The Wall in Our Minds: Negotiating Heritage and Identity in Post-war Dubrovnik

This Ph.D. thesis explores how the production of Dubrovnik’s heritage, and its World Heritage, intersects with the reconstruction and consolidation of identities and locality after the Croatian war of independence (1991-1995). The thesis analyses how Dubrovnik’s inhabitants negotiate and produce the city’s cultural heritage in a post-war context, under the conditions of global market economy and mass tourism. The author analyses the driving-forces, consequences and responses to ‘place branding’ and commodification processes of Dubrovnik’s UNESCO enlisted walled centre. Focusing on different localities and areas of social life, this ethnographic case study explores how heritage is steered and contested by different interest groups for commercial, political, ideological and cultural ends. The thesis discusses how cultural memory, different uses and perceptions of the past can provoke both dissonance and unity, shape practices and mobilize cultural and political activism