Contemporary Issues
International Journal for Social Sciences & Humanities

We are very pleased to be able to present you with a new online journal for social sciences and humanities. As the title Contemporary Issues / Suvremene teme already suggests, the journal is focused on current social processes and wishes to make an active contribution towards understanding of contemporary social issues in Croatia and the rest of the world. By doing so, the journal continues the tradition of its publisher, the Political Science Research Centre (PSRC), whose scientific projects, as well as previous publishing activity, have been particularly focused on processes, questions and issues that preoccupy contemporary societies. Reasons for such an orientation are partly theoretical and partly practical/political.

On a theoretical level, contemporary processes of globalisation, transition and extremely fast social transformation represent a challenge to social sciences and humanities and often call for radical changes in their research approach. On a practical/political level, these processes give rise to new problems that existing societies often have difficulty dealing with. That is where scientific understanding, we believe, can be helpful in finding answers and anticipating solutions.

Besides focusing on current issues, the journal also supports the principle of interdisciplinarity. Accordingly, Contemporary Issues welcomes papers from all fields of social sciences and humanities, as well as encourages interdisciplinary approach to the research topic. We believe that such a principle will not just enhance the communication and flow of insights among related disciplines, but also enable a more complete scientific comprehension. Alike, the journal cherishes the principle of scientific openness, both towards issues and research topics and approaches and methods of work. This principle also applies to the acceptance of work of young authors, as well as the already established ones and encouragement of their representation in the journal.

The journal also wishes to improve international cooperation in the field of social sciences and humanities, especially to enhance the integration of Croatian science in the European and broader scientific community. Therefore, the journal will publish work of both domestic and foreign authors and will use Croatian and English as working languages. Further, the structure of the editorial board is of international character and comprises scientists from Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy and the United Kingdom.

We hope that the first issue will fulfil at least some of our, as well as your expectations. We have managed to collect four papers by Croatian and three by foreign authors, with a range of topics covered and methods used. We have also succeeded in representing various disciplines such as political science, sociology, history and anthropology.

Since the journal Contemporary Issues supports the principle of open science and access to scientific work, we are sure you will enjoy the fact that all the papers are free for reading and downloading.

Editorial Board

Current issue

suvremene TEME / CONTEMPORARY issues  issue 1, volume 1, Zagreb 2008