Suchergebnisse

The context ot the development of the Croatian society after the decay of the socialist structures is burdened not only by the processes specific for all postsocialist countries such as the loss of the traditional securities or the renaissance of the "desintegrating capitalism" (Beck, 1994, 479), but with the specific post war processes. Since it results with the complex mediation between the individual and collective behaviours the young people of the nineties in Croatia have found themselves in an ambivalent situation. Finding themselves in the gap between the wish for security and the possibilities for development they can hardly develop self-functioning ways of achieving the material, cultural and biographical resources. Sceptical towards their own future they primarily tend to provide for their everyday basic needs and declare themselves as nonpolitical, interested only in themselves, their private sphere and free time. (SOI : PM: S. 193)

In the research traditions of social and political science two central answers are being sought. The first is, what is the relationship between the specific con-figurations of the proponents of social changes and the particular outcomes of their activity? The other is, which changes in the configuration of the proponents lead to better results than the existing ones relative to th value criteria such as peace, feasible development, or social justice? This makes the reference frame-work of contemporary discussions on institutional shaping of the relations between the state and the society. In this work, the author first mentions three dominant dimensions of social change to which all of us are exposed. Second, by changing perspective, he goes over from a passive to an active approach in order to observe the actors (citizens) and the forms of their activity (civilness) that might challenge th forces of change and transform them into tolerable or even desirable outcomes. And third, he contributes to the discussion about civilness and depicts in bigger detail six fallacies that must be avoided if one wants to attain a competent configuration of activity. (SOI : SOEU: S. 37)

The aim of the research was to find out whether the recent socio-economic changes in Croatia generated the corresponding change in the religiosity of Croatian youth and if so, what was the nature of this change. To this end, the results of the studies of Croatian youth of 1986 and 1999 are compared. Several indicators of religious devotion are included: confessional and religious self-identification, beliefs, and religious practice. Since all four indicators have increased significantly, this means that in the mentioned period religiosity registered a marked increase, which signifies a massive shift from the non-religious to the religious orientation of Croatian youth. This is an indirect confirmation of the claim that this shift in the religious devotion of Croatian outh and its remarkable increase is due to the social changes such as the fall of communism, the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, the creation of the independent Croatian state, and the Serbian aggression against Croatia. (SOI : PM: S. 160)