Prilozi poznavanju primorsko-bunjevačkog identiteta
An Addition to Better Understanding of Coastal Bunjevci Identity

Summary/Abstract: The meaning of this work was to show which symbolic methods could construct mental borders, which divide members of two different societies: the coastal Bunjevci and the citizens of Senj. The documents were collected through fieldwork (in November 2002 and in April and October 2003) among the coastal Bunjevci who live in the hinterland of Senj. This was in the area of Senjska Draga, in the localities of Sveti Križ and Tukanići, Ljubežine, Stolac, Alan, RončevićDolac, Liskovac and Žukalj. Here is discussed the level of daily interaction between the two groups which were of the same religion, ethnicity and nationality but see each other as different because of their historical and social differences and their different origin. This research was focused to the auto-identification of Bunjevci, the symbolic evidence, which they used to emphasise the difference between them and the culture of other citizens. The list of those cultural markers is divided into three categories: the way of dressing – traditional costume, some economic specifications and the local dialect. Analysis of those units shows that the collective identity of coastal Bunjevci includes a realistic dimension as knowledge of specific cultural heritage, and a subjective dimension, which is related to the perception of their own inheritance and the inheritance of the others, as a stereotype. Emphasizing cultural differences in this case doesn’t present division into more different groups of the same value in the same region. It includes stigmatisation, which defines one group as ‘established’ and the other as ‘outsiders’. This is the reason why coastal Bunjevci, as during history and as today, present ‘the Senj others’. They didn’t create the image of themselves on their own. They have been perceived as slightly exotic, but in a cultural and economic sense ‘underdeveloped’ compared the citizens of Senj.

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