| Abstract (english) | The topic of this dissertation is the local cultural identity in the region of Županjska Posavina. Assuming that this identity is fundamentally determined by the complementary contents of Šokci, Military Frontier (Grenzer), and Croatian culture, identification processes are considered from a cultural anthropological perspective as strategies that the community in social change uses to select and revalue elements of cultural historical heritage on which social identity is constructed. The work ... More attempts to contribute to the research and understanding of the complex phenomenon of the cultural identity of Šokci in the broader context of ethnic and national relations. In line with contemporary views on culture and identification processes as changing social categories, the theoretical base is derived from selected elements of the modernist paradigms of constructivism and ethnosymbolism (A. D. Smith). The research employs qualitative ethnographic methods to explore the concepts of the use of culture and history and is based on the presentation and analysis of long-lasting cultural content (myths, symbols, memories) in the context of sociopolitical circumstances from the end of the 19th century onwards. Apart from literary and linguistic issues, the scientific and professional community has not thus far explored cultural elements as a component of identification processes in this area. Historical, ethnological, and cultural anthropological inquiries were predominant in previous research; the latter were mostly focused on individual elements of material and spiritual (non-material) culture considered mainly in the context of the essentialist paradigm and reduced to description as a given set of characteristics of the community. Until the middle of the 20th century, traditional anthropological approaches regarded the phenomena of ethnicity, identity, and culture as innate, well-established, homogeneous, unchanging, and territorially limited value systems typical of a certain community. When, in the second half of the 20th century, the theoretical-methodological discourse shifted to the research of context and interaction, from the objective to the subjective, and from the collective to the individual, these complex social phenomena were no longer understood as predetermined and unchanging certainties but as constant processes and social constructions that resulted from the interaction of social actors in specific circumstances of space and time. Numerous theoreticians warn of the phenomenon of multiple, plural identities, in the sense of the complementary (co)existence of multiple identities – such as local, regional, and national identities, and call for the end of the search for a grand theory while emphasizing the importance of studying concrete examples of the dynamics of identification processes in specific circumstances of space and time. This points to the necessity of diachronic and synchronic research of social phenomena and processes and directs contemporary research to concrete historical changes and events. The research topic and framework are determined by the researcher’s personal interest in the past of her native land and the cultural identity of her local community as well as by her desire to analyse and interpret the identification processes and elements of collective memory from a cultural anthropological standpoint, as a contribution to the general image of the contemporary Šokci identity and to the understanding of plural identities in the national framework. The research starting point is the hypothesis that the collective identity in Županjska Posavina is based on cultural contents – symbols, narratives, and practices related to Šokci, Grenzer, and national culture – selected from the totality of cultural historical heritage in the context of specific sociopolitical circumstances from the end of the 19th century onwards. The goals of the research are to determine, analyse, and contextualize the cultural contents that are recognizable symbols of the local identity in Županjska Posavina, and then to show, using selected examples, how the current local and broader sociopolitical situation affects the dynamics and intensity of identification processes. Qualitative ethnographic and historiographic methods were used in the research. Long-lasting cultural contents – here related to the Šokci and the Military Frontier – were extracted primarily from a larger body of historical and ethnographic literature and literary works (secondary) and sources and interpreted within the framework of certain sociopolitical circumstances. At the local level, they were further contextualized by various publications of local significance, primarily by selected ethnological/anthropological literary texts (novels and short stories by local writers, folk prose and lyrical works). References to sources and literature are therefore not concentrated in the introduction but are thematically distributed in individual chapters. Contemporary cultural practices were researched by analysing the presentation strategies employed in the programs of local cultural and entertainment events and in the activities of associations and individuals. Part of the material was collected through ethnographic field research, participation and observation, and open-ended structured interviews (mostly during 2023 and early 2024). The rest of the material – given the autoethnographic position of the researcher, who is a member of the community – came from spontaneous/random conversations and the researcher’s own memories collected over a long time. As a rule, the insider position facilitated research through the use of accumulated personal knowledge about the community, greater availability of sources and literature, accessibility and openness of interlocutors, participation in certain events, and so on. Objective scientific distance from the researched community, as a fundamental postulate of scientific research, was easier to achieve because of the researcher’s years-long experience of living outside the community. Aside from an introduction and a conclusion, the work consists of three major chapters. The chapter entitled Theoretical framework: identity and cultural identity provides a brief overview of the development of theoretical, methodological, and terminological thought and of the approaches to identity research in the social sciences and humanities from the 1960s onwards and sets the research topic in the context of selected elements of the modernist paradigms of constructivism and ethnosymbolism. Next are considered the elements of Croatian national and cultural identity as well as the sociohistorical framework of their construction – especially the phenomena of Croatian folk (traditional) culture and the borderland character of the Croatian state territory and ethnic space as recognizable contents of the cultural identity in Županjska Posavina. In the chapter entitled The Šokci ethnonym and ethnomyth the Šokci cultural community, understood here as an ethnic group, is placed in the context of Smith’s mythic-symbolic system and studied at the level of collective name, common myths and culture, common territory, and sense of belonging. The Šokci ethnonym and ethnomyth is formed by complex, dynamic, and changing systems of meaning at different levels. During the last few centuries, on the territory of the former Turkish Bosnia and Croatia the term šokačko (‘pertaining to or belonging to the Šokci’) was a mark and a cultural symbol of the domicile Catholic population. Through migrations, šokačko spread and settled in the wider Pannonian area of Slavonija, Baranja, Srijem, Bačka, and Bosanska Posavina, then largely under Habsburg rule and today divided between several states. During the last two centuries šokačko has gone through the Croatian national integration process and, at the same time, especially from the end of the 19th century onwards, through its own process of transformation into a collective positive – as a national, religious, and cultural category and sometimes even as a regional category (for example, the Šokci of Baranja, the Šokci of Bačka). It reached its peak with the full integration of the Croatian nation in the 1990s and the years that followed precisely through the primary use of symbols rooted in folk (peasant, traditional) culture. The cultural identity of the Šokci community is formed within the larger body of the Croatian national being. It is then stratified into regional levels within the framework of several sovereign states and, further down, into local/homeland, family, and individual/personal levels. Accordingly, it brings together some common traits of the Šokci: a collective name (Šokac/Šokci), common territory (Šokadija), myths, language, cultural features, and a strong sense of belonging – elements that according to Smith’s mythic-symbolic system constitute an ethnic group. Within these components, which are conditioned by social change, šokačko also includes a whole series of subsystems and certain distinctive features and meanings at local levels. The ethnonym Šokac, as established in dictionary databases, has various meanings, but it is most widespread and most recognizable as a positive determinant of this indigenous Croatian population in the wider Pannonian area. Within this area, in a part of the former Slavonian Military Frontier, the core of šokačko, complementary to the Grenzer, can be recognized. The lexeme Šokadija, which generally expresses the plural of Šokac and/or the (in)determinate territory that the Šokci inhabit, can also be somewhat more narrowly defined as the area in the Military Frontier occupied by the former 7th Grenz Infantry Regiment of Brod. Šokci nomenclature was introduced to Croatian literature at the end of the 19th century by writers from the Vinkovci and Županja areas. These writers described the reality of rural life in the context of changed socioeconomic circumstances after the demobilisation of the Military Frontier, creating a characteristic oeuvre of local themes, the poetics of the Šokci and the Grenzers, land and forest, pride and defiance, with a whole spectrum of long-lasting cultural symbols (land, forest, horses, national clothing, ducats, customs, temperament, and so on), recognizable even today. A hundred years later, at the end of the 20th century, a neotraditional layer of local literary creativity with the same narrative framework and a separate thematic unit – the Frontier and the Grenzer – was added to the Slavonian heritage poetics and to the Šokci poetics within it. In recent times, since the independence of the Republic of Croatia, there have been numerous attempts to bring out the shared cultural features and values of the Šokci ethnic group. These efforts are present, for instance, in the activities of folklore societies and similar associations, in the programs of larger Slavonian cultural and entertainment events with half a century of continuity, in contemporary tourist and food offer, in scientific and professional gatherings dedicated to the current social and cultural issues of the Šokci, and in publishing projects and self-published titles by engaged individuals. All of them strive to organize, preserve, and present Šokci heritage as a strategy of cultural memory. The chapter entitled Cultural identity in Županjska Posavina combines several smaller units. After a short introduction that defines the spatial and historical peculiarities of Županjska Posavina, the cultural memory of the Military Frontier is presented and analysed in the context of social change – from the general national framework to the target level of the researched area within the 7th Grenz Infantry Regiment of Brod. Recent strategies of cultural memory are analysed on the example of the microregional unit of Cvelferija (from the German zwölf, ‘twelve’, representing the 12th company within the 7th Grenz Regiment), especially through the influence of folk poet Đuka Galović (1924–2015) from Drenovci and historian Ivan Ćosić Bukvin (b. 1954) from Vrbanja, and on the example of certain components of the manifestation Šokačko sijelo (folk clothing such as the špenzle coat; the Konjarske vatre program) in Županja. For cultural and tourism purposes, Županjska Posavina is today presented primarily as a land of rich culture and tradition with a particular emphasis on the values of peasant, traditional Šokci culture, the specific geostrategic position at the crossroads of cultures and religions over the centuries, and a “glorious” Grenzer past. The cultural contents recognizable in the process of collective local identification can primarily be defined as Šokci, Military Frontier, and Croatian, as stated in the title of this work. The strengthening and interpenetration of the local/regional principle and the national and, sometimes, religious principle in the process of constructing a collective identity was influenced by the homogenous composition of the population – Croats, Catholics – and by the geographical position historically determined by the symbolic Grenzer capital, today on the triple border between Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. The components of traditional Šokci culture, as perceived by the wider community, are mostly linked to the remembered and mediated past of the Croatian village life from the end of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century and primarily refer to the local peculiarities of folklore content and sociality (folk clothing, songs, dances, customs), traditional husbandry (horses, land, forests), architecture, and gastronomy. The elements that form the local identity are communicated, presented, and preserved mostly in the activities of folklore societies, in similar cultural and sports associations, in tourism, and partly also within the institutional framework – in the work of museums, libraries, kindergartens, and schools. The most important outlets for presentation are the local cultural and entertainment events, especially the folklore festival Šokačko sijelo in Županja (since 1968). The typologically and stylistically diverse versions of local folk clothing, today mostly present in folklore use, are perceived by the wider community as the most noticeable determinants of identity. Some of the narrative and contemporary cultural practices are linked to the specific military-political border territory of the Austrian Empire, established under the Ottoman Empire – the Military Frontier (Vojna krajina, Militär Grenze), which included Županjska Posavina from the beginning of the 18th century until the demobilisation of the Military Frontier in 1873 and its abolition in 1881. The terms Frontier, Grenz infantry (frontiersmen), Grenzer not only refer to the historical reality of the existence of this military institution and its army but also carry a strong mythicsymbolic capital generated by the elements of cultural-historical heritage that have over time been verified and mediated by the community. The local cultural identity uses this capital, within the broader framework of the national myth of the Bulwark of Christendom (Antemurale Christianitatis), to emphasize the historical role of defending Europe against the Turks. In conclusion, the research shows that the collective identity in Županjska Posavina is constructed from recognizable cultural contents, including some general Šokci determinants (common name, territory, culture...), while the local peculiarities are based mostly on folklore symbols and on the phenomenon of the Frontier, frontiersman and its sub-entity, Cvelferija, Cvelfer. In the collective memory the meaning of the Frontier, integrated into a wider national framework, refers in particular to two historical periods – the period of the Military Frontier (18th and 19th centuries) and the period of the Homeland War (1990/1–1995) – in which it takes on certain symbolic and cultural markers such as the border between Christ and the Prophet, West and East, Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the civilized and the savage world, while the local population assumes a long-lasting role of brave guardians, frontiersmen in relation to their respective Others, especially during the immediate war events in the first half of the 1990s. At the same time, mediated by the active past and present cocreators of local constitutive narratives – chroniclers, folk writers/poets, folklore and horse-breeding associations, museums, libraries, and other factors – the common past of the community is crystallized in the phenomena of the frontier on the river Sava, Cvelferija, špenzle, watch towers, frontiersmen, and the historical military unit serežani. A positive attitude towards the cultural heritage of one’s own local-regional culture is very pronounced in this area. Its perception of Others/non-members of the community has positive connotations, while also including the national principle. In fact, the two confirm and homogenize each other according to the principle: Šokac-Grenzer-Croat. The strategies of identification and presentation were influenced by the dynamic sociopolitical circumstances, studied from the middle of the 19th century onwards, as well as by the rather homogeneous population in the researched area. Contemporary narratives and practices created by the mechanisms of cultural memory shape the cultural imaginarium of the community, and they take place mainly through festivalization and public presentation of the cultural peculiarities that the community considers to be inherent and specific in relation to Others. The presentation and preservation of selected elements of the cultural and historical heritage is a fundamental prerequisite for the life and survival of the community, while the transfer of heritage values to the younger generations is a special imperative. Less |
