Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.31953/sz.44.1.26
THE SPECIFICS OF THE IDENTITY OF THE PEOPLE OF PODGORJE – ITS FORMATION AND CHARACTERISTICS
TATJANA TOMAIĆ
Abstract
Studies of the identities of individual peoples or ethnic groups do not differ significantly in
their methodological approach in as much in the fact that the feeling of the community, which is
the basis of a collective identity, can be placed on completely different bases. The specifics, which
determine an identity, are primarily the result of the historical and institutional context in which
it has developed. Collective identities demonstrate an essential difference between political and
cultural concepts of identity. However, the people of Podgorje have, for centuries, been the last line
of defence of the Christian world and European civilisation from the Turks and the Islamisation of
our continent. In the context of the Military Frontier as an institutional structure where they were
on the bumper of Christianity, the people of Podgorje constructed an identity which we might be
able to define by its characteristics not only as cultural but also as political.
Research questions: Can we therefore, in the role of the guardians of Christianity, define the
identity of the people of Podgorje as a political identity which contains common political values
which are expressed about the sense and directions of the project of a political community? Can
these identity specifics also be analysed in the context of the political preference of the electoral
body being Christian-conservatively orientated to the right?
Keywords
identity; people of Podgorje; guardians of Christianity
Hrčak ID:
192314
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2017.
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