Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.5613/rzs.55.3.3
Generational Understandings of Culture in Croatia
Mirko Petrić
; Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar – Centre Split, Croatia
*
Inga Tomić-Koludrović
; Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar - Centre Split; University of Zadar, Croatia
Iva Žunić
; Elementary School Prelog, Croatia
* Corresponding author.
Supplements: GENRevSoc_Dodatak_55_3_ Petric Tomic Koludrovic Zunic_2025-OTH.pdf
Abstract
This article, based on exploratory empirical research, aims to contribute to knowledge about how citizens of different generations in Croatia understand the concept of culture. The responses of members of different age cohorts to an open question about what they first associate with the word ‘culture’ were analysed. Data obtained from a survey conducted in 2021 on a nationally representative sample (N = 1,200) were first analysed using an algorithmic topic modelling method. Subsequently, the statements were analysed as micronarratives. The latter analysis served to interpret the machine-generated findings from the perspective of inductively generated knowledge. The Pew Research Center’s 2015 division into silent, baby boom, X, millennial and Z generations served as a framework for determining age cohorts. This division was adapted to the Croatian context. The findings suggest that in Croatia there are generational differences in the understanding of culture, but also a continuity of associating culture with institutions (primarily theatres and museums) and the rules of social behaviour and decency. This points to the dominance of the Central European normative tradition of self-cultivation through culture (Bildung). The analysis shows that with the passage of time, the positive role attributed to high culture in the older generations is weakening. The frequencies of the presence of different concepts related to culture in different age cohorts, as well as qualitative indicators of how different generations generally see the concept of culture, indicate that understandings of culture can also be associated with cultural policies dominant at the time of socialisation of different cohorts.
Keywords
understandings of culture; generation; cultural policy; Croatia
Hrčak ID:
351969
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2025.
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