Naslov
Remembering Yugoslavia in Public: The Formation of Institutionalized Collective Memories in Authoritarian and Liberal Regimes

Autori
Vučković Juroš, Tanja

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

Skup
Joint PhD Symposium on South East Europe, organized by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), University College London (UCL) i Goldsmiths University of London, London, UK

Mjesto i datum
London, Ujedinjeno Kraljevstvo, 18.06.2010

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
collective memories; elite narratives; public discourse; authoritarian; liberal

Sažetak
The recent boom in the memory studies demonstrates what people living through social changes have always known: the past matters. The past is the key influence in shaping people's perceptions of themselves and the divisions between "us" and "them". Consequently, perceptions of the past are often the fuelling force for conflicts, as well as the building blocks for societal integration. But how do particular perceptions of the past develop and gain dominance? Much of the recent sociological research has focused on the institutional transmission of collective memories and particularly on the influence of the political elites on the dominant perceptions of the past (Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991, Schudson 1992). Political elites usually assume the role of the main memory-producers as they are able to influence the public discourse and to frame the dominant presentations of the past. The most powerful instrument at their disposal is the educational monopoly (Wertsch 2002) – for example, they can use history textbooks to systematically disseminate the official accounts of the past. In addition to the educational monopoly and other public resources, the elite narratives are often complemented or confirmed by the mainstream media accounts of the past, especially in non-liberal societies. But even there, the role of the media, and press journalism in particular, offers a more complex picture of negotiations of the official narratives than simple reproduction. In authoritarian regimes, journalists often have little choice but to follow the official lines and disregard or discredit alternative accounts. Nevertheless, contesting collective memories may still find their way into the oppositional or the underground press. On the other hand, in non-authoritarian regimes, journalists are not required to follow the official lines. However, they are a part of an interpretative community (Zelizer 1992) and so often they do adopt the official versions (Gamson and Modigliani 1989, Beamish, Molotch and Flacks 1995). Even when these versions are challenged, more weight is given to the accounts of the officials than to the challengers (Gamson and Stuart 1992). Therefore, we cannot assume that the public in liberal regimes has considerably greater access to the alternative narratives of the past than the public in authoritarian regimes. The case of Croatia, a former state of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ), is therefore particularly interesting. Croatia's secession from SFRJ in 1991 was followed by a war for independence ending in 1995, and a rule of a nationalist government headed by Franjo Tudjman who kept a strong check on the political opposition and the press. This authoritarian period ended with Tudjman’s death in 1999, and the regime change in 2000 marked a new period of liberalization and democratization. Therefore, this case allows for examining the formation of institutional collective memories on the Croatian Yugoslav past during two sets of social changes: 1) through the transition from a communist to an authoritarian and nationalistic regime in the 1990s, and 2) through the transition to the more liberalizing Croatian period in 2000s. For these purposes, I examined both the official accounts of the Yugoslav past as presented through the history textbooks used in the primary and secondary school in the period 1988-2007 and the journalist narratives of the past as presented in two mainstream and two oppositional Croatian newspapers in the period 1991-2007. The textual analysis of the official textbook and journalistic presentations traces how the official narratives on Yugoslavia have changed throughout the liberalizing transition and the discrepancies (or the lack of them) between the journalistic narratives and the official presentations of the past, as well as the differences between presentations of Yugoslavia in the mainstream and the oppositional press in both the authoritarian and liberal Croatian post-Yugoslav years. This study of the elite and the journalistic narratives in two periods which differ in the degree of governmental control over the public discourse, while holding the object (the same recent and controversial past), as well as other contextual factors (from the examined country to the types of examined newspapers) constant, contributes to a better understanding of the institutional transmission of collective memories. Little difference between the dominant presentations of Yugoslavia in the history textbooks and the mainstream press in the authoritarian and the liberal period would indicate that the authors emphasizing the deference of the mainstream journalism to the elite accounts of the past are right and that the formation of collective memories in liberal regimes is not characterized by a significantly greater variety of alternative voices. But, on the other hand, analyzing potentially dissident presentations of the past in the oppositional press in the authoritarian period adds another layer of complexity to the often-assumed monolithism of non-liberal regimes. Specifically, if the oppositional press served as a source of alternative accounts even in the period in which state controlled much of the public discourse, this indicates that the influence of the state-controlled public discourse on the past in authoritarian regimes should be reconsidered. Furthermore, although this investigation has merit in itself, it is also the first stage in a wider-reaching research project which goes beyond the institutional approach to the formation of collective memories and addresses one of its weaknesses: an insufficient attention to the role of the non-institutionalized factors (e.g. family or personal experiences) on the evaluation of the acceptance (or rejection) of the official or elite presentations of the past. For a final evaluation of the influence of the from-above presentations of the past we also need to look at the way they are negotiated by their audiences and to identify the factors these audiences took into consideration while assessing their legitimacy. This is the wider goal of this project and this explicit comparison of the public narratives of the past with those of the "lay people" is the next stage of this research. But, for that, it is necessary to set up a clear framework of the form and contents of the from-above narratives of the past, which is the second goal of this paper.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Sociologija

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