We Were Gasping for Air: (Post-)Yugoslav Anti-War Contention and Its Legacy

(Post)-Yugoslav anti-war contention has remained an under-theorised phenomenon more than a decade after the end of the wars of Yugoslav succession. The rich conceptual apparatus of collective contention theories has not, up to now, been employed to account for the emergence and development of these civic undertakings. Positioned at the interface between historical sociology, social movement studies and anthropology, this thesis follows the anti-war protest cycle which unfolded in Serbia and Croatia throughout the 1990s. While generally not expounding on the “ontogenesis” of individual civic enterprises, I draw upon in-depth interviews, documentary analysis and participant observations to illuminate broader politico-social trajectories of activist group constitution, protest expansion and demise. This thesis shows that various anti-war initiatives appropriated and developed dormant social networks created through student, feminist and environmentalist engagement in socialist Yugoslavia. Anti-war activisms, in turn, served as platforms for generating the social and material capital which enabled the establishment of the present-day politico-civic organisations devoted to human rights protection across the ex-Yugoslav space