Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.5673/sip.62.2.5
Chasing the Specters, Dodging the Ghosts: Borders and the Processes of Europeanization in Croatia
Orlanda Obad
; Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb, Croatia
Petar Bagarić
orcid.org/0000-0002-5368-3496
; Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
This article analyzes discursive bordering practices in the processes of Europeanization
in Croatia. It attempts to inscribe a border-related, anthropologically seated notion of
tidemarks more firmly within the research on symbolic geographies of the Balkans. The article
provides an overview of spatial imagining and (re)bordering of the Balkans and Europe, and
it discusses metaphors that accompany those formations, such as bulwarks, bridges, or crossroads.
Then, examples from long-term empirical research on the perception of the European
Union in Croatia are analyzed through the lens of tidemarks. The analysis includes interviews
with negotiators with the EU, students of the Faculty of Law at the University of Zagreb,
union leader in the region of Međimurje, as well as the speech delivered by Croatian Prime
Minister Zoran Milanović at the ceremony marking the country’s accession to the EU. In conclusion,
the article proposes that discerning the varying historical and ideological meanings of
tidemarks within the realm of symbolic geography deepens the understanding of the European
Union and processes of Europeanization in general.
Keywords
symbolic geography; tidemarks; Europeanization; Croatia; EU accession; 1990s
Hrčak ID:
322192
URI
Publication date:
30.9.2024.
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