Anti-war activism as therapy

This paper begins to illuminate the therapeutic function of Serbian anti-war activism during the armed conflicts of Yugoslav succession. Such a specific aspect of civic engagement in the 1990s Serbia has been insufficiently explored in the existing accounts of the Yugoslav/Serbian pacifist efforts. Serbian anti-war activists perceived “sanity” maintenance as an important aim of what is normally considered to be exclusively political involvement. I draw upon in-depth semi-structured interviews and documentary sources to examine how collective enterprises, such as candle lighting, petitions, street protests and demonstrations were conceptualized as spaces of personal freedom without necessarily having specifically articulated political objectives. An inductive thematic analysis of the collected material revealed the following themes under the overarching category of therapy: staying “sane”, recovering agency/empowerment, personal growth and maturation, and resistance to “psychologization”. These themes are discussed in the light of complex interactions between the personal and the political through which social movements, groups and organizations, which generally tend to be perceived as disturbing elements of unrest and change, become islands of civility and creativity in a political environment marked by destruction and violence.