Naslov
Constructing Yugoslav National Space, 1918-1941

Autori
Duančić, Vedran

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
15th International Conference of Historical Geographers

Mjesto i datum
Prag, Češka Republika, 06.08.2012. - 10.08.2012

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Nije recenziran

Ključne riječi
Yugoslavia ; Geography and Nationalism ; Geographical Narration of the Nation

Sažetak
The paper focuses on the spatial aspects of the cultural debate in interwar Yugoslavia, 1918-1941. The aim is to analyze “geographical” mechanisms employed, on the one hand, in service of creating a new synthetic Yugoslav culture and, on the other hand, to emphasize the unique characteristics of already existing national cultures and identities. Competing scholarly and quasi-scholarly discourses were significantly marked by the usage of spatial tropes – the most important and frequently used was imagining Yugoslavia “in the middle, ” “between East and West” – and should be viewed within a larger framework of the cultural debate, where politics, nationalism (nation-building process), and culture are intrinsically connected. The hypothesis is that after 1918, when the South Slavs (omitting the Bulgarians) were for the first time merged within one country, the lack of shared historical experience caused significant difficulties for promotion of new synthetic culture. Where “history separates, geography gathers ; ” geographers, anthropologists, and ethnographers often linked their expertise to one of the competing political options, favoring centralism and cultural unitarism or federalism and survival of particular cultures. The works of pre-eminent Yugoslav interwar scholars of various political commitments – Jovan Cvijić, Dinko Tomašić, Milovan Gavazzi and others – and their contribution to the cultural debate, with particular focus on spatial categories they employed, will be analyzed, since the positioning of Yugoslav culture was a vital precondition for its sustainability. Promotion of stronger ties with West or a call for development of more indigenous cultural forms was inherently linked to the self-imagining of the contemporary Yugoslav public. The role of cultural geography was twofold ; it partly emphasized the Yugoslavian importance in the maintenance of the Versailles system and “civilizational affiliations, ” but primarily reflected the country’s internal political, economic, and cultural differences and hope that a common cultural space, if not history, can help to overcome them.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Povijest

POVEZANOST RADA