Managing “Spoiled” National Identity: War, Tourism, and Memory in Croatia

Abstract

Approaching the public representation of a “difficult past” as a macro-level impression management dilemma, this article addresses how states manage reputation-damaging elements of their histories on global stages. Through an empirical case study, I examine how the Croatian government has represented the country to international audiences via tourism after the wars of Yugoslav secession. Challenging assumptions that contentious historical moments will be commemorated, I find that the state has managed Croatia's “difficult” recent past through covering and cultural reframing rather than public acknowledgment. The country has omitted the war from representations of national history and repositioned Croatia as identical in history and culture to its Western European neighbors. I draw from Goffman's work on stigma to explain the Croatian case and to develop a broader theoretical framework for understanding the conditions under which public recognition of reputation-damaging events is likely not to occur. I conclude by discussing theoretical implications for scholarship on collective memory, cultural sociology, and world polity theory.