Politics and Gender Papers

Heather Field*

The Failure of Post-Communist Political Arrangements in Former Yugoslavia

Abstract

War and conflict still continue in former Yugoslavia, a decade after they began. The conflict has moved from east to west, and the great powers and international society have become increasingly though reluctantly involved. This paper argues that the failure of post communist political arrangements has been a major cause of the conflicts. These arrangements have been at the level of states, secessionist states, secessionist and some cases formerly autonomous parts of states, as well as at the level of the opstina or municipality. The major failing has been with respect to ensuring the representation of minorities and the provision of guarantees for their rights and security. The political and economic consequences, and feared consequences, grafted onto specific historical situations and ethnic, class and religious divisions, led to war and conflict and the horrors of ethnic cleansing. The ‘numbers game’ promoted by simple democracy in the context of the new divisions was a motivation for ethnic cleansing, conflict and war. Appropriate solutions are still to be found, hence the war in Macedonia, the likelihood of continued conflict under new constitutional arrangements being put in place in Kosovo, and the continued instability of Bosnia-Hercegovina.

The wars of secession in former Yugoslavia appear to be coming to end after over a decade of war and conflict, though there are many issues still unresolved and prospective causes of future conflict. The conflict has moved from west to east. It started with small skirmishes between Serbs and Croats in Croatia early in 1991. A real but only 10-day war was conducted between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in June-July 1991. A more extended war erupted with Croatia, leading to the seiges of Vukovar and Dubrovnik. In 1995 Croatia was to recover much of its lost territory, and drive out some 200 000 Serbs. 1992 brought civil war in Bosnia-Hercegovina, with the FRY and Croatia assisting their own factions in it, also with a Croat-Muslim sub-war in 1993-94 and one between government forces and those of Fikret Abdic in Bihac. The Bosnian war ended only after the Srebenica massacre and Dayton Agreement in 1995. 1998 and 1999 brought war in and over Kosovo, with NATO bombing Serbia in 1999 to allow a reversal of the ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians from the region. In 2000 there was insurrection in and from the Presevo Valley, and minor actions in Macedonia which grew into a full-scale rebellion and civil war in 2001, now hopefully ended. In the course of these wars between 100 000 to 200 000 have died, many more have been wounded, 3 million were made into refugees, and some 50 000 women have been subjected to rape.

This paper looks at the failure of post-communist political arrangements in former Yugoslavia to prevent these wars and conflicts. It ascribes some of the fault for this to the great powers and international society, and their failure to ensure that minority rights were protected and consensual arrangements reached. It shows how the economic consequences, and feared economic consequences, of new political arrangements were a motive for conflict, ethnic cleansing, and war, but some other factors were also important. This first part of the paper outines the background and some theoretical explanations put forward for the conflict. It is followed by a discussion of arrangements under communism in former Yugoslavia, and the extent to which these were genuinely successful in preventing conflict.

The second major part of the paper considers arrangement at the level of the state, including secessionist states, and takes into account the question of guarantees of minority rights and the role of individual politicians. This is followed by a discussion of arrangements at the level of the opstina or municipality and the difficulties created by these. This section looks at the ‘numbers game’ or population balance in in specific towns and regions as a source of conflict.

The third major part of the paper considers the importance of specific issues, including those of a political, economic and cultural nature, and how these have led to dissatisfactions with specific post-communist political systems, and in turn conflict and war.

Much of the popular focus and explanation of these conflicts has been related to ethnic and religious divisions and the historical background. There has also been a tendency in the west to see such conflicts as resulting from ‘evil leaders’ (Maynes 1999, p. 2). The commentary on the trial of Slobodan Milosevic is just the most recent example of this, while the war in Macedonia has continued despite the absence of an obvious ‘evil leader’. (Maynes 1999, p. 2). Maynes describes the tendency as having been part of a fundamentally ‘Fukayaman’ American foreign policy, following the arguments of Francis Fukayama in his controversial book The End of History and the Last Man? (Fukayama 1992).

As a consequence the recognition of the independence of new states without adequate arrangements being in place within those states for minority representation, rights and autonomy was not seen as problematic. It was simply assumed that communism had been an undesirable system, and its replacement by democratic liberalism would bring benefits for all, with new state and political arrangements not being a matter of great consequence.

In some cases the error of such beliefs was rapidly evident, for example in the war which erupted between Croatia and the FRY in 1991 over the status, autonomy and territory of the Croatian Serbs. In others, for example the recognition of Macedonia or the ‘Former Yugoslav State of Macedonia’ (FYROM), it did not become evident until a substantial time after recognition had taken place. In the Macedonian case this was almost a decade later, with the outbreak of the current or recent ethnic Albanian separatist insurgency there.

Communism, peace and Tito

There is a tendency today both in ex-Yugoslavia and among foreign commentators to see the communist years under Tito as golden years, and to some extent they were. However, the initiation of the post-war regime came with massacres and forced death marches of tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of Croatian and Slovenian home guard and Ustasha troops and supporters, German soldiers and others, and the quelling of a major rebellion in Kosovo. The break with Stalin resulted in the resulted in imprisonments and executions of supporters of the USSR.

Nevertheless, Tito was a key mainstay of the system. As a Croat/Slovene, he was a counterweight to the influence of the Serbs as the largest ethnic group. However, being a mere mortal he died, in May 1980.

The communist party endeavoured to allow the representation and participation of all ethnic and religious groups in the political system. There were some hiccoughs, for example the expulsion of over 11 000 supporters of the Cominform and USSR from the party in 1948, with 2500 being sentenced to imprisonment on the island of Goli Otok (Bennett 1995, p. 59). The party aimed to discourage nationalism and bourgeois tendencies, and to encourage the development of young people of promise. Nationalist and separatist tendencies among ethnic Albanians in Kosovo had been contained with repression prior to the fall of secret police chief Arthur Rankovic in 1966.

In 1974 a new constitution devolved greater power from the centre to the republics. Further significant changes include the raising of the status of Kosovo to that of autonomous republic, the same as that of Vojvodina. Territorial defence arrangements were also introduced, giving the republics some control over defence as opposed to it being solely the business of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA).

The major conflict which occurred during post-war communism was the outbreak of riots and protests in Kosovo in 1981, the year after Tito’s death. Hundreds were killed in the course of the repression of these actions. This conflict represented a continuation of earlier conflicts between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, and a struggle over land and political influence which had continued from the ‘liberation’ of Kosovo from Turkish control in the First Balkan War in 1912. Kosovo constitutes an important exception to the general argument in this paper that the wars and conflicts of ex-Yugoslavia in the past decade can be closely tied to the failre of post-communist political arrangements, since it is possible that further conflict was inevitable at some point regardless of the political arrangements adopted.

Communism did constitute a consociational formula for the management of ethnic and religious cleavages in former Yugoslavia, whatever its other failings. The hegemony of the party prevented the rise of nationalism and the partition of republics on an ethnic basis. Consociational formulae which allow for a degree of representation and control by all groups are an important theoretical solution to ethnic conflict management (Vuckovic 1997, p. 21). However, clearly the formula did not work so well in Kosovo. The democratic systems which followed communism in former Yugoslavia did not require consensus, and put nationalists in charge of countries and rebel regions. As Isakovic (2000, p. 11) states, while democracy can alleviate ethnic tensions, the transition towards it can create a ‘fertile climate’ for the growth of hatreds, biases and conflicts.

The secession of states

The withdrawal of the autonomous status of Kosovo in 1989 caused major concerns in Croatia and Slovenia, that it might be followed by attempts to reduce the autonomy and internal control of the republics. In 1990 the Slovenian and Croatian delegations walked out of the congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, effectively bringing any form of party control from the centre to an end. Democratic elections held later that year in Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. In Slovenia the existing party chief, Milan Kucan, became president. In Macedonia former communist Kiro Gligorov became president, and a coalition government came to power. In Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina former ‘outsiders’ to the communist system became president, at the head of nationalist parties which gained majorities in the assemblies of those republics.

In Serbia an existing party chief, Slobodan Milosevic, had already become president in 1989, and he was able to continue in power by forming the Socialist Party of Serbia from the old Serbian League of Communists and the Serbian Socialist Alliance (Cohen 3001, p. 87). He won an election for the Serbian presidency in December 1990, and his party gained a majority of seats in the Serbian assembly. His party of reformed communists also won in Montenegro.

The transfer from communism to democracy in Slovenia was relatively smooth. Milan Kucan received 58.6 per cent of the vote in the first post-communist presidential election, voter turnout being 77 per cent (Pozun 2000, p. 51). The situation that Kucan was the former local communist party leader added to the continuity and perceived legitimacy of the new political arrangements. Minority rights and representation was not a significant issue in Slovenia sicne it was around 95 per cent ethnic Slovenian. This situation meant that there was no significant sector of the population which risked disadvantage from the replacement of communist arrangements, or the transfer of ultimate legislative power from the FRY and Belgrade to Slovenia and Ljubljana after secession. There were no major issues over which the population was divided. Slovenia had 8 per cent of the total population of Yugoslavia, but funded some 20 per cent of the central budget, hence independence for Yugoslavia was seen as being beneficial. Membership of the European Community was seen as a desirable and achieveable objective, and likely to be achieved by 2005.

Because of the above, recognition of Slovenia as an independent state was not seen as problematic at the international level. Taking Slovenia on its own merits, post-communist arrangements there did not fail. Forced into a war by the FRY in 1991, Slovenia had made adequate preparations and was able to resist the JNA with its own strengthened territorial forces. The defence minister, Janez Jansa, was a former journalist who had been jailed by the JNA, and he ensured that it was not able to use its superior numbers and weaponry within Slovenia.

Table 1: Population breakdown, Yugoslavia (1991)

Group Number Percentage

Serbs 8 526 000 36.2

Croats 4 636 000 19.7

Muslims (Bos.) 1 905 000 8.1

Macedonians 1 372 000 5.8

Slovenes 1 760 000 7.5

Albanians 2 178 000* 3.3

‘Yugoslavs’ 710 000 3.0

Montenegrins 539 000 2.3

Total 23 528 000

Notes: *of which 1 686 000 in Kosovo or other parts of Serbia.

Source: Pavkovic (2000), Table 1, p. 50.

What was problematic was the destabilising effect of prospective Slovenian secession on the rest of Yugoslavia. A basic fact of life of Yugoslavia was a preponderance of Serbs, and a delicate political balance between the Serbian component and the other nationalities or ethnic and religious groups. In Yugoslavia as at the 1991 census Serbs accounted for 36.2 per cent of the population, and 38.5 per cent if their close allies and fellow Serbs, the Montenegrins, were taken into account. There was hence a very fine balance between this ‘bloc’ and the 38.6 per cent which the Slovenes, Croats, Bosnian and Sandzak Muslims and Albanians comprised. The Yugoslav 3 per cent was not strongly identified with any particular group, and while the Macedonian 5.6 per cent had some commonalities with the Serbs they did not closely identify with them. The secession of Slovenia with its 7.5 per cent of the population would not have been a massive loss in itself, but it would inevitably upset the balance of nationalities. From a Croatian point of view it reduced the influence of the Roman Catholic bloc in Yugoslavia, and led to fears of Croatia being left behind in a rush to join the European Community, and worse still condemned to a Yugoslav and Balkan fate. The latter fears now seem ridiculous in view of the present EU and its all-embracing enlargement aims for ‘South East Europe’, but were real enough at the time.

The secession of Slovenia could perhaps still have left Bosnia-Hercegovina, with its majority Muslim government, content to be part of the FRY. The President of Bosnia-Hercegovina (BiH), Alija Izetbegovic, had opposed international recognition of the independence of Croatia because of the problems which this would create for Bosnia-Hercegovina, but was persuaded to drop this opposition (Sudetic 1998, p. 88). BiH and Macedonia had proposed a loose confederation of states within a continuing FRY, but this had been rejected by the other republics.

On 20 December 1991 the BiH presidency voted to apply for international recognition of independence. Germany persuaded or pressured the other EU member states to accept a scheme for the recognition of Croatia, Slovenia and any other Yugoslav republics wishing to apply for it. Britain and France had been opposed to such recognition. On December 20 Bosnia’s presidency voted to apply for international recognition.

An important point here is that due to its World War I and II involvement in the area, and its constitutional ban on sending troops outside the territory of NATO, Germany was not going to be able to provide any military protection or assistance to the newly-independent states.

The major problem or political failure which arose from the transfer of political power and legislative control from Belgrade to Zagreb which Croatian independence involved was with respect to the representation of the Serb minority and its rights. There were 580 000 Serbs in Croatia, excluding those who identified themselves as ‘Yugoslavs’, equivalent to 13 per cent of the population. It was those located in the Knin Krajina area or east of Croatia who constituted a problem. They had had a historical tradition of not being under Croat or Zagreb control from when they had acted as the frontier military force and defence of the Austro-Hungarian empire from the Austrian one.

In 1990 former partisan fighter, JNA general and more recently historian Franjo Tudjman was voted in as president of Croatia. His nationalist Croat Democratic Union (HDZ) party was as a matter of principle not going to be greatly accommodating to the Serb minority. It did attempt to woo them, briefly. Tudjman offered Croatian Serb leader Jovan Raskovic of the Serb Democrtic Party (SDS) one of five vice-presidential posts in his government, but Raskovic turned the offer down. Serb police in Croatia were wooed to support the government with salary increases and job security. But distaste for the HDZ’s adoption of symbols associated with the World War II Nazi-ideology Independent State of Croatia (NDH) caused them to reject these. After being offered higher pay in an attempt by the Croatian Interior Ministry to persuade Serb police in the Krajina to wear the new black uniforms they had been issued with, Knin policeman Milan Martic complained to Belgrade that (Bert 1997, p. 38): ‘… there is something which money cannot buy. What cannot be bought is our Serb dignity. We would rather go hungry, as long as we are together with our Serb people. We will eat potatoes and husks, but we will be on the side of our people.’

The new uniforms had on them badges with the red and white chequerboard sahovnica, which had been adopted as an emblem by the new Croatian government but had also been that of the wartime NDH, and an earlier Croat historical emblem. The NDH had been associated with the slogan ‘kill a third, expel a third, convert a third’ (to Catholicism) (Silber and Little 1995, p. 99) as a means of dealing with the Serb population. Around a sixth of the Serb population of Croatia is estimated to have been killed during World War II.

The earlier literature on the wars of secession in Yugoslavia, for example Thompson (1992), tends to deride the fears of the Croatian Serbs that they were in danger from a new Ustashe-type threat. Also, the death of thousands on both sides in Vukovar and the massacre of several hundred by the Serbs when they took the city were important factors in making German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher press for recognition of Croatia by the killings in Vukovar. He used the agreement of Germany to amendments to the Maastricht Treaty which the UK wanted in return for Britain agreeing to the recognition of Croatia (Goldstein 1999, p. 272). However, recent evidence suggests that special Croatian units under the command of Tomislav Mercep and Mirko Norac killed around 400 Croatian Serb civilians in and around Pakrac and Gospic in 1991, and that orders from the top had been to reduce the number of Serbs in Gospic (New Europe 1997; Raseta 2000). A prospective witness in the case was murdered last year, and another one has been attacked and beaten.

Croatia removed at the end of May 1990 the constitutional clause that had given every nationality in Croatia the right to reject any measure which was seen to threaten its rights if it could obtain a two-thirds majority (Thompson 1992, p. 279). Although the Serb minority would clearly have had difficulty getting a two-thirds majority to support them, removing the provision could only antagonise them.

In Croatia the Krajina Serbs ran their own referendum on August 1990 which obtained a full vote of support for autonomy, local Croats being unwilling or discouraged from voting in it. The government of Franjo Tudjman adopted strongly repressive measures, sacking Serb police from the force, retrieving guns from army reserve arsenals, and replacing road signs in the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets with Latin-only (Thompson 1992, p. 260). In April 1991 the ‘Independent and Autonomous Region of Krajina’ requested the Belgrade parliament to annex it to the Republic of Serbia (Thompson, p. 261), a step clearly impossible without war. A number of minor skirmishes, massacres and counter-massacres, led to the involvement of the FRY and JNA in the conflict and the Serbo-Croat war of 1991, with the seiges of Vukovar and Dubrovnik and the occupation of a substantial part of Croatia’s territory. Revenge came in 1995 when Croatia sent its army, now numbering over 200 000 and well-armed and trained due to indirect American help, to recover most of this ‘lost’ territory through Operations Flash and Storm. In the latter up to 200 000 Serbs were driven out of Croatia in a matter of a few days, their houses burned by the Croats behind them, and 3000 killed.

Total losses on both sides in the conflict are estimated at around 25 000 dead, with many more wounded, Croatian losses being equivalent to or slightly less than the Serb ones. Some 200 000 Croatian Serbs became refugees, and while there have been some permitted returns under Croatian president Stipe Mesic these have been slow and subject to harassment. IN conclusion, post communist political arrangements failed to guarantee minority rights and to allow for accommodation between the Croatian government and its Serb minority.

The secession of BiH has been yet more serious, leading to over 100 000 dead and the effective destruction of much of the country. A major underlying and political problem has been that the majority of the Serb population has not wished to be in a state with a Muslim-majority government, and that the Croat population has also had misgivings and wars and conflicts over this. As Table 2 shows, Muslims were the largest single group, but not a majority. In combination with the Croat population, they account for over 60 per cent of the population. Serbs accounted for over a third of the population, taking into account some self-declared ‘Yugoslavs’. Under communism, the situation of the Serbs was protected and assured, and they tended to hold a disproportionate share of public sector positions, including those of police. Under democracy, there were fears that they would have no influence at the state level, once central decision-making and legislative power had been transferred from Belgrade to Sarajevo.

Table 2 Population breakdown, Bosnia (1981 and 1991)

Group 1981: No. % 1991: No. %

Bos. Muslims 1 630 000 40.3 1 905 000 44.6

Serbs 1 321 000 32.7 1 369 000 32.1

Croats 758 000 18.8 755 000 17.7

Yugoslavs 326 000 8.0 239 000 5.6

Total 4 035 000 4 268 000

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Source: Estimated from Pavkovic, p. 50, Table 1, and Judah (1997).

Had the most popular political parties been ones which cut across the different communities, simple democracy might have worked. But in practice, after the 1990 Bosnian elections nationalist parties held 202 of the 240 seats in the two-chamber parliament. The Muslim SDA had 87, the Serb SDS 71 and the Croat HDZ 44. There was a clear polarisation of interests.

There were factors which would have constituted valid reasons for refusing to accept the independence of the country without political changes. The major one was that the Serb population was clearly opposed to independence under existing arrangements, and such independence was likely to disenfranchise it and fail to guarantee its rights.

It could have been argued that the formal decision of BiH to secede had not been undertaken in an appropriate constitutional manner. Under Amendment LXX of the republic’s constitution qustions of national equality should have been submitted to the assembly’s Council, and required a two-thirds majority, which would have likely blocked the passsing of the ‘Memorandum of Sovereignty’ and hence independence (Pavkovic 2000, p. 159).

When the government of Montenegro was pursuing the prospect of independence from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 2000 and 2001, it obtained a parliamentary majority in favour of its aims, but of less than 10 per cent. Advice from the US was there should be no move towards independence without a two-thirds majority in favour. Had such instructions been given in Bosnia-Hercegovina, it would not have become independent of the FRY, or would at least have had to find a political formula more acceptable to its minorities in order to win their support for independence. The EU also advised Montenegro to remain within a renegotiated Yugoslav federation (FreeB92 2001).

A major failing in the operation of the post-communist political system in BiH arose with respect to arrangements for the presidency. There were six elected presidents, two from each community, and the individual who received the greatest number of votes should have become chair of the presidency and in effect the most powerful person in BiH. This was not allowed to happen, for reasons which have been disputed and never fully clear. Fikret Abdic, a business and political figure from Bihac, obtained 1 010 618 votes for the presidency, compared to Alija Izetbegovic’s 847 386. Abdic had earlier been jailed over the Agromerc unbacked promissory note scandal in 1987 – possibly framed – which at worst put him in the same category as Bosnian Serb leaders Karadzic and Krajisnik. He was much more of a politician than Izetbegovic and was able to attract some local Serb and Croat votes, and is described by a respondent from Tuzla as a ‘good man’. He was much more willing and able to reach deals with the Serbs and others than Izetbegovic was, and at one point led his local area in rebellion against the BiH government and Izetbegovic. It has been suggested that Abdic gave up being chair of the presidency in return for getting his nominee, Alija Delimustafic, appointed interior minister, but Delimustafic was later to feel himself at risk and flee overseas.

Although the presidency was supposed to rotate, it did not do so. Izetbegovic remained the chair of the presidency on the basis that this was a war situation. However, it was also a deviation from the democrtic operation of the post-communist arrnagements which had been put in place.

Numerous aspects of Izetbegovic’s party and policies were considered a provocation by Serbs. Izetbegovic’s very name indicated that he was from the former Ottoman landlord class, as did that of foreign minister Sacirbey. The SDA was a populist party of the Muslim masses whose supporters were rural and traditional Muslims. Thompson (1992, p. 99) describes how an early SDA supporters’ meeting was held in a football stadium and attended by men in tasselled fezes and blue-grey shiny suits and women in dimiye, in the ratio five to one.

The Bosnian Muslim Organisation (BMO) of Adel Zulfikarpasic and other SDA expellees represented mainly urban Muslims, and focused on democracy and the dangers of clericalism, but failed to attract more than a minority vote. In 1991 it attempted to negotiate a Muslim-Serbian accord in order to preserve the integrity of BiH and avoid war. This was accepted by Radovan Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb SDS, also allegedly by Milosevic, but rejected by Izetbegovic, who claimed that it amounted to siding with the Serbs in both Croatia and Bosnia at a time of war. Another later more broadly-aimed party was to be the Party for Bosnia-Herzegovina (SBIH), which became the main opposition party in the Muslim-Croat federation and was led by former Bosnian prime minister Haris Silajdzic. However, Silajdzic was badly beaten up by SDA supporters when electioneering.

The EC was concerned that independence would lead to war. It had made approval of independence of prospective states in ex-Yugoslavia subject to adequate minority rights, and the Badinter Commission was asked to oversee this latter situation. The Commission had replied to the EC on 11 January that the independence of Croatia should be ubject to constitutional changes on minority rights. Even though the constitutional changes were not made, and there would not have been time to do so in any case, Croatia’s independence was recognised on 15 January by all of the EU countries (Cohen 1998, p. 336). Donia and Fine (1996, p. 233) state that German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher had in any case vowed not to be bound by the reservations of the Badinter Committee with regard to Croatian constitutional changes which reduced the influence of minorities. After Germany had said it would unilaterally recognise Croatia’s independence the EC followed suite on 15 January 1992. The Badinter Commission’s solution for BiH was that as a condition to be met for recognition there had to be a referendum of the whole population with the outcome being assessed on a simple majority basis. The Bosnian Serbs boycotted the referendum, which was held on the weekend of 29 February – 1 March 1992. Hence although 63 per cent of the electorate voted, and of these 99 per cent supported independence, the point which the referendum process and result missed was that 37 per cent of the population had chosen not to vote. With hindsight, the referendum was an amazingly naïve proposal with a predictable outcome. The EU recognised Bosnia on 6 April and the US on 7 April. Had cantonisation, devolution of power or some other effective arrangement been insisted upon as a condition of recognition, war might have been averted.

In February 1992 Izetbegovic had accepted the EC-brokered ‘Lisbon Agreement’ which divided Bosnia into three national cantons. However, a few days later he repudiated his earlier agreement (Cohen 1998, p. 187). There have been suggestions that the US Ambassador to Yugoslavia Warrren Zimerman had encouraged Izetbegovic to renounce the Lisbon agreement, but he himself has denied this (Donia and Fine 1996, p. 235). However, Donia and Fine see the shift of US policy towards recognition of Bosnia-Hercegovina as being encouraging to Izetbegovic, who had earlier stressed that his goal was sovereignty rather than peace. The US was certainly not anticipating any military or other intervention in BiH at the time it gave this encouragement, regardless of what the consequences might be, hence its actions appear naïve and self-seeking and contributing to the failure to obtain political solutions which would have avoided war.

The EC reconvened the Lisbon talks, this time in Sarajevo, on 18 March, and Izetbegovic again agreed with Serb and Croat representatives to divide or cantonise Bosnia, but by then agreement had ceased to be be meaningful as the Serbs were on a war footing.

Four years of war and some 100 000 dead later the Dayton Agreement, reached in 1995 after several years of terrible war and ethnic cleansing, instituted or gave legal effect to the division of Bosnia-Hercegovina into separate ethnic entities. There was a Serb entity, and a combined Muslim-Croat Federation entity which included specific canton arrangements. The institutions of the national government were relatively weak compared to those of the two sub-state political entities (New Europe 1996). The formation of a government by non-extremist parties offers the possibility of future reconciliation, but separatist tendencies remain strong in the Serb and Croat entities.

The independence of Macedonia was also approved by the EC, after being delayed to December 1993 due to continuing Greek concerns over the use of the name ‘Macedonia’ and of an ancient Macedonian star-burst symbol on the flag. There were fears that such things might provoke separatism among the ethnic Macedonian population in Greece. The issues which were to provoke the current 2000-2001 uprising among the ethnic Albanian community in Macedonia, for example political representation and minority rights, the status of the Albanian language, and so on, do not appear to have been given any consideration at all.

In Kosovo also, post-communist political arrangements led to war. In this case, however, they had been imposed by Slobodan Milosoevic and the FRY government when it removed the autonomy of the region and effectively cut the interaction of much of the Albanian population with the state. Repression, conflict and ethnic cleansing led to the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, and the occupation of the region by KFOR forces and its subjection to international administration by UNMIK.

Issues and opstina problems in Bosnia-Hercegovina

It was not just arrangements at the state level which led to war and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Hercegovina, but also those at the level of the opstina or municipality. Also, there were a number of major issues on which the population was necessarily divided.

Table 3 Ethnic and political divisions at the municipality level in Bosnia, 1991

Municipality Serbs Muslims Croats Yugoslavs

% % % %

Foca 45.3 51.6 3.1**

Banja Luka 54.8 14.9 14.6 12.0

Prijedor 42.3 44.9 5.6 5.7

Vlasenica 42.5 55.5 13.0 5.5

Sanski Most 42.2 47.0 7.1 3.0

Doboj 39 40.2

Bijeljina 58.8 31.0

Rogatica 40 60

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Source: Estimated from Pavkovic, p. 50, Table 1, and Judah (1997).

.*’Others’, including Muslims. Hungarians accounted for 1.6 per cent.

** ‘Others’, implying Croats, Yugoslavs and others.

The 1991 census indicated that out of 109 municipalities in Bosnia-Hercegovina, 37 had an absolute Muslim majority, 32 a similar absolute Serb majority, 13 an absolute Croat majority, 15 a simple Muslim majority, 5 a simple Serb majority and 7 a simple Croat majority (Bennett 1995, p. 180). Towns and areas where there is a narrow margin of population between one ethnic group and another have tended to be those most viciously fought over, and where ethnic cleansing has been at its most murderous.

There have been exceptions to this. Brcko in Bosnia is one, as Serbs were only around a fifth of the pre-war population, but the importance of Brcko was that it was needed to give any Greater Serbian state a clear corridor linking Serbia proper with Bosnia and Knin, the capital of the Krajina. Sarajevo is another, but its importance was due to its status as the capital and main city of Bosnia-Hercegovina.

History resulted in a situation in Bosnia in particular where cities tended to have substantial or majority Muslim populations, reflecting the earlier situation of Muslims as comprising a majority of artisans, administrators, merchants and landlords. In the countryside Serbs and in some cases Croats tended to be in a majority, reflecting their earlier situation as serfs of sharecroppers. This closely-balanced distribution of population in much of Bosnia-Hercegovina was a cause of the sheer deadliness of the ‘numbers game’. Once it became assumed that the Muslim-majority government in Sarajevo was not going to protect the Serb minority descendants of the former serfs, and their loss of power through the workings of simple democracy at the level of the municipality became evident, the ‘game’ became one of expulsion of one group, or two groups, by another. Muslims and Croats were considered by the Serbs to be natural allies, hence if their combinated proportion of the municipal population outweighed the Serb one this was considered to be a major problem.

The impact of the ‘numbers game’ had been mediated and modified by communist or ‘Titoist’ arrangements to increase equity between the different groups. These resulted in Serbs getting a higher proportion of posts in the army, on the railways, and in the civil service, than their numbers would have suggested on a strictly pro rata basis. This compensated to some extent for the greater business and tourism development and opportunities of Croatia and Slovenia. Financial transfers between republics involved net payments from Slovenia and Croatia, the wealthiest republics, to less less well-off areas such as Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo.

A major reason why Muslim voters had supported the secessionist SDA, in spite of the obvious risks of war and conflict this might lead to, was because they did not wish to see their sons called up to fight in the war against Croatia. On coming to power the SDA government instructed that the individual municipalities were no longer to maintain conscription registers for the JNA, or at least give them to it. That this was an important issue is indicated by the controversy which resulted from attempts by the JNA to continue to receive the registers and to obtain recruits in Bratunac and in Prijedor (see Sudetic 1998 and Mujadzic 1996). Most, though not all, Serbs continued to support the recruitment, but the vast majority of Muslims were opposed.

Land reform changes were a prospective issue. The 1919 land reform had transferred land from the Muslim begs or landslords to their former Serb and Croats tenants or serfs. It might be argued that the government would have undertaken no such step, but there were published claims that the Serbs were ‘false’ landowners and that the land reform had been discriminatory (Vranic 1996, p. 333), as indeed it had. Given that land was the major asset of many Serbs, the situation was not one in which they felt secure.

Yet more important were the issues of jobs, and the homes that went with them. Many positions were in the gift of the municipality, and the latter also had a say in the hiring and running of enterprises. Under communism party arrangements ensured that the interests of all groups were represented, even though this might not be to everyone’s satisfaction, and where there was a strong preponderance of one community over another members of that community tended to be favoured. The new arrangements created a Serb ‘nightmare scenario’ whereby they were outvoted in all the finely-balanced opstinas of the Drina valley and eastern Bosnia, began to lose their jobs and the homes that went with them, and perhaps lost their land through a reversal of the land reform.

Prijedor, where there was to be horrific ethnic cleansing and where the Keraterm, Omarska and Tropolje concentration, death and transit camps were to be established, exemplifies the pattern of events. In the 1991 census there had been 112 543 people living in the Prijedor district, of whom 44.9 per cent were Bosniaks or Bosnian Muslims, 42.3 per cent were Serbs, 5.6 per cent were Croats, 5.7 per cent were Yugoslavs. and 2.5 per cent were others. In absolute figures there were 49 700 Muslims and about 48 000 Serbs. The ‘balance’ had gone from an excess of 5 per cent Serbs over Muslims in 1981 to around 5 per cent more Muslims than Serbs by 1991. The reaction of an SDS member of the municipal leadership from Omarska on hearing the latter result was ‘Give me an automatic rifle and in a couple of hours I will turn this result in favour of Serbs by killling some two to three thousand Muslims’ (Mujadzic 1996, p. 19).

In negotiations over future post-communist arrangement in Prijedor, the president of the Prijedor municipal SDS committee, Srdjo Srdic, had objected to the Serbs getting anything less than 50 per cent of political control of the municipality. He said angrily ‘Do you really think we would permit that an Ustasha-Muslim coalition gains control over Prijedor?’ (Mujadzic 1996, p. 13). Dr Milan ‘Mico’ Kovacevic, a man who had spent part of his childhood in the NDH’s Jasenovac concentration camp, and who was to die during his trial for war crimes while in the custody of the Hague Tribunal, was selected to be president of the municipal government. Professor Muhamed Cehajic, believed to have been murdered in the Omarska camp, became mayor, and Milomir Stakic deputy mayor. The appointment of police chief was particularly fraught with tension, as the Serb SDS side nominated only parties without the university degree supposedly required for the position. Also, the Muslim side sought an equal division of executive police appointments, or at least two, but the Serb side offered them only one of the six appointments. The Muslim side refused to go along with the Serbs’ request that they prevail upon the Minister of the Interior so that their candidate for police chief could be appointed in spite of his lack of the required university degree (Mujadzic 1996, p. 17). From the Muslim point of view they wanted to strike a balance between the political and economic power of different groups at the municipal level while the SDS wished to keep complete control for itself. The changes did involve some shift of key positions from mainly Serb incumbents to others.

In the Prijedor Municipal Assembly there were 90 seats, of which after the November 1990 democratic elections the Muslim SDA occupied 30, the Serb SDS 28 and the Croat HDZ 2, with the 30 seats going to the ‘opposition’ or non-nationalist parties (ICTY 1998, p. 1). The SDA was able with Croat support to control who would fill the majority of administrative positions in the municipality, and to have first choice of who would fill the top positions. The SDS found it lacked power to influence the future of Prijedor Municipality, for example to remain in a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. Its members planned separatist arrangements from Bosnia-Hercegovina and the seizure of power by a municipal Crisis Staff. Serb forces obedient to the latter seized control of the municipality in the early morning hours of 30 April 1992 (ICTY 1998, p. 2). The freedom of movement of Muslims began to be restricted, and in late May large scale attacks on Muslim areas began, the inhabitants being killed, transported to camps, expelled or driven out.

In Vlasenica there were similar Serb concerns over lack of representation, as they were in a slight minority, and horrific ethnic cleansing followed. The president of the town council of Vlasenica, Mihaljo Bajagic, told Roger Cohen (1998, p. 177) that in the 1991-92 period not a single proposal made by the Serbs of Vlasenica was approved in the Muslim-dominated town council. Since the Muslim members of the council were later murdered or expelled, one cannot be sure that they would agree with this account. Rajo Dukic of the Boksit Milici trading firm headquartered in Vlasenica, and a founding member of the SDS party in Bosnia, felt that the design of the Muslim SDA had been, from an early stage, a take-over of top jobs in government, industry, education and the police, resulting in a gradual squeezing of the Serbs out of Bosnia (Cohen 1998, p. 182). Again, as its local members were mostly killed, they are not available to contradict this ‘Serb nightmare’ view.

Sudetic (1998, pp. 146-7) discusses problems at the Milici open-pit bauxite mine near Vlasenica. The mine had been run by a Serb and employed mainly Serbs. It had over a thousand apartments, which had gone mostly to its Serb employees. It was a socially-owned property, and from the Muslim point of view it was not ‘right’ that it did not employ more of the Muslims who were in the majority in the local community. Allegations of embezzlement and financing of the SDP were made against the director, Rajko Dukic. Serbs saw these complaints as an attempt to deprive them of jobs and homes and hence drive them out of the locality, and made their complaints known to the government and to the JNA. The SDA Muslim-majority government in Sarajevo could not be expected to be sympathetic.

As in Prijedor, there was a forcible Serb takeover of Vlasenica in 1991, and the vast majority of the Muslim population was rounded up, placed in camps, expelled or murdered. Similar events took place all over Bosnia-Hercegovina, although in some cases it was to be Croats who were undertaking the ethnic cleansing, and in some cases the forces of the government or local Muslims.

From the point of those who died, suffered injuries, lost their livelihoods, had their houses burned, were raped, or suffered other losses and harm during the war and ethnic cleansing, post-communist policital arrangements had failed. It might be argued that support and intervention from Milosevic and form Tudjman exacerbated the situation, or that the BiH government should have better prepared Muslim citizens for it. But it is unlikely that war and ethnic cleansing could have been averted, without less conflictual post-communist political arrangements at the level of the state and the municipality.

Conclusions

Post-communist political arrangements failed to prevent war and ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia, and continue to be a source of conflict. There was a failure to protect minority rights, to grant autonomy, and to ensure a consensuality of arrangements, where these would have prevented war. Slovenia was less affected by such considerations, and by war. While confrontational and nationalistic leaders such as Milosevic and Tudjman may have promoted war, it was the failure of newly-introduced political arrangements which lay behind the drift to war in Croatia and in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and now in Macedonia. The great powers and international society must bear some responsbility for their willingness to recognise the independence of the states concerned without political arrangements which would guarantee minority rights being in place. Kosovo constitutes an exception, since it has not been given independence and the repression and war which have occurred arose from a combination of ongoing conflicts and resentments, and from the policies of Slobodan Milosevic and the willness of citizens of Serbia and the FRY to support these.

References

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Vranic, Seada (1996), Breaking the Wall of Silence: The Voices of Raped Bosnia, Izdanja Antibarbarus, Zagreb.

Vuckovic, Gojko (1997), Ethnic Cleavages and Conflict: The Sources of National Cohesion and Disintegration, Ashgate, Aldershot.

Heather Field*

Rape and the Politics of Ethnic Cleansing in Former Yugoslavia

Abstract

The paper looks at the use of rape as a weapon of war and conflict and a political strategy in former Yugoslavia. Rape has been a common feature of the wars and conflicts of secession in Yugoslavia of the past decade, and one of the more shocking from a western point of view. It was not confined to women, but they were its major victims. The paper argues that two different strategies motivated rape in the conflict. One was aimed at damaging the elites of opposing groups. The other was the more specific policy rape of young girls and to a lesser extent women in general in the conflicts in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo. It was motivated by political aims such as ethnic cleansing, as well as social, historical and biological ones. It was seen by some of its perpetrators as a revenge of the descendants of serfs upon the descendants of their former landlords and superiors. The existence and further development of a patriarchal and hypermasculine cultural background was also an important factor in the use of rape. The experience of the war is also used to evaluate the validity of current theories of rape, which fall into two main groups, those which argue that rape is a social and power issue, and secondly those which argue that it is biologically-motivated.

Introduction

The paper considers the use of rape as a weapon of war and conflict and a political strategy in former Yugoslavia. The rape of some 20 000 to 50 000 women and girls in wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina (BiH), and further possible thousands in Kosovo, has attracted considerable international attention. The rape and abuse of women in the areas of armed conflict in former Yugoslavia were condemned by The United Nations in General Assembly resolution 48/143 of 20 December 1993 as a heinous practice constituting a deliberate weapon

of war. It despatched a team of experts to investigate the allegations of rape and abuse by the Special Rapporteur.

There is a connection with Australia, in that one of the young victims of the ‘Foca’ rape rape, torture and enslavement case from wartime Bosnia-Herzegovina, is reported by Bosnian journalist Dzenana Karup-Drusko (1999), to have come to Australia as refugee. However, she suicided after two years here due to the continuing psychological impact of what had been done to her. She had not yet reached the age of twenty.

This paper argues that rape was used for political and social as well as biological purposes during the war. It argues that two different basic strategies motivated rape in the conflict. One was aimed at damaging the elites of opposing groups. The other was the more specific policy of rape of young girls and to a lesser extent women in general in the conflicts in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo.

The paper also attempts to assesses the validity of different theories of the causes and motivations of rape in the light of the use of rape during the past decade of war in former Yugoslavia.

Literature and sources of information on rape in war in ex-Yugoslavia

The issue of rape in the Croatian and Bosnian wars was dealt with by Stiglmayer (1993), by Allen (1996), by Vranic (1996). Gutman (1993) also covers a number of cases, some of which have since reached the Hague Tribunal on war crimes in former Yugoslavia. All of these provide a discussion of cases and much factual information on the nature and incidence of rape during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The information and cases provided relating to rape are consistent with those from other sources, such as that from Hague Tribunal evidence testimony and publications from the United Nations and from human rights bodies.

However, Allen (1996) contains a good many absurdities and inaccuracies. These include claims that Yugoslav Muslims who died in accidents while working in foreign countries were the victims of deliberate conspiracies. It is ssuggested that Croat conscripts in the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) were deliberately killed once there was a prospect of war. Ethnic cleansing and organised crime leader ‘Arkan’ Zeljko Raznatovic is referred to as a colonel in the JNA. Allen is critical that a book published in Italy entitled Violentate or raped women purportedly by one Ehlimana Pasic and presented as testimonies of survivors of rape in the war was in fact written by two male Bosnian journalists. In spite of this she gives relatively uncritical credence to documents which Italian journalists said they had seen copies or photographs of but were uncertain as to the authenticity of. The documents had been discovered and sent to a UN tribunal by Bosnians. They relate to the alleged existence of a plan by the JNA for the rape of women and children in Muslim communities.

In its legal findings on rape the Hague Tribunal has not accepted that there was a formal plan or strategy of rape at the JNA or FRY level. No supporting evidence of such a plan has emerged elsewhere.

A further misleading assertion by Allen (p. 80) is that the novel Noz (the knife) by politician Vuk Draskovic is about the ‘chetnik cult of the knife’. It is rather about the use of the knife as an instrument or murder and terror for Serbs by the World War II Ustasha of the NDH. This is not to say that murdering with the knife has not been strongly associated with chetniks and their murders of Muslims and Croats in the recent war.

The work by Vranic (1996) is an excellent one where its main topic is concerned, but it strays into some rather unusual coverage of other issues, such as arguments that the 1919 land reform in Bosnia-Hercegovina was unjust and should implicitly be reversed. It was fears of such a reversal of the land reform, and of the loss of jobs and the previous preference involved in many places, which led to the Bosnian Serbs adopting policies of ethnic cleansing and war.

Stiglmayer’s (1993) edited volume is of a high academic standard and contains much original an background information. However, only the two chapters by Stiglmayer herself deal directly with rape in former Yugoslavia, the other contributions being more in the nature of commentaries.

The historical background

Rape, torture and murder of women have been a historical part of warfare in the Balkans. During the IMRO rising against Ottoman rule in Macedonia in 1903, Turkish forces were estimated to have raped over 3000 women (Kaplan 1993, p. 61). During the uprising, in northwestern Macedonia, fifty Turkish soldiers raped a young girl before finally killing her, and in another case Turkish soldiers cut off a girl’s hand in order to take her bracelets.

During the 1912 First Balkan War conquest or liberation of Kosovoa Serb officer tried to rape an Albanian woman in Ferizaj, and was killed by her husband, with the village and two others being destroyed and thirty-five ethnic Albanians burned to death as a punishment for this (Malcolm 1998, p. 257).

Rape was also a feature of the war between the white (pro-unification with Serbia) and green (anti-unification) groups in Montenegro in November 1918. The whites responded to rebellion by the more rural greens by burning and looting their villages, raping women and killing men there (Merrill 1999).

Rape and murder were also features of the atrocities committed by the Austro-Hungarian army in its first invasion of Serbia in World War I. Many of its troops would have been from Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia, including Serbs. They included an instance of gang-rape by forty soldiers and murder of a twenty-one year old (Cohen 1998, pp. 128-129).

There is relatively little documention of rape during the conflicts in former Yugoslavia in World War II. The emphasis in that conflict was on murder rather than on on rape, so that victims did not survive, at least where the NDH government and Ustasha atrocities were concerned. Rape appears to have been contrary to the principles and discipline of the partisans. One factor here may have been the large number of women who served with them. Rape does not appear to have been a standard practice with the occupying German and Italian forces in Yugoslavia, although thousand of civilians, including schoolchildren, were murdered in German reprisal executions . However, the Red Army ‘liberators’ who arrived at the end of the war committed 121 rapes and rape-murders, resulting in complaints from Tito to Stalin.

The historical acceptance of rape may have influenced the incidence of rape in the wars of the last decade in former Yugoslavia. However, there were other historical factors which tended to promote its use and lend themselves to propaganda promoting it, in Bosnia-Hercegovina as well as Serbia. Under Ottoman rule, within which much of Serbia gained autonomy in 1830 but Bosnia-Hercegovina was to remain until 1878, there had been a disadvantaged position of Serbs and Croats.

The use or misuse of Serb and other Christian minority women by Muslim men, especially Ottoman officials and the landlord class, has been a major source of grievance. Polygamy and concubinage by Muslim men, especially Ottoman officials and landlords or begs, resulted in wives and concubines being taken from the Christian population as well as the Muslim one, and often abandoned when no longer wanted. The insecurity of these women resulted in their having relatively few children, and resorting to abortion, infanticide and other birth control measures (Stoianovich 1994, p. 159).

The other ‘misuse’ was through ‘first night’ arrangements, more generally known as the jus primae noctis (right to the first night) or droit de seigneur (the right of the feudal lord), by which the janissary in charge of an estate or the local landlord had the right to the virginity of all brides among Serb and other serfs. These arrangements are a folk memory rather than attested by literary sources. They were mentioned by Bosnian Serb former politician Biljana Plavsic in 1993 in an attempt to assert that rape was the war strategy of the Muslims and Croats. She noted that it was ‘quite normal of Muslim notables to enjoy the jus primae noctis with Christian women’ during the Ottoman period (Cohen 1998, p. 222). Levinsohn (1994, p. 274) quotes Belgrade publisher Petar Zdazdic as saying that there was a tradition that the Serb serf or peasant would have to walk around the house with his shoes in his hands when an Ottoman official or landlord came to the house to have intercourse with his wife. In the early phase of Ottoman occupation the janissaries, who were in control of major agricultural estates as well as forming the core of the military, were forbidden to marry until they retired from the service of the empire. First night and similar arrangements may have been important substitutes for marriage.

However, the landlords became an increasingly hereditary class. In Bosnia some three hundred years ago they were having to persuade Serbs to come from Montenegro to work their land as serfs or sharecroppers. Muslim peasants had chosen increasingly to purchase their own land and work it as smallholders rather than be serfs, but this option was not open to Christians in Bosnia-Hercegovina until after 1830. Hence first night and concubinage arrangements for Serb and Croat kmet or serf women would have become less common in the later phases of Ottoman rule. Also, the landlord class accounted for no more than 5 to 10 per cent of the Muslim population – there were 4000 families who had land redistributed from them in the 1919 land reform. Hence only a small proportion of the Muslim population had access to Orthodox and Christian women where this was common, certainly not the majority. In Kosovo the majority of Serbs were in effect serfs working the land for Albanian clan leaders as well as Turkish landlords prior to the first Balkan War of 1912, but it is not known what impact this had on access to women.

Arrangements whereby one community, or at least its privileged class, has access to the women of another, are controversial. A Greek film shown on the Australian Special Broadcasting Service several years ago depicted such a use of Greek brides and wives who were serfs on an agricultural estate by the Ottoman landlord and a visiting relative of his a couple of decades before Greek independence in 1830. I am informed that even as late as the 1960s, after which peasants obtained greater security of tenure, such arrangements might be required in the south of Italy in order to ensure continued tenure of a peasant holding or access to one. A film of the 1950s shown on SBS also indicates this, but the ‘misuse’ did not extend to breaking the prospective bride’s virginity, and the land tenancy was seen as a form of dowry given in exchange for the sexual services rendered.

The historical background in Serbia and Bosnia-Hercegovina lent itself to use for propaganda promoting conflict with the Muslim community and rape of Muslim women, even though in reality only a relatively small elite had been involved.

The propaganda goes back some way. A famous Montenegrin epic poem of 1847, The Mountain Wreath by poet-bishop prince Njegos or Petar Petrovic II, became a blueprint for the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims. It says ‘Destroy the seed in the bride’ (Merrill 1999, pp. 195-6). This is an exhortation to gang rape, which may induce spontaneous abortion, or to murder.

The state-run media included such propaganda as ‘Remember that the Muslims are enemies of the Serbs. They slaughtered us at Kosovo and then sowed seeds in Bosnian women that flourished into nothing less than the bastard offspring of our sworn foes.’ (Campbell 1999, p. 97).

Print media and documents were influential in misleading people and encouraging them to support ethnic cleansing and even mass murder. O’Rourke (1994, p. 262) mentions a thirteen-page document in English entitled Jihad Must Be Stopped which he was shown by a Serb major in Banja Luka. It included a reference to plans to detain and impregnate Serb women with ‘orthodox Islamic seeds’ so as to produce janissaries. A similar document circulated round Foca. Such documents were likely to have been a motivation to the ignorant to support such behaviour but with Muslim women as the victims.

Broadcasts with a similar content were transmitted over the radio in Bosnia. Maass (1996, pp. 112-4) describes how a refugee from central Bosnia, grandmother Vera Milovic, whom he encountered in Banja Luka, had been told by RS radio broadcasts that her local village Muslims had been planning to take over and had prepared lists of names of Serb women to go into harems of Muslim men. She believed this in spite saying that the Muslims in her village had been very nice people.

The aims of rape

Hansen (2001) says that there were three main external representations of the use of rape in the wars of secession in former Yugoslavia. These were (p. 57) ‘Rape as normal/Balkan warfare’, ‘Rape as exceptional/Serbian warfare’, and rape as a reflection of ‘Balkan patriarchy’.

It is argued here that there were two major aims and strategies of rape during the wars of the past decade in former Yugoslavia. Rape followed by murder could be said to represent a further aim and strategy, but in practice appears to have resulted from a variety of factors. Rape does not appear to have become a feature of the conflict in Macedonia. However, the reasons for this can be found in the difference between the Macedonian conflict and those in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo. On the Macedonian side, the troops are conscripts, not hardened paramilitaries seeking loot and rape. On both sides, deaths appear to have totalled less than 200, so there is not as yet a large number of people with a strong motivation for vengeance. Ethnic cleansing has only been a very limited part of the war, can carried out by ethnic Albanian guerillas who had had considerable military success and were not fearing resistance.

On the other hand, rape continues as a feature of circumstances after the war in Kosovo. There have been gang rapes of Rom or gypsy women by ethnic Albanian men, aimed at promoting ethnic cleansing. There have been a number of abductions of young Serb women by ethnic Albanians, the outcome of which has yet to be determined.

One aim of rape in war which is found in the Croatian, Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts is to ‘break’ female members of the opposing elite so that they no longer have the same capacity to play a professional or leadership role if they survive the ordeal. There are numerous examples of this, including in the Serb-run Omarska camp in BiH, the HOS (Croat) run Dretelj camp in BiH, and on a more ad hoc basis in many places, including Kosovo.

In the Omarska concentration and death camp in Prijedor 33 women were held prisoner, 29 of whom were eventually released and 4 of whom are believed to have been taken away and killed. They included party activisits for the Muslim SDA, judges, lawyers, teachers, economists, engineers, a dentist and a nurse, and several high school graduates. They were beaten, subjected to occasional rape, required to clean up after male detainees had been murdered, and to work in the canteen (Gutman 1993, p. 147). Jadranka Cigelj, a Croat who had been married to a Montenegrin and who was held in the concentration and death camp of Omarska in Prijedor, was an attorney. Her detention was part of the persecution of the non-Serb elite in the area. In the camp she was raped and beaten, including by commander Zeljko Mejahic (later Meakic) and Radic. The rapists never said that she would now give birth to a small Serb, as they did to women who were raped in the ‘ordinary’ detention camps. ‘Everyone, the guard rapists as well as the prisoners, expected that the women would be killed’ (Allen 1996, p. 64).

Rape also occurred in the Serb-run Luka camp at Brcko, although on a more ad hoc basis, mostly by visiting soldiers. The camp commander, Goran Jelisic, the self-styled Serb Adolf, told one inmate that she would not be able to work in her profession again. Due to the impact of life in the camp, including rape, she has not been able to.

In the Dretelj concentration camp run by the neo-fascist or neo-Nazi Croatian HOS about seventy women aged from thirty to eighty were held at one point, in very bad conditions and subjected to beatings. A Serb worker aged around 55 from Capljina near Mostar was forced to go to Dretelj where she was tortured and raped (Stiglmayer 1993, pp. 142-3). Another case cited by Stiglmayer is that of a doctor aged around 34 who was held and mistreated by HOS prior to being transferred to Dretelj. An HOS soldier at the camp admitted to a visiting Croatian journalist that two women members of the Serbian SDS (Socialist Party) were being held there, a doctor and a teacher, but had said that they were in no condition to be seen by the journalist (Stiglmayer 1993, p. 142). On August 17 1992 the Dretelj camp was taken over by HVO regular Bosnian Croat forces and the women in it transferred.

Stiglmayer (1993, pp. 144-145) also reports the case of a 50-year-old housewife and mother in Berak near Vukovar.who was raped by nine Serb members of the White Eagles paramilitary group. The motivation for this appeared to be that she had refused advice from the JNA and local Serbs to leave and had hence resisted ethnic cleansing. She was helped by a Serb neighbour and her husband to get medical treatment and leave.

In Kosovo some women who were members of Kosovar political organisations were held in the dreaded Lipljan prison and are believed to have been raped there. Another incident during the attempted ethnic cleansing of Kosovo in 1999 was the attempted rape of a female doctor.

It might be argued that rapes reported during the Serbo-Croat war of 1991 or later Croat ‘ethnic cleansing’ operations in 1995 are not typical or representative. Mestrovic (1994, p. 100, cited on p. 65 of Hansen 2001) says that the Croatian government had sought not to publicise the plight of its rape victims, in order to avoid negative consequences for them. However, it appears that there were not a great many such victims. This can be contrasted with the situation in BiH where rape was much more a standard activity of the war in which all parties participated and fell victim, even if Serbs were the main perpetrators and Muslim women the main victims. Where Serbs and Croats outside BiH were concerned, there had been no substantial history of sexual use of one side by another, no cult of virginity on either side, and since many women would have been using contraceptives pregnancy would have been an unusual outcome of rape.

Mass rape, and the rape of virgins

One of the more horrifying aspects of rape in the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina and in Kosovo was the extent to which it was mass rape, and it focused especially on girls who were unmarried and often very young. In this it was an attempt to cause maximum damage to a society where virginity was still an important source of pride and sometimes a necessary asset for marriage. Gang rape ensured that this damage was going to be substantial.

Rape does not appear to have originated as an official strategy or policy, contrary to some of the claims made with respect to documents as mentioned earlier. In Foca it appears to have been used as bait to get soldiers to come there and take up arms against government and Muslim forces. A Muslim physician from the Trnopolje camp said that rape began to happen two weeks after the military occupation and that the authorities did not try to stop it. Rather, they approved of rape and murder because would clearly facilitate ethnic cleansing, and ensure that people would never come back (Stiglmayer 1993, pp. 89-90).

Rape was a feature of almost all detention camps and facilities where women were held. Many of these served as de facto brothels in which women were forced to accept rape by soldiers and others. They were also often required to cook, clean and wash clothes for soldiers. In some situations in Kosovo, women were forcibly abducted to perform such domestic tasks in villages taken over by the army or paramilitaries, but were often subjected to rape or assault as a subsidiary activity. Women were in some cases abducted but not raped and assaulted, either because the primary aim was just to scare the local population, or because where abductions were on a one-on-one basis or in very small groups men were more likely to feel empathy for the abductees. However, there were also substantial numbers of reports of drugs of a rohypnol type being administered to victims in Kosovo. The impact of the drugs was that they were able to be raped and gang-raped while unconscious without violence having to be inflicted on them to achieve this.

Drakulic (1993) has mentioned the high value placed upon the ‘honour’ of women and the shame attached to their violation in societies of the Balkan peninsula. This is especially the case in rural and Muslim contexts. D’Alpuget (1993, p. 36) argues that mass rape of women is intended to ruin them as future wives and mothers, and wreck their marriage chances. She also mentions the camps in which women were held until pregnant and too late for an abortion, so that they had no choice but bear a half-Serb child. In the ‘Balkan patriarchy’ view of rape, where the latter occurs it is seen as a symbol of men’s weakness and of their inability to protect their women and control their sexual and procreative powers (Hansen 2001, p. 66, and Denitch 1995, p. 68, cited on p. 66 of Hansen). In the Bosnian Serb view of history, it had been a symbol of their weakness that they had been unable to prevent ‘their’ women being used by the Muslim landlord class. Turning this history into propaganda, the conflict of the 1990s was an opportunity to revenge themselves, although in reality this was on the wives and daughters of ‘ordinary Muslims’ rather than the landlord class.

Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic is alleged to have been in charge of the murder of some 7500 male Muslim prisoners from the fall of Srebenica. There were still women raped at Srebenica, with one girl who later killed herself and several who were removed from a bus as it went through Bratunac and never seen again. However, Mladic did try to ensure that the women and children captured were swiftly packed onto buses and deported to government-held territory. As such he could be seen as saving the ‘honour’ and offspring of the seven and a half thousand men executed even though he did not allow them their lives.

Women with children were much less likely to be raped than single young women or girls. A twenty-four year old woman refugee making the hazardous journey to Muslim territory down the hellish escape route of Mount Vranic carried a three year old child she had borrowed from another refugee with her in a sack on her back in the expectation that this would lessen the chance of rape (Gutman 1993, p. 123). An ethnic Albanian girl in Kosovo did what other young unmarried women did to try and avoid rape, by wrapping a scarf around her head to suggest she was married, but in this particular case it was pulled off her by a paramilitary soldier who commented that he knew what she was trying to pretend.

However, one of the abductees in the Foca case was a young mother who was separated from her young children and detained for the purposes of rape for months. A young woman and her three year old child were among the women and girls removed from one of the convoys from the Susica camp for the purposes of rape, and it is not known if they survived.

If the rapes had had the objective of making as many women as possible pregnant, then it would have been logical to focus on young mothers in their twenties and thirties. They would have had a higher rate of fertility than girls in their early teenage years, and would have been more likely to accept the birth of a further child than a teenaged girl who would probably seek an abortion if available.

Many of the young men undertaking rape would have had no prior experience of sexual intercourse, hence rape was their introduction to this. Those arguing in favour of the ‘biological’ motivation for rape might see this as evidence supporting it. However, many of them were ordered, bullied or coerced to rape. To persuade a victim to submit, one young soldier put a grenade in the girl’s hand, and said that he had to undertake the rape, otherwise he would blow them both up with the grenade (Gutman 1993, p. 72).

Rape and murder

As most of the accounts dealing with rape during the wars of the past decade in former Yugoslavia show, in a proportion of cases rape has been followed by murder. There were several sets of circumstances in which this appears to have occurred. The war itself represented an opportunity for misogynists, violent abusive men, psychopaths, and those who were already in jail for rape or murder but released on account of the war, to undertake crimes against women with little fear of retribution.

As at 27 September 1997 a total of 846 missing women had been notified to the ICRC with requests to try to trace them, equivalent to 5.6 per cent of the requests submitted at that time (Nowak Report 1997, p. 20). The majority of these women may be presumed to be dead, and many would have been killed or died consequent upon rape or sexual abuse. There are nevertheless some who may have been abducted and kept by their captors or trafficked into prostitution, especially younger victims.

Many of the women and girls taken off convoys from the Susica camp at Vlasenica by paramilitaries for the purposes of rape appear not to have survived. A witness at the trial of former Susica commander Dragan Nikolic said she believed that he was party to these abductions. He chose who was to go on which convoy, and presumably informed the paramilitaries that it would be arriving. However, he has not been charged with conspiracy to murder with respect to any of these disappearances.

Where women are murdered after rape, or mistreated or given inadequate food, heating and medical care so that their death results from this, it cannot be argued that there is a biological objective of reproduction. Inquiries by refugee worker Nina Kadic of refugee arrivals from BiH in Zagreb, who were all either relatively old or had young children with them, indicated that all the girls aged 13 to 17 had been taken to V_, and of a 100 taken there, only six had survived (D’Alpuget 1993, p. 39).

Foca

The town of Foca, on the Drina, has been particularly strongly associated with the wartime rape and enslavement of Muslim and Croat women and girls. There are strong suggestions also of the rape and murder of possibly hundreds of women. A major factor behind this appears to be the situation that paramilitaries were enticed to the area to occupy it and fight BiH government forces and enforce the ethnic cleasning of almost all ohte Muslim population by the promise of rape. Some 4000 paramilitary troops had reportedly been invited into Foca from there and from Uzice in Serbia by Vojislav Maksimovic, a former professor of literature at Sarajevo University and at that time an associate of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. Local Serbs had lacked willingness to become involved in ethnic cleansing and murder campaigns in adequate numbers. Maksimovic was an aide to Velibor Ostoje, a minister in Karadzic’ government, as was Petar Cancar who was also involved in the attack. Ostojic is understood to have ordered the raping of women in Foca, according to direct evidence from wiretaps received by Alija Delimustafic when he was intterior minister of BiH (Gutman 1993, pp. 160-161).

Peter Maass (1997, pp. 5-6) mentions being told by a refugee in Split, one Munevera from Foca, of a seventeen-year-old girl who had lived next door in Foca. She had been dragged off by Serb soldiers one day, dumped home a few days later bleeding after having been raped an unimaginable number of times. She died at home. In other places and contexts women were sometimes murdered, but mostly by violence not through excessive rape. There has been evidence of a willingness and eagerness to use the latter to damage women, for example in the ‘Foca’ case.

In the latter a victim who complained about rapes to the then chief of police in Foca, Dragan Gagovic, was not only allegedly raped by him in response but afterwards singled out for especially intensive rapes. One night she was raped by seven soldiers while conscious and possibly all the other fourteen or so present after she lost consciousness. She was made infertile by the rapes, and could be regarded as lucky to have survived a situation that could easily have become murder.

Another victim from Foca was taken to the Novi Pazar stadium in the Sandzak and gang-raped by soldiers with some other women. She counted twenty-nine soldiers before losing consciousness due to the rapes. The rapes only stopped after the commander, who had taken part in the assault, told the troops ‘enough is enough’ and drove her back to the Partisan hall. Once again, this could have resulted in murder, or serious injury or infertility. It also suggests a high degree of formal organisation and collaboration between different forces in organising the rapes. The victims came from different sources, and an officer was involved in overseeing the attacks.

In the ‘Foca’ case legal history was made with regard to rape in war when Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic, were sentenced to 28 years, 20 years and 12 years respectively in 2000 (ICTY 2001). The sentences were for their parts in the extended detention, rapes and mistreatment of young girls and women in Foca in 1992 and 1993 (ICTY 2000).

There are other crimes some of the indictees are known to have committed, and from circumstantial evidence they appear to have possibly committed further and more serious crimes than those for which they stood trial and were sentenced. Kovac and Janko Janjic, another indictee who blew himself up to avoid standing trial at the Hague, had earlier reportedly been found guilty of the murder of Muslim women who had been detainees in the Partisan hall in Foca,and sentenced to twenty years each for this in a trial held in absentia in Montenegro. That Janjic blew himself up to avoid standing trial at the Hague suggests that he feared facing murder charges rather than just those for rape, torture and enslavement. The same applies to the situation that indictee Dragan Gagovic tried to run an IFOR checkpoint and was shot and killed.

The Hague Tribunal trial did not deal with any charges of murder, although one of the alleged rape victims, a twelve year old girl, was allegedly sold to a soldier who was never identified and has not been seen or heard of since. Three indictees in the Hague’s case still remain at large. The case was the most organised, systematic and large scale rape case from the Bosnian war which has so far been dealt with by any court, and it was also characterised by the extreme youth and in one case advanced pregnancy of the victims, as well as the intensity of the rapes and the extent to which forced prostitution was involved. It put rape firmly on the map as a war crime for which penalties could be imposed. It followed an earlier one case, that of Anto Furundzija, who was found guilty of allowing the rape and beating of a Muslim girl by a soldier under his command, and of torture. As already mentioned, it was a victim of the Foca case who is understood to have suicided in Australia.

During the trial indictee Dragoljub Kunarac gave as one of his alibis an overnight stay in the Velcevo complex. He went to far as to produce a former soldier who had been a sentry at the complex to testify that he had stayed there on the night in question. Kunarac had a house in the Aladza area of Foca where he usually resided, along with the ten or so Montenegrin paramilitaries who were under his control and who were also involved in raping the victims he brought them. The Velcevo complex, according to two informants of the journalist Roy Gutman, was the location not only of the local Serb political headquarters and guarded by several hundred paramilitaries, but also of a women’s prison which had been turned into a concentration camp for Muslim women.

Gutman (1993, pp. 162-163) reported that the women who had been held there after the Serb takeover in 1992 were believed to have been killed or were still held there at the time he was writing. Gutman’s information on the complex came from Muharem Omerdzic, an official of the Muslim benevolent association Riyaset, and Enver Pilaff who had been head of the Muslim Democratic Action Party in Foca. They had obtained this information from refugees or the familes of women who were still being detained in Bosnia.

Of the 375 Bosniak victims of the war identifed so far in the Foca area, 40 per cent were women, a much higher proportion than elsewhere in Bosnia where the figure was around 12 per cent (Klarin and Bogati 2001, p. 4). The high proportion of female victims in Foca suggests that many were victims of mistreatment, rape and murder, rather than being killed for being party activists, judges and lawyers, as was the case elsewhere. The use by Kunarac of a claimed stay in the Velcevo complex as his alibi appears to have been a deliberate provocation to the court. One of the problems is that in cases so far the court has focused only on situations where there were live witnesses who could be produced to give evidence.

The total number of men involved in raping in Foca was estimated at around fifty during the period when women and girls were detained in the Partisans’ Hall, and based on the evidence given by different sources would total from one hundred to several hundreds. The number of victims was at least thirty, with over twenty being specifically mentioned in the Hague Tribunal case. There were also other detention and rape camps in the Foca area, discussed for example by Vranic (1996), which do not form part of this case. Also, most of the women who remained in Miljevina after their menfolk were taken away or killed were subjected to rape by paramilitaries, except for the very old and the very young.

Even women in the maternity ward in Foca were not safe from rape. Sacco (2000, pp. 117-118) interviewed a woman in Gorazde, ‘Munira’, who had been in the the maternity ward of the Foca hospital at the time of the takeover of the town by Serb and Montenegrin paramilitaries. A month after the occupation chetnik soldiers visited the ward at 3am one night. They took the women’s gold wedding rings and jewellery and abducted two women, one of whom had had a stillbirth and the other being three months’ pregnant, bringing them back at 9am in a distressed state. The next night the chetniks came back and took the same women, also this time two who had newborn babies, after which they abducted these four women every night. The patients were to scared to say anything about the abductions and rapes to the Serb doctor and nurses, who would have been powerless to prevent them and at risk of being killed if they attempted to. After some months the women were told they would be freed in a prisoner exchange. When soldiers with vehicles came to get the women, there were fears they were going to be killed. The Serb doctor stood in front of the women to prevent them from being taken away, but one was still dragged away and abducted. She was only released later after her father-in-law paid her captors DM10 000. After two further nights, safer transport was arranged to where the women and their babies could reach BiH government lines.

Perpetrators and protecters

The perpetrators of rape in the war were mostly paramilitaries. Like those sentenced in the Foca case they were men of little social standing and often personal ugliness and social ineptness. The perpetrators also included members of the different official armies in BiH, and of the ‘Red Berets’ or Ministry of the Interior forces from Serbia. Often they were neighbours, former colleagues, or fellow pupils at school of victims. There are suggestions that in these latter cases they would be less violent or murderous, and in some cases they intervened to stop the rape or beating of women they knew.

The men indicted in the Foca rape case were mostly former blue collar or service industry workers or unemployed, as were many others accused of war crimes. Gojko Jankovic worked in industry in Montenegro and owned a café there, before the war. Janko Janjic had been a car mechanic and unemployed. Zoran Vukovic was a former waiter, and Dragan Zelenovic was a former electrician. All of these were described in the indictment for the case as sub-commanders of the military police and paramilitary leaders.

In the ‘Foca’ case witnesses reported that men who did not want to participate in gang rape were bullied into doing so, although there were a few instances where soldiers assisted victims in avoiding rape. One soldier gave a woman gang-raped by five soldiers a grenade to use to prevent future rapes, another helped two of the victims to escape from the house where they were being held. A soldier took a heavily pregnant woman who was being detained and beaten and raped by one of the indictees and others back to the Partisans’ Hall, from which she was shortly released as part of an exchange. A gang rapist who wanted to mutilate a young victim by cutting off her breast was prevented by one of the fourteen others involved in the rape from doing so by another.

On one occasion – but one only – the guard shift prevented soldiers from coming into the Partisan Hall where women were detained to remove them for rape. However, guards did on occasion hide prospective victims from the rapists, and in some other cases men who were thought by their fellow soldiers to be raping let their prospective victims sleep instead while they stayed on guard by the door.

Women did try to help each other across ethnic and religious boundaries in some cses, but were constrained by their lack of power and vulnerability. Evidence from the Tadic case at the International Court for Former Yugoslavia indicates that a female Serb doctor at the Prijedor hospital complained about the rapes of young girls, some only 13, at the Trnopolje detention and transit camp. She was sacked from her job in response. Levinsohn (1994, pp. 108-9) describes how a 20-year old Serb girl detained and subjected to rape in a Muslim-run camp was help by a Muslim woman who obtained contraceptive pills for her. After it became impossible to obtain them the girl became pregnant, and the Muslim woman helped her to escape.

As already indicated, victims of rape were in some cases helped by Serb friends and neighbours and their relatives. Vranic (1996) tells the story of a raped and badly beaten Muslim woman who was nursed back to health and helped to escape by Serb neighbours she barely knew and had not previously been on good terms with. In another case, a woman and her children were helped by the husband of a Serb friend whom she had not previously met. Not only were they assisted to leave, but he was also believed to have helped arrange the escape of her husband from the dreaded Luka camp.

Theories of rape

One theory of rape, as discussed by Brownmiller (1975), is that the more the opponent group is perceived as racially inferior, the more likely that rape will involve mistreatment and murder, and be inflicted on under-age girls and mere children. Rape, and its ferocity, are hence related to the power and feelings of one group relative to another. Rapes undertaken where there was an ideology of the inferiority of the group being subjected to rape have historically tended to be the most brutal and murderous and where victims have been most dehumanised by the treatment meted out to them. Examples include Nazi arrangements for the rape and forced prostitution of Jewish girls and of Russian women in occupied territories. They also include rapes and the use of ‘comfort women’ by Japanese troops in occupied China, the Philippines, Korea and Timor. More recent examples include the rape and murder of women by US and in some cases Australian troops during the Vietnam war (Brownmiller 1975, Rintoul 1997).

In Vietnam captured or suspected female Vietcong or North Vietnam army members, even if only teenagers, were gang-raped and often murdered. Men tended not to rape when on their own, only when there were ‘a lot of guys around’ (Brownmiller, p. 111). To quote one participant (Brownmiller p. 113), ‘It wasn’t like they were humans … They were a gook or a commie and it was okay’.

The strength of perceived ethnic difference appears to have been a factor in the very great use of rape in the Bosnian and Kosovo wars as opposed to its much more limited use by Serbs and Croats in the Serbo-Croat war. However, while Kosovar Albanians are derived mainly from people who inhabited the area prior to the arrival of the Slavs in the sixth century, the Muslim Slavs of BiH have the same ethnic origin as most Serbs, as do the Croats. During the war there strong attempts to identify them with the ‘Turks’ or former Ottoman rulers, and these appear to have created a view of inferiority. However, probably a stronger motivation was the earlier history of the sexual use by Muslim landlords and officials of their female Christian serfs. Neither are supposed ethnic divisions quite so straightforward, as some of the most strongly ‘Serb’ areas, for example around Knin in the Krajina and that of Romanija outside Sarajevo, had had significant Vlach or pre-Slavic origins. Also, there are many examples during the war of men with Muslim or part-Muslim origins or connections being amongst those most ready to undertake murder, beatings and rape in Serb camps. They did this to avoid their ‘Serb-ness’ being questioned, and in many cases to save their own skins.

There was an ‘ethnic superiority’ face to rape in the decade of war in former Yugoslavia according to psychologist Ivan Siber (1996, in Vranic 1996). Information collected from interviewees in Australia by Skrbis (1999, p. 179) also gives some insight into rape across religious and ethnic divisions in former Yugoslavia. Several male (Croatian-Australian) respondents said they could imagine a Serb as a potential sexual partner but not as a marriage partner. Skrbis explained this by saying that intercourse implices possession and occupation, ‘while rendering the Other of the opposite sex a fertile field for exercise of power’. The liaison is then ‘an emotionless and non-binding encounter’ which ‘safely takes place on the other side of "enemy" lines’.

However, the wartime rapes also showed many similarities to ‘normal’ criminal rapes. Rapists who were brandishing weapons elicited the highest percentage of submissive behaviour. Fewer victims fought back in gang rapes. Young persons aged twelve and sixteen (and children) were particularly vulnerable to sexual coercion by adults using a position of authority to exert pressure.

Rape was also used against women of the same ethnic group in some cases. Richard Holbrooke (1998, p. 336) mentions how attempts by Serbs supportive of the government in Pale to intimidate Serbs to move out of Sarajevo and away from the control of the Muslim government from Pale included the beating and rape of a Serb woman by a young Serb who also set fire to her apartment.

Thornhill, Wilmsen-Thornhill and Dizzino (1986, p. 108) argue that rape is a biological strategy, as it is engaged in by men who are ‘less able to compete for the resources and/or the status which are important in attracting desirable mates and reproducing’. This would be true of some of those involved in rape in war in former Yugoslavia, but it is also the case that rape was also undertaken by men with wives and children already, and by young men who would not have had any difficulty attracting a partner in the normal course of events.

Making women pregnant was often an expressed justification for the rapes, although it appears to be mainly an excuse by the rapists and an attempt to justify their actions, at least to themselves. In one of the Foca cases a young girl who was repeatedly told by one of the main rapists that she would bear a Serb baby was being raped so often that she was made infertile. In another, one of those later convicted attempted to add to the distress of a married woman and mother who was being raped by three soldiers by jibing that she would not know who the father of her prospective child was. Croat rapists told their Serb victims that they were going to have Ustasha babies (Stiglmayer pp. 141-2 of Stiglmayer, Muslim rapists say that they are going to give their victim a little Muslim (Stiglmayer, p. 140 of Stiglmaery). Many victims did become pregnant. Most of those who could, in other words were not detained too long, obtained an abortion. Some, for example two Bosnian Serb women who had been detained and made pregnant by Muslims, are claimed to have committed suicide when they arrived back in their village.

Conclusions

Two major conclusions are drawn from the analysis here. The first is that there were different patterns of rape during the wars of the past decade in former Yugoslavia. Women of the elites of all communities were subjected to rape. The second is that rape was used in particular as a weapon of war in Bosnia-Hercegovina and in Kosovo, where it was focused strongly young unmarried girls. There was a strong ethnic factor in this, but also a political one in that it discouraged groups from returning, and was seen as vengeance on communities for their attempts to secure political control as well as for the activities of their ancestors.

While there was evidence of a ‘biological factor’ at work in some cases, and in expressed strategies of trying to make women pregnant and bear a child fathered by a different ethnic and religious group. However, had this been a strong motive patterns of rape would have differed, with emphasis on younger married women with children rather than very young girls or older female members of elites.

The situation that rape-murder was not uncommon also suggests that biology was not a strong factor in motivating rape. Opportunities to rape appear to have been used as an indicement to outside forces to provie military help in Foca. The Foca case itself demonstrates that in conditions of war where rape and detention of women are permitted, misogynists and psychopaths will take advantage of these situations to inflict suffering and harm, and in some cases death. Their victims will tend to be the weakest and most vulnerable members of the community in terms of power, and include mere children.Much remains to be done in attempting to identify perpetrators of rape and rape-murder in former Yugoslavia and having them brought to justice. Democratisation in Serbia has increased the chance of achieving this where the individuals concerned are from Serbia. In Republika Srpska inquiries into wartime rape were earlier prohibited, but with a new government this situation is likely to have changed.

References

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Sandra Grey

Australian National University

Who cares?: The women’s movement and childcare policy debates in New Zealand

The end of the twentieth century saw a proliferation of "new" social movements and the creation of a new field of social research. Within the literature on new social movements it has been argued that one aim of social movements is to change the cognitive landscape of public policy. This paper looks at the public policy debates surrounding childcare provision in New Zealand from 1970 to 1999, and whether there were changes in the discursive construction of childcare over those 30 years. The investigation showed that core beliefs on childcare continue to focus on ‘mother-care’ as both the most natural and the best form of childcare, a focus that limited the way childcare policy was formulated. Is this an indication that social movements have only limited impact on the core discourses of public policy?

Despite increased research into the "political opportunities" and "resource mobilisation" of social movements there has been little exploration of the impact of movements on public narratives. Social movements are not just fighting for material goods or for increased participation in democratic decision-making, they are fighting for different meanings and orientations to be adopted. This paper investigates the struggle over meanings that surrounded childcare policy debate in New Zealand from 1970 to 1999.

I chose to look at the impact of feminist beliefs on childcare policy due to the centrality of childcare to the women’s movement. The importance of childcare to women and the belief that it plays a key role in overcoming their subordination was discussed in some of the public documents analysed for this paper. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs asserts the importance of childcare in the drive to achieve equality in paid employment. "Although both parents can be affected, the labour force participation of women is more likely to be influenced by childcare arrangements." Childcare is a key demand of the New Zealand Working Women’s Charter: "Clause 12: Availability of adequate child care provisions with Government/employer or community support on a 24 hour basis and including after school and school holiday care." The centrality of childcare to the women’s movement meant movement organisations were actively involved in the struggles over meaning in childcare policy debates in New Zealand.

Social movements as "cognitive praxis"

For this paper social movements are not viewed as one organisation or one particular interest, they are seen as cognitive territory. This follows the work of Eyerman and Jamison who claim a social movement is its cognitive praxis, for this praxis is what distinguishes one movement from another and what gives a social movement its significance for broader social processes. A similar focus on the cognitive aspect of social movements is found in the work of Alberto Melucci. "Since the action [of contemporary movements] is focused on cultural codes, the form of the movement is a message, a symbolic challenge to the dominant patterns."

There are more "grounded" definitions of social movements centered on the actions of movement organisations. Sidney Tarrow sees movements as being "better defined as collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities." For some the mode of action is the key and social movements are seen as "organized, collective efforts to achieve social change that use non-institutionalized tactics at least part of the time." While these definitions centre on interaction and action by social movements, it is clear social movements cannot be examined without considering their cognitive praxes.

In order to focus on the ideas behind childcare policy debates it was necessary to link together large numbers of disparate groups using their common discourses. In this paper all women’s organisations that commented on childcare in public forums were gathered together as one voice, as part of the cognitive praxis of the women’s movement. Similarly, the narratives of a large number of government departments, state agencies and politicians were grouped together as the cognitive praxis of the state.

Social movements are actively involved in the production and maintenance of meanings for constituents, antagonists, and bystanders. Has

This production and maintenance is carried out by reference to cognitive frames. The concept of framing is taken from the work of sociologist Erving Goffman. The term framing refers to a "schemata of interpretation" that enable individuals "to locate, perceive, identify, and label" occurrences. Frames shape what we think has occurred and what we expect to happen now. Political actors, including social movements, use frames to punctuate existing social conditions and to define what is unjust, intolerable, or deserving of action. Frames function as modes of attribution by making diagnostic and prognostic attributions.

The concept of framing is important when investigating the impact of social movements on public policy debates, as it acknowledges the political nature of language. Frames are consciously developed by actors to challenge or reinforce the beliefs that shape public policy. As Alberto Melucci stated: "In the last 30 years emerging social conflicts in complex societies have not expressed themselves through political action, but rather have raised cultural challenges to the dominant language, to the codes that organize information and shape social practices." This paper looks at the frames in childcare debates to uncover the beliefs shaping policy. The aim was to test whether the New Zealand women’s movement successfully challenged the dominant language surrounding childcare policy between 1970 and 1999.

This is not to suggest that the ideas of social movement’s and the state exist independently of their organisations and institutions. The pervasive flaw in "power of ideas" arguments is their failing to abide by the recognition that ideas and interests are ‘not separate entities, only analytically separable ones," especially in the economic arena. This analytical separation of ideas from institutions provides a way of testing the strength of beliefs and the impact of these on policy narratives. As Sheri Berman states ". . . if an ideational explanation is correct and ideas are the primary factor motivating and shaping choices, then political actors should be much less sensitive to changes in their external environments and much less concerned with "cost-benefit" calculations than most political economy and rational choice explanations would predict."

Childcare narratives and underlying beliefs

In order to map the frames used by the women’s movement and state in New Zealand childcare policy debates, I adopted part of the advocacy coalition framework of Paul Sabatier. The advocacy coalition framework is a theory of policy change and learning that requires a perspective of at least ten years, a focus on policy subsystems, an intergovernmental dimension and the conceptualisation of public policy as a belief system capable of establishing value priorities and causal assumptions. For this paper the most important component of the advocacy coalition framework is the assertion that belief systems drive and constrain policy change.

In this paper I have divided the ideas of the women’s organisations and state institutions into the three belief categories found in Sabatier’s advocacy coalition framework. The first category is deep core beliefs. These are the normative concepts or worldviews found in the cognitive praxes of the state and the women’s movement. The second, policy core beliefs are those ideas which are central to the policy views of the state and women’s movement, such as who is responsible for childcare and why childcare is necessary. The final category is that of secondary aspects of public policy. These are the beliefs on how the policies surrounding childcare should be implemented.

A close analysis of public documents from state agencies, unions and sector groups, employers and women’s organisations was used to isolate the frames used in childcare debates. While not all beliefs of the state and social movements are written in public documents, these are the most readily accessible for analysis. The use of public documents is advocated by Paul Sabatier: "Given the rather technical nature of many secondary aspects and the focus on changes in beliefs over a decade or more, content analysis of government documents (e.g., legislative and administrative hearings) and interest-group publication probably offer the best prospects for systematic empirical work on changes in elite beliefs." Publicly documented comments on childcare in New Zealand gave an indication of where the cognitive praxes of the women’s movement and state converged and diverged over the 30 years studied. The ideas extracted during the close analysis of 135 documents from the state, women’s organisations, unions and sector groups, were mapped into ten-year blocks to allow for an analysis of change over time. (See Tables 1, 2 and 3)

The outline of policy narratives in Tables 1, 2, and 3, indicates a convergence between the beliefs of the state and women’s movement in the childcare debates. The two core feminist frames of equality and choice were found in state documentation between 1970 and 1999. However, the close analysis of documents showed divergence in what was meant by choice and equality in these debates. The state beliefs on choice and equality were linked to the public realm of paid employment. The women’s movement frames of equality and choice covered the public and private spheres. This meant the feminist narratives included a belief that equality encompassed men taking more responsibility for unpaid labour in the home, as well as women being afforded the opportunity to take part in the paid labour force. Divergence on the frames of choice and equality, were only some of the differences in the frames and beliefs of the state and women’s movement.

The close analysis of public documentation on childcare also highlighted a divergence between the state and women’s movement on the issue of gender roles. This divergence is evident in extracts from MP Rob Muldoon and the National Organisation for Women.

In the 1990s state documents continued to highlight the role of mothers in caring for children, while feminists continued to push for changes to the division of labour in both the public and private spheres.

Beliefs about the role of the family in providing childcare showed another major difference in the cognitive praxes of the state and the women’s movement during the 30 years of documentation analysed. The state emphasised the centrality of family care in its policy narratives between 1970 to 1999 – a family consisting of a male breadwinner, female caregiver, and dependants.

From the Minister of Social Welfare, 28^th November 1973

From the Minister of Education, Hon. John Luxton, 30 May, 1995.

"To support this, desirable outcomes have been set out and which are

This frame of family responsibility for childcare was not used by the women’s organisations of New Zealand. The cognitive praxis of the women’s movement emphasised communal responsibility to children. The divergence of state and women’s organisation frames and the underlying core beliefs in childcare policy debates suggest there was little state acceptance of feminist ideas between 1970 and 1999. However, the state’s narratives on childcare were not completely static.

There was one major change evident in the core beliefs of the state between 1970 and 1999, with the introduction of a frame on what constituted full participation in society. This frame which linked full participation with paid employment, was found in the state documents of the 1980s and 1990s, including a speech made by the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Georgina Te Heuheu in 1995:

The idea that citizens must be employed to be fully participating in society was part of the neo-liberal belief system adopted in New Zealand from the middle of the 1980s.

The adoption of neo-liberal beliefs by the state in the 1980s and 1990s was also evident in the secondary aspects of the childcare policy debate. The state’s secondary beliefs in the two decades emphasised that funding for childcare should be targeted only to those in need. (See tables 2 and 3) This move to limit state funding for childcare by targeting only those families in need was part of the neo-liberal retrenchment of the state.

The introduction of new beliefs to the state repertoire showed that its core beliefs were adaptable. Changes to core beliefs are considered extremely difficult to achieve in the advocacy coalition framework, with any adaptation seen as being "akin to a religious conversion". Further investigation of childcare debates in New Zealand is necessary to trace the exact origin of the neo-liberal frames that begin to appear in the state discourses in the 1980s. This task is outside the scope of this paper.

New actors in the childcare debates

While the focus of this paper is primarily on the impact of feminism as a cognitive praxis on public policy narratives, the close analysis of public documentation highlighted an important change to the actors participating in childcare debates in New Zealand. Women’s organisations in New Zealand were very active in the 1970s debates on childcare, but their voices were practically non-existent in the debates of the 1980s and 1990s. The beliefs attributable to the women’s movement in Tables 2 and 3 came from a handful of public documents and a small number of feminist groups. This diminished activity by the women’s movement requires exploration.

Diminished activity by social movements is discussed in a study of the environmental movement by Andrew Jamison, Ron Eyerman, Jacqueline Cramer and Jeppe Laessoe. The researchers surmise that one of the major problems for some environmental movements has been that they have been incorporated by other political actors, parties and organisations of the established political culture. If this assertion applied to the New Zealand women’s movement, the diminished activism from the movement in the 1980s might have been linked to the development of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. The Ministry was established in 1984 as a state advocate of women’s needs. "An important point to note is that because responsibilities for different areas of policy lie with specific departments, eg, Health, Education etc, the overall effect of the Ministry’s work will show in a greater responsiveness to women’s needs in policy implementation by those departments."

To test whether the women’s movement beliefs were subsumed within the narratives of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, I isolated out the beliefs of the Ministry from the ideas of all other state actors. There was little evidence of the women’s movements core beliefs on childcare being fully adopted by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in the 1980s and 1990s. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs frames were more closely linked to the beliefs of other state agencies than to the women’s movement, particularly during the 1990s.

While the voice of the women’s movement was not subsumed by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs during the 30 years studied, there was evidence of the adoption of feminist frames by unions and sector groups. The close analysis of public documentation showed childcare was not on the agendas of the unions and sector groups in the 1970s. Then in the 1980s and 1990s unions and sector groups joined in the debates of childcare policy and frequently used feminist frames. (See Table 4)

The women’s movement frames on childcare were not the only beliefs evident in the narratives of the unions and sector groups. The ideas of the unions and sector groups during the 1980s and 1990s converged with the state beliefs on full participation and paid employment. This convergence between state frames and the narratives of union and sector groups further highlights the strength of the neo-liberal beliefs found in the childcare policy debates of the 1980s and 1990s. (See Tables 2, 3 and 4)

Motherhood and the division of labour

The divergence in the belief systems of the state and women’s movement evident in Tables 1, 2, and 3, indicates that the women’s movement made little impact upon the state’s core beliefs about childcare between 1970 and 1999. The state’s core beliefs throughout the 30 years analysed focused on "family", or more accurately "mother" care and women’s rights in the public sphere of paid employment. On the other hand the women’s movement frames centred on the rights of women to equality in the public and private spheres, equality for which ready access to quality and affordable childcare is essential.

The New Zealand women’s movement was not successful in challenging the existing state beliefs on childcare between 1970 and 1999, in part because of the strength of narratives on motherhood and gender roles. Feminist frames for childcare policy often challenge deep seeded beliefs about gender roles in society. The politics of childcare is ultimately caught at the centre of the debate focussing, not on the provision of care for children, but rather what people believe the roles of men and women should be. Even in the documents from the 1990s there is evidence of the strength of the beliefs about gender divisions in society.

While core beliefs remained stable in the New Zealand debates of childcare policy, previous studies suggest changes are more likely to occur at the policy level of the belief structure. As already noted, policy beliefs are those ideas concerned with the policy views, rather than deeper normative questions. In their study of the British women’s movement Lovenduski and Margetts found that the traditionalist coalition was prepared, under pressure, to change its policy beliefs. Lovenduski and Margetts suggest the changes to policy beliefs may have been done to maintain deep core beliefs. This paper now turns to the policy beliefs on childcare found in public documents in New Zealand. Did the women’s movement have more success in influencing the state’s policy beliefs, than it had on the core beliefs about childcare?

Policy beliefs and stable narratives

There was a change in policy beliefs on childcare in regard to who was responsible for the provision of care for children in New Zealand. The policy beliefs of all actors involved in childcare debates in the 1970s viewed provision of childcare primarily as a state responsibility (See Table 1). In the 1980s the state suggested that childcare was a community responsibility, that is something to be shared between the state, individual parents, and the community at large (See Table 2). In the 1990s employers were seen as being partially responsible for childcare provision. Employer responsibility for provision of childcare was found in the narratives of the state, women’s organisations and from union and sector groups (See Table 3). Even the state’s watchdog for women, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, focused on employer responsibility in the 1990s:

Childcare was seen as being of benefit to employers because it to helped improve staff retention, resulted in lower absenteeism, and boosted staff morale. This frame is evident in a state agency report on "Employers’ Attitudes: Work Opportunity for Women" from 1973:

Childcare provision was subjected to cost-benefit analyses, in an attempt to make employers take some responsibility in helping working parents.

Cost-benefit analyses were also applied to state involvement in childcare provision. In the narratives of the 1980s and 1990s childcare was viewed as a necessity for workers, so that the state could save on social security benefits, while increasing the tax revenue from employed parents. The adoption of cost-benefit analyses, and the push to have employers more involved in childcare provision, was part of a neo-liberal belief in state retrenchment.

Another policy belief that changed between 1970 and 1999 was centred on the placement of childcare within policy structures. In the 1970s the women’s organisations saw childcare as an education issue. This frame was focused on ensuring all children received equal educational opportunities. In contrast, the state view of the 1970s focused on childcare as a welfare issue. Childcare was for families in crisis and supported by the state in order to protect children in need. Then in the 1980s the state changed its policy belief in line with earlier feminist claims and began to view childcare as an education issue, not a welfare matter. This change in policy belief saw the childcare policy portfolio moved from the Department of Social Welfare to the Department of Education. However, this change in the frames used by the state was child centred, not feminist, at its core. The change in the state’s policy core frames protected the deep core beliefs of the state, in which the needs of children were viewed as prior to women’s needs. In fact women as carers were often not even acknowledged in this cognitive frame on childcare.

There were also changes in the policy beliefs on why mothers needed to use childcare arrangements. The argument that economic necessity forced women to use childcare was found throughout the 30 years investigated. In the 1970s it was predominantly women’s groups that argued that the provision of affordable childcare was a matter of economic survival for some families.

This view of childcare as a necessity for economic survival was used to counter the state claims in the 1970s that women worked to buy luxury items. By the 1980s the frame of economic necessity was absent from the cognitive praxis of the women’s movement, and feminists were claiming women worked through necessity and choice. However the belief that mothers worked out of economic necessity was located up in the narratives of the state, employers, and unions in the 1980s and 1990s. For example, the Master Cleaners Association New Zealand told a parliamentary select committee:

3. The majority of employees are part-timers and the nature of the industry allows easy exit from and re-entry to the work force. This has benefits especially in the case of married women, providing them with an opportunity to earn a second family income (as the family financial situation dictates) whilst at the same time maintaining their family responsibilities.

This use of the women’s movement frame, in which childcare was seen as a necessity to ensure economic survival of families, did not challenge the core beliefs of the state which focused on the centrality of the nuclear family in the provision of childcare.

As with the core beliefs on childcare, there was divergence in the policy beliefs of the women’s movement and state. Throughout the 30 years the New Zealand women’s movement framed childcare as a way to relieve some of the burden of care placed on women and to allow them to participate more fully in all areas of life. The idea that childcare was necessary in order for women to carry out paid and unpaid work was also part of the policy beliefs of unions and sector groups in the 1980s and 1990s.

In the 1980s there was an admission from one of the state agencies that women may need time out from the stresses of motherhood to rest or take part in leisure activities, but it was more common for the state to tie childcare to employment. Childcare was seen as necessary to ensure women could join the paid workforce. This narrative from the state meant childcare would only be provided for parents in paid employment.

Overall there was less stability in the policy beliefs of the state than in the core beliefs about childcare. Despite this flexibility in state ideas there was only minimal evidence that changes in policy beliefs were due to the efforts of women’s movement organisations. It was interests pushing a neo-liberal platform that brought about the major changes to childcare policy beliefs in New Zealand.

Implementation details and feminist beliefs

As with core and policy beliefs, the major changes to the secondary aspects of childcare policy can not be attributed to the attempts of the women’s movement to change the cultural stock surrounding childcare. The changes in the secondary aspects of childcare policy include the move to target childcare benefits and the transfer of the management of childcare policy from the Department of Social Welfare to the Department of Education. As already noted the ideas on targeting childcare funding fitted the neo-liberal beliefs on state retrenchment that come to the fore in the 1980s and 1990s. This is not a feminist frame impacting up childcare policy, but the impact of business interests on state belief systems. The transfer of responsibility for childcare away from the Department of Social Welfare was, as I noted earlier, part of a belief system centred on protecting children. While the close analysis of documents showed the secondary aspects of the childcare belief system were less stable than other levels of the belief system and more readily changed, it also highlighted how the narratives on policy implementation were impacted upon by the core and policy beliefs.

There is evidence from the close analysis of childcare narratives that even the deepest ideas in belief systems can be changed, despite the fact that changes to core beliefs are akin to religious conversions. In childcare policy debates in New Zealand there were major changes to beliefs systems of the state from the 1980s. These changes were not linked to the attempts of the women’s movement to alter the meanings behind childcare policy. The state adopted neo-liberal beliefs into its policy narratives, rather than feminist frames.

This study into childcare policy debates in New Zealand highlights that the power of beliefs in shaping public policy is linked to the power of the advocates. Clearly business elites were more powerful than the women’s movement in the bid to change the cultural stock of childcare policy. The success of the neo-liberal beliefs may have been due to the fact that its frames for childcare more easily fitted existing state beliefs, while the women’s movement was challenging core undertsandings about gender. The challenge to central understandings of the roles of men and women were continually a part of feminist frames about childcare. This challenge to deep seeded cognitive frames for New Zealand society was clearly not a success, with mother-care still viewed as the optimal form of childcare in the 1990s. Framing childcare as a way of protecting New Zealand children was more acceptable in policy debates, than frames in which childcare was seen as being beneficial to mothers.

Robyn Hollander and Elizabeth van Acker

Griffith University

Fame, Fashion and Fans: Pauline Hanson as Political Celebrity

Abstract

The media’s focus on gossip and celebrity as lead stories marks a shift in newsworthiness. While this raises some concerns about the media’s capacity as ‘the fourth estate’ and its responsibility to support democracy and inform the public, the shifts in news values can be considered in different respects. This paper examines the creation of Pauline Hanson as a political celebrity. It analyses media content in the Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Courier-Mail during the two weeks before and the week after the 1998 and 2001 Queensland state elections. Media representations attempted to discover the ‘real’ Hanson by using particular symbols and settings. As a media magnet, Hanson was promoted to celebrity status, connecting with her public in ways that had little to do with politics. The paper argues that, ultimately, celebrity codes involving elements such as fame, fashion and fans overrode discussion about policies. The construction of Pauline Hanson as a personality indicates some fundamental changes in what is deemed to be of political importance in the public sphere and our broader cultural environment.

Turner et al (2000:1) acknowledge that those who champion the media as ‘the fourth estate’ might see the ‘celebritization’ of politics as a worrying trend because it trivialises politics and displaces hard-edged political coverage. Marshall (1997:204) offers a contrasting analysis. He argues that the concepts of celebrity and its associated ‘affective function’ are useful in understanding politicians and their relationship with their constituents or ‘audience’. However, this relationship is obscured by the ‘shroud of rationality’ which characterises political discourse. The rationality serves to legitimate the democratic process and establish the authority of the regime while ‘… the celebrity’s agency is the humanization of institutions, the simplification of complex meaning structures, and a principle site of a public voice of power and influence’ (1997:244). Moreover, once elevated to celebrity status, a political actor no longer needs to articulate clear policy positions and goals. Their image alone can convey meaning by reminding their public of their political message (Ward 2000:97-8).

The media portrays the politician as a celebrity at the expense of raising important issues concerning politics. In the 1998 Queensland state election, Hanson received a great deal of media coverage. This continued during the 2001 Queensland state election when much of the print media paid great attention to her as a personality. Fashion stories took precedence over examining political events and policies. As a populist leader, Hanson successfully reinvented herself. One Nation is losing the trappings of a traditional political party, replacing members with fans, policies with policy directions, notions of internal democracy with autocracy. Celebrity and capriciousness remain, so that Hanson is now as well known for her clothes as her politics.

What is Celebrity?

The concept of celebrity eludes easy definition. It is, according to Turner et al (2000:9), ‘slippery’. They reject the simple notion that ‘celebrities are people the public is interested in’ as syllogistic. They contend that celebrity is not a status that attaches to an individual or is intrinsically associated with a particular activity. Hence, not all actors or sportspeople are celebrities and performing at public events, such as concerts or book launches does not automatically convey celebrity status. Rather, ‘celebrity is a product of the manner of representation’ (Turner et al, 2000:16). Celebrity is an artefact, a manufactured product of media coverage, and attaches to the way in which individuals are reported. Turner et al (2000) are concerned to uncover the way in which celebrity professionals primarily working in the promotional industry, manufacture and maintain their celebrity products over time or generate instant celebrities in the wake of unexpected events, such as natural disasters.

How then is celebrity constructed? According to Turner et al (2000:12), a key signifier involves ‘the dissolving of the boundary between public and private lives’. Celebrity involves looking ‘behind’ the individual’s ‘professional’ personae (which may very well have provided public profile in the first instance) and discovering the ‘real’ person. Celebrity reportage is concerned with the ‘doings and ways of life’; it involves ‘an individuated account of the personal lives’ (Turner et al, 2000:11). Emotional responses and personal perceptions are important to celebrity treatment, as are opinions and perspectives on issues beyond the individual’s area of expertise. For Marshall (1997:ix), this gives celebrities a unique power: ‘They are allowed to express themselves quite individually and idiosyncratically’ and further ‘the celebrity is a voice above others, a voice that is channelled into the media systems as being legitimately significant’ (1997:x).

Film representation, along with photographs and sound recordings, make a crucial contribution to the construction of the personalised relationship between celebrity and audience. The ‘seeing and hearing’ provided by television and radio construct familiarity in two ways. First, they build public recognition; we, as an audience, feel we know the celebrity because we recognise their visual and verbal characteristics. Moreover, we are likely to have developed that recognition in the private domain where we consume television and radio – our own home. Second, television and radio provide a seemingly authentic image of the celebrity unmediated by interpretation or the strictures of the written word. Hence, we feel as though we are positioned to discern the ‘real person’ behind the celebrity and make our own judgements. Because celebrity is a product of representation, celebrities can emerge from any context. Nevertheless, having established how celebrity operates, we now turn to look at the activities which most commonly provide the starting point for celebrity. Celebrity is most commonly associated with movies, television soap opera, popular music and, more recently, sport. This is what Turner et al (2000:17-18) found when they surveyed a range of Australian media formats over two fortnights in 1997. Of the 3,141 celebrity stories they identified, 1730, or 55 per cent, concerned celebrities with a background in entertainment. A further 488, or 15 per cent, were associated with sports based celebrities. More unexpectedly perhaps, politics constituted the third most common background for celebrity stories contributing 266, or 8.5 per cent, stories.

Symbol and settings are also important in the manufacture of celebrity. Turner et al (2000:160-4) explore the symbolism of the ‘red carpet’ in reinforcing and ordering celebrity at recent film events. While the carpet is derived from film premiers and award nights, it can transfer its meaning into other contexts, bestowing celebrity on those who walk its path. Other celebrity symbols include expensive and exclusive forms of transport, (jets, yachts, limousines, and helicopters), modes of dress, (especially evening costume and jewels), exotic locations and palatial ‘homes’ (not houses). Moreover, celebrity can be contagious rubbing off on family members, friends, and associates (Turner et al 2000: 9).

Celebrity involves more than modes of representation; its has a relational dimension involving both audience and individual. According to Marshall (1997: xii) celebrity serves to connect the public figure and the populace. It provides a vehicle whereby the various ‘audience[s] … make sense of the incongruities of their social world through celebrating the human agency of particular public personalities’ (xiii). However celebrity can only fulfil this function if audiences detect an ‘ordinariness’ behind the public status, the search for which forms a core element of celebrity representation. Moreover, the ‘unmasking’ which characterises celebrity reportage often involves efforts to demystify the celebrity and discount their achievement. As Turner et al (2000:13) put it succinctly: ‘[a]s signs of the potential for ordinary people to transcend their condition, celebrity are inspirational; as signs of the unauthenticity and superficiality of success they are consoling’.

However, just as the audience attaches particular meanings to red carpets, celebrities do not exist without public support. Celebrity status is denoted by a market for the ‘sayings and doings’ of the differentiated individual. Hence, ‘[a] celebrity is someone whose authority appears to emanate directly from the masses’. It follows then that a celebrity’s power ‘is dependent on maintaining the illusion of contact with their public’ (Lumby, 1999:73). Celebrities need to be seen to be noticed (either adored or reviled) to demonstrate their status as an object of ongoing public attention.

In summary, celebrity representation is characterised by a concern with discerning the ‘real’ person behind the public personae. Its emphasis on an individual’s leisure interests and activities, intimate and familial relationships, emotional responses, tastes and preferences distinguish celebrity reportage. It often focuses on individual failings and inadequacies and is particularly concerned to reveal evidence of artifice or subterfuge. Sets of recognisable symbols and settings, reiterated in depictions of the celebrated individual connecting with their public, signal celebrity status. The elements contributing to the construction of Hanson as celebrity are discussed below.

THE RISE OF PAULINE HANSON

The focus on Pauline Hanson represents a shift towards celebrity status by the media. Before the 1996 election, Pauline Hanson, who ran a fish and chip shop, was selected by her local Liberal Party branch as the candidate for Oxley, the safest Labor seat in Queensland. She had no political experience, no important connections or influence and limited education. Her Labor opponents noticed a letter she had written to an Ipswich newspaper, accusing politicians of causing ‘a racist problem’ by showering Aborigines ‘with money, facilities and opportunities that only these people can obtain’. This was dynamite: it reached the national media and fearing scandal, the Liberal Party’s federal leadership intervened, depriving Hanson of her pre-selection. Although she was disendorsed, she appeared on the ballot paper as a Liberal and was elected in 1996 to the seat of Oxley as an Independent.

Pauline Hanson has been continually profiled in the media since her maiden speech to Parliament in 1996. In the House of Representatives, she described Aborigines as a new privileged class and warned about the danger of Australians being swamped by Asians. This speech received enormous media attention and began the love/hate relationship with the public. The quality media, intellectuals and progressives deplored her views. Ordinary people saw her as an anti-politician, defying the snobs of political correctness. She became a hero, a popular figure who was cheered in country towns and shopping centres around the country. The media lined up to hear her conservative views and produced many stories about her actions and rallies. Men like Graeme Campbell – a former Labor and then Independent politician – hold similar views and have been making the same kinds of statements as Hanson. One of the reasons he failed to get similar coverage is because of the significance of sex. The media drew attention to Hanson's’ sexual difference from men, because as a woman, she functions as ‘other’ in our political culture (Lake, 1998: 116). Hanson has been constructed as ‘just a fish and chip lady’, ‘a real person’ and ‘a battler’. She appears vulnerable, her voice shakes, she is slim and well groomed. She flaunts her sexuality, combining her femininity with a strong character. Her admirers see her as courageous, able to stand up to the major parties and speak her mind. She repeats her short, simple message to journalists, which works well for the media’s purpose. However, television and the press also distorted her image and she has been lampooned as much as she has been taken seriously.

The media has played an important agenda-setting role in giving an independent MP so much attention, deciding that she has news values. In turn, Hanson attempts to use the media for her purposes. In November 1997, Hanson taped a video beginning with ‘Fellow Australians, if you are seeing me now, it means I have been murdered’. This was televised and while her minders denied it was a publicity stunt, she did not receive much media sympathy. Shanahan (1997:1) claimed this ‘bizarre politically strategy to entrench her as a martyr’ ... ‘is not the way to participate seriously in politics’. At this point, although she received enormous attention, she had not yet achieved celebrity status.

In April 1997 Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party was formed. Yet support for the party had decreased in the polls. In October 1996 polls said 18 per cent of respondents would vote for her. This was enough to win up to 12 Senate seats if a double dissolution election were held. However, in June 1998, at the Queensland state election, One Nation candidates received almost 23 per cent of the votes, with 11 candidates winning seats. Since then many One Nation Members of Parliament have left the party, either joining the newly formed City Country Alliance or becoming Independents. According to Goot (2000), Hanson’s support base is clear from an election study of the 1998 results. This indicates that those voting for One Nation are likely to be blue collar trade workers, white, middle aged men between 45 and 54, in rural areas with an income of under $60.000. Her message is that these men have lost their place in the nation: they are marginalised, mourning for their lost jobs and guns. She celebrates the myth of the man on the land and the Australian national identity. The party receives less support from women. She said that women have rights to abortion and child care, but she does not support feminism, she sees it as part of the problem. Hanson lost her federal seat in 1998.

THE 1998 QUEENSLAND STATE ELECTION

During the three weeks under study, Pauline Hanson and her party Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party (PHON) dominated reporting on the Queensland state election in The Courier-Mail, The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald. Hanson and PHON provided the dominant lens through which the media presented the Queensland election campaign. Statements made by the leaders of political parties, discussion of policy, and analysis of electoral strategies were invariably accompanied by references to PHON. For example, both coalition and Labor policy launches were evaluated in light of PHON’s vaguely articulated policy positions and potential appeal to PHON supporters (Meryment, 2000). PHON commentaries or PHON imagery accompanied election reports in all three papers and the bulk of election comment and opinion was heavily skewed toward PHON leader and party. Within this extensive coverage, this analysis is concerned with those reports that focus on PHON and on Hanson herself in particular. After summarising overtly political directions, it concentrates on those stories which contribute to the construction of Hanson as celebrity.

In the two weeks prior to election day (June 1-12), the bulk of the coverage in all papers dealt with party and policy. All three papers emphasised the impact of PHON on other political actors and their responses to this challenge. The Australian foregrounded views from outside Queensland; Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett, garnered coverage for his anti-Hanson position and the views of other Victorians, including Opposition leader, John Brumby were canvassed. While the Courier Mail surveyed federal and state political figures, it also looked at the impact of PHON on an individual level. For example, it attributed Liberal leader, Joan Sheldon’s, unwillingness to meet journalists to a wish to avoid questions about Pauline Hanson (Franklin, 1998b). The allocation of preferences on How-to-Vote cards was covered extensively in The Courier-Mail and the Australian although handled differently. The Courier-Mail tended to focus on the role of preferences in determining electoral outcomes. The Australian, in contrast, saw the allocation issue as a cypher for positioning parties and individuals in relation to PHON and Hanson herself and was particularly interested in establishing a Liberal Party position.

The press also covered PHON in its own right. During the week June 1-6, The Australian ran stories on the party, its candidates, and its offices in suburban Brisbane. The disendorsement of a candidate who claimed that the pope had sold cyanide gas to the nazis during WWII provided an dramatic element in the Australian’s coverage which tended to emphasis the homespun appeal of PHON candidates and the makeshift nature of PHON operations. The Courier Mail ran profiles on a number of PHON candidates, the stories tending to place them within the context of their electorates (O’Mally 1998a,b; Madigan 1998). In the week before the election, both papers connected PHON with extremist groups and ideas (Neale 1998; Niesche 1998). The Australian also provided extensive analysis of PHON policy positions. The Sydney Morning Herald’s news coverage of PHON (as opposed to Hanson herself) was much more limited as to be expected given its market.

An editorial in the Courier-Mail (1998) had accorded Pauline Hanson the status of ‘the uninvited guest’ at the election table, a guest that other candidates were reluctant to name. In the early part of the campaign, the three newspapers under study tended to follow suit when sourcing comment on PHON operations, policy positions or tactics. Heather Hill (state leader and candidate for Ipswich), Peter James (state director) and David Oldfield (Hanson’s ‘chief advisor’) were the most commonly cited spokespeople. Hanson herself rarely spoke on behalf of the party on the more procedural aspects of campaigning or the finer detail of policy. She did not even deliver the party’s policy speech at the official launch on the Monday before the poll. For the Sydney Morning Herald , her low profile was the story, making its point with a photo showing her surrounded by empty seats and captioned ‘Lonely at the top …’. However, her presence was confirmed audibly when Oldfield began a ‘Pauline Hanson’ chant apparently to avoid close questioning on policy issues (McGregor, 1998).

While Hanson held herself aloof from the more mundane aspects of running an election campaign, she was not completely absent from the policy front. A speech, which engaged with the defining PHON issues of foreign ownership and indigenous land rights, generated commentary. The Courier-Mail and the Australian largely neglected the speech itself and focused on reactions; for these papers, the news value lay in the Prime Minister’s claim that the speech was ‘deranged’ (Meryment, 1998). The Australian’s coverage, headed ‘Finally, the PM attacks’ emphasized the responses that the controversial speech elicited from senior government figures (McGregor & Niesche, 1998). By contrast, the Sydney Morning Herald focused on Hanson heading its report, ‘Enter the Powerbrokers’ and using a full length photo of Hanson walking toward the chamber captioned ‘Corridor of power …’. The Sydney Morning Herald ’s text outlined Hanson’s predictions for the forthcoming Federal arena.

In these early days, the personal was not completely absent. Peter Wear’s (1998) frivolous piece in The Courier-Mail emphasised Hanson’s sexual dimension. Adopting the personae of a psychiatrist empathising with those attracted to this:

Sophie Masson (1998) offers an alternative explanation of her allure. She argued that Hanson was an archetypal working class ‘Mum’:

As the election draws closer, all papers carried more stories which placed Hanson amongst her supporters emphasising her rapport with ‘ordinary people’. Lumby (1999:234) suggests this is important in building and maintaining celebrity status. Hanson appeals to the public because she is seen as a real person, and this is linked to the appeal of her anti-politician politics. The Australian’s Nicholas Rothwell (1998) described her appearance at the Gympie showgrounds thus:

In Toowoomba in the following week, the Sydney Morning Herald ’s Margo Kingston (1998a) had Hanson being ‘mobbed by children, teenagers, mums and babies, old men, all wanting autographs, a chat and a handshake’. On the penultimate day of campaigning, the Courier Mail reported on Hanson’s ‘whirlwind’ tour of the Atherton Tablelands. In tones reminiscent of touring royalty, it describes the, ‘hundreds who crammed into shopping centres, newsagencies and outside bakeries [sic] for a glimpse of their hero’ (O’Malley, 1998c). The text is accompanied by an image, used in all the papers, of a burly farmer literally sweeping Hanson off her feet. He was given a few lines in the Australian on the strength of his brush with celebrity (Saunders, 1998). The Australian had Hanson moving on after only a few short minutes spent ‘romanc[ing the crowd] with tales of her rise from fish-and-chip shop owner to powerful politician’. The tour was accorded the status of ‘every politician’s fantasy’ by the Sydney Morning Herald which painted an enthusiastic word picture of devoted school children, old men and middle aged women milling around their star. Margo Kingston (1998b) reinforced the image on election day where she declared Hanson a ‘cult figure’: ‘Women weep when they see her. Men ask to hug her and say they’ll never wash their shirt again’. A montage of photos of Hanson engaging with her public accompanied this story. The Sydney Morning Herald ’s effort rather overshadowed the Courier Mail’s election day front page of a smiling Hanson exchanging words with an Asian supporter and her young child.

Hanson’s interaction with her people is also reported in less tangible terms. In the Sydney Morning Herald (Dixon, 1998), PHON’s Victorian leader Robyn Spencer described, ‘the instant rapport she felt the first time she met Ms Hanson’. The first meeting between Hanson and Oldfield was ‘a meeting of minds’ (McGregor 1998). Elsewhere Oldfield accords her with almost mystical powers, claiming that her contribution to parliamentary debate, ‘is recorded in the minds of the Australian people’ (Scott, 1998).

Turner et al suggest that celebrity status can be generated and reinforced through association with other celebrities. Prior to the election, The Courier-Mail carried several reports of Hanson’s not altogether happy interaction with local personalities. One report had Hanson claiming that Brisbane radio host Rod Henshaw ‘attended her house for drinks last year after he launched the One Nation party and "agreed with a lot of my views and policies"’. Mr Henshaw, a candidate for the Liberal Party in the forthcoming federal election, denied exchanging anything more than ‘pleasantries’ and threatened legal action (Meryment, 1998). Another report had Hanson claiming the support of ‘legendary’ bush outfitter, R.M. Williams boosted her enthusiasm for her task. Williams also denied being a supporter (‘RM rejects’1998). The Sydney Morning Herald noted her meeting with the ‘rich’ Williams although it failed to mention his disavowal and also placed her arm in arm with Toowoomba’s richest man, Clive Berghoffer (Kingston 1998a).

Association with the symbols of celebrity is also important in the construction of celebrity. Before the Atherton tour, images of Hanson more frequently placed in her ‘work’ context of Parliament or political platform or in her past life as fast food purveyor. The Australian (6 June 1998) had her at the beach, a location which can carry celebrity connotation, although its depiction of her standing fully clothed in ankle deep water to illustrate poll results was most unflattering. Where the Australian’s Hanson had ‘cold feet’, the Sydney Morning Herald ’s was triumphant, a smiling Hanson, clad in a closefitting sleeveless frock complete with corsage, her bare arms lifted in a mass embrace (6 June1998). On the second last day of the campaign, The Courier- Mail ran a classic celebrity story (Horan 1998). Its report on Hanson’s after hours activities created an image of a glamorous lifestyle of clubbing and dining complete with personal body guards.

The Courier-Mail’s nightclub story was not wholly positive; trailing Hanson was driving Australian Federal Police officers ‘crazy’ at taxpayers’ expense. Negative comments of this type are not incompatible with celebrity representation. Rather debunking forms an important component of celebrity representation. The print media published several stories of this type in the lead up to the election. The Courier-Mail dismissed PHON as ‘just another cynical political party’ (Madigan and Vale, 1998) and the Australian covered Graeme Campbell’s claims that Hanson had ‘plagiarised’ his Australia First Party’s policies (Campbell, 1998; Campbell and Masson 1998). The Sydney Morning Herald’s Laura Tingle (1998) implied Hanson’s political success was undeserved because she was ‘inarticulate … [swinging] from cliché to cliché’ showing only mastery of ‘political cunning’ and not political concepts. On a different tack, The Courier-Mail’s Craig Johnstone (1998) challenged Hanson’s status as an ‘ordinary Aussie’, working in the interests of the battlers. She was, he implied, a fraud because she had assets worth $700,000. Furthermore, while she was vehement in her criticism of politicians as drains on the public purse, she too has been under investigation for rorting her entitlements as a member of parliament.

In the week following the election (June 15-20 1998), PHON’s success provided the focus for election coverage in all of the papers. They examined the implications from every conceivable angle. The possible political and business ramifications received particular attention. PHON’s successful candidates were profiled and the Sydney Morning Herald explored NSW connections. The Courier-Mail was obviously preoccupied with the formation of a government and the impact of the results of the main political players. Nevertheless, Hanson herself frequently occupied centre stage (and front page). She was the main news in an election that had failed to produce an outright result and celebrity themes were increasingly prominent.

Page one of the Australian’s Monday (15 June) edition featured Hanson ‘posing girlishly’ at an open gate at her ‘picturesque ranch home’. She was according to the text ‘a different woman to the implacable political leader who … followed by a flotilla of media, sallied royally about the tallyroom floor’ two days earlier. Hanson outside her ‘work’ environment is characteristic of celebrity representation, and was also a part of the Courier Mail and Sydney Morning Herald’s post election coverage. The Sydney Morning Herald pictured a casual Hanson ‘taking calls from supporters’.

The Australian (17, 19 June 1998) ran a number of photos of Hanson in her work context – at her desk in her Ipswich electoral office and holding a media conference, PHON’s National Director at her side. She was also portrayed interacting with supporters. While photos showed her signing t-shirts, posing with supporters, or looking fetchingly into a mirror, text invariably depicted an enthusiastic public (Australian 16 June 1998; The Courier-Mail 15, 17 June 1998). John Harms (1998), a sports columnist with the Australian described her entrance at an election night celebration; ‘

The message that Hanson had not been ‘spoilt’ by her success was reinforced by mention of her hour long drive to visit to her father in his Gold Coast nursing home (Niesche 1998). The Courier- Mail’s Christine Jackman (1998) sought ‘Dad’s’ thoughts on his daughter’s success but the Australian (20-21 June, 1998) trumped with a collection of photos from the Hanson family album. That staple of the women’s magazines, a handwriting analysis, complemented these. The Australian’s Megan Saunders (1998) provided a contrast with her depiction of the highly strung star, prone to tantrums, now accepting the pressures of media attention.

Many of the Australian’s columnists sought the source of Hanson’s appeal in personal characteristics. McKenzie Wark (1998), for example, concentrated on her vernacular speech ‘with its brittle vowels and wavering pitch’. Roy Eccleston (1998) cast his net more broadly touching on dress sense, communication skills and the manufacture of the Pauline Hanson ‘brand’. Shelly Gare (1998) attributed her success to sexual allure, an appealing vulnerability and a simple message, and compared her with the dead Princess of Wales. Belinda Hickman (1998) thought her use of primary colours – hair, lips and the Australian flag – conveyed strength, determination and extroversion and the ‘hint of softness in [her] eyes’ added to her attraction.

THE 2001 QUEENSLAND STATE ELECTION

In the lead up to the Queensland state election in 2001, the press coverage of Pauline Hanson was not markedly different to that of 1998. The Courier-Mail’s coverage in the two weeks prior to the election focused mainly on the various parties, their policies and electoral strategies, and similarly to 1998, these were filled out by references to One Nation. Reports about One Nation covered Hanson’s lack of policies, her meaningless promises and disunited party. Few stories mentioned One Nation candidates; they were of interest only in relation to how they planned to direct preferences. The other two papers did not pay much attention to One Nation until the final week of the campaign.

The last days before voting provided heightened attention on Hanson after she returned from Western Australia. The results of the Western Australian election on 10 February 2001 indicated the revival of One Nation which attracted about 9 per cent of the vote. More significantly, Hanson’s appearance at the tally room on election night caused a great deal of excitement amongst many journalists. The Sydney Morning Herald was captivated by Hanson’s attire and many stories represented her as a celebrity. Much analysis was given to her fashion sense and sex appeal. Summers (2001) claims that

Alderson (2001) argues that wearing a party frock to a State election announcement shows that Hanson considers herself above the societal rules of attire appropriate to age, occupation or occasion. Sheehan (2001) begins his narrative into ‘Pauline’s journey’ with the following colourful description.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s attentiveness to Hanson’s attire continued with the inclusion of fourteen photos from the Hanson scrapbook on its website. Her clothes also enraptured The Australian. A full-length photo of her at the tally room appeared on the front page on Monday 12 February 2001. On page 4, a photo of Hanson’s shoes introduced "Dress steals the show", including a comment by Liz Davenport, a fashion designer and independent candidate in the election (O’Brien and Egan: 2001). During the week after the Western Australian election, several articles in the Australia portrayed her like a model, while others discussed the appropriateness of her clothes for election night. Well respected fashion designers Alannah Hill and Charlie Brown analysed some of the outfits that Hanson wore on the election trail. In the past, the press had represented Hanson as an object of derision. Now they treated her as a star by seriously analysing her wardrobe.

The construction of celebrity by dissolving the public and private was also evident. Hanson’s sexuality received attention in the Sydney Morning Herald in different ways. An article entitled ‘A patch-up, but no pash with Pauline’ covered the public reconciliation between Hanson and John Pasquarelli organised by radio announcer Howard Sattler. Her former adviser, Pasquarelli denied he and Hanson had ever shared any romance and that they had ever kissed (Kerr, 2001). Humphries (2001) began his article by denying any prospects of ‘kiss-and-make-up’ between One Nation and its breakaway, the City Country Alliance. Attempts to find the ‘real’ person were evident as journalists provided insights into Hanson’s personality and changing style. For example, in The Courier-Mail Olsson and Johnstone (2001) observed that she was ‘more sassy’ and ‘way more dangerous’ because she has ‘learned to laugh at herself’. The Australian remarked that she ‘handled her audience with the skill of a vaudeville veteran’ under the headline ‘Polished Pauline is good for a laugh’. Paul Kelly’s headline announced that ‘Hanson’s deadlier than before’. The Sydney Morning Herald commented that she has stopped trying to ‘play politics by conventional rules’. While she ‘used to dress like Doris Day goes to the RSL’ she ‘appears to have become, by her choice of clothes, more worldly’ (Sheehan 2001). Her criticism of welfare payments to Aborigines, leading to her disendorsement from the Liberal Party in 1996, provoked a comment from her father. His retort was included in an attempt to draw out emotional responses in relation to her family. The Sydney Morning Herald quotes another reference to ’Dad’, when, according to the journalist, Hanson told him that her father advised her that ‘politics was a dirty game’ (in Sheehan, 2001).

Public recognition of Hanson as an icon was reinforced in accounts of Hanson’s lifestyle. Roberts (2001) in the Sydney Morning Herald examined Hanson’s spendthrift and simultaneous bankruptcy. His article included comments from various people claiming that she had bought vehicles for her children. Hanson’s aspirations to become a fashion designer and the possible launch of the ‘please explain’ label received coverage. David Ettridge, her former adviser, revealed her fashion ambitions. He also informed the Sydney Morning Herald that he had advised Hanson to ‘tone down’ her distinctive sartorial style. The Sydney Morning Herald celebrated Hanson’s election launch with the ‘Sunshine Coast’s singing cowboy’ who transplanted Hanson into the lyrics of a song he was singing (Humphries, 2001). An article in The Courier-Mail informed readers that Hanson was maintaining support for a candidate jailed for growing marijuana in the 1970s. This was despite sacking another candidate charged with possessing the drug three years ago. Hanson was the most talked-about person on Australian talkback according to a national media monitoring company, but this was probably less because of the quirkiness of her candidates, than because of what she symbolises.

During the final week of the Queensland election campaign, The Courier Mail began to shift its focal point. Much more attention was paid to Hanson’s clothes and sexuality than in the first two weeks. Photos and stories focussed on her wardrobe, while at the same time admitting that too much was made of her clothes. According to Olsson and Johnstone (2001) ‘there is no doubt sex is part of the Hanson package’. Dorries’s (2001) headline ‘Julio has the hots and Pauline’s not sorry’ built up Hanson’s celebrity image. The setting of a shopping centre’s ‘whipped up crowds’ illustrated the close contact she has with the public. Underlining the veneration from her people, the article mentioned that she had received a marriage proposal from a ‘lovelorn’ admirer. The reference to a helicopter provided by an unnamed patron, reinforced the trappings of celebrity. The paper also included a photo of Hanson talking to a woman asking Hanson to tone down her racist comments. This illustrates The Courier-Mail’s attempt at reminding readers about the serious issues. Yet The Courier-Mail also included stories about Hanson’s fashion. Jones, O’Dwyer and Vale (2001) wrote about Hanson’s intention to enter the world of fashion. The paper’s fashion editor, Sonja Koremans, explained Hanson’s intention of ‘flaunting flesh’ rather than ‘projecting political acumen’ as a way to ‘egg on her biggest fans’ – white, middle aged Anglo Saxon men. The journalist includes comments from two fashion consultants on Hanson’s manipulation of the media. These various representations contribute to constructing a celebrity.

Despite its contribution to Hanson’s celebrity status, The Courier-Mail criticised ‘the southern media’ in a number of stories for writing too much about Hanson and her fashion sense (or lack of it). Mathewson (2001) pointed out that due to ‘a southern fascination’ with Hanson, she was on the front page of The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald more than Peter Beattie or Rob Borbidge. Franklin (2001) condemned ‘southern medial outlets’ and ‘many television outlets’ for ‘breathless media coverage’ and ‘gushing about Hanson’s wardrobe and her potential to destroy governments’. An editorial in The Courier-Mail titled ‘Chattering about Pauline Hanson’ illustrated its disapproval of the media in other states for ‘gushing over a floral print dress’. However, Balogh in The Australian (2001) justified the media attention on Hanson because One Nation was Queensland’s third largest party and the issue of preferences was crucial. These are important concerns, but Balogh’s comments do not explain the wide reporting on Hanson’s dress sense or portrayals of her as a celebrity. While she has been a symbol of dissent for many people, her status changed into a more star like quality.

Many stories in the three papers focused on Beattie’s just-vote-one strategy, Hanson’s lack of policies and the use of One Nation as a protest vote. The major parties’ fear of One Nation was also a common theme in many stories. The National Party’s move to direct preferences to One Nation received much attention, particularly in The Courier-Mail. Some stories interweaved these issues with a more personal element. The Australian evaluated Hanson in terms of the way she has remodelled herself, both in her strategies and in her personal attributes and ambitions. In this way, readers were able to obtain insights into her celebrity status. In The Courier-Mail, Franklin (2001) challenges the representations of Hanson, the anti-politician as political hero. He argues that she has grown into a personality cult figure. His argument is actually reinforced by the accompanying photos: a large coloured one of Hanson posing cutely with hand under her chin and the other featuring her legs as she gets out of a car.

In the early days after the election, stories about Hanson continued. While Peter Beattie’s landslide election win received much media coverage, so did entrance Hanson made and the dress she wore on election night.. The Sydney Morning Herald ‘s Sally Loane drew attention to ‘the big split in Pauline’s ballgown’ highlighting the impression of celebrity. Loane writes: "always dressed as if for a night at Star City, she parts the crowd like a shark through a shoal of bream, TV cameramen and reporters hanging on like suckerfish’. The Australian revealed Hanson’s plans to ‘dance the night away’ noting that she ‘rocked on’ at a night club until the wee hours. ‘Revellers clapped her triumphant arrival, and admirers spend the night cutting each other out for dances’ (McGregor, 2001). The Australian included a photo of Hanson surrounded by a large media contingent on election night, as well as a photo of her daughter. The Courier-Mail interviewed her daughter, Lee Hanson, aiming to get the scoop on what her famous mother is really like. Accompanied with a photo of Lee Hanson holding a kitten, she spoke of dealing with her mother’s fame. This highlighted Hanson’s celebrity status by talking to those close to her to gain an understanding of the ‘real’ person. It also provided the daughter with her own small dose of celebrity, as she mentioned her ambitions to enrol in a modelling course.

This attention on Hanson, usually reserved for the victor, was despite One Nation’s vote falling by 6.6 per cent compared with 1998. West, writing for the Sun-Herald, explains the media’s revisiting Hanson due to the lack of colour on a bland and boring political stage. The Courier-Mail again chastised journalists in southern states for the superficiality of its reporting, particularly in relation to Hanson. Charlton (2001) claims that Queenslanders were beginning to see past Hanson’s ‘shallow slogans and the fancy frocks, the posturing and preening’. Another piece in the paper claimed that Hanson was training her three new Members of Parliament about the pitfalls of Queensland politics. Robert Mann, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, argued that the re-emergence of One Nation over the previous fortnight was ‘a political expression of a social malaise’. However, towards the end of the first week following the election, Hanson was receiving less attention in the press. While her picture had carried distinct meanings during the campaign, her party’s poor showing meant that, at least temporarily, she was no longer the primary focus for the media. However, she was soon back on the agenda, promoting her celebrity status in a ‘make-over’ for the Australian Women’s Weekly. She reached the headlines again a few weeks later when Cue, the fashion label, informed its staff not to sell its garments to Hanson.

CONCLUSION

The media established Pauline Hanson as a celebrity in both the 1998 and 2001 state elections. Avoiding the complexity of political issues, many stories chose instead to put Hanson in the limelight. Although she is no longer a Member of Parliament, the spotlight still shines on her. Representations of Hanson cannot be explained just by examining the politics of the case. While Hanson and One Nation provided little policy analysis, they threatened the Labor Party and the Coalition, raising important political concerns for the major parties attempting to cope with many disillusioned voters.

Numerous the media stories created Hanson as ‘the human face’ of politics. She herself reinforced this image by offering simple slogans to the disenchanted and by refashioning her appearance. The three papers contributed to her allure by prioritising Hanson’s sex appeal and clothes. Media representations emphasised the ongoing division between public and private, particularly for women politicians. In the process they have fashioned her as a celebrity. Hanson has used the political platform to her advantage by creating a particular look that captivates a large and appreciative audience. This reinvention enhances her attractiveness as a cult figure: an ordinary person is portrayed and portrays herself as participating in extraordinary and glamorous activities. That she – a ‘real’ person - is performing on a political stage intensifies her appeal. Even so, the media often ignores the conventional treatment of politics, focusing instead on a woman’s allure, thereby constructing and reconstructing her as a celebrity.

References

Kyungja Jung

University of New South Wales

Theorising Feminist Practice: A comparative case study on sexual assault centres in Korea and Australia

ABSTRACT

As practices of feminist organisations and movement have become diverse, professionalised, institutionalised and bureaucratised, there has been an increasing concern about the practices of feminist organisations. It has been said that the current feminist practices are in crisis. Coping with this crisis, first of all, what constitutes feminist practices will be answered. In addition, the significance of feminist practice will be re-examined. On the basis of two case studies of sexual assault centres in Korea and Australia, I found that crisis in feminist practices has been caused by various factors such as funding cuts (Australia) and organisational identity crisis (Korea). It has been argued that crisis can be a significant phase which can provide activists an opportunity to re-examine and reflect their practice in the light of feminist vision. This paper has also suggested that continuous reflexive attention be needed to maintain feminist practices. It has been concluded that the practices of feminist organisations are seen as dynamic processes constituted by the context in which they are situated, the role of feminist activists and the nature and strength of a broader women’s movement.

Crisis in Feminist Practices

The movement, if it is to live, will always be in turmoil (Mansbridge 1995:33).

When I went to two SACs, one in Korea and one in Australia for the fieldwork for my PhD thesis, I was told by the activists that now our centres were in crisis. Through my participant and non-participant observation and interviews with activists, I was curious as to why the crisis had happened and how it was defined. But we need to identify the identity of crisis and explore why and how it happens. For this, what constitutes feminist practices need to be explored.

In existing literature, it is argued that feminist practices have lost their authentic nature as over time feminist organisations have become diversified, professionalised, bureaucratised and institutionalised(Matthews 1994; Weeks 1994; Kim Hyun-Jung 2000). It has been pointed out that the movement aspect of the feminist organisations such as sexual assault centres is now less apparent than its character as a social service (Matthews 1994). Some of them have still considered them as agencies for feminist movement. It seems that maintenance of distinctive characteristics of the feminist practices one of the heated issues in feminist circle including Australia or South Korea (Kim Hyun-Jung 2000; Korean Women’s Association United 1999; Women’s Services Network 1998; Weeks 1994; Reinelt 1995). Therefore, there seem to be conflicts and difference among activists because there are no clear ideas of the feminist practices of organisations and movements as Reinelt has put as below:

According to the shift in the social context in which feminist organisations are located and the relationships with the other organisations such as the state, how feminist practices can be maintained is one of the central issues in feminist circle as Weeks has implied:

Thus, this paper attempts to theorise constitution of feminist practices and discuss the strategies of maintaining feminist practices.

Definition of Feminist Practice

Although there has been increasing interest in feminist practices (Martin 1990; Weeks 1994; Ferree & Martin 1995; Reinelt 1995; Women’s Services Network 1998), research on feminist practices has been rare. The need to develop new theories and discourses regarding feminist organisations and practices has been raised (Ferree & Martin 1995; Martin 1990; Morgen 1990). Yet we still know little about what has happened in feminist organisations. Furthermore, as we accept that "theories follow practice" (Perez 1993:6 cited in Scott 1998: 404) and acknowledge that most feminist theories are grounded in the experiences of women and practices of feminist organisations, we need to look to the sites of feminist practice in order to broaden the horizons of feminist theory. (Rodriguez 1988; Schlesinger and Bart 1981). Martin has also suggested it need to be investigated whether a universal practice exists among feminist organisations. Martin has clearly state that ‘in contrast to normative prescriptions of how things should be done(i.e.structure), practices concern what actually occurs. Practices include the where and how of member’s energy and time; what do they do, how often, in what manner? To whom and for what purpose are resources expended (i.e., money, time, energy, and attention)/ How does the organisation treat and recruit members, impart services, interact with outsiders?’ (Martin 1990:196).

It has been argued that feminist practice is guided by values that include ‘nurturance, democracy, cooperation, empowerment, inclusion, transformation, maximising rewards to all, and ending oppression’(Martin 1990). These values provide a moral framework for action but do not entail specific organisational forms or political strategies. That is, feminist ideology, values and goals doesn’t specify feminist practices. Because the process of social change is ‘neither predetermined nor linear’, all activism is ‘historically contingent and shifting, replete with its own contradictions’(Reinelt 1995). Instead of denying this reality, many feminists in the 1990s accept this as the condition of their activism (Reinelt 1995:101). It is not simple to define feminist practices because ‘the different meanings of feminism for different feminists precludes any very ready definition’(Taylor 1990: 3). As a result, feminist practices are to be different and diverse according to the context in which organisations are located. In addition, feminist ideology and values are constantly redefined and reinterpreted in a specific context by feminist activists. Feminist practices cannot be a set of ‘how-to’ which can be easily adopted. A feminist frame work is flexible and evolving , and involves as much as analysis of one’s self, as that of the women with whom is working (Rummery 1996: 158). Despite diversities of feminist practices, there are common characteristics. In order to establish and maintain feminist practices, they must commit to the feminism and feminist values. In addition, they should be organising in a feminist way : collective decision-making and participatory democracy. Furthermore, feminist practices should produces feminists outcomes such as survival and retention of feminist ideology and structure, empowerment of women and activists themselves and contribution to social change in terms of gender equality. In this paper, feminist practice is defined as ‘the strategies and tactics that feminist organisations employ both internally and externally’ (Martin 1990: 196).

Feminist Organisation

Feminist organisations emerged from the second-wave women’s movement, criticising the practices of traditional and patriarchal organisations in pursuit of the feminist movement. Feminist organisations are characterised as ‘a unique type of organisation, which is aiming at collectivist decision-making, member empowerment and a political agenda of ending women’s oppression’ (Martin 1990).

It is well known that practices of feminist organisations make a radical contribution to contemporary politics. The women’s movement impact can be attributed in large part to the activities of feminist organisations that have worked for change- in the law, the courts, universities, corporations, local communities and individual women’s lives (Ferree & Martin 1995: 4). They have also triggered cultural changes. It is said that the women’s movement exists because feminists founded and staffed these organisations to do the women’s movement work (Ferree & Martin 1995: 4). Numerous feminist organisations were born and have had a profound impact on the lives of women and society.

Feminist organisations include rape crisis centers, battered women’s shelters, women’s studies programs, women’s health clinics, and women’s book store and restaurants (Ferree and Martin, 1995: 4). They vary in scale, scope, intent, form, and practice in rich and multiple ways. They are typically small organisations, either ‘community-based’ or autonomous units under the umbrella of a larger non-government organisation. They are all run by women and for women according to feminist or woman centred principles of practice (Weeks 1994: 2-3). They are classified into three types, according to their orientation; consciousness-raising/ self-help groups, service organisations and social movement organisations. Self-help groups aim to facilitate member’s individual change (Alter 1998: 266). Service organisations tend to facilitate change in specific groups of women and/ or to create change in community structures that discriminate or oppress them (Alter 1998: 266). On the other hand, social movement organisations aim to promote change in community or societal structures that discriminate or oppress women (Alter 1998: 266). As Alter has indicated these three types are not mutually exclusive. In reality, most feminist organisations have multiple goals. Their work focuses on public education and action towards social change, as well as providing a range of services or activities for women participants or service users (Weeks 1994: 2-3).

Martin has played a significant role in the theorisation of feminist organisation. Martin has claimed that "an organisation is feminist if it meets any one of the following criteria: (a) has feminist ideology; (b) has feminist guiding values; (c) has feminist goals; (d) produced feminist outcomes: (e) was founded during the women’s movement as part of the women’s movement (Martin 1990, 185). However, we need to elaborate on what feminist ideology, values, goals and outcomes can be.

In regard to goals, feminist organisations have three major goals; to change their women members by improving their self-esteem, political awareness, skills and knowledge; to serve women generally through providing education or services such as political education, personal counselling, health care, shelters. Feminist outcomes are the consequences for all women, and societies of the activities of feminist organisation (Martin 1990: 193).

Martin has argued that feminist ideology is ‘broader and more nebulous than guiding values or goals (Martin 1990: 191). Feminist ideology acknowledges that women are oppressed and disadvantaged as a group and sees this as rooted in social arrangements, and articulates beliefs that its correction or elimination requires social political, and economic change (Martin 1990: 191). It has been pointed out that feminist ideology has guided the structure, mission, practices concerns and dynamics of the feminist organisations (Thomas 1999: 101).

Feminist values have been defined in a various ways. Taylor has claimed that feminist values are "egalitarianism rather than hierarchy, cooperation rather than competition, nurturance rather than rugged individualism, peace rather than conflict (1983: 445). They focused on ‘the primacy of interpersonal relationships; empowerment and personal development of members; building of self-esteem; the promotion of enhanced knowledge, skills, and political awareness; personal autonomy (Martin 1990:192).

Most research on feminist organisation assert that internal democracy is a central value of most feminist organisation(Alter 1998; Thomas 1999; Reinelt 1995). That is, non-hierarchical collective structure, consensus decision-making, job rotation and equal payment has been preferred. In addition, wholism and non-differentiation were pointed out as feminist values (Alter 1998: 265). Thus both process and form must be relevant to the feminist ideology or values in feminist practices. Feminists have viewed their organisational practices as ‘ a way to embody the movement’s vision of the ideal society in its practices’ (Arnold 1995:227). In terms of the relationships with the state, feminist practices are by definition ‘outside the system’ : they are marginal, and are neither part of routine politics nor part of the dominant ideology (Dahlerup 1986: 13). This has resulted from its genesis in the leftist counter-culture and the radical characteristics.

However, application of these feminist principles to practices of organisations may not be simple. As Young has argued that ‘we may agree on goals and values in this most abstract sense, but disagree strongly on what are the best means of promoting these values and trade-offs, and so on’(2000:33). In a study of the practices of feminist health centres, Morgen has pointed out that ‘the staff of the Center experienced and constructed a fabric of reality woven from the element of contradiction between ideal and reality’(1990: 56). She has also added that becoming a feminist or acting on the basis of feminist ideology is ‘neither a simple nor a linear process’(1990:56). She has concluded that ‘it involves not only a deepening commitment to feminist principles, but an evolving understanding of the ways that the dominant political, economic, and social institutions of this society are maintained in everyday life by those accept and those who reject those institutions’ (1990:56). For instance, feminist organisations in Korea utilise volunteers for their activities, while feminist organisations in Australia do not agree with the hiring of volunteer workers on the basis of feminist principles. Feminist values and goals and outcomes can be defined and interpreted differently within diverse social contexts by feminist activists.

It seems that feminist organisations are ‘the outcome of situationally and historically-specific process’ (Ferree and Martin 1995). This position allows diverse and flexible practices of feminist organisations. They have changed over time in response to their own needs, the needs of the women they serve, and the demands of their environment (Ferree and Martin, 1995: 8). Feminist organisations are constantly engaged in internal and external political relations. The engagement with the state has been unavoidable and the ideal type of collective structure has been difficult to maintain. The important question about feminist organisations is what these shift means for feminism. Such organisations were surely co-opted in some ways but did they abandon their feminist goals, practices, and agendas? Ferguson has strongly claimed that ‘feminist organizations, even those that routinely encounter and work with bureaucracies, cannot be themselves bureaucratic or they cease to be truly feminist’(1984:211). Some research challenges the claim that institutionalisation necessarily leads to deradicalisation (Spalter-Roth and Schreiber 1995; Reinelt 1995; Eisenstein 1995; Matthews1995; Katzenstein 1995; Thomas 1999).

However, Alter has asserted that ‘democracy and bureaucracy are opposite poles of the same controlling mechanism , two potentials which exist simultaneously in all organisations and which point toward diverging organisational objectives- social equality or technical efficiency- both of which are necessary if an organisation is to sustain democratic rule in an environment and during periods of organisational expansion(1998:262). Alter assumes that four factors can largely explain organisational growth with democratisation and bureaucratization(1998): member ideology, organisational mission, political reception and resource dependency. These four factors have direct and indirect effects on the development of both democracy and bureaucracy, and together they have a wide range of consequences for the organisations. It is apparent that a high level of commitment by the membership, accompanied by some measure of organisational self-sufficiency and combined with support for the organisation’s mission by other external forces, has resulted in the survival( Alter 1998: 261). These four forces which have a direct effect on growth, in turn drive democratic or bureaucratic processes. Alter has claimed that organisational growth is the strongest force pushing against democratic rule and toward technical efficiency (1998:262). There are two basic dynamics arising out of growth and expansion. The first is an internal dynamic set in motion by efforts to bring order to out-of–control conditions associated with growth. This balance of power is achieved through requirements that make distinctions between organisational members and by structures that segment members into different operating units. The more that organisational members are placed in different roles, with different functions and tasks, the greater the likelihood that status differences will develop and that those in control of the whole will have more power and authority (Alter : 262).

The influence of the external funding such as government funding on feminist organisations is well documented. Acceptance of government funds often entails bureaucratic structures or practices (Martin 1990b : 201). Alter has also argued that those organisations reject or minimise their reliance on outside resources retain a far greater measure of internal autonomy (1998: 262). However, under these circumstances, activists and organisational members are required to make continually occurring choices. According to Alter, it is necessary to understand what factors enable activists to withstand non-democratic or anti-feminist forces. She emphasises the role of activists and members; the members or activists’ ability or willingness to pursue their goals in spite of external forces and regulations (1998: 262). This account has a useful implication for feminist organisations although Alter has focused only on organisational growth. While organisational growth and survival has been one of the major concerns in feminist organisations, it is also apparent that accomplishment of feminist values and ideology such as empowerment, autonomy and internal democracy has been of a great concern.

Thomas has illustrated the ways in which feminist ideology has been translated into a variety of organisational structures. In her study of women’s health centers, she has argued that there were three core ideological issues that directed and reflected structural change: (1) the importance of maintaining system of equitable power distribution, (2) the importance of growth versus autonomy, and (3) the importance of feminism as an organisational outcome or internal process (1999:102). Thomas has also argued that as the centers moved from small, informal volunteer organisations to formalised service organisations, most shifted their beliefs about what a "feminist" organisation was (1999:102).

She explains this, using the term ‘frames’ that Snow and Benford (1992,137) define as " an interpretive schemata that simplifies and condenses the ‘world out there’ by selectively punctuating and encoding objects, situations, events, experiences, and sequences of actions within one’s present or past environment. She argues that the shift in women’s health centers reflected the shift in their frameworks. She claims that frames are defined within the context of ideology but reflect the changing interpretations and emphasis of the centers over time. The frame constructed by each center reflected the particular internal and external environment of the organisation. These frames actively helped shape and legitimise structural change in these feminist women’s health centers (Thomas 1999:102).

It needs to explore how , why and in which context frames are constructed and changed. In this regard, Colebatch and Larmour’s explanation of organisational action is worth considering. They have argued that organisational action is made up of three dimensions: their framework of meaning, the institutional setting and the underlying values ( See Figure 1).

Figure 1: Dimensions of Organising (Colebatch & Larmour 1993: 108)

Institutional setting Framework of meaning

Underlying values

It is said that these are analytically distinct but in practice they interact closely with one another(Colebatch & Larmour 1993: 108-117). They have claimed that the framework of meaning is the way that people make sense of the organisational activity: what action is appropriate, and why (Colebatch and Larmour 1993: 108). However, this model doesn’t explain why different organisational action happens even though some organisations have similar frameworks of meaning, underlying values and institutional settings. I think that contemporary feminist organisations are good examples of this. Although feminist organisations are based on common feminist values and ideologies, their practices can be different. I think that this has resulted from the context in which feminist organisations are situated and conceptualisation of feminist activists on feminist practices are placed. Interpretations of feminist values and ideology can be different and vary according to the definition or conceptualisation of the feminist activists who are the major and active agency in feminist organisation. Thomas’s case study of feminist women’s health centre supports this argument. She has noted that there are three organisational ideal types representing the range of feminist organisational structures in the 1990s: collectivist democratic, participatory feminist bureaucratic, and feminist bureaucratic (1999:106). Those closest to the collectivist-democratic end are those are who have left the critical decisions of the organisation in the hands of the whole staff. Participatory bureaucracy is defined as ‘those who have structured involvement of the staff to ensure input, but ultimate decision-making authority rests with a director or board of directors. Feminist bureaucracy is identified as ‘having given critical decision-making authority to an individual or external board of directors (Thomas 1999: 106). She has claimed that as feminist organisations changed their structures, they made choices around three central ideological issues: One critical issue was whether a system of dispersed or concentrated power distribution should be maintained; A second issue was the perceived importance of organisational growth. A priority on growth often included a loss of autonomy, which had been a central ideological component of the early feminist organisations; A final issue was whether a feminist organisation was framed primarily through its outcomes (services) or through internal processes (consensus, empowerment of staff). Therefore, diverse practices of feminist organisations have existed, although they are based on feminist ideology and values.

Constitution of Feminist Practices

If feminist practices have constantly shifted according to internal and external change, what constitutes feminist practices in a specific context needs to be examined ( See Figure 2 ).

First of all, feminist practices are constructed by the activists’ perception of the particular feminist movement identity of each feminist organisation. In Korea, activists conceptualise the SAC as a site of the women’s movement and themselves as feminist activists while in Australia, activists see the SAC as a feminist social service and themselves feminist counsellors. This difference in their perception has resulted in differences in terms of their activities, allocation of staff, funding source and relationship with government and future orientation.

Figure 2: Practice of feminist organisation

feminist movement

social movement

feminist community

feminist ideology/ values/goals

characteristics of the state

socio-political context

feminist activists resources

There has been little discussion on the role of activists in feminist organisations in the existing literature. If acknowledging the definition of the women’s movement as ‘a systematic collective action by activists’ and feminist organisations are the places which are doing the movement work, more attention should be paid to role of the activists. Alter has emphasised that most important in terms of organisational development is the level of member commitment (Brown 1992, cited in Alter 1998: 261). According to Alter, commitment determines the persistence and obstinacy with which members or activists pursue the organisation’s objectives in the face of resource shortages, market changes, and political opposition (Zald 1970, cited in Alter 1998). Activists also played a significant role in constant decision-making.

Particularly when the external environments of feminist organisations are fluctuating, willingness and commitment to withstand the forces to ruin feminist values will be required. Activists as active rather than ‘passive or manipulated learners’ (Reiner 1992: 109) can resist their influences. Furthermore, they are active in constructing and making references to the practices as guiding their activities. Therefore the role of activists in interpreting their situation and making creative and conscious decisions must be an essential component of the reconceptualisation according to the shift of all factors. As Giddens has pointed out that ‘social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information about those very practices, thus constitutively altering their character’ (1990: 38), the centrality of the activist in the integration of the new information, knowledge and organisational practices should be emphasised. Activists play a pivotal role in developing, reinforcing, transforming feminist practice, and resisting other constraints. Thus, the feminist consciousness of the activists can be a vital factor in maintaining feminist practice, as indicated in other studies (Alter 1998: Morgen 1990. Mansbridge 1995) .

Feminist identities are created and reinforced when feminists get together, act together, and read what other feminists have written (Mansbridge 1995: 29). Mansbridge has claimed that ‘both experiences, of personal transformation and continuing interaction, make feminists "internally accountable" to the feminist movement and feminist community. This is because the accountability of feminist organisations ‘can rarely be exercised by formal political mechanisms but is commonly felt by activists as a moral demand, sometimes as a collective critique by groups that legitimately express feminist concerns’ (Ferree & Martin 1995: 18). The opportunity of being re-educated by new feminist knowledge and being able to participate in the activities of the feminist movement will be secured in order to keep this sense of ‘moral demand’ and feminist vision.

Along with this, it was argued that feminist practices cannot be fully understood without a recognition of the social cultural context ( Morgen 1990).

Feminist practices change over time through interaction with the external social , political and cultural environment. For instance, in Korea, sexual violence issues have been the focus of attention by the democracy movement, which had fought against the military dictatorship, as a means of criticising the government. Sexual torture cases or sexual violence cases committed by the police force was the main issue of the movement. With the shift in regime to a democratic one, the sexual violence issue has become a major issue in the women’s movement. On the other hand, in Australia, the issue of sexual violence was raised by radical feminist groups in pursuit of the women’s movement. Due to a feminist-issue friendly government, RCC and SACs were financially supported by the state from the earliest stages, even though this issue was hotly disputed within feminist groups.

In Korea, a strong Confucian culture has characterising Korean Society as a patriarchal one with clear distinction between men and women, and seniors and juniors and a taboo on sexuality. That is, it was argued that it was not possible, without vigorous activism from the women’s movement, to put sexual violence onto the public agenda and establish RCCs or SACs. Due to volatile political context, the student movement, the democracy movement and the women’s movement have a long history and have played a vital role in changing Korean society. Thus, the Korean sexual assault center has been doing movement work as a site of the women’s movement, unlike other centres in Western countries. The Korean Centres as a site of women’s movement has broadened its activities in order to maintain its radical movement identity, dealing with nearly all women’s issues rather than narrowing down its activities. This is quite contradictory to the existing literature on the development of social movement which has argued that the first period of the movement was characterised by direct, disruptive actions, great enthusiasm, intense ideological debates and organisational personal experiment and this stage passed and has been replaced by a proliferation, fragmentation and specialisation of the movements (Dahlerup 1986). Thus, active participation of volunteers and a positive perception of utility of volunteers can be understood in this context. In Korea, volunteers decided to participate in the centre’s activities because they believe that this centre is a site of women’s movement. Thus, they have regarded them as activists who participate in the women’s movement rather than doing a charity work.

Another factor contributing to the constitution of feminist practice is resources such as funding, particularly in order to maintain the movement aspect such as advocacy work and activities for social change and human right issues. In Korea, even though their self-identity has been clearly stated as a feminist movement organisation and as feminist activists, they are seen as social welfare services and social workers or counsellors by the government authorities while they have received funding or project grants from the state such as the city council or central government. In order to secure government funding, they have to do social service-oriented works - provision of counselling and a shelter for the victims. That is, their activities had to be tailored so as to meet the government’s requirement. It was found that as state funding becomes available, state agencies begin to define the conditions under which feminist organisations can be funded . Not only this has affected the feminist practice of each organisation but it has also influenced the relationship between sexual assault centres or women’s movement organisation. Because there is a limited funding source, women’s movement organisations have to compete with other organisations for the government funding. Further, they have to display their strength by organising demonstration workshop or meetings and extending their facilities or range of activities. However, by securing independent funding sources such as overseas funding and fund-raising activities and membership fees, the Korean centre kept retaining the movement related activities along with service delivery.

The Australian case study has also supported the previous studies that state funding directly undermines the collective practices of the feminist organisations and, over time, influences them to shift their focus from confronting oppressive gender relations to servicing victims of those relations. In coping with the funding reduction which occurred during the fieldwork, the centre had to rearrange their activities making 24 hour service delivery its priority to rather than maintaining their movement- related work, that is, its community development section. It appears to undermine their autonomy, sisterhood and self-determination which are the most significant values that feminist organisations must aim for. previous argument that state support may

The other significant factor contributing to the constitution of feminist practice is the role of the feminist movment or feminist circle. In Australia, despite shifts in socio-political context, presence of femocrats and alliance with other women’s services enable SACs to commit to feminist ideology. In Korea, the existence and strength of the progressive women’s movement help to shape feminist identity of the activists in SACs and sustain their radical practices.

In sum, feminist practices are complicated processes involving interactions between feminist ideology and values, the commitment of feminist activists to their principles and external resources along with their external environment (feminist movement, the characteristics of the state, social, political and cultural context). In addition, the stage of development (survival, growth or expansion ) and the scale of organisations will be affected the construction of feminist practices. Further research is needed in these areas.

Crisis , reflexivity and self-criticism

Why would crises happen in feminist organisation and what are crises in feminist organisations? In Australian SAC, the cause of the crisis was funding cuts, In the Korean centre, crisis was its organisational identity as a feminist organisation. There seem to be various factors resulting in crisis: a shift in organisational structure, dependence on the state, a lack of resources (funding cuts), activist burn-out, internal conflicts among activists and losing their feminist ideology, values and goals. This has also often occurred when the organisations overexpand their scope and activities, and compete with other organisations, for instance for funding. However, the two case studies imply that an awareness of their situation as crisis can pave the way for resistance to other forces which may undermine practices and provided an opportunity for reflecting on their practices.

For Giddens, reflexivity has become integral feature of modern social life, as ‘social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information about those very practices, thus constitutively altering their character’ (1990: 38). Giddens claims that even the most enduring of habits, or the most unshakeable of social norms, involves continual detailed reflexive attention. Routinization is of elemental importance in social life; but all routines, all the time, are contingent and potentially fragile accomplishments (Giddens 1993: 5-6). He explains that individuals in all forms of society ‘distance themselves’ from rules and resources, approach them strategically and so forth. Certainly feminist practices can not be exceptional. Brown has also emphasised ‘reflexive monitoring which compares the current state of organisational processes with the ideal situation and initiates modifications ’ (1992: 29) . Weeks has also argued that ‘critically reflective practice’ has been valued in feminist organisation.

In order to maintain feminist practices, first of all, it needs to review what is the significance of feminist ideology in the current context. Rethinking ideology requires self-reflections of activists who have led the feminist movement and organisations (Kim Hyun-Jung 1999: 98). Ideology as an essential principle for guiding the organisation or movement can be continuously reconstructed by activists who are active agents. Kim has claimed that ideology can be redefined as a result of the self-reflection of activists (1999: 98). Re-examining ideology, activities and outcomes, securing time and efforts will be required. For instance, the Korean case is a good example of this. The Korean Sexual Assault Centre experienced crisis -defined by the activists- due to a quick expansion and shift in the relationship with the state. The necessity of time and effort to re-evaluate their practices, direction and goals had been raised by the activists for a while. However, their busy schedule and overloaded activities such as funded projects did not make this issue the main agenda. Finally, nearly half the activists quit their job, being disappointed by their practices.

In terms of organisational structure, the need for a specific structural type, however, did not emerge as a core belief for all feminist organisations. Other scholars have suggested that there is no particular structure essential to a feminist organisation but that different types most effectively produce particular outcomes (Martin 1990; Ryan 1992; Staggenborg 1995). I think that feminists need to make great efforts to experiment and develop new practices. In addition, organisational success and growth or expansion should be reconsidered in terms of feminist ideology: what success and growth means for feminism will be questioned. Although various structures can also successfully produce a similar outcome, I believe that democratic decision-making and equal power distribution should be retained if we consider that feminist organisations started from two goals- feminist outcome and accomplishment of feminist values. Therefore a certain arrangement to maintain internal democracy will be taken. Considering the centrality of activists in the feminist organisation, better treatment and retraining of activists will be guaranteed. In order to prevent burn-out and frequent turn-over, I suggest some award system such as a sabbatical year for activists. That could recruited firmly committed activists to the feminist movement organisation for a long time or even for their life time. This also will enable the feminist movement to flourish in the new millennium as before. More importantly, what the implication of feminist practices are for feminism in general and the feminist movement need to be taken seriously.

Finally, does feminism and feminist practices matter? What is the significance of feminist practices in the current context? Feminism as an alternative political perspective, constitutes ‘new ways of seeing, fresh modes of reflection and assessment’ (Narayan 1997: 33). The rapidly changing contemporary society in either local or global context needs critical investigation. A number of urgent tasks, across the world, need a new way of feminist understanding and feminist political movements. Feminists still need to criticise a variety of important social institutions and practices for being flawed and partial. Feminists need to pay more attention to how the institutions and practices have affected women’s lives, prospects, and interests of many women of our national and global communities. Finally, in order to develop ‘more just, equitable, and inclusive institutions and practices at national and international level, and to convey a vivid positive sense of the stakes we have in these changes (Narayan 1997: 37),’ feminism and feminist practices need self-criticism and self-reflection and openness to criticism from other forces.

In regards to organisational practice, the feminist component of feminist organisations will continue to push the boundaries of what is possible when engaging with the state and other organisations. In addition, it would be impossible to articulate opposition and resist cooptation without the existence of a broader feminist movement and the presence of feminism as an alternative political perspective. This also requires the appearance of new activists with a new feminist vision of sexual violence in a shifting socio-political context.

References

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