Conference paper
CULTURE – THE SINE QUA NON OF THE SOLUTION OF THE CROAT ISSUE
Ivan Sivrić
Abstract
The main topic of the article is the cultural identity of the Croat nation in Bosnia
and Herzegovina. By analysing in detail the position and the status of national cultural
institutions, the author wants to confirm the thesis that the cultural specifics of the Croat
nation are a key for resolving the Croat issue in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Croat issue in Bosnia and Herzegovina is in its core the issue of culture, both in its
narrow and wider sense. The author emphasises that not a single political issue is exclusively
of a political nature, but that they all include a cultural component, but may on the other
hand not be resolved in the cultural field only. What the author suggests is reiteration
of the cultural institutions in institutional terms, resp., not to indulge in national romanticism,
but to put efforts in founding, maintaining and further developing the institutions with
public funds, whereby the maintenance of those institutions does not necessarily have to
be exclusively market-based, as a cultural industry, as suggested in the global perspective.
The author describes and opposes the paradigm that a sensibility for culture may be developed
only after the material and political conditions have already been secured. The
author argues that maintenance and development of the cultural identity must go hand
in hand with the development of other social segments. Moreover, the development of
the cultural identity very often boosts and drives the national and social development.
Therefore, it is of uttermost importance for the solution of the Croat issue in Bosnia and
Herzegovina that the BiH Croats are recognised and respected as a nation with a developed
sensibility for culture.
Keywords
culture; institutions; Croat issue; policy; Croat identity in BiH.
Hrčak ID:
234805
URI
Publication date:
4.6.2018.
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