Suvremenost, tradicija i sjećanje: Sinjska alka
Modernity, Tradition and Memories: The Sinj Alka

Summary/Abstract: The particularities of the Sinj Alka as a manner and means of articulating and transmitting important memories to the local community are considered in the article. Various repercussions from the inevitable encounter between global and local cultural elements, as well as the efforts to include the Alka in UNESCO’s protective register of non-material cultural heritage are the starting-points of this article. The Alka is observed as a syncretic phenomenon of the foreign and the domestic, and from the aspect of a game of chivalry and of tradition. In the process, particular attention is paid to the local historical event – the battle against and victory of the local population over the Ottomans in the distant year of 1715 – as a venue in which local tradition legitimately links the past and the present. Relevant theoretical views of memory are stressed (social conditioning, stance towards history, categories of memory, ways of articulation and mechanisms of transmission, its role in the shaping and maintenance of identity,...) and, in conclusion, those segments of the Alka that make it a unique form of commemorative ceremony are interpreted.

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