engleski

The Importance of Being Patriotic : Enregistered Connections in Croatian Minority Activism

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a school in a village in Vojvodina, Serbia, where teaching in Croatian has been introduced, this article analyses relationships maintained between Croatian minority activists, the teaching staff at the school, and representatives from Croatian state institutions who visited. This minority context is especially sensitive as, following the wars that accompanied the break-up of the Socialist Yugoslav state into primarily nationally defined states, Serbo-Croatian split into two mutually intelligible standards, Serbian and Croatian. The article examines the contexts of such visits, with a focus on what was at stake in the encounters and how different participants in minority politics manage various connections (veze) with Croatian state institutions. In particular, it describes how a hegemonic register consisting of tropes, or ideologemes, relating to domoljublje (patriotism) and caring for/preserving Croatian national identity featured in these interactions. This article makes the ethnographic argument that some activists primarily used this patriotic register nonreferentially, its use indexing the pursuit of connections with Croatian state institutions, whilst other activists used the patriotic register referentially. Nevertheless, it is argued that when disputes occurred, “pro- national” activists used the enregistered tropes referentially, in so doing disrupting the networks of activists who used them in a primarily non-referential sense. Finally, the consequences and wider implications of this are explored.

Croatia ; Serbia ; post-Socialism ; nationalism ; minority activism

Na temelju etnografskog terenskog rada u školi u Vojvodini (Srbija), u koju je uvedena nastava na hrvatskom, ovaj članak analizira odnose među hrvatskim manjinskim aktivistima, nastavnicima u školi, i predstavnicima hrvatskih državnih institucija koji su dolazili u posjet. Ovaj je manjinski kontekst posebno osjetljiv s obzirom na to da se srpskohrvatski, nakon ratova koji su doveli do raspada Jugoslavije uz stvaranje nacionalnih država, razdvojio na dva nova međusobno razumljiva jezična standarda – srpski i hrvatski. Ovaj članak ispituje kontekst tih posjeta, s posebnim naglaskom na svrhu tih susreta, i način na koji su različiti sudionici u području manjinske politike održavali veze s hrvatskim državnim institucijama. Konkretno, članak opisuje prisutnost hegemonijskog registra, sastavljenog od fraza ili ideologema povezanih s domoljubljem i očuvanjem hrvatskog nacionalnog identiteta, u tim interakcijama. U članku se iznosi etnografski argument da su neki aktivisti taj domoljubni registar prvenstveno upotrebljavali bez upućivanja na određeni referent, pri čemu je njegova upotreba indeksirala traženje veza s hrvatskim državnim institucijama, dok su drugi akti