Actors of social changes in the space

• Duration: January 2007 - December 2013
• Project code: 100-1001172-1071

The researches carried out until now, (the recent ones in particular), convincingly show that social space is the scene of various actors’ confrontations and competition in achieving certain goals. In Croatia’s context, the actors are all the subjects that affect social changes and development in a particular space, from local and regional community, to national and global level, through their respective actions and interactivity. They affect the space utilization, social structuring, spatial and social mobility, inhabitation and the morphology of settlements. Various actors use various resources, power and competence resources in their activity. Like other transitional countries, Croatia has also been hastily involved in globalization processes which, affected by neo-liberalism, pose the requirements of state’s deregulation, openness and flexibility. The basic presumption of the project is that the process is occurring where the global actors’ impact is growing, while the state’s regulation at different levels of spatial organization is decreasing. It mostly manifests at local level through confrontation of traditional and modern. It is also the dare for national actors (entrepreneurs and managers) to take part in globalizational trends as directly and efficiently as possible. The new spatial restructuring is necessarily taking place as well. Towns and regions capable of making their intellectual capital and informatics competence more efficiently included into globally and hierarchically networked society will go forward more rapidly (Castells, Soja, Sassen). In globalised society there is a strong concentration of financial power, information and cultural potential in mega-cities and world metropolises, but it does not exclude the action of more pervasive local actors in urban and rural community (Mendras). The main aim of this research is to identify various types of actors who through their action and interactivity shape new forms of social structure, space utilization and the functioning of town, village and local community. Proposed project includes appropriate methodological instruments (case study analyses, interviews, biographic method, among others) to achieve the aims set and for the checkout of the results gained. The results of this research will advance the cognition about social and spatial development, and point at their importance in social practice and in the shaping of Croatia’s modern identity, and give scienific basis for DMP.

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