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

Bojan Bili University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies

ABSTRACT

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 antipatriarchal and anti-militarist organization, which has successfully resisted numerous instances of repression, has not been up to 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 crossfertilization between non-Western activism and the Western conceptual apparatus for studying civic engagement.

Key words: Women in Black, Serbia, collective identity, anti-war activism

Forthcoming in Nationalities Papers. The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 2012