CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Balikić, Lucija |
|---|---|
| Title | Molding the National Body: Intellectual History of the Interwar Yugoslav Sokol |
| Summary | The dissertation examines the intellectual history of the interwar Yugoslav Sokol, an organization dedicated to physical culture of the masses, originally in a national liberal key. Focusing mainly on associational periodicals, it analyzes the debates that political thinkers and scholars involved in Sokol, had over the years. Taking into account texts that pertain to strictly conceived political questions, but also those related to historical narratives and cultural canon, as well as physical education and biomedical questions, the dissertation divides the studied period into three sub-periods: 1918-1929; 1929-1934; 1935-1941. It demonstrates that in the first period, namely during the volatile 1920s, Sokol served as a platform for diverse initiatives and debates that most often conceptualized a given political community in terms of a “national body” to be molded based on positivist understanding of physical exercise and Yugoslavism. The second period, that of the Royal Dictatorship, was marked by the centralization of associational life and programmatization of its intellectual output. In this context, the dissertation showcases the etatization of Sokol thinkers’ discourses and concerns, whereby their understanding of the body rapproched the ideas around “human capital”, even if still belonging to a Masarykian liberal tradition that stressed the importance of active citizenry. Finally, the third period, following the assassination of King Aleksandar, was marked by the rise in neo-romanticist discourses on political issues and in visions of technocratic governance, in the case of physical education and biomedical knowledge production. |
| Supervisor | Trencsényi, Balázs |
| Department | Historical Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/balikic_lucija.pdf |
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