The Neoliberal Feminist Divestment from Care in Domestic Violence Prevention Advocacy in Serbia and Croatia

Vanja Petrović; Jana Kujundžić; Nina Čolović

doi:10.25038/am.v0i28.637

Authors

Vanja Petrović Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Jana Kujundžić School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom
Nina Čolović Institute for Ethnology and Folklore Studies, Zagreb, Croatia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i28.637

Keywords:

material care; feminist advocacy; violence; post-Yugoslav region; survivors; carceral feminism; abolition feminism.

Abstract

Drawing on abolition feminism and critical feminist discourse analysis, the article critiques the overreliance of the mainstream feminist advocacy on the police and criminal legal system as the solution for femicide and gendered violence. Our article aims to investigate how carceral politics constructs the ways in which domestic violence is understood and approached in Croatia and Serbia, and how such politics constrains and conditions material care for survivors. During the last few years, we trace the path of local feminisms in becoming increasingly immersed in the interests of the punitive state, and the implications for the lives of the people they claim to represent. Analyzing recent research and policy documents from Serbia and Croatia, we are committed to documenting these tendencies and to their critical consideration.

Author Biographies

Vanja Petrović, Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, Serbia

Vanja Petrović (1987) is a nonbinary community organizer, activist, and PhD candidate in ocial policy and social work at the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science. Her research is interdisciplinary, spanning across gender and queer studies, social policy, and activist practices. She is one of the founders of an abolition feminism collective in Novi Sad. Before becoming an activist, she worked as a journalist, editor and translator.

Jana Kujundžić, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom

Jana Kujundžić (1989; Zagreb, Yugoslavia) is an Associate Professor in Criminology and Sociology at Northumbria University, United Kingdom. Her research focuses on the socio-legal structures and institutional power dynamics of gendered violence as well as abolitionist feminist responses to state violence. She obtained her PhD in Criminology in 2022 from the University of Essex, Department of Sociology. She holds two MA degrees, one in Gender Studies from the Central European University and the other in Sociology from the University of Zagreb. She has written for feminist and regional leftist portals such as Libela.org, Voxfeminae.net and Lefteast.org. She is a long-term grassroots organizer and member of queer, feminist and antifascist collectives.

Nina Čolović, Institute for Ethnology and Folklore Studies, Zagreb, Croatia

Nina Čolović (1989) is a researcher in the social sciences and humanities at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb. Her work explores the history and mechanisms of linguistic regulation, as well as the potential for developing methodologies in critical discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, critical pedagogy, and social semiotics. She engages with a wide spectrum of debates on social and economic justice, particularly through the lenses of Marxist, anarchist, feminist, and queer praxis.

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The Neoliberal Feminist Divestment from Care in Domestic Violence Prevention Advocacy in Serbia and Croatia

Authors

DOI:

Keywords:

Abstract

Author Biographies

Vanja Petrović, Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, Serbia

Jana Kujundžić, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom

Nina Čolović, Institute for Ethnology and Folklore Studies, Zagreb, Croatia

References

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