STRATEGIC NONVIOLENCE AND HUMOR: THEIR SYNERGY AND ITS LIMITATIONS: A Case Study of Nonviolent Struggle led by Serbia’s Otpor A thesis submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for University Honors by Anne M. Lucas December, 2010 A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S I first joyfully thank God for an abundance of unmerited goodness throughout the process of creating this thesis. Hallelujah! Highest praise to You, O Lord. To my mom, Gina Lucas, I say a heartfelt thank you for instilling a respect for life in me, your warm silliness and outright ridiculousness, all the times you read to us growing up, the way you create and pick up funny phrases and jokes, your deep appreciation for and bold affirmation of other’s gifts and your love for me. To my dad, Mark Lucas, I say a genuine thank you for passing on your love of knowledge and understanding, your goofy impersonations and tell-all, funny facial expressions, all the times you initiated interactive learning experiences with me and your love for me. Thank you both for teaching me to work hard and then play hard. To my brother, Andrew “Bubba” Lucas, I say thank you for genuine conversations about strategic nonviolence, the military and ethics. I thank you for your contemplative honesty, consideration of perspectives different from your own as well as your fun-lovingness. I hope and pray you come to know how deeply you have influenced my life’s path, including the topics of this thesis. To my grandma, Violet Harrigan, I say thank you for your unwavering affection towards me, your hilarious impropriety, your tenacity for life and your interest in people that fed my interest in social science. Thank you for getting me to walk on my own two legs when I still wanted you to carry me from that street corner at age four. And thank you (to all four of you) for weaving humor into the fabric of our lives, especially in the fight against our own pride and fear. Thank you for putting up with this whole “thesis iii business.” I love you and I pray that I honor and care for you each and for you collectively with my life, including my scholarship. To Pat Coy, I thank you for pouring knowledge and care upon me, cultivating the visionary in me, listening patiently to my preposterous verbal processing, forgiving me when I made poor decisions, respecting me as a scholar and a person and giving this project an extraordinary amount of your time and energy. Thank you for doing your best to discern when to give me the compass and let me loose and when to give me the whole darn map so I could get back on track. Three years ago, you drew back the curtains of ignorance toward an entire landscape of conflict management and conflict transformation. This year, as I conclude a season of my life, I thank you for continuing to open students’ eyes to the variety of perspectives, strategies and histories that make the Center for Applied Conflict Management what it is. To Landon Hancock, I thank you for your willingness to pull on some waders and jump into the swamp. Thank you for your commitment to clarity in my writing, your wit and approachability, sharing your knowledge in writing, teaching, public speaking, Microsoft office and your appreciation for political satire particularly in the form of comic strips. I have thoroughly enjoyed and been challenged by your classes and by working with you in this endeavor. To both Pat and Landon, thank you for apprenticing me as a social scientist and ensuring that my first substantial work is articulate and my assertions well-founded. And thank you for coaxing me into the world of academic cyber-storage, namely RefWorks and EndNote. I trust that understanding these tools will increasingly prove to be a great asset as I continue doing iv research. To all the faculty of the Center for Applied Conflict Management, thank you for contributing your individual gifts in a variety of fields for the betterment of students, the wider Kent community and others. I am a better friend, co-worker, scholar, daughter and global citizen because of the skills and history with which you have challenged me. To Mary Anne Skinner, thank you for your warmth, consistently listening and sharing in this journey with me. To Babacar M’baye, Sara Newman and Rich Stanislaw, thank you immensely for your time, brain power and care. Thank you for your editing assistance, your content analysis and incredible encouragement. The defense was quite an experience and I have been sharpened as iron against iron and delighted as scholar amongst scholar because of your efforts. To Pat, Babacar, Sara and Landon thank you for your solid dedication and the wonderful positivity you have provided even when I failed to meet deadlines. I cannot adequately express how my heart jumped a beat and did a little dance inside my chest whenever I read your encouraging e-mails or spoke with you in person. To Pat, Landon, Babacar, Sara and Rich, thank you for your own pursuit of understanding, your commitment to the academy and equally as strong commitment to make your work and yourselves accessible to students with all types of perspectives, weaknesses and interests, including me. To Vicki Bocchicchio, for supportive words, long-term focus and clear suggestions especially at difficult points in the thesis writing process I say, “thank you!” To Lori Michael, Sally Yankovich and Judy Yasenosky for all the times you have greeted v me warmly, listened to me graciously, given me invaluable tidbits of advice and celebrated victories throughout the thesis process, thank you, thank you, thank you! To good, good friends, who have supported me in prayer, affirmation, service and being themselves in various seasons of this journey. Thank you for allowing God to love on me through you in this thesis endeavor. I especially want to thank Fre, that is Firehiwot Achamyeleh, Chelsea Holsopple, Anna Dowell, Vanessa Opoku and Tamara Williams. You each offered special gifts of yourselves to me, bringing me great joy and instigating ridiculously deep belly-laughs. I love you and am grateful for you. To Pastor Bryndon Glass, Elder Yvonne Glass and others of our church family who prayed for me, checked in on me and even helped me process the process and content of this thesis. Thank you for fueling me to glorify God in all aspects of my life. To the whole SPAN family, thank you for challenging and helping me to strive for a healthy balance of work and rest. Thank you for being people who love God, love people, work diligently, appreciate humor and enjoy spreading life. Lastly, most of the foundational scholarship that I build upon is from Western scholars. For each of the fields this thesis combines (i.e. conflict transformation, humor, sociology and qualitative research), there are many scholars whose work I simply could not include because of time restraints, language limitations, and the complexity of weaving together an even greater variety of perspectives. It is here that I want to acknowledge and tribute all the world’s scholars outside the West especially those in the vi Global South, who have contributed to these fields. I greatly look forward to learning more from you and to the exchange and synthesis of our scholarship. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Research Question and Scope .............................................................................. 1 1.1.1 The Thesis’ Research Niche ......................................................................... 2 1.1.2 Conflict Transformation ................................................................................ 3 1.1.3 Strategic Nonviolence and Models of Political Power ................................... 4 1.1.4 Uncertainty as Power to Provoke or Transform ........................................... 6 1.1.5 My Definition of Humor ............................................................................... 7 1.2 Social Context: Recent Serbian Culture, Politics and History ............................. 8 1.2.1 President Milošević’s Regime and Its Strategy for Self-Preservation .......... 8 1.2.2 Nationalism and Communism..................................................................... 11 1.2.3 The Main Characters: Otpor and “the Opponent” Group ........................... 12 1.2.4 Timeline of Otpor’s Development .............................................................. 15 1.3 Thesis Profile...................................................................................................... 16 2 Research Design........................................................................................................ 20 2.1 Methodology, Research Question and In-dwelling ............................................ 20 2.2 Data Collection Methods .................................................................................... 22 2.3 Informant Selection and Profiles ........................................................................ 23 2.4 Protocol Formation ............................................................................................. 25 2.5 Interview Mechanics .......................................................................................... 29 2.6 Document Collection.......................................................................................... 30 2.7 Data Analysis ....................................................................................................