hrvatski

Unlocking non-religiosity in Croatia

Since the comprehensive changes that Croatian society endured from the beginning of the nineties, religiosity became socially desirable and conformist pattern. Conversely, in the public discourse non-religiosity and atheism became phenomena that were seen as remnants of the old communist system, suspicious, and unwanted in the public space. However, during the last decade organized groups of non- religious persons and atheists are beginning to appear in Croatian society. Even though they gather a small number of members, in certain situations they provoke public interest and have the potential to attract a significantly larger number of sympathizers. This work will focus on members of non-religious organizations in order to examine more closely the individual non-religious and atheistic identities (their origin, type, content, structure and development), the ways in which these identities are represented in the predominantly religious society on the level of everyday life in the micro-communities (of family, friends, colleagues) and their perception of their own position (with regard to religious persons). To address the above issues we used qualitative methodology approach and conducted semi- structure interviews with the members of organized groups of non-religious persons and atheists (N = 22). Since there are only few sporadic researches of non-religiosity and atheism in Croatian context, especially after the nineties and since these researches are mostly quantitative, this paper could be seen as an attempt to unblock non-religion methodologically, as well as thematically.

non-religiosity, atheism, Croatia, organizations of non-religious

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