Original scientific paper

The social participation of Croatian citizens as an indicator of social capital

Inga Tomić-Koludrović ; University of Zadar, Department of sociology

Abstract

The article interprets certain data acquired from the project "Gender Relations in CroatianSociety and the Role of the Church", which the Franciscan Institute for the Culture of Peacein Split conducted on a representative sample of Croatian citizens in the fall of 2005. Basedon the data they got from the answers to questions about the social participation of citizens involunteer work, about who they went to for help in difficult situations and about their goalsin life in general, the article discusses the state of development of social capital in Croatiansociety. The relevant results from the project are compared to the results from similar projectsin other countries and to earlier Croatian research with similar themes. Special attention is paidto contextualization by viewing the results in the context of religiously motivated or organizedsocial participation in the USA, as the most prominent example of voluntary work and socialparticipation in a different religious tradition.Earlier interpretations (Baloban, 2005), which claimed that the lack of social participation inCroatia is a result of the absence of a civil-social activity tradition, are complemented with theassertion that the absence of such participation indicates poor development of social capital.As a profile of religious culture, the results of the research indicate hierarchically structuredCatholicism, which is connected to a lack of preparedness to participate in civil society and alesser degree of integration. As well as differences compared to North American evangelicaltradition and the postulates of neocommunitarian theory, differences compared to the viewof social participation in the theories of "reflexive modernization", which are based on theEuropean tradition of social states, were also found. According to the results of the research,a greater percentage of Croatian citizens see the meaning of life in materialistic, rather than inimmaterialist or potentially "post-materialist" values (Inglehart), which are tied to the stage ofdevelopment of social capital.

Keywords

Croatia; civil society; post-materialist values; social capital; social participation; religious communities; volunteer work

Hrčak ID:

190051

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/190051

Publication date:

14.10.2017.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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