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This article deals with the political strategies related to the diagnosis of a culturally diverse and hybrid Istria. Discussions about hybridity first appeared in the circles of Austrian and Italian experts from the middle of the 19th century. There, the hybridity discourse was part of a re-ordering of the monarchy after the revolution of 1848. The exploration of Istrian cultural hybridity by imperial science is a very good example of how scientific categories in the sense of classifying the population could create social realities. The greatest credit for this was due to the state, science and its institutions. However, apart from these elite circles, regional and local actors in Istria also participated in the negotiation of identity and also used the categorization and classification of the population to achieve their political goals. The archive material and newspapers consulted show that Istrian hybridity was also a guideline for political action at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the recent trend of avoiding the terminology of "mixing" and "mixture" and accordingly replacing it with the term prepletanje ("interweaving") in current Slovenian social scientific literature as well as in public language use. The avoidance is especially remarkable in the Slovenian-Italian borderland where the studies of linguistic and cultural contact, of bilingualism and multiculturalism are flourishing on both sides of the state border, in particular among the ethnic Slovenians from the Adriatic coast. The paper brings forward evidence of the systematic "mixophobic" nature of this rejection of the terminology and imagery of mixing and hybridization, replacing it with the notion of linguistic and cultural interaction in which interwoven strands can always be separated again, if necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with collected life stories of the second generation of migrants or, rather, migrants and their descendants. In the first part I present selected anthropological theories on the metaphors of mixing cultures, particularly hybridization and the notion of bricolage. In the second part I present segments of the life stories of migrants and their interpretation of culture through the metaphors of mixing cultures; in this part the analysis is based on the formalist model of ethnicity. The purpose of this paper is to present a reconsideration of metaphors that illustrate mixing of cultures through the analysis of in-depth interviews conducted in the framework of the BRIDGE project. Primary focus is on the parts of the narratives that provide insight into the interpretation of cultural and ethnic differences, in connection with the management of different cultural repertoires. I point in particular to the representations that are created and used within the cultural repertoire of the interviewees, which are shared within various groups and used for their cultural and ethnic self-identifications or self-ascriptions. The article shows how individuals either defy the methodological nationalism and isomorphism of culture and limited national territory within some contexts or remain caught in them within others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]