Conflict, Nationhood, and World Society in Croatian History Textbooks: (Re)Interpreting Post-World War II Period During Decades of Transitio

This research is a longitudinal critical content analysis of history textbooks published in Croatia in the period from 1981 until 2014, specifically focusing on the representation of the post-World War II events nationally and abroad. History textbooks, influenced and approved by state officials, have important function of forming the collective memory of young generations, and in that process, socializing students within particular state ideologies. History education in Croatia, besides generating the collective memory and national cohesion, has a key role in education of the future citizens, due to the embeddedness of the citizenship education within history curriculum. The recent Croatian history was marked with three major events: 1) transition from the socialism to the representative democracy, 2) the civil war for independence followed by the post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation, and 3) the accession to the European Union. These events mark the unique phases of the history textbooks developments. Throughout this period, education politics represents the contentious space. Regimes influence and change the content and the methods of history education, referring to the global standards and the 'truth' that students need to know about Croatian past. But the comprehensive education reform did not happen yet. Besides the de-ideologizing of the past in the post-socialist period, the national curriculum did not change substantially during the last three decades.;With this study I track the changes in history textbooks pertaining to themes of nationstate building, world society, conflict, and student centeredness. The world society theory and the social constructivism represent main theoretical framework within which I am looking to find out: how did Croatian history textbooks construct the nation-state building project in relation to four mentioned themes during three distinct periods of very recent history: pre-transition (1981- 1990), transition (1991-2005), and post-transition phase of accession to European Union (2005- 2014). In short, national and world history topics exist parallel in textbooks, but history representation through the world society framework enters rather late in Croatian history textbooks. Textbooks of pre-transition period, as well as of transition period, are carriers of nationalistic ideologies, and post-transition textbooks are moving closer to multiperspectivity in representation of the past, and framing the national and world history within the world society framework. But, the world society ideas representation are limited to specific topics, especially related to student centeredness of textbooks, as well as putting more emphasis on the agency of individual citizens as change agents of Croatian society. In other aspects, regarding the multicultural and multiethnic representation of the society, lack of examples of environmental protection and putting emphasis on environmental degradation, constructing the global society as divided, conflicting, and unequally developed with specific power centers and periphery, textbooks actually disclose a certain push-back towards the world society framework. Textbooks that portray Yugoslavia as a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement during the socialism put more emphasis on global citizenship, although as a collective, than textbooks of transition or posttransition period, that criticize transnational organizations, such as the UN and its agencies. Having in mind that the world society theory has foundations in the globalized world that is influenced by the organizations as the UN, and which underlining values are legitimized by nation-states' membership within these organizations, the push-back is as peculiar as it is understandable. One possible answer lies in the fact that during Yugoslavia regime the emphasis was put on the very early 'world society' concept of the 'universal socialism', and peaceful coexistence under the sponsorship of the Non-Aligned Movement, making the world society concept undesirable, particularly in the period of transition.