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Paper short abstract:

The author discusses how the concept of Europe is defined, negotiated, and sometimes challenged by people’s everyday experiences. She deals with ways in which the notion of Europe is materialized in contemporary Croatian cityscapes. Her analysis is based on case studies related to Zagreb and Rijeka.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses how the concept of Europe – a term unavoidable in the country’s political and media discourses in the last three decades – is defined, negotiated, and sometimes challenged by the everyday experiences of people living in Croatia nowadays. The author approaches the everyday uses of the concept as mechanisms through which people construct memories of their pasts, address current uncertainties, and shape visions of their futures. She deals with ways in which the notion of Europe is materialized in Croatian cityscapes, thus becoming a part of people’s spatial practices.

The analysis is based on case studies related to two cities: Zagreb and Rijeka. The first example centres on one of Zagreb’s central squares – the European Square – restructured and opened to the public on the eve of the country’s accession to the EU in 2013. The square has become a venue for events that inscribe diverse, sometimes clashing, meanings of Europe in public space. The second example follows the remaking of Rijeka into a European Capital of Culture in 2020. It points to the European dimension of city-making processes triggered by the ECOC initiative, as well as to ways in which local inhabitants use the project to reimagine the futures in/of the city.

Finally, the author explores whether the approaches of critical (post-)area studies and current theories in the anthropology of space can be applied to re-examine the centre – periphery power relations that emerge in making sense of Europe in contemporary Croatian (and other) contexts.