Tanja Kovacic

Ph.D. Topic: Narratives on Civic Participation and Resilience: Contextual, Cultural and Generational Understanding of the Phenomena in the Republic of Slovenia

Current understanding of the notion of resilience emphasizes the importance of contextual and cultural specifics for studying the phenomenon (Ungar, M. & Liebenberg, L., 2008). This idea provides an important step forward in providing the link between individual processes and availability of social resources in studying resilience.

On the other hand, several studies claim that resilience process among other factors depends on individual’s civic participation in society (Evans, S. & Prilleltensky, I., 2005, p. 405; Dolan, 2010). However, the connection has to be approached with cautions and researched in different socio-cultural, political and historical contexts. According to this, the aim of the study is to explore the connection between civic participation and resilience in Slovenian cultural setting, approached through three different contexts: epistolary experience of the Second World War soldiers, narratives of adult population growing up in Yugoslav Socialism (between 50 and 55 years old) and experiences of today’s Slovenian youth (between 19 and 24 years old) set in the context of consumerist capitalism. Slovenian situation offers an interesting insight into the topic, as today’s living generations experienced different levels of civic participation: from enforced inclusion into war, encouraged participation (e.g. youth working brigades) during socialism and today’s turn of younger generation into private domain. Individual narratives on the topic will provide a unique insight into individual understanding of the link between the two and track general (public) discourses on the topic.