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WHO OWNS YOUR BODY: CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS IN CROATIA IN THE 1990S
Oliwia Berdak
; Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh
Sažetak
The collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s changed little in the relationship between male citizens and the state. In fact, ownership of men’s bodies became a token of statehood, as different republics assumed and legislated their right to draft men into their smaller armies. In Croatia, men could, at least nominally, exercise their new right to conscientious objection from 1990 onwards. This article traces the adoption and implementation of the Article 47 of the Croatian Constitution in 1990, which allowed conscientious objectors to complete civilian instead of military service. I draw upon letters to the Croatian Ministry of Defence, written in the 1990s by men who claimed their right to conscientious objection, to investigate the constraints and possibilities of voicing dissent by men at this time. How men narrated their reasons and motivations portrays the dilemmas of pacifism in the context of a defensive war. Even in these narrow frames, men have found enough space to evoke their own understandings of democratisation, individual rights and European political standards, narratives which were later used in calls to abandon military conscription altogether.
Ključne riječi
Conscientious objection; conscription; military; citizenship; Croatia; masculinities
Hrčak ID:
112875
URI
Datum izdavanja:
25.6.2013.
Posjeta: 1.669 *