The collapse of communism in the former Yugoslavia has sparked an avalanche of personal and political questions for Croatians everywhere on the meaning of their history, traditions, and identity. This article analyzes the mutually constitutive relationships of diaspora Croatians and the focus of their desire: a free Croatia whose citizens participate in the "production" or "recovery" of the historic Croatian state. But, rather than inspiring unity, independence has created the conditions for the emergence and exacerbation of often fraught or equivocal relationships within and between these groups. The Croatian example challenges the inclination to juxtapose diaspora and homeland contexts and points to the need to investigate the struggles of their subjects to define their often tenuous yet increasingly intimate relationshipswithin, across, and between borders. [Croatian independence, politics of desire and disdain, diaspora, identity, homeland] bers of Croatian political organizations (branches of Croatian homeland parties), academic associations (e.g., alumni organization, university student clubs), social and recreational clubs (dance, sport, and tambouritza music groups), Croatian Catholic churches, and committees or organizations that emerged in response to the homeland war (lobbying groups such as Bedem Ljubavi-Mothers for Peace-and Croatian-Canadian Information Congress). In Croatia, I was able to foster and cultivate a wide array of contacts, initially through personal contacts made with friends and relatives of research subjects in Toronto. Over the course of three years, I have expanded my contacts and developed new research relationships primarily in Split, Zagreb, and Dubrovnik with some in Knin and Gospic. Many people with whom I spoke were perplexed as to why I (a non-Croatian) was interested in working with the Croatian community and often remarked on how so many people seemed to ignore their plight and had focused their attention mainly on Serbs during this period. My research informants have included teachers, clerks, service industry and health care workers, underemployed and unemployed workers and professionals, and high school and university students (see Note 38 for comments on my particular interest in Croatian youth). These relationships have varied tremendously over the years from courier (to and from Croatia) to confidante.With the exception of several weeks spent in the former Krajina region of Croatia, I have not conducted extensive fieldwork in (particularly rural) regions of Croatia where inhabitants were frequently the targets of combat, dislocation, or displacement (such as Eastern Slavonia or towns close to the Bosnian border). In addition, the wide demographic, ethnic, socioeconomic, political, class-based, and other sources of variability in a large and cosmopolitan metropolis such as Zagreb, with a population of approximately one million inhabitants, makes for a very different set of dynamics than those found in smaller centers. For these and other reasons, the experiences that i...

La relation entre la convention et la tradition, d'une part, et l'innovation, d'autre part, est un aspect essentiel de la notion d'identité collective en tant que processus dynamique de (re)construction et de (re)présentation. Cette communication aborde dans cette optique ce que les Mennonites appellent aujourd'hui leur «crise d'identité». L'auteur insiste plus particulièrement sur l'ambiguïté et parfois le conflit qui caractérisent les tentatives des Mennonites de se donner une vision renouvelée de leur «spécificité,» empruntant à Pierre Bourdieu le concept d'habitus comme cadre d'analyse théorique des causes et des manifestations de cette lutte contemporaine pour définir la principale caractéristique distinctive de l'identité mennonite. The relationship between convention/tradition and innovation is indispensable to the notion of group identity as a dynamic process of (re)construction and (re)presentation. This paper applies this perspective to what Mennonites currently refer to as the Mennonite ‘identity crisis’ by focussing on the ambiguity and, at times, conflict which surrounds Mennonite efforts to articulate a renewed vision of peoplehood. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of Habitus provides the theoretical basis for understanding the causes and manifestations of this contemporary struggle to isolate the key defining feature of Mennonite identity.

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L'une des plus importantes contributions des théories modernes de la mondialisation et du transnationalisme est la remise en question des définitions traditionnelles fondées sur l'appartenance à un lieu, applicables à la communauté, à la nation et à la notion connexe de citoyenneté. Les études canadiennes dans le domaine de l'identité ethnique ont tendance à privilégier les notions limitées et fonda‐mentales d'ethnicité, au détriment du concept de transnationalisme en tant qu'élément constitutif de l'identité ethnique, envisagé sous Tangle du discours des diasporas et des coutumes des populations d'immigrants. Dans cet article, nous suggérons de déplacer l'analyse afin de mettre l'accent sur les effets du transnationalisme dans la construction ou la reconstruction identitaires des ethnies au Canada.One of the most significant contributions of contemporary theories of globalization and transnationalism, is their challenge to the traditional localizing strategies of community, nation, and the related notion of citizenship. Canadian studies of ethnic identity have tended to privilege bounded and essentialized notions of ethnicity. This has had the effect of eliminating conceptual space for transnationalism as a factor shaping ethnic identifications through a consideration of the diasporic narratives and practices of “immigrant” populations. I propose a shift in analytical focus to place greater emphasis on the impact of transnationalism on the (re)construction of ethnic identities in Canada.

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