engleski

Perceived importance of recent historical events for national history among Croatian youth

Previous studies using open ended methodology resulted with formulation of three general characteristics of social representations of world history: (a) salience of politics and war ; (b) existence of recency effect (c) salience of Eurocentrism, followed by nation-level ethnocentrism (Liu et al., 2009 ; Liu et al. 2005). The aim of this paper is to examine the robustness of these general characteristics by using closed-ended survey methodology. The paper will present preliminary findings at a national level (collected in the frame of large European project –MY PLACE, funded by the EC FP7, (http://www.fp7-myplace.eu/index.php) about perceived importance of recent historical events for national history among Croatian youth. Survey data were collected from a random sample of young people aged between 16 and 25 (on two areas of the city of Zagreb, N=1200). Participants assessed the perceived importance of the 11 recent historical events: WWI, WWII, Cold War, Fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of socialist regimes, Fascism ; Communism, The NY terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001 ; and three national events: Signature of the Accession Treaty of Croatia (Brussels, 09.11. 2011), Croatian Homeland war (1991-1995) and Independent State of Croatia (1941-43 during the WWII). This close-ended data will be complemented by data from semi-structured interviews with subsample of surveys participants (N=60) about most interesting and/or important parts of Croatian past. Results showed that surveyed Croatian youth, as relatively most important events for country history perceive national and most recent events ; Homeland War (1991-1995) followed by Signature of The Treaty of Accession 2011 and Independent State of Croatia (19941-43 during the WWII). Results are interpreted within a framework of general characteristics of the representation of world history, taking into account differences between this and previous studies, as well as, Croatian context (former Communist country, recent establishment of independence and sovereignty).

perceived importance of historical events; social representation of history; world history; national history; survey methodology

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