Anthropology of East Europe Review

Vol. 11, Nos. 1-2 Autumn, 1993

Special Issue: War among the Yugoslavs

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ETHNOGRAPHY OF A WAR: CROATIA 1991-92

Maja Povrzanovic
Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb, Croatia

Introduction: Fieldwork within the Context of War:

Edward Said once claimed "... there is no discipline, no structure of knowledge, no institution or epistemology that can or has ever stood free of the various socio-cultural, historical, and political formations that give epochs their peculiar individuality (Said 1989:211)." Today, many theoretical and discursive revaluations of "the hopelessly overlapping, impossibly over-interpreted and conflicted anthropological site" attack ethnographic authority. Whether responses are "aesthetic" or "reductively pragmatic," as Said put it, the problem of reconciling the claims of ideology and desire with the needs of theory and observation, underlies the very grounds of all our efforts. In this article I focus on this problem using the example of my actual research on coping with fear in a war situation, that of Croatia in 1991-1992.

In this essay I first discuss the relationship of war and anthropological writing in Croatia. Subsequently I present some notes on everyday-life in Croatia in summer 1991, and discuss this "conflicted anthropological site" as a research issue which poses dilemmas about the possible position and role of the anthropologist in war, namely the Croatian anthropologist in Croatia 1991/92. In the last two sections I focus on several theoretical questions put by critical American cultural anthropologists (Marcus, Fischer, Clifford and others), to consider their relevance for a native anthropologist in the midst of a war situation, as well as point out the political implications of writing about a war.

Croatia is in a state of war. It began in May 1991, escalated from September through December 1991, and as I write these lines in May 1992, its end is not in sight. This is not a classical civil war nor only a confrontation between two nationalistic movements. It is not a function of resistance to European integration nor merely a conflict initiated by two equally conservative and militant presidents. Some very old political and economic problems underlie this war and one might even suggest that this conflict and the decay of Yugoslavia as a multinational state under Serbian hegemony was predictable from its very foundation in 1918. After World War Two the Serb partisan elite succeeded in using communist ideology to perpetuate their hegemony in the second Yugoslav state, thus enabling economic exploitation of the most prosperous republics of Slovenia and Croatia, as well as a systematic denial of the diversity of national identity in all Yugoslav nations. The concept of nation, as well as the concrete inter- (or intra-) national relations were not taken seriously, for there were no ideological means for coping with the existence of separate nations and national interests within Yugoslavia. What we witnessed in Croatia 1991/92, then, is the most violent destruction of communist rhetoric of "brotherhood and unity." However, though the conflict was embedded in the system as such, it could have been dealt with initially by political means. However, Serb nationalist-socialist rulers rejected such means of confrontation, and did nothing to prevent the violence. Moreover, they sent Serbs to the front to keep their own ruling position in any kind of "third Yugoslavia," preservable only by production of an enemy in a war.

In the meantime, 3,000 Croats were killed, another 8,000 are missing and presumed dead, and more than 700,000 are homeless. In the last decade of the twentieth century, in the midst of Europe, every seventh Croat is a refugee in his or her own country. A third of the country is in ashes. Numerous villages and several towns are fully destroyed. And while I do not have official data about the Serbs (there are doubtless thousands of refugees who fled to Serbia, as well as many thousands of Serbian victims) it must be remembered that the war is taking place in Croatia only.

The fact that church towers were always the first targets and that the monuments protected by UNESCO were purposely damaged is an indication of the importance of culture in this war. The Serbian government is not trying to protect the Serb minority in Croatia, but trying to conquer Croatian territory to create a "Greater Serbia." To their way of thinking no Croatian presence should remain in the conquered territory and Catholic churches are material evidence of that Croatian cultural tradition. Even in ruins, they affront Serb rhetoric about "gaining back the territory belonging to Serbia." (In early 1992, there was a round table on Serbian television where art-historians and other intellectuals agreed that the completely destroyed and now occupied baroque town of Vukovar should be rebuilt in Byzantine style! )

The war is not over yet, and in one way or another, we are all its victims; simply by being Croatian. Its political absurdity and physical violence is shocking. Mostly old men and women who couldn't or didn't want to flee are massacred by their former neighbors. Fields are burnt and houses bombed by "our people's army", as the Yugoslav federal army was once called. Violence produces violence and there are war crimes on both sides. This war is a tragedy for the thousands of Croats, Serbs, Hungarians, and other ethnic groups; for families that have lost their members. As for the three year old girl seen at TV who lost both her legs: who can care about her nationality?! By the end of April 1992, there were 18,000 war invalids registered in Croatia with an average age of 24 years.

In spite of all the critique of Croatian politicians and in spite of different reactions to Croatian propaganda, the war has genuinely provoked both a high degree of national homogenization in opposition to the enemy, and also a spontaneous, deep identity with and sentiment of belonging to Croatia which, until recently was only an abstraction and a feeling unknown to most intellectuals, myself included. Today, no one can tell how long this historically new feeling of unity will last and what kind of future it portends. At the moment, the only certainty is that values have been repositioned while what the process of returning to "normal life" will mean in social and cultural terms is completely unknown.

Almost every Croat intellectual is trying to do something now. Remaining passive is not only judged as morally inappropriate but also seems to be emotionally unbearable. Thus, many intellectuals and artists volunteer as soldiers or help the refugees in various ways. From rock-musicians to Academy of Science members, people are writing, publishing, composing, recording, talking, painting, shooting photos, participating in aid-concerts, or giving lectures abroad. There is an enormous output of popular songs, documentary and art photos, paintings and poems dedicated to the struggle for freedom and peace. The first war-novel appeared recently, as well as a documentary book on the tragedy of Vukovar.

So, as an anthropologist in a war situation what can one do, and how can one act or respond? Are there really any options, or are they all structurally - institutionally, politically, emotionally - predetermined? What about the obligations arising out of one's identification with the victimized nation? Would such tasks threaten the scientific claims of our efforts? Is there any need for humanities in the war at all? What about remaining silent for a while? Should one focus on post-war cultural processes instead? Wouldn't that be the wisest thing to do?

My colleagues at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb organized an interdisciplinary project called "The Poetics of Resistance." The results will appear in the forthcoming issue of our journal Narodna umjetnost. The Board of the Croatian Ethnological Society reacted by proposing the theme "The War as Seen by the Ethnologist" for the annual meeting in 1992. It is uncertain whether or not some of the very few colleagues from Belgrade (the capital of Serbia and of ex-Yugoslavia) who maintained contact with us, will be invited to the annual meeting of Croatian ethnologists as they were in preceding years or, if invited, they would even accept.

There is also a need for an ethnography of this war written from the other side. While the war is about Serbian aggression against Croatia, many thousands of Serbs who died in Croatia were not volunteers. There is a peace-movement in Serbia, there are groups of opposition intelluctuals who try to publish anti-war articles in Belgrade. An analysis of the war by those anthropologists who did not submit to Serbian propaganda would be especially welcome and certainly contribute to a more detailed picture of the numerous faces of the war that cannot be seen or heard from within Croatian borders.

Recent History of the War: Values, Symbols, and Economic Context:

By destroying the traditional fabric of society, the long years of Communist Party rule in East European countries dismantled most traditional points of social identification. When people sought to distance themselves from official ideology one of the few positive reference points to use was their national identity. As Salecl (1990:25) suggests:

In the new struggles for ideological hegemony, national identification is used by the opposition as well as by the old Party forces. On the one hand, national identity serves as a support for the formation of a specific version of the 'moral majority' (in Poland, Slovenia and Croatia, etc.) which conceives Christian values as the ideological 'cement' holding together the Nation...; on the other hand, the Communist party in some countries (Serbia, for example) has assumed an authoritarian populist-nationalist discourse, thus producing a specific mixture of orthodox Communist elements and elements usually associated with fascism (violent mass movements structured around a charismatic leader and directed towards an external-internal enemy, etc)...Both nationalist movements-the opposition moral majorities and the- authoritarian-populist Communist parties-have built their power by creating specific fantasies of a threat to the nation and so put themselves forward as the protector of...our being part of a nation.

Similar to elsewhere in post-communist East Europe, the regime in Croatia aspired to a radical reversal of society. This process was the context for the outbreak of war. Politically and economically the Croat government legally enabled democratic institutions, promoted staff changes at all levels, and enjoined state planning in favor of a competitive market economy. Symbolically the state encouraged the use of the Croatian coat of arms, a new flag and anthems, as well as old "nationalistic" songs forbidden during Communist times. However, because such symbolic aspects of Croatian identity were repressed for forty-five years, their use exploded overnight caught up in the euphoria of independence. In this transformation the Serbs in Croatia, who had extensively identified themselves with the communist regime, suddenly became a national minority and lost the status of a constituent, often privileged, nation. In particular, the symbolic changes after the 1990 elections provoked them but their dread of Ustashi, i.e. fascist, symbols was cleverly intensified and manipulated in the Serbian mass media. The war in Croatia thus sprang from the fears of the local Serb populations encouraged by the Serbian leadership and heated up by immoderate statements of some Croatian politicians.

Thus the early fears, barricades, and armed skirmishes in 1991 grew from countless irrationalities. However, they soon became a decisive reality as the majority of Serbs developed their own interpretation of events based on interpretations of marginal and extremist individuals. For example, in July 1991 Belgrade TV filmed a Serb girl from Mirkovci near Vinkovci who, in the battle on that day, had just killed a Croatian soldier. The TV newscaster said that she "had the will and knew how to use arms which she learned quickly from her father and her brother." Eyes shining and in a voice which left no doubt, she said: "Right here is where I shall die if necessary, right here" on the ruins of her hearth and home, destroyed by artillery fire. (TV Digest, Croatian TV, July 1991). She was very young, very beautiful and believed she was attacked because she was a Serb. She was among the first innocent victims of this war, the victim of political manipulation.

All nationalism is based on the fantasy of an enemy; no matter what he really does, his very existence is perceived as threatening. Thus as the fighting heated up fantasy increased and so too did hate and fear. A political "case" was created which served as the pretext for suspension of relations between the Serbian Democratic Party and the Croatian Parliament and the way was opened to militaristic solutions of the Serbian question in Croatia. For many Serbs, their subjective experience of impending danger was, without doubt, the crucial motive for their behavior, despite the fact that it was, almost in its entirety, stimulated from Serbia through the press and other media. The communist circles in Serbia needed the war in Croatia to strengthen their own political position. By arming the Serbs in Croatia, and giving them political support, Serbia claimed to protect its co-nationals. But after conquering and destroying so many Croatian towns and regions with no Serb majority, and especially after all that has been done in Bosnia and Hercegovina, it seems that no one can deny that such statements were just a part of Serbian propaganda. The official Serbia still claims that all Serbs have the right to live in one state and the old idea of forming a Greater Serbian state is, unfortunately, being actualized.

The general uncertainty about the economy at all social levels in Croatia was also a factor. After the decades of social and psychological certainty of static East European socialism, only a minority of people were prepared for market competition. In April 1991 unemployment in Croatia was 1000 times higher than one year before. While the State guaranteed a four-member family an income of Dinars 5,587, Dinars 13,915 was estimated necessary to cover basic needs. In mid-July 1991 the guaranteed minimum wage in Croatia was increased to Dinars 3,800, the equivalent of Deutschmark 172. (At the same time in Zagreb, a bed in a two person room for a student cost DM 100, and the rent for a two-room sublet flat (excluding utilities) was DM 500. At the end of May 1991 Croatia (with less than 5 million inhabitants) had 250,000 registered unemployed, and another 250,000 employees in insolvent companies were to join them soon. Reported theft in the cities was 20% higher than a year before and there were a large number of first offenders among the arrested, some no doubt prompted to steal from necessity. Meanwhile both black markets in foreign exchange and consumer goods continued to thrive, and newspapers published interviews with people so poor they were forced to sell their used clothes at the markets. To make matters worse, for the first time since 1945 the 1991 harvest was carried out under war-time conditions. Serb terrorists set fire to the wheat fields and fired on workers from sniper hideouts. It is assumed that over 6,000 ha. remained unharvested due to the risk of death to the farm workers.

Everyday Life in War-Time: Fragments of Texts:

Headlines from a single issue of the daily Vjesnik on July 24, 1991 paint a graphic picture of wartime Croatia: "Terrorist Attacks and Explosions Throughout Croatia; Killings, Thefts, Beatings; Explosives Found in Car; The Shooting Continues; Terrorist Crime in Benkovac-Beating the Heart Patient; Calls for Blood Donations; Army Accused of Crimes; Aircraft Attack Guardsmen; Shooting in the Drni Municipality; Shots Fired in Konavle Too; Explosion near Bjelovar; New Explosions in Rijeka; Must Abandon Their Homes; Truth is the First Victim of War"

From April 1991 the Croatian media described frequent attacks on doctors and ambulance teams and intentional firing at cultural monuments. From Borovo Selo, Struga, and Dalj came incredible news of massacres of the wounded and of mass murder. TV commentary accompanying pictures of destruction compared events to the Second World War. Especially disheartening was the negation of the values of neighborhood relations and hospitality, which are essential characteristics in the South Slav regions. Croats from a village in the hinterland of ibenik, under grenade attack from neighboring Serb villages, asked themselves: "How can they, when it was only yesterday that they ate and drunk in our homes?" (Croatian TV, July 1991)

A fifty year old woman from Vodjinci told me about behavior of a Serb man with whom she had worked at a farm for years: "Since the beginning of Milosevic's rule in Serbia, his behavior became provocative. He often talked about Serbs, offered me "Drina" cigarettes, but asked if I preferred "Croatia" cigarettes at the same time, although he knows well I never smoked." In May 1991, the postman's apartment in Vodjinci was demolished by several local youth. The people didn't like to talk about it, but I had the impression they approved of the act. The postman was a Serb (one of the few in Vodjinci) and it was widely believed his son took part in killing Croatian policemen in Borovo Selo in early May 1991. As proof of the postman's complicity they told me that since April 1991, he always left Vodjinci several days before an armed encounter or terrorist act in the surrounding region, claiming he was ill. After the postal apartment was demolished, he returned to pick up his things and left Vodjinci.

A seventeen-year old girl from the area around Karlovac, in 1992 a refugee in Opatija, cried on German TV while telling how the Serbs she lived with changed their behavior: "Three or four years ago, they suddenly started naming their children Srboljub (literally, one who loves Serbs)." In the same broadcast on inter-ethnic marriages in Croatia, a Croatian girl who fled from Vukovar said that even now she can imagine herself marrying a Serb, but that she is sure they would have to live abroad. "After all they did to us, he wouldn't be able to live in Croatia," she explained, "and I would never live in Serbia" (TV Bayern, May 25, 1992).

As it is almost impossible to travel, many Croats managed to maintain relations with friends, colleagues, and relatives "on the other side" by telephone or letter. However, many such contacts have been cut off either by inaction or due to political arguments. Such was the case of two sixty-year old Croatian women in Zagreb who were friends since university. One of them, married to a Serb, condoned the behavior of Serbs from Knin in summer 1991. As for me, a request from a colleague from Belgrade for a small favor caused me extreme satisfaction, an exaggerated response in different circumstances.

Such was the decline of the fifty, or seventy, years of Yugoslavia with its six peoples, four languages, three religions, two alphabets, the multi-ethnic Yugoslav nationality and its many inter-ethnic marriages. According to the census of 1991, the number of people who declared themselves Yugoslavs has declined precipitously as they declare either the nationality of their mothers or fathers. A noteworthy example was from Vodjinci where a young man from Vinkovci declared himself a Serb, while his brother said he was a Croat. Their father was a Serb and their mother a Croat. In such cases the family was and is under considerable strain. (In 1992, there are indications of increasing divorce rates in such inter-marriages, especially among war refugees.

Daily culture too has been severely affected. One August Sunday my joy of meeting a friend who had returned to Zagreb after a long absence, was dampened by an old lady who chastised us saying: "How can you young people laugh so loudly?" Again the daily Vjesnik from May 4, 1991 describes it well:

Worrying news from Slavonia, Dalmatia and Lika have emptied the streets, there is no sign of that typical throng on the eve of the weekend, the coffee-shops are unusually empty, it's nothing better in the shops, and on the faces of the rare passers-by there is an indelible trace of fears and disquiet. Everybody is hurrying somewhere, there are no relaxing conversations, the groups on the corso are small. It is as though everyone lives from news bulletin to news bulletin on television and on radio, which is best shown by empty streets and empty pubs at the time when the main evening news is broadcast, during which all conversation stops, even in the coffee-shops.

In a couple of months, disbelief, apprehension, and bitterness in Zagreb grew into fear, horror, and anger. May 1991: candles were lit in windows throughout Croatia in memory of the people massacred in Borovo Selo. July 1991: civil defense units handed out leaflets with instructions on how to act in the event of air raids. (The inhabitants of Zagreb heard their first air raid on September 8, 1991). May 1991: The mayor of Zagreb called for mass registration in the volunteer (unarmed) units of the National Defense force. August 1991: there were more applications for the Croatian army than could be accepted due to the lack of arms and suitable training conditions. Posters called for the population to attend protest gatherings, to give material aid to the displaced persons, the media called for blood donors, bank account numbers were publicized asking for "help in buying medicines and medical material for those wounded in the defense of Croatia."

In the regions directly involved in military operations, people have for months slept at the homes of neighbors in safer houses, or stayed with friends or relatives in more distant places. A man from Borovo Naselje sent his children to relatives in Zagreb, and he and his wife lived for weeks with friends in Vukovar, from where, risking his life, he made a daily journey by car to feed his pigs and poultry. Subsequently that whole region became the front, Vukovar has been destroyed, and the man does not know if his house in Borovo Naselje still stands.

In July 1991, people from Hrvatska Kostajnica "have been sleeping in the cellars for fifteen days. They held on despite the disappearance of electricity, water, bread, basic food stuffs, and everything else necessary for a normal life. When seeing that the people from Kostajnica were not giving in and fleeing, the Army shelled Hrvatska Kostajnica with the excuse that an aircraft had been fired on. The elementary school, the Medical Center and kindergarten, and two family houses were hit (Ve ernji list, August 1, 1991)." The Army used heavy artillery for days against Croats without weapons. When a convoy of refugees from Pounja reached Hrvatska Kostajnica, panic ensued. The people were no longer able to bear living in such horrendous uncertainty and they left. They arrived at Zagreb in a column a couple of kilometers long, hundreds of cars, trucks, tractors with trailers pulling livestock, several Serbs among them. They organized a refugee "watch" on the central square, evoking mixed feelings among many people in Zagreb: sympathy for these unhappy people, and also discomfort at the pathetic sight. (This consisted of four people standing under a sun umbrella, Croatian flags behind them, a Croatian coat-of-arms in front, with glowing candles, and a cardboard box carrying a handwritten call for "Your contribution for the refugees".)

What it really means to abandon or lose one's home is known only to those who have experienced this misfortune. The home does not have only material value, but also an exceptional symbolic value; it represents the point where the symbols of personal, family, and birth-place identity meet. Being torn from one's own existential context is tragic; loss of home is more tragic than loss of homeland. Refugees bear witness to the fear of death and fear for their lives in the future, to their misery, anger, disappointment, feeling of helplessness, injustice and humiliation.

The refugees are almost exclusively women (apart from old men and children) and in all media interviews express their deep gratitude for the assistance given, but:

they say that in Opatija, although they lack for nothing, they feel confined...They do not have their rhythm of life and this is something which nobody can compensate for. Everybody repeats the same sentence: 'We want peace, so we can go back to our homes'. In the hotel lobby, they do not take their eyes from the TV and the latest news which makes everyone, even the children, more anxious. Frightened children's voices are heard saying: 'Mama, they are going to bomb us!' (Globus, Aug 23, 1991).

In strained anticipation of the next news bulletin, nervous and idle, out of their minds with the uncertainty of waiting, fearing for the men of the family who remained behind to defend their homes, worried about the possibility of a stay of many months, women from East Slavonian towns arengrad, Ilok and Vukovar made a written request that they be returned in five busses from Opatija to their homes in August 1991. They took the full responsibility for the move upon themselves.

Children's playgrounds in Zagreb in the summer of 1991 were only a little more lively than usual during the summer months, and gave no indication of the state of war. However, at the same time in the Banija region, a three-year old boy in a refugee column picked up by a Croatian soldier said: "Don't kill me; I'm a good boy..." In Vodjinci etnici (chetniks) actualized folklore by replacing the baba roga (bogey-man) of children's stories. Throughout Croatia children played guardsmen and chetniks. In Zagreb, a girl of six, the daughter of a Croatian mother and Serbian father, came home from kindergarten with a question: "Mama, why should all Serbs be butchered?"

Perhaps only children can provide joy, the possibility of a true spiritual distancing from a war situation, and the belief that "the time after the war" will really come one day-and consequently, a measure of mental stability. Fear for one's children, regardless of how grown-up they may be, was (and still is) felt by all parents in Croatia-Croats, Serbs and all other nationalities-as well as in other parts of ex-Yugoslavia. In the summer of 1991, this was especially true for the parents of the soldiers doing their mandatory service in the Yugoslav National Army. For days in July 1991, prayer meetings were held on Zagreb's central square "for soldiers in the Y(N)A". The mothers' revolt, as the parents' movement was called, received much attention in the media; the mothers' messages reached a wide public both in Croatia and abroad: "Mothers from all the republics - let your voices be heard - protect your children"; "Mothers of soldiers, unite! Let us save our innocent children!"; "Generals, where are your sons?"; "Give peace a chance!". A peace movement grew from the protest movement of mothers/parents of soldiers throughout Yugoslavia. But, of course, it could not prevent the military aggression in Croatia 1991/92, as well as in Bosnia and Hercegovina 1992.

The very real possibility of a military coup in Croatia on January 25, 1991, and the psychosis provoked by the rumors of this occurred while we were still preoccupied with the war in the Gulf. We had no way of knowing that that period was a pre-war experience of collective fear for us, the first in a series of many. On Easter Sunday 1991, we experienced collective shock due to the news of the bloody clash between police forces and insurgents at Plitvice Lakes. An even greater shock came a month later with photos of a terrorist mutilation of the dead bodies of policemen in Borovo Selo. The shock was compressed into collective anxiety, which has been our constant companion since then. At the end of June 1991, The Yugoslav Federal Army attacked Slovenia, which resulted in an upsurge of fear in Croatia which, unfortunately, was justified.

Since the beginning of the war in Slovenia, in most Croatian houses television is on all the time. One literally "lives from news bulletin to news bulletin". We can hardly wait to hear the news, but are terrified of hearing it. Even in the peaceful regions, the news is listened a number of times during the day, and watched a number of times in the evening and during the night. For many people, time is conditioned by the schedule of news bulletins and daily activities are planned around the news. (It is so even for me myself, living in Germany since September 1991.) When the war in Bosnia began, I called colleagues in Zagreb, and heard that they were listening to the news at the Institute every hour, just like in the days when Zagreb was under attack. For all those in Croatia who are not subject to direct shelling, the reports on the war are the main content of everyday life and the main theme of conversation.

The war experiences of the people of Zagreb, of the so-called crisis regions, and of the refugees, vary to such great degree that it is impossible to describe them generally. The only commonality that links these people beside basic values (survival, family, home and nation) and basic fears is the receipt of common radio and TV signals. Croatian TV thus mediates between the direct war experiences of soldiers, that of civilians in towns and villages under attack, and of the experiences of the people at the edge of the war (for example in Zagreb, in Istria, and in other Western parts of the country), who live in a condition often termed "neither war, nor peace".

For those living "neither in war, nor in peace", the war is experienced and daily life hence defined largely by media content. For those living in war, media images instruct and thus aid their adaptation to daily war. In August 1991, a TV journalist completed her report from Banija with a shot of a just-married couple and their small wedding party in which all the men, including the groom, were smiling Croatian soldiers in camouflage uniforms. "In Banija, uniforms have become the sole reality," she commented, "but despite everything, or in spite of everything, life goes on (Croatian TV, August 17, 1991)."

Coping with Fear: A Research Project:

In November 1991, two months after arriving in Tübingen for a year's stay with a German scholarship, and after two months of worries, fears, constant search for news, enormous telephone bills and being unable to concentrate on academic questions, I decided to change my PhD topic from "Gathering at open-air places in town-centers," to "War and fear: strategies of adaptation." This topic seemed more relevant, or at least not as sarcastic as the former in light of the new circumstances.

I start with the assumption that the emotions, however individual and part of a person's intimate life, are cultural facts and a culturally shaped dimension of social life. Though they are an essentially individual experience they are made meaningful by collective existence. Culture chooses and gives importance and value to certain emotions, and ignores or suppresses others. The desirable and permissible degree of emotional reaction, and the manner of its expression, are defined by culture. Culture defines the rules for utilization of emotions as a means of communication (cf. Scruton 1986).

Fear is one of the most basic and intensive emotions, and is a response to actual or anticipated danger. The intensity of fear varies from culture to culture, and within the same culture over time, as fears are primarily learned, and determined by culture. Fear is thus a cultural experience that should be approached both from the individual and group perspective, and placed in its historical framework. It can lead to the confirmation and support of mandatory values and norms, but is potentially also a perception of freedom - freedom of choice, and the rejection of existing values and creation of new attitudes, values and behavioral norms that underlie and make collective-or any-action possible (Parkin 1986).

As everyday life during war-time is essentially different from everyday life in peace, it may be assumed that there are no previously determined cultural responses to fears invoked by war-inspired violence. How does culture redefine objective situations of danger and threat? How can the terrifying become domesticated, "tamed", or, at least - familiar? How can fear become an emotion adapted to people's needs and interests?

In war time, there is a need for and interest in adapting in order to survive in physical, as well as in psychological and cultural senses. Therefore, strategies of adaptation are a creative way of facing up to fear invoked by war. Their result is "patterned fear" (ibid.), i.e. fear "confined" in recognizable patterns. Such fear ceases to be wild and unpredictable, and something with which one cannot deal and which destroys the integrity of the individual. Such fear, "processed" by means of culture, aids the individual and the social group, which can exist in terrifying circumstances only if it adapts to them and undertakes rational measures which lead to alteration of such circumstances.

During the war in Croatia in 1991/92, two strategies of adaptation seem prevalent and functional. One, effective primarily at the collective (national) level, is the use of public rituals. The other, effective mainly at the level of the individual and family or neighborhood group, is the routine of everyday life. Rituals serve to control emotions and regulate their expression. Thus I observed numerous religious rituals dedicated to calls for peace, and rituals like mass-gatherings in town squares or funerals of Croatian soldiers "spiced" by the orations of politicians. These were symbolic expressions of community and solidarity, which functioned to control and re-direct negative emotional energy which, when "out of control", could become dangerous, widespread, and in the circumstances of war, ineffective and self-destructive. In the process of adaptation, emotions, and thus collective fear, have an important role to play in communication between people who find themselves in the same circumstances. These are people whose endlessly varying individual characteristics are often reduced to one by war: they become "Croats", "the mothers of soldiers", "the inhabitants of X", or "the refugees from Y", and, at the same time, "brothers and sisters-in-fear" who spontaneously understand each other. The feeling of solidarity/security this understanding produces is, in the circumstances, a positive one. However, what is potentially dangerous, although probably inevitable in war, is the brake the put on social movements, particularly mass education for democracy.

My research also aims to analyze another type of adaptive strategy, the counter-practices to the experience of fear in the context of omni-present violence in the world of home, family and personal network. My own involvement in the war during Summer 1991 is the starting point for such a choice but, as the war escalated, I realized the wide spectrum of strategies of adaptation that second type covers. As of September 1991, with my departure from Croatia and my remove from the threat of war-violence, I only could imagine the fears of the people in Croatia, and admire from a distance how they coped with them. I could hardly believe the news about colleagues working in our institute's library when a bullet slammed into a volume of the general encyclopedia; or about playing scrabble and reading Asterix during long hours spent in cellars; or about people finishing dinner quietly in spite of air-raid alarms; or about baking a birthday cake in Osijek as it was under constant attack; or about wanting to be dressed all in white in spite of lack of water and electricity in Dubrovnik. However, a friend from Zagreb who hid in an air-raid shelter with her three-year old daughter more than forty times, wrote one month ago: