Celine Motzfeldt Loades (University of Oslo) delivered the lecture at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research on September 29, 2015.

Contested Places and Ambivalent Identities in UNESCO enlisted Dubrovnik

The tourist industry in Dubrovnik has played a central role in stimulating economic post-war recovery. However, critics argue that the sudden post-Yugoslav transition to market-economy and the pressing need to rebuild post-war rural and urban environments and the national economy, has created an unsustainable tourist industry and development paradigm. Dubrovnik’s over-reliance on tourism and poor political management and control over tourism developments are leading to new socio-cultural, environmental, infrastructural and urban challenges, and have effects on the perceived quality of life. The intensification of tourism and property transfer since Croatia’s independence have influenced the ways in which places are perceived, experienced, used and represented in Dubrovnik. Consequently, certain places are made into economic, political, cultural and symbolic battlegrounds, and are significant in contemporary identity constructions. This presentation will draw on the contemporary conflicted issue of ‘Golf Park Dubrovnik’, a planned construction project on Mount Srđ, situated on the hill overlooking Dubrovnik’s UNESCO – enlisted centre. With a surface area 20 times the size of Dubrovnik’s historic centre and twice the size of the whole city of Dubrovnik, makes the golf park on Mount Srᵭ an interesting case study in exploring how identities, place and power are constructed, contested and negotiated.