Original scientific paper
Sport, Nation and Umbilical Cord: The Comparison of the Slovenian Skiing in the 1980s with the Croatian Skiing in the 2000s
Ozren Biti
orcid.org/0000-0002-9228-0438
; The Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The article offers a comparison between the Slovenian ski phenomenon in the late Yugoslav socialism and the Croatian ski phenomenon in the post-socialist context of the independent state. During the 1980s, the Slovenian skiers led by Bojan Križaj and Mateja Svet speeded up the Slovenian state-building momentum of those days, by achieving, although still under the Yugoslav flag, the amazing results by world standards, while during the 2000s thanks to the Kostelić family, and especially to Janica and Ivica, the Croatian national anthem was repeatedly intoned at the biggest sporting events on the occasion of awarding golden medals. In both cases skiing is evidently intertwined with national, yet due to unequal social contexts and state-political systems, among these examples not only similarities, but also differences can be established. The latter are noticeable on the discursive level of these ski phenomenon designs – in media, popular-cultural and scientific discourse – nevertheless they are very much associated with the sport and also cultural history of Slovenia, Croatia and Yugoslavia at the same time. Concerning the scientific engagement in this sense, Slovenian anthropologists and historians mainly resort to modernist interpretations of the nation when they explain the status of skiing in the Slovenian society and culture. Unlike the Slovenian trend, this article finds it interesting to review somewhat neglected primordial arguments about the power of the nation and the attractiveness of the national identity, and in the wake of metaphors used by Ernest Gellner and Anthony Smith in their debate on the origin of the nation, the article is also trying to recognize whether the Slovenian and Croatian skiing have “the umbilical cord”.
Keywords
Sport; Skiing; Nation; Identity; Croatia; Slovenia; Yugoslavia
Hrčak ID:
131265
URI
Publication date:
17.12.2014.
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