Suchergebnisse

Focusing on Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, this article examines film and music that emerged in the region since the end of the Yugoslav Wars of Succession. We analyze how the uncertainties of the postwar era facilitated a dynamic field of cultural contestation in which the music and film industries simultaneously challenge and affirm normative masculine sociocultural roles. Although traditional norms have not lost their primacy in public life, we emphasize the fact that attitudes toward masculinity have, in general, become increasingly ambiguous and multivalent. While local sociological studies accurately observe that violence and intolerance constitute central traits for the majority of men in the West Balkans, our research reflects on how popular culture complicates the idea that postwar West Balkan masculinities have remained uniform, static, and defined exclusively by aggression. We thus focus on the most popular musical and cinematic productions that embody the tension inherent in the contemporary representations of West Balkan masculinity. From our examples, it becomes clear that generalized instability attending new market economies and postwar political turmoil have indeed created a context within which national gender norms have entered a state of flux.

This article addresses TV preferences as a marker of class divisions both as a type of embodied cultural capital and as a pattern of consumption within the local and global cultural structure in Croatia. Data analysis is extracted from the survey 'Social Stratification in Croatia: Structural and Subjective Aspects', conducted on a nationally probabilistic sample of adult Croatian citizens. Factor analysis discovered two main dimensions of television preferences: reality spectacle and foreign fiction preferences, which were recognised as indicators of localised and globalised culture preferences. Further analysis established that these factors are also structured along the class positions of the respondents. Using multiple regression analysis, data suggest the conclusion that the working class prefers TV content in the domestic language and heavy on popular entertainment programming (soap operas, talent, and reality shows). However, the dominant class repudiate 'lowbrow' TV content, which highlights class divisions in the cultural field. The analysis sheds light not only on how class positions structure these preferences but also on the important role of age, gender, and music taste play in the formation of television preferences.

The field of cultural consumption features an abundant body of research addressing the relationship between the local and global. While this research concentrates on issues of cultural repertoires and socio-economic context, the investigation of values continues to be been under-researched. An extended interpretation of the concept of banal cosmopolitanism is proposed as an attempt to describe the relationship between cultural consumption and values. Based on quantitative research (N = 2650) of high-school students in major cities of Adriatic Croatia, using cluster analysis, three value types were identified: modern, transitional and traditional. Our research shows that the modern type is mainly correlated with highbrow cultural practices and stronger preference towards foreign cultural artefacts, whereas traditional type is more prone to be involved in the local culture that uses national language. The article concludes that there is a positive relation between values and preference towards global culture that can be interpreted as a form of embodied cultural capital, adding a stronger emphasis on values to the current discussion on the relationship between cosmopolitanism and culture.