engleski

Placing the Urban: the use of urban imagery in Balkanist representations of Croatia in International Guidebooks

The paper, as part of an ongoing larger project on politics of representation in tourism industry, addresses the ways in which images of the city were used in select guidebooks, produced for international audiences, on Croatia, during 2003-2013, a decade marking the start of the country's EU membership negotiation process and its EU entry. Drawing from cultural geography, urban and cultural studies, this paper looks at discursive attempts by these guidebooks to locate Croatia on the Euro-centric map, where Europe's West remains encoded as the origin of the modern and civilised world and the Balkans (an ambiguous space in-between West and East) continues to be imagined as a society in permanent transition, the outcome of which is assessed by the West. Focusing on how the representation of Croatia, itself consisting of former Austro-Habsburg, borderline Ottoman, and Venetian/Italian territories and heritage, changed during the ten-year period, I demonstrate that the semiotic mapping of the country in international guidebooks matched the country's 'path' from the messy, war-torn Balkans into the 'united Europe'. References to war and familiar (unvaried) Balkan lawlessness were gradually replaced with references to street smart lifestyles and Central European architectural heritage. During that transformation, as Croatia discursively 'travelled' from the Balkan peninsula into Central Europe, whilst remaining in its place, images of cities were given a central function, to invoke a classical contrast to rural spaces and cultures, and thus to emphasise Croatia's Europe's orientation (accompanied by images of youngsters in Zagreb's city centre), whereas the countryside remained the site of pristine beauty and pre-modern, Balkan 'ways of life'.

guidebooks ; Croatia ; urban space ; city ; representation

nije evidentirano