Croatian Identity and Mediterranean Multiculturality in the Age of Globalization

The structure of the Croatian identity, the historical processes of its formation and its current and future socio-cultural development will move between self-determination and integration into the Euro-Atlantic and globalization processes. Croatian national and socio-cultural identity is built on three European regional cultural traditions, and in this context it contains three essential components: Central European, Mediterranean and South Slavic-Balkan. The project aims to explore the least known component of the Croatian identity, which is the Mediterranean component. It is about the research of Mediterranean multicultural and civilizational features and peculiarities, and their participation in the creation of Croatian cultural and political identity, on the one hand, as well as in the formation of a new European cultural and civilizational identity in a global context, on the other. Special attention will be paid to religion as one of the key determinants of cultural identity, both in the Croatian and in the wider Mediterranean multicultural and multireligious context. The mutual influences of religious, cultural, national and political factors in the Mediterranean environment would be observed mainly in the context of the collision of traditional and modernization-globalization relations. Longitudinal research into the relationship between the Mediterranean regional and Croatian national identity among a certain population in coastal Croatia and the relationship with assumed elements of European identity will test the dynamics of the development of Croatian identity, the degree and quality of its change under the influence of Euro-Atlantic and globalization integration processes, as well as the opposing disintegrative effects of globalization, as which is, for example, a “clash of civilizations”. One of the possible contributions of the research is to examine the possibilities of using the Mediterranean component of the Croatian national and cultural identity in the social, economic, political and other promotions of the Croatian state and national interest, both in the context of the upcoming Euro-Atlantic integration of Croatia, and in the horizon of the establishment of various international relations and mutual the impact that advanced processes of globalization bring with them.