hrvatski

Punk, gender and politics in Croatia

This presentation will introduce key findings of the ethnography case study ´Anti-fascist punk activism´ that was conducted as a part of the MYPLACE project. The objectives of the project were to explore how young people´s social participation is shaped by the shadows (past, present and future) of totalitarisms and populism in Europe. Through 21 in-depth interviews with members of the local anti- fascist organization, members of the non-profit collective that organises punk concerts and members of local punk bands, most common topics that would occurred were related to personal understanding of politics, gender issues and violence. During the fieldwork it was noted that there is strong disunity and fragmentation of the punk scene in Zagreb, which could be caused by the different understanding and meaning attributed to declaring oneself politically. However, most of the respondents in this study who declared themselves antifascists belong to the contemporary ´antifa punk´ scene rooted in the protest movements of the 1990s (reclaim the streets action, food not bombs, etc.) as well as in anti-nationalist resistance to retraditionalization processes in Croatian society. Most of the respondents expressed critical views on contemporary politics and a certain wish to subvert dominant discourse, but when talking about specific practices and activities for changing thereof, there is a certain gap in emancipatory rhetoric of some of them. One of the main examples of this can be seen in the understanding of gender roles. Except for activism scene where women are still a big part of organisational and managing teams, in other areas, such as bands, audience or even pogo dance, the ratio of men and women is uneven. This leads to the conclusions that the understanding of gender roles on the punk scene in Croatia is not significantly different to ones of general and more mainstream culture.

Politics, anti-fascism, gender, apolitical

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