engleski

Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on Minority Religious Communities during Socialist Time in Croatia

Long-lasting efforts of minority religious communities in Croatia during socialist and post-socialist time for legal recognition, visibility and nominal acceptability shed a light on cultural, national/ethnic and religious identities construction in Croatian society today. Collected historical documents gathered from “liminal” religious community archive relate to diverse communication practices between their representatives and governmental institutions. Documents include private letters, more hidden and intimate ethnographic narratives, along with official administrative reports or notes indicating diverse structural patterns of social hierarchy. Aiming to give subjective perspective of interlocutors on the processes occurred on seemingly peripheral field of political interest ; we introduced ethnographic approach and conducted in-depth interviews with representatives involved in diverse religious minority community establishment. We hypothesized that enduring struggle for minority religious rights and cultural recognition and lack of transparent institutional support influenced ambiguous sociocultural outcomes, and mirror changeable and dynamic political and sociocultural context. Moreover, we show that development of complex and non-transparent communication patterns between institutions and individuals or groups creates widespread perception of permanent segregation encouraging one-dimensional national and religious identification practice. Representing those events from diverse perspectives, we describe and reexamine formal relationships toward religious minority groups in former Yugoslavia likewise in current Croatia.

anthropology, archives, religioius studies

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