear. However, in spite of the unfavourable circumstances, WIB have managed to preserve their activist charge and they have consistently (re)won a portion of the public sphere and physical public space in which their anti-war and anti-patriarchal message could be clearly heard. This paper draws upon a range of methodological techniques to account for the surprising survival of this group of activists. The empirical corpus pertains to life-story interviews with the group members and other (non-WIB) anti-war activists in Serbia and in the region, their leaets and publications as well as to my participant observations.1 In summer 2010, I spent two months with WIB, taking an active part in their activities which provided me with access to their documentary sources. I also participated in a silent public vigil in the memory of the Srebrenica massacre which took place at the Belgrade Republic Square as well as in a street performance organized in the central street of the Serbian capital. The collected empirical material is here positioned in the framework of recent collective identity scholarship because this approach can begin to account for the two-decade long resilience of WIB in an unpropitious political climate. By drawing upon AngloSaxon sociological scholarship and applying it to the post-Yugoslav research context, this paper promotes a potentially fruitful cross-fertilization between the non-Western activism and the Western conceptual apparatus for studying civic engagement. In the following section, I introduce the (post-)Yugoslav feminist scene and position WIB in it. Yugoslav feminism and the Serbian WIB The Belgrade-based WIB has built upon and continued a relatively long tradition of fem inist activism in the former Yugoslavia (Bilic, Recovering post-Yugoslav anti-war and pacist activism; Bozinovic). The emergence and operation of the autonomous antiwar feminist groups on the Yugoslav territory throughout the 1990s cannot be understood without appreciating the long-term trajectories of the Yugoslav feminist movement.2 The political involvement of the Yugoslav women intensied towards the end of the Second World War and in the immediate post-war period.3 Women from all of the Yugoslav republics (except from Macedonia they could not reach Bosanski Petrovac because of the still non-liberated territories) established the Antifascist Women Front [Antifasisticki front zena] whose principal tasks were the liberation of the country, the improvement of the women social and educational standing and the struggle for the equality of women and men. Once the war was over, the Front was representing the women of Yugoslavia in the international women movement. Due to the constant womens engagement, the Yugoslav progressive legislature equalized the legal status of men and women in all spheres of life. It allowed abortion by a law passed already in 1951 and it also incorporated into its legal system all international conventions pertaining to womens rights (Nedovic). However, while these efforts appreciably reduced womens illiteracy and improved public health, the regime never really succeeded in destabilizing the deeply entrenched patriarchal values. In spite of many positive trends, Yugoslavia still witnessed differences between regions and republics as well as serious gender-related urban rural imbalances. For many women there was a discrepancy between the proclaimed equality policies of the

Nationalities Papers

609

regime and their everyday social reality coloured by male dominance, sexism and dis crimination (Bilic, In a crevice between gender and nation). Towards the beginning of the 1970s, in the context of the global 1968 student demonstrations, there were groups of highly educated, mostly non-party-afliated women in Yugoslav urban centres. Well-informed about the contemporary feminist trends in the Western world, these women grew increasingly dissatised by the position of women in the Yugoslav society. As a result of this, feminist ideas became ever more present in the Yugoslav public space, especially after the conference Comrade Women. The Woman Question: A New Approach? which took place in Belgrade in 1978 (Blagojevic; Bonglioli). Two groups, called Women and Society, were then established in Belgrade and Zagreb and the Belgrade one dened itself in 1986 as feminist. Interestingly enough, it operated without any state nancial or institutional support. Thus, feminist engagement grew ever stronger and led to a proliferation of workshops, public discussions, SOS hotlines for women victims of violence and other womens groups, although it was constantly confronted with a lot of resistance coming from the governmental organizations devoted to women. As republic nationalisms grew stronger throughout Yugoslavia, some feminists felt that they brought with them sweeping militarization and patriarchy that threatened to undo the women-oriented legacies of Yugoslav socialism. With the deterioration of the political situation in Yugoslavia, feminist work acquired a more political dimension. In the Serbian context, feminist activists distanced themselves from the rising nationalist sentiment and decided to undertake political actions. A group of them established the Belgrade Women Lobby (in 1990), an organization which issued around twenty anti-war public statements. The major anti-war initiative in Belgrade, the Centre for Anti-War Action, was established in December 1991 and it, among other activities, organized many anti-war demonstrations and offered legal help to the conscientious objectors in Serbia. The key gure of the Belgrade-based WIB Stanislava Stasa Zajovic was active in the group Women and Society and she was a co-founder of the Belgrade Women Lobby and the SOS hotline. She was also a participant in the activities of the Centre for Anti-War Actions. Zajovic became dissatised with the character of the mainstream anti-war protests organized by the Centre, arguing that the peace movement. . . repeated certain patriarchal models, using patriarchal language and ignoring the inequalities between men and women. She thus saw a need to found a specically feminist initiative against the terrifying upsurge of patriarchal militarism now dominating politics, pervading the media and swaggering the streets (Zajovic, issued in 1991, published in 1993, 84). In such a politico-social context, the Belgrade-based WIB had their rst public appearance on 9 October 1991 when they staged a silent vigil in front of the Student Cultural Centre in downtown Belgrade. They were inspired by the rst group of WIB which was founded in Israel in 1988 as a reaction to the First Intifada with the view of publicly denouncing the omnipresence of war, violence and unpunished crimes in their lives. These women decided to dress in black following the white women of South Africa who wore a black strip while protesting against Apartheid (Urosevic 29). The Serbian WIB have received numerous awards for their engagement and along with their Israeli counterpart they were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.4 Every week since their foundation and all the way until the end of the Yugoslav armed conicts, the Serbian WIB silently protested at the Belgrade central Republic Square while dressed only in black. Since the end of the wars, they have organized silent vigils to commemorate some of the most important dates both regionally and internationally, but the main thrust of their activities now has to do with forcing the Serbian authorities and the

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

610

B. Bilic

wider society to come to terms with the criminal past, especially in relation to recognizing the above-mentioned Srebrenica massacre as genocide. Ever since their rst public appearance in 1991, WIB were exposed to numerous instances of repression comprising the administrative-institutional as well as social. The leader (Zajovic 6570) of the group argues that the history of repression could be divided into three distinct phases: the rst one took place throughout the 1990s and is characterized by the state involvement in the wars and the concurrent denial of it. During this phase, the members of the group were not allowed to work with refugees and those with whom they did work were questioned about this by the secret police. Many women also had informative talks with the police that were accompanied by threats and blackmail aimed at weakening the group cohesion. Feminist colleagues coming to WIB meetings from other countries were denied visas to enter Serbia or they were not allowed entry at the Serbian border. The repression reached its apogee during the last months of the regime in 2000: the activists were stigmatized, their houses searched, passports and documentation conscated and their volunteers banished. The second period is between the regime overthrow (October 2000) and the assassina tion of the Prime Minister Zoran indic, where there was an appreciable relaxation in the political climate which WIB used for decentralizing their activists and organizing initiatives outside Belgrade. However, legal trials against the group that started during the previous government were continued before being terminated in 2003. This showed that the judiciary was not reformed as quickly as expected. More serious repressive acts resumed during the third phase which began in the wake of indics assassination. The organization was yet again audited, its members were physically and verbally attacked and accused of prostitution. It can be added that, with the comeback of the Democratic Party, the WIB performances enjoy state support, but they have become heavily policed, which is an aspect that I discuss in further detail below. During their almost two decade long existence, WIB have often been subject of sociological inquiry, mostly in the context of other Yugoslav/Serbian anti-war efforts. For example, Cockburn discusses their work in a broader study of feminist anti-war activism in which she also touches upon the presence of men in WIB and other feminist vigils around the world. Hughes et al. recognize WIB as the most important feminist anti-war initiative in Serbia and they highlight a political shift away from the patriarchy-oriented Centre for Anti-War Action. Other studies approach the group from a more anthropological perspective and examine the ways in which feminist civic participation redened womens political subjectivities and womens role in the wars of Yugoslav succession (Devic, Redening the public-private boundary; Duhacek; Slapsak). Fridman (2006a, 2006b, 2011) positions the work of the organization in the context of social memory politics, responsibility and denial. She explores the role of the organization in raising public awareness and forcing Serbian society to come to terms with the criminal past. She concludes that the anti-war efforts, including WIB, could not have stopped the wars, but managed to keep an alternative voice alive throughout the conicts. The above studies mostly address the questions pertaining to the organizations emergence (Baiocchi) and its function as a denial breaker within the Serbian political context (Fridman). However, they do not draw upon the conceptual corpus of social movement theories to enquire as to how it was possible for this activist organization to survive for almost two decades. And yet, speaking at a celebration organized to mark the 15th anniversary of the organization, the co-founder and leader of the Belgrade WIB said: Feelings, opinions, passions and thoughts of many people are incorporated in the WIB as a collective act, as a product of collective work (Women for Peace 13, authors emphasis).

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

Nationalities Papers

611

It is precisely this idea of collectivity that is, in my opinion, crucial for the organizations survival.

Analysis Collective identity has become an increasingly explored concept in social movement studies. It is argued that it might explain those aspects of collective enterprises for which resource mobilization or political process accounts seem to be insufcient (Polletta and Jaspers 283 305). At the heart of collective identity research lies the question of how a sense of cohesion is developed among social movement participants which informs collective action (Hunt and Benford 484). Melucci was one of the rst social movement scholars to systematically engage with the idea of collective identity. He claimed that:
the empirical unity of a social movement should be considered as a result, rather than a starting point, a fact to be explained rather than evidence [. . .] the actors produce the collective action because they are able to dene themselves and their relationship with the environment (Melucci, The process of collective identity 43).

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

Melucci perceives collective identity as a process which comprises cognitive denitions pertaining to ends, means, and the eld of action which develop within a system of opportunities and constrains and become expressed through a shared language of rituals, practices and symbolic artefacts. All of these, Melucci claims, point to collective identity as a system of relations and representations which should be studied as a testament to the constructive process of a social movement, rather than as empirical dimensions that produce a reied version of it. Melucci thinks of collective identity as a movement characteristic which ensures its continuity and permanence over time. This is achieved by the processes through which collective identity continually marks the limits of the actor within its social environment. I consider ve important facets of the WIB collective identity construction: blackness, activism and body use, conceptualizing the group as a safe-haven, ideological consistency and leadership.

Blackness: wearing a colour of political visibility The main aim of the Belgrade anti-war feminists gathered around WIB since the very beginning of the Yugoslav wars was to reject the notion that their anti-war engagement stemmed from the natural female propensity to care, comfort and feed. They wanted to articulate their stance not as a socially and biologically predisposed womens role, but as a conscious political choice and an intentional radical criticism of the dominance of the patriarchal and the militarist in their society. Their objective was to increase the visibility of women as political actors as well as to strengthen the solidarity among the women in all former Yugoslav republics and the world arguing that the active solidarity between women is the force and the tenderness by which we can overcome isolation, loneliness, traumas and other consequences of hatred (issued in 1992, published in Women in Black, 1993, 50). In their 1993 annual publication Women for Peace, the Belgradebased WIB write:
We wanted it to be clearly understood that what we were doing was our political choice, a radical criticism of the patriarchal, militarist regime and a non-violent act of resistance to policies that destroy cities, kill people and annihilate human relations (23).

Wearing exclusively black during their public vigils is a crucial element in these efforts. It draws upon the culturally shared ideas of mourning and expressing grief in an Eastern

612

B. Bilic

European/Christian context (Slapsak). Reecting upon the use of black colour in their performances, the members of the WIB claimed:
We are a group of women who stand in silence and black every week to express our disapproval against war. We have decided to see what the womens side of this war is. Women wear black in our countries to show their grief for death of the loved ones. We wear black for the death of all the victims of war. We wear black because the people have been thrown out of their homes, because women have been raped, because cities and villages have been burned and destroyed (issued on 17 December 1992, published in Women for Peace, 1993, 101).

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

Blackness is an expression of bereavement and empathy for all the victims of war. It cuts across national afliations and works against the implicitly accepted notion that our victims are more important (Fridman, It was like ghting our own people). This is particularly signicant in the Serbian context given the fact that the country was not ofcially at war until the 1999 NATO bombings. By repeatedly bringing the colour black into the public space, these women (and occasionally also men) demonstrate feminine power in a highly re-patriarchalized environment with a belligerent charge. The act of silently standing dressed in black at the Belgrade central Republic Square effectively subverts power relations which normally assign to women positions of marginality and submission. Black clothes used in the protest depart from their traditionally private, home-restricted sphere which associates them with a socially expected womens role in expressing grief and mourning. Black, thus, becomes a visible, political colour (Women for Peace, 2007, 30). All the way to the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, it also pointed to the both ideological and geographical proximity of war and denied loyalty to the regime. While preparing for the (non-silent) performance A pair of shoes, one life5 it was reiterated within the group a couple of times that only black clothes should be worn, at least by the core activists that have been keeping the organization alive. One of the most important mechanisms through which social movements foster collective identity construction is boundary work (Hunt and Benford 485). WIBs exclusively black clothes attract public attention, facilitate group recognition and constitute a clear separator between the protestors and the audience. They strengthen the group by pointing to its members similarity in a public space. As one activist says:
[. . .] we wear black because we should not represent an individual, but we demonstrate our strength, we show that we are one whole. . . the more of us there are in one colour, the stronger impression of the audience will be that we are strong, potent. . . so that we can better transfer the message that we want to say (cited in Women for Peace, 2007, 31).

Blackness has been recognized as the main symbolical feature of the Belgrade-based WIB both internally and by the general public. In the latter case and particularly among the opponents circles, it might have become associated with dark forces and obscure feminine power (Benski). This is testied by the fact that a small group of women that gathered in the Knez-Mihailova Street to obstruct the performance and verbally attack the activists were dressed completely in white. While representing an extreme opposite to WIB, this strategic choice of the counter-demonstrators drew upon the traditional notions of white as a colour of innocence and purity. It is, then, interesting to observe how this very act points to what Melucci (48) recognized as the paradox of identity, namely the idea that the afrmation of difference from the rest of society presupposes a tacit acceptance of it and belonging to the shared culture by which protestors can be recognized as social actors. In this regard, re-creations and afrmations of identity always involve certain equality and reciprocity.

Nationalities Papers

613

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

Activism: letting the body speak The Belgrade-based WIB is the only organization, founded at the very beginning of the wars of Yugoslav succession on the whole post-Yugoslav territory, which has preserved its activist component up to the present day. The members of the group staged regular weekly protests on Belgrade streets throughout the whole duration of the armed conict and they continued doing so even after a peace agreement was reached. In the post-war period the frequency of public actions has, nevertheless, subsided and they are mostly devoted to commemorations of important anniversaries or to expressions of solidarity with civilians involved in other conicts around the world. The regularity of public gatherings during the most difcult war years served as a mechanism for group maintenance and continual rejuvenation in spite of the fact that, as one activist said, the number of vigil participants appreciably varied, dropping at one point to only three. WIB street performances, along with the colour black discussed above, are characterized by two important elements: silence and use of the body. The majority of WIB vigils are strictly silent (although, on the basis of my participant observations, this does not seem to be always the case) and they might involve activists either standing or lying on the ground. Sasson-Levy and Rapoport claim that the human body is the vehicle of all social protest, but theories of social movements have neglected the questions raised by a protesting body of men and women. Yet feminist research has recently highlighted the role of the body in collective political action. Bodies are turned into sites of protest which destabilize the supposedly gender-neutral social and national-political order. By forcing the public to appreciate their protest as distinctly gendered, WIB redene the political discourse pertaining to the legitimacy of political participation and the fashion in which it is done.
[. . .] the body produces, elaborates, and articulates political ideology. It does not only serve as a medium for change, but also realises it. This leads us to suggest that female body as a text of alternative and subversive knowledge can challenge deep social and cultural structures. (Sasson-Levy and Rapoport 399)

Moreover, silence is understood as a creation of space for concentration and thinking. It is at the same time a culturally shared message of human dignity, bereavement and compassion with war victims. In their public statement, WIB write:
We chose silence because we reject superuous words which disable thinking about ourselves and others. Silence is a feature of the lives of many citizens, both men and women. The media have silenced us, but for us silence is in its entirety an expression of our disagreement with this war [. . .] important experiences are expressed and felt through silence. . .silence here from where the war started is a protest, it is our scream and warning. With our silence and our blackness we want to express shame and empathy. (Women for Peace, 2007, 33)

Along with its grief-related connotations, the silence of WIB in their street performances is a means of non-violent defence. It is, similarly to exclusively black clothes, a separator from the broader public to whose reactions the members of the organization generally attempt to remain unresponsive. As one activist says, silence is a method for us to show that we are different. It strengthens the group representation of a single actor frequently positioned in noisy streets and squares of the Serbian capital. In the words of the group leader:
Silence is important for learning non-violence. You do not wage wars which they want to draw you into, you do not react to provocations. That is a deconstruction, you are silent, you do not want to repeat what they ask from you (cited in Women for Peace, 2007, 34).

This was also reiterated a couple of times throughout the preparations for the 2010 street performance A pair of shoes one life. Before the group of activists actually left the WIB

614

B. Bilic

headquarters surrounded by heavy police forces, the leader of the organization emphasized the importance of remaining calm and silent as well as of resisting the temptation to reply to potential offensive remarks by the passers-by and especially by those who came to the performance to interrupt it and obstruct it. Safe-haven: WIB as a space of freedom and solidarity Group identity is possible only through emotional bonds and feelings of solidarity which reinforce it during the times of conict and repression (Barr and Drury 245; Klandermans). Shared emotional experience, which underlines the process of collective identity construction, gives meaning to group action and can have signicant biographical impact (e.g. Goodwin; McAdam, Freedom Summer). One of the most important functions of participation in WIB is the idea of claiming, sharing in, co-constructing and defending a portion of social space in which group members can escape the requirements of the roles afforded to them by the militarized and patriarchal social environment. The group becomes a surrounding in which members feel free to express their emotions as well as discuss their personal concerns linked to a set of broader societal patterns which the group tries to oppose. The organization is perceived as a site in which members are allowed to be what they are without feeling threatened. Coming together on the basis of shared grievances and condensing them through protest into a political message has a signicant empowering effect on the group members. As one WIB activist says:
For us, those protests were some kind of medicine. It might appear strange, but during this hour in the street, we would build up our own space in which, at least temporarily, our own values were valid. That space was so openly different from the pervasive formal reality. It was a space in which we were free6 and we could breathe. From time to time the aggression of the external world could be felt physically, but it is exactly because of this that the links among the group members were growing stronger. I was feeling stronger within the group. [. . .] all of those were islands of our own world and our own values where we gave each other strength to proceed (cited in Women for Peace, 2007, 20).

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

In accordance with a lot of research done on the biographical impact of protest participation, this extract shows that the act of taking part in a collective endeavour tends to strengthen the willingness to engage in further group undertakings (McAdam; SearleChatterjee). Protesting can be a psychologically transformative experience because it constitutes protestors as political actors and, thus, creates a sense of freedom and agency (Bilic, Staying sane 45; Fridman, Alternative voices in public space). The activist claims that the group became stronger precisely because of the instances of aggression against it. This encouraged activists to stick even more tightly to the values they represented because they could witness them endangered in the open space. Another activist who has been with the organization for almost 18 years says:
I joined WIB on one winter day in 1992 because among them I found, how can I tell you, I found a soul asylum. . . there I found everything that I was looking for for years. . . I found that word feminism which I could not really pinpoint, I found that courage which I had, but I could not just stand on my own in the street. . . and however painful the whole story was, this experience saved me. . . every Wednesday I was coming to the square to take a little bit of air and to breathe. . . (Interview with the author, 15 July 2010)

The idea of perceiving civic engagement and WIB participation as a breathing space expansion is quite recurrent (Terselic 20). It demonstrates that the protestors found themselves in a morally unbearable political climate in which only protest participation afforded them a possibility to remain who they are and, at the same time, to make sense

Nationalities Papers

615

of what they were doing or wanted to do. A certain dramatic tone with which the activist 18 years later describes the moment of joining the organization gives evidence for how psychologically potent this experience must have been.

Ideological consistency: unwavering clarity of a political stance The Belgrade-based WIB, from very early on, have perceived Serbian nationalism as the engine behind Yugoslavias dissolution. They argue that Belgrade was the ideological centre of a project which wanted to keep all the members of the Serbian nation within a single state while infringing upon the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of other ex-Yugoslav peoples. As early as June 1992, while many anti-war activists still talked about a civil war on the Yugoslav territory,7 in a public statement issued in Belgrade, the WIB argued:
Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012
We say that the Serbian regime and its repressive structures (Federal Army and paramilitary formations) are responsible for all three wars, in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Serbian regime leads wars in the name of all citizens of Serbia. This way all the citizens become hostages of their imperialistic politics. (Women for Peace, 1993, 50)

Although they do condemn nationalism and combative patriarchy generally, the WIB constantly highlight the appreciable unevenness of power distribution in the former Yugoslavia in which the Serbian political elite had the easiest access to both political institutions and military means. This gave the regime a substantive amount of leverage in the conict and enabled it to attack Croatia and support the Serb forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Thus, WIB see the armed conict as an act of Serbian aggression on Croatia and BosniaHerzegovina which abused the idea of Yugoslavia and turned it into a Great Serbia project. The members of the organization have for two decades now clearly stayed away from denouncing war crimes done on all sides a formula which is often adopted by the Serbian ofcials and which, in the WIBs opinion, relativizes the notions of guilt and responsibility. This attitude earned the group members many friends outside and many enemies inside the country. Ideological consistency is the most important group unier which neutralizes or at least decreases the importance of many other differences among the group members. As one activist explains:
What attracted me to WIB? We were of different ages, different education, but we all shared the same political convictions we were all against Milosevics belligerent politics and in favour of a peaceful solution to the problems. I liked it very much that the differences within the group were not relevant, either on a national or religious basis that was also the way in which I was brought up within my own family [. . .] for me personally, the vigils on the Belgrade streets and squares were very important. The WIB were the only group that constantly, from month to month, from year to year, publicly and openly manifested its political, anti-militarist stance. (cited in Women for Peace, 2007, 58)

One of the most important political objectives of the Serbian WIB is to raise public awareness, break the state of denial and force society to come to terms with the criminal past (Fridman It was like ghting a war with our own people). An essential element in this endeavour is the recognition of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which the Bosnian Serb forces killed around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim boys and men as genocide. Although the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has unequivocally referred to this as an act of genocide, the Serbian authorities still resist such a label.8 That no relativization of this position is conceivable among WIB was demonstrated during the preparations for the Knez-Mihailova Street performance in July 2010. The group asked a designer to come

616

B. Bilic

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

up with a leaet which would give the public some basic information about their street action. However, when the leaet was nished and brought to the organizations headquarters, the members of the group realized that it read Srebrenica massacre instead of genocide. All the copies of it were withdrawn and new ones with the right word had to be produced. This aspect of the Women in Black operation is illustrative of the concept of plausibility structures which was developed by Berger (1969). Berger claims that views which are at odds with mainstream society would necessarily weaken under social pressure. In order to keep normative commitment to the group, members must huddle together with like-minded fellow deviants and huddle very closely indeed. Only in a counter-community of considerable strength does cognitive deviance have a chance to maintain itself (Berger 19). Plausibility structure, formed by intimately interacting group participants, can sustain socially untenable perspectives by enabling constant interaction with conrming others (Erickson Nepstad 51) who legitimate beliefs and assuage doubts. This affective commitment to the group can be maintained only if the individual remains within the structure. It is depleted through a lack of communication or infrequent interaction (Erickson Nepstad). The Belgrade-based WIB has managed to preserve its plausibility structure at the expense of assuming a particularly marginal position on the Serbian political scene. They advocate a radically anti-nationalist stance in an environment which has often been charged by a strong nationalist sentiment. By positioning the responsibility for the wars of the Yugoslav succession exclusively with the Serbian regime, these women provide a rather simplistic interpretation of the Yugoslav conicts which prevents them from having a stronger impact on their own social environment. They do not seem to fully appreciate the complexity of the mutually perpetuating antithetical forces operating within the post-Yugoslav political arena which have their long-term trajectories.9 Leadership: strength of an untiring charisma WIB is an organization based on the principle of horizontality and solidarity. In their street vigils, group members are dressed in the same way, they often stand in (semi-)circles which equalize their position or they, alternatively, lie on the ground while (occasionally) holding each others hands. This public side of protest promotes group cohesion, presents it as an exclusively collective undertaking and obscures the role of the organizations leader. It actually makes the leader of the group invisible, indistinguishable from the rest of the vigil participants. In a horizontally-oriented collective, any explicit discussion of the leaders role is absent from the group publications. This particular aspect of the groups operation, therefore, can only be accessed through interviews and participant observation. The Serbian WIB have had the same leader since the very foundation of the organization. This person has a rich activist background going back to the rst feminist initiatives in the former Yugoslavia. She is a co-founder of WIB and tends to be perceived as the engine behind the groups survival. She enjoys the highest amount of respect and admiration among the group members; she coordinates all group activities and represents it in public and abroad. The organization leader is clearly the one most frequently interviewed by journalists and researchers alike. She chairs group meetings, silences or gives word to those present and takes decisions when these cannot be consensually reached. The interviewed WIB activists are unanimous in attributing the endurance of the organization to

Nationalities Papers

617

their charismatic leader. One of them says that the two decade long existence of the group has been possible:
. . .thanks to Stasa Zajovic and to her incredible energy which from time to time becomes unbearable, it can be burdensome, but she is a creator and she gave birth to the WIB in Belgrade. It is in any case thanks to her capacity for inventing and creating a certain philosophy, a certain ethic of WIB that the group has managed to survive until the present day. (Interview with the author, 20 July 2010)

This activist suggests that the organization has, in a certain way, been a life project in which its leader has become identied with it to the extent of rendering it almost meaningless to separate them. This project or style (philosophy) is essentially characterized by a corpus of ethical values which has been a two decade long constant in the groups existence. Note how the activist perceives the organization as its leaders offspring when claiming that she, as a creator, gave birth to it. Similarly, a very intimate pairing of the organization with its leader became obvious in an interview with an older activist:
Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012
When I look at her I am amazed by the passion with which she explains a certain idea or argues for some kind of proposal. . . for example, if we sit in a bar somewhere and her mobile rings in relation to a WIB engagement, she cannot sit, she goes around the bar, people look at her. . . but she cannot help it, she goes on talking, she is so much into it. . . I often tell her you must be less passionate, you must put less heart into all of this. . . sometimes I am afraid that so much effort might not do her good. . . (Interview with the author, 10 July 2010)

Even very rhizoid structures concerned with de-hierarchization and power de-centralization have central gures whose leadership stems from their organizational skills, charisma, ambition, political agency and courage which make them opt for unusually high energy investments into their cause. This commitment gives group members an impression that the group is kept together and that its objectives are worth struggling for. It, thus, serves as a powerful incentive for further engagement.

Discussion Melucci (The process of collective identity 55) claims that to understand how a social movement succeeds or fails in becoming a collective actor is [. . .] a fundamental task for sociologists. This paper set out to explore the surprising survival and two decade long existence of the Belgrade-based anti-war activist group WIB while focusing on the elements that are most important for the process of their collective identity construction. The analysis of my interviews and participant observations as well as of the WIB publications shows that the organization has devised specic strategic options that strengthen group cohesion and promote collective identity. First, wearing exclusively black clothes and silently presenting their bodies at regular weekly intervals turns a moral and political grievance into a programme which constantly challenges and reafrms commitment to the movements cause. Participation in the WIB public performances constitutes body as an alternative political and gendered knowledge (Sasson-Levy and Rapoport 400). The resulting sense of collectivity and solidarity serves as a discouragement for disengagement because it reduces the cognitive dissonance which appears as a result of the need to oppose the regimes belligerent policies, on the one hand, and the (traditionally patriarchal) lack of political agency to do something about them, on the other. Movement participation re-produces a portion of political and social reality in which thoughts and emotions can be freely shared and in which ethical values are conceived as universal rather than national. In such a way, the organization becomes a

618

B. Bilic

safe-haven where group members can count on unconditional support which possibly counter-intuitively turns a social movement into a more static societal element (Bilic, Staying sane 45). The pre-agreed cyclicity of protest, characterized by a straightforward ideological undercurrent throughout the wars of Yugoslav succession and beyond (in spite of the appreciable uctuations of the number of activists) downplays the educational, professional or age variety within the group and produces a set of expectations to which its members are supposed to conform, thus creating a sense of responsibility for the organizations survival. In this regard, collective identity appears as an interactive and relational process which is constantly re-negotiated while both preceding and following collective action. Collective identity does not simply emerge as an aggregate of individuals identities. It is, rather, a uid meta-concept or a relational overarching category within which particularistic identities, life histories, emotional states and political values come across important converging points. Private grievances nd their way into the public space given that group participation articulates them as political acts inseparable from the broader societal/cultural behavioural patterns, values and concerns. This points to a highly politicized nature of the organization, and invites a further examination of a plethora of political options that can be identied among the (post-)Yugoslav anti-war activists which inform the dynamics of their complex interactions (Walder 393). Some researchers attempted to extend and correct Meluccis insistence on the processual nature of collective identity by pointing to a distinction between identity process and product which supposedly appears at the end of this development (e.g., Snow 4). Product would, then, constitute the constructed social object to which the movement protagonists, adversaries and audiences respond (e.g., Snow 4). However, as Flesher Fominaya (378) argues, collective identity as an internally unfolding process taking place and drawing information from a broader social milieu, on the one hand, and the visible projection and expression of political content (the product), on the other, are two conceptually different phenomena. In other words, movement opponents do not react to the collective identity as it is experienced and constructed by group members, but to a publicly projected movement representation. The extent to which movements are interested in closing the gap between their collective identity and its public manifestation depends also on their orientations and political objectives. In the case of WIB, the distinction of collective identity as a process and collective identity as a projected product (Snow) is blurred. This is due to the fact that WIB mobilizes collective identity as a political tool the groups cohesion and operation revolve around the convergence of personal, social and collective identities which condenses them into a political message (Flesher Fominaya 377). The organization is here approached 20 years after its establishment, a more than sufcient period of time for testing various strategic options and developing an easily recognizable collective identity. Thus, what we can today empirically capture as identity construction and maintenance strategies is the sublimate of a long process of identity building. Moreover, this organization is not characterized by ideological heterogeneity which would make such a process more difcult. On the contrary unassailable ideological consistency is one of its staple features. In addition, at least a part of the reason for the survival of the Belgrade-based WIB lies in the fact that recurrent collective identity articulations comprise a specic combination of the requirement of consensus, on the one hand, and strong and charismatic leadership, on the other. A group that is so heterogeneous in terms of its members age, educational level, political experience and social ties would be paralyzed if it were based solely on consensus

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

Nationalities Papers

619

decision making. It would also generate a lot of internal resistance and would not be able to create a sustainable collective identity if it were to be single-handedly run. By successfully combining these two elements consensus and leadership and by giving them different weights at different stages of group operation, the organization manages to preserve its both expressive-emotional aspect and its strategic logic. In other words, the collective succeeds in perpetuating itself by maintaining strategic elements reective of its expressive requirements. Interestingly enough, the incentives for the WIB collective identity maintenance have remained practically the same in two appreciably (but not fundamentally) different politi cal contexts, those during and after the Milosevic regime. In the former case, WIB were seen as outright national traitors and their street vigils were not protected by police forces. They were claiming and feminizing public space by silently presenting their black-clad bodies to passers-by, many of whom were verbally offensive or physically threatening (Devic; Fridman). In such an environment, the group members could easily perceive their difference from the wider public. However, once the authoritarian regime was overthrown, the WIB vigils have become heavily policed as the state realized that it could draw political legitimacy through a heavy police protection of non-aggressive dissenting voices. This has signicantly changed the nature of WIB performances as it has enclosed them within the public space, thus severing interaction possibilities for physical and verbal attacks, but also for emotional exchanges, contributions or participations. Protest militarization makes the group exotic by obstructing communication channels while concurrently perpetuating the idea, both externally and internally, that the group members are ideologically and also physically separate from the rest of society. This paper revolves around the question of how collective identity, appearing as a combination of both stable and continually renegotiated elements, contributes to the survival of a social movement. Recent social movement research demonstrates that the notions of movement success or failure are complex, given that they comprise political, cultural and biographical facets (Bosi and Uba, 2009). Although these are worth exploring also in the case of the Serbian WIB, what is at stake here is a broader relationship between the Serbian state and society, on the one hand, and the nature, experiences and legacies of the extra-institutional engagement that appeared immediately prior to and during the wars of Yugoslav succession. This issue is intimately related to the processes of NGO-ization which have not only enabled many people to stay in activism professionally for two decades, but have, to a different extent across the alternative sphere, led to an accumulation of nancial, social and symbolic capital which might start obstructing the appear ance of grassroots initiatives and hinder their access to institutions and sources (Bilic, A concept that is everything and nothing; Stubbs; Vetta 26). It would be of interest to see in more detail how it is possible for WIB to concurrently perpetuate and resist this trend. What are the strategies upon which they draw to remain non-exclusive and maintain their strong activist orientation which prevent them from completely giving in to the necessities of professionalization and bureaucratization? Are the challenges of resisting this trend on a par with those of surviving during the heyday of the Milosevic regime? In this regard, Melucci (The process of collective identity 54) insists that the collective identity level of analysis cannot explain everything, and the concept of collective identity is a permanent warning about the necessity of recognizing a plurality of levels in collective action. My analysis has not done justice to what seems nowadays to be at the very heart of social movement research, and that is mobilization into protest participation. WIB is a group that combines various political, historical, social and personal

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

620

B. Bilic

threads and networks, and one of the crucial questions in this regard has to do with the processes and mechanisms that facilitate or obstruct political mobilization in a highly volatile climate in which this kind of engagement can seriously put ones health or even life at stake (Baiocchi; McAdam Recruitment to high-risk political activism 64). A more sophisticated biography-oriented account is needed to illuminate the issues of who actually joins the organization and who decides to stay or leave and why. Given that the group has existed for almost two decades now, it could also lend itself to a more generational approach which would contribute to our knowledge about those who join the organization 15 years after the end of the armed conict and whose pre-existing identities cannot be directly linked to the history of the Yugoslav civic engagement. Another possibly inspiring research path would be to recover participation patterns and engagement mechanisms while associating them with the stages of repression outlined above.

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

Notes
1. This paper is a part of a broader research project on the post-Yugoslav anti-war activism for which my interview sample included 60 activists in Serbia, around 20 of whom have been at some point during the last twenty years associated with WIB. The participants were recruited through snowball sampling an approach for locating information-rich respondents whose number increases as they themselves suggest additional informants. In order to increase variance, I interviewed group members who took part in the earliest street performances as well as those who joined the group recently. Whereas the majority of women included in the sample come from Belgrade, I also talked to those members who live in other parts of Serbia. Data collection was conducted in December 2009 as well as in January and July 2010 by means of mp3-recorded semi-structured interviews lasting between 40 minutes and three hours. All participants were interviewed face-to-face, mostly at the WIB headquarters in Belgrade. 2. Feminist initiatives on the Yugoslav territory, which can be traced back to the second half of the 19th century, were coloured by socialist ideology from the very beginning (Slapsak). In 1919 Croat and Serbian women founded the Secretariat of Women Socialists which operated within the Socialist Workers Party. They could, thus, rather quickly establish ideological linkages with young communists and anti-fascists who in 1941 initiated the Peoples Liberation War. 3. Although the Yugoslav partisans mostly counted on womens material and logistic support (collection and distribution of food, nding accommodation for refugees and children, etc.) many Yugoslav women were active ghters and a few of them were also declared national heroes by the post-war Tito regime. 4. It is important to note that WIB nowadays represents a loose world-wide network of women activists committed to peace and justice. 5. The public performance A pair of shoes, one life took place in July 2010 in the Knez Mihailova Street in downtown Belgrade. It was jointly organized by the members of WIB and independent Belgrade artists (e.g., DAH theatre) to mark the 15th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. The organizers invited Serbian citizens and the international public to donate a pair of shoes with a signed message to the survivors of the Srebrenica genocide and members of the victims families. The purpose was to collect a pair of shoes for each genocide victim. The collected shoes were put on the WIB banners extended along the street and the accompanying messages were read in Serbian and other languages. 6. Note that Serbo-Croatian, like other Slavic languages, has grammatical gender. This means that all the associated words (adjectives, verbs etc.) must have specic inections reecting the gender of the noun which they accompany. WIB challenges the gender-neutral language usage which traditionally applies masculine nouns when referring to both genders. Thus, the word free here is slobodne (in the Serbian original) meaning free women. 7. The Yugoslav armed conict did have some civil war elements. For example, the people of the socalled Republika Srpska Krajina, a self-proclaimed Serb entity within Croatia (19911995), were ghting against the Croatian state. See also Bolcic (1992) and his idea of internal war. 8. The International Court of Justice also based in The Hague, the Netherlands, has recently absolved Serbia from responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre, to which it also referred as an

Nationalities Papers

621

act of genocide. The Court, however, did rule that Serbia was responsible for failing to exert its inuence to attempt to prevent it and punish its perpetrators (Summary of the Judgment, 2007). 9. The need for maintaining unquestionable ideological consistency has sometimes made Women in Black choose rather problematic strategic options. For example, in the summer of 2010 the leader of the organization along with a few other members took part in the Peace March (from the Bosnian village of Nezuk to the Memorial Centre in Potocari) which takes place every year to commemorate the victims of the Srebrenica genocide. The March participants, however, were greeted by Naser Oric, a Bosnian military ofcer sentenced by the International Crime Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for failing to prevent the murder of Bosnian Serb detainees.

References
Baiocchi, Maria Lis. Women in Black: Mobilization Into Anti-nationalist, Anti-militarist, Feminist Activism in Serbia. CEU Political Science Journal 4 (2009): 469 500. Print. Barr, Dermot and Drury, John. Activist Identity as a Motivational Resource: Dynamics of Dis-empowerment at the G8 Direct Actions, Gleneagles, 2005. Social Movement Studies 8 (2009): 243 260. Print. Benski, Tova. Breaching Events and the Emotional Reactions of the Public: Women in Black in Israel. Emotions and Social Movements. Eds. Helena Flam and Debra King. London: Routledge, 2005. 57 78. Print. Berger, Peter. A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969. Print. Bilic, Bojan. Mapping the Ephemeral: Yugoslav Civil Society Initiatives Towards the End of the 1980s. Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe. Eds. Heiko Pleines and Sabine Fisher. Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2010a. 47 58. Print. Bilic, Bojan. Bourdieu and Social Movement Theories: Some Preliminary Remarks on a Possible Conceptual Cross-fertilization in the Context of Yugoslav Anti-war Activism. Sociologija 52 (2010b): 377 398. Print. Bilic, Bojan. Staying Sane and Even Growing in Times of Chaos: Serbian Anti-war Activism as Therapy. Antropologija 11 (2011a): 45 65. Print. Bilic, Bojan. In a Crevice Between Gender and Nation: Croatian and Serbian Women in 1990s Anti-war Activism. Slovo 23 (2011b): 95 113. Print. Bilic, Bojan. Recovering (post-)Yugoslav Anti-war and Pacist Activism: A Research Agenda. The South Slav Journal 30 (2011c): 24 56. Print. Bilic, Bojan. A Concept That is Everything and Nothing: Why Not to Study (Post-) Yugoslav Anti-war and Pacist Contention From a Civil Society Perspective. Sociologija 53 (2011d): 297 322. Print. Blagojevic, Marina. 1998. Ka vidljivoj zenskoj istoriji: zenski pokret u Beogradu 90-ih. Belgrade: Centar za zenske studije, 1998. Print. Bolcic, Silvano. Sociologija i unutrasnji rat u Jugoslaviji. Socioloski pregled 26 (1992): 9 25. Print. Bonglioli, Chiara. Belgrade 1978: Remembering the Conference Drug-ca zena. Zensko pitanje novi pristup? 2008. Web. 20 Dec. 2009. Bosi, Lorenzo and Katrin Uba. Introduction: The Outcomes of Social Movements. Mobilization 14 (2009): 409 415. Print. Bozinovic, Neda. Zensko pitanje u Srbiji u 19. i 20. veku. Belgrade: Women in Black, 1996. Print. Cockburn, Cynthia. From Where We Stand: War, Womens Activism and Feminist Analysis. London: Zed Books, 2007. Print. Devic, Ana. Anti-war Initiatives and the Un-making of Civic Identities in the Former Yugoslav Republics. Journal of Historical Sociology 10 (1997a): 127 156. Print. Devic, Ana. Redening the Public-private Boundary: Nationalism and Womens Activism in Former Yugoslavia. The Anthropology of East Europe Review 15 (1997b). Print. Duhacek, Dasa. Gender Perspectives on Political Identities in Yugoslavia. From Gender to Nation. Eds. Rada Ivekovic AND Julie Mostow. Longo Editore, Ravenna, 2002. Print.

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

622

B. Bilic

Erickson Nepstad, Sharon. Persistent Resistance: Commitment and Community in the Plowshares Movement. Social Problems 51 (2004): 43 60. Flesher Fominaya, Cristina. Creating Cohesion from Diversity: the Challenge of Collective Identity Formation in the Global Justice Movement. Sociological Inquiry 80 (2007): 377 404. Print. Fridman, Orli. Alternative Voices: Serbias Anti-War Activism, 1991 2004. Diss. George Mason U, 2006a. Print. Fridman, Orli. Alternative Voices in Public Space: Serbias Women in Black. Ethnologia Balkanica 10 (2006b): 291 303. Print. Fridman, Orli. It was Like Fighting Our Own People: Anti-war Activism in Serbia During the 1990s. Nationalities Papers 39 (2011): 507 522. Print. Goodwin, Jeff. The Libidinal Constitution of a High-risk Social Movement: Affectual Ties and Solidarity in the Huk Rebellion. American Sociological Review 62 (1997): 5369. Print. Hughes, Donna, Mladenovic Lepa and Mrsevic, Zorica. Feminist Resistance in Serbia. European Journal of Women Studies 2 (1995): 509 532. Print. Hunt, Scott and Robert Benford. Collective Identity, Solidarity, and Commitment. The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Eds. David Snow et al. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. 433 460. Print. Jansen, Stef. Antinacionalizam: Etnograja otpora u Beogradu i Zagrebu. Belgrade: Biblioteka XX vek, 2005. Print. Klandermans, Bert. The Social Psychology of Protest. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. Print. McAdam, Doug. Recruitment to High-risk Political Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer. The American Journal of Sociology 92 (1986): 64 90. Print. McAdam, Doug. Freedom Summer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Print. Melucci, Alberto. Nomads of the Present. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989. Print. Melucci, Alberto. The Process of Collective Identity. Social Movements and Culture. Eds. Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1995. 41 63. Print. Nedovic, Slobodanka. Savremeni feminizam: Polozaj i uloga zena u porodici i drustvo. Belgrade: Centar za unapredivanje pravnih studije, 2005. Polletta, Francesca and James Jaspers. Collective Identity and Social Movements. Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 283 305. Print. Sasson-Levy, Orna and Tamar Rapoport. Body, Gender, and Knowledge in Protest Movements: The Israeli Case. Gender & Society 17 (2003): 379 403. Print. Searle-Chatterjee, Mary. Occupation, Biography and New Social Movements. Sociological Review 47 (1999): 258 279. Print. Slapsak, Svetlana. The Use of Women and the Role of Women in the Yugoslav War. Gender, Peace, and Conict. Eds. Inger Skjelsbaek and Dan Smith. London: Sage, 2001. Print. Snow, David. Collective Identity and Expressive Forms. Web. 18 Sept. 2004. Stubbs, Paul. Nationalisms, Globalization and Civil Society in Croatia and Slovenia. 1996. Web. 10 Oct 2010. Stubbs, Paul. Civil Society or Ubleha? Reections on Flexible Concepts, Meta-NGOs and New Social Energy in the Post-Yugoslav Space. 20 Pieces of Encouragement for Awakening and Change: Peacebuilding in the Region of the Former Yugoslavia. Eds. Helena Rill et al. Belgrade: Centre for non-violent action, 2007. 215 228. Print. Summary of the Judgment of the International Court of Justice of 26 February 2007. Web. 10 March 2010. Susak, Bojana. An alternative to war. The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis. Ed. Nebojsa Popov. Budapest: Central European UP, 1996. 479 508. Print. Tanjug. Attack on Activists at the Headquarters of Women in Black in Belgrade, Serbia. 2010. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. Terselic, Vesna. Expanding Our Civil Space: Women in Peace Initiatives. Women and the Politics of Peace: Contribution to a Culture of Womens Resistance. Ed. Biljana Kasic. Zagreb: Centre for Womens Studies, 1997. 19 30. Print.

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012

Nationalities Papers

623

Urosevic, Milos. Simbolika Zena u crnom, pre i posle petnaest godina. Zene za mir. Ed. Stasa Zajovic. Belgrade: Women in Black, 2007. 29 35. Print. Vetta, Theodora. Democracy Building in Serbia: The NGO Effect. Southeastern Europe 33 (2009): 26 47. Print. Walder, Andrew. Political Sociology and Social Movements. Annual Review of Sociology 35 (2009): 393 412. Print. Women in Black. Women for Peace. Belgrade: Women in Black, 1993. Print. Women in Black. Zene za mir. Belgrade: Women in Black, 2007. Print. Zajovic, Stasa. Militarism and Women in Serbia. Zene za mir. Ed. Stasa Zajovic. Belgrade: Women in Black, 1993. 29 35. Print. Zajovic, Stasa. Dis/continuity of Repression Towards Women in Black. Zene za mir. Ed. Stasa Zajovic. Belgrade: Women in Black, 2007. 65 70. Print.

Downloaded by [Bojan Bili] at 06:45 28 September 2012