Croatians from Bosnia and Herzegovina or Bosnian Croats? : searching for the identity of a certain micro-culture : preliminary considerations

The main aim of the article is to show complicated processes of self-identifi cation of Croats living in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to analyze the defi nition of national and cultural identity of Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina. This question interests me especially in the context of recent political changes in Croatia but also deepening economic crisis, which has caused a major social unrest in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Changing the course of Croatian offi cial policy in 2015 brought to the public the need of redefi ning the concept of being Croatian. Also in the case of the Bosnian Croats – consistently infl uenced by strong Croatian national policy approaching them since the 90s of the twentieth century by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). In such turbulent times one may again come up with very up-to-date questions about whether the true homeland of Bosnian Croats could be only Croatia, or Bosnian Croats can be Bosniaks too, because it is still possible for Bosnia to be "Croatian, Serbian, Muslim" at the same time. National identity is the example of the Bosnian Croats tool used in everyday political clashes. As the researcher of culture I am the most of all interested in how it is defi ned and manifested in the public space. An important point of reference for my research is Ivan Lovrenovic’s publications, he first described the situation of Croatians in Bosnia in such a comprehensive way.