engleski

Divided Space or Divided Society?

This chapter focuses on practices of divisions in everyday life in Vukovar, Eastern Croatia. This city was an arena of destroyed armed conflict at the beginning of the 1990s. The main thesis of the author is that divisions are not geographically visible, but they mainly occur in public and ‘private’ spaces. The model of four-level divisions of urban space is developed. It comprises the following groups: formal, political, informal and symbolic divisions. The formal divisions could be seen in a form of separated schooling and the educational process. The second group also concerns formal division connected to the right to use minority language and script in some parts of Croatia. This possibility became the reason for political divisions and served as a forum for political games between political parties at both the local and national level. The informal divisions are deeply rooted in society and show similarities and differences in most plausible ones. In the chapter, the last group is illustrated by examples of divisions in the sphere of housing and commerce. The last group concerns places of symbolic divisions as religious objects and memory sites that underline divisions in public space even more.

Vukovar · Divided city · Divided society · Urban public spaces

nije evidentirano