Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU
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The Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography SAS (I-VII)/ SASA (VIII/) is a scientific periodical of international significance which publishes papers in ethnology/anthropology. From its inception in 1952, the Bulletin publishes the results of scientific research projects of scientists and associates of the Institute and other affiliated institutions in the country and abroad. In addition, discussions and articles, supplements, field data, retrospectives, chronicles, reviews, translations, notes, bibliographies, obituaries, memories, critiques and similar are published as well. The Bulletin was founded as a means to publish the results of research of settlements and origins of populations, folk life, customs and folk proverbs. However, the concept of the Bulletin, like that of any other contemporary scientific journal, changed over time to accommodate the social, cultural and political processes and research trends in the social sciences and humanities.
The Bulletin (GEI) is referenced in the electronic bases: DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), Ulrich's Periodicals Directory and SCIndex (Serbian Citation Index). All articles are digitally available in a form typographically true to the original (in .pdf format). The Bulletin is also available in the same form on the website of the Institute of Ethnography SASA.
The Bulletin (GEI SANU) can also be found and read at CEEOL (Central and Eastern European Online Library): http://www.ceeol.com
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- Policy, mobility and everyday culture in competition in the identity construction (The case of Karakachans in Bulgaria)
- The political changes in Bulgaria in 1989 are accompanied by severe economic crisis, high unemployment rate, and the emergence of acute social inequalities. These factors lead to intense migration processes. Furthermore, the ambiance generates conditions that enable the activation of new ways of constructing identities amongst most ethnic and confessional communities in the country. Immediately after the changes the Karakachans in Bulgaria become the object of political interest from neighboring Greece: from the beginning of the 1990s community members (as well as their spouses), unlike other Bulgarian citizens, have easy access to visas for entry into Greece, which determines the emergence of a mass labor mobility within the community. Thus, the Karakachans from Bulgaria find themselves at the center of a complex tangle of relationships and mutual influences between politics, identity and mobility, which will be the subject of this study.
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- Politics and counter-politics of identity and space
- With the onset of political overturn in Serbia in 2000, the process of the ideological reconfiguration of public places was simultaneously being put in motion. One of the most prominent means of this endeavor was naming and renaming of urban space, primarily of streets and squares, but also treatment of existing memorial sites and monuments and commissioning and erection of new ones. These undertakings were especially prominent in Serbia’s capital Belgrade. Such processes were opposed several times by certain political parties and groups which organized street-actions of counter-naming of Belgrade’s thoroughfares and campaigns against newly designated public monuments, and power-play and identity politics of such proceedings will be commented on here. This paper will discuss practices of several artistic and political groups which carried out unofficial street-renaming actions and performances, or discussed and opposed proposed new memorials. By (re)naming certain urban spaces, hegemonic political coalitions are trying to construct significant symbolic places, while oppositional counter-actions are seeking to overtake those same places and reinterpret them. This paper will attempt to sum up and inquire into the ideological politics of official memory discourses and artistic and political counter-politics and actions of opposition or alternative commemoration.
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- Population mobility as a determinant of development and spatial distribution of population in Serbia in the last fifty years
- The transition of migratory phenomena in Serbia is characterized by the transition from the predominant local migration in the 1960s, dominance of regional resettlement and migration between cities since the 1980s to the forced migration of the 1990s. These trends were parallel with the intensification of international migrations. These, along with methodological differences in conducting the migrant population in population censuses, are important determinants of changes in the spatial distribution of population potentials in Serbia. This paper evaluated the migration component from 1961 to 2011. or in the last half century, through consideration of its impact on the transformation of rural and urban areas of Serbia. The transitional trends in the relations between natural increase and net migration formed the modern population decline on one and population concentration on other side and their individual segments. In doing so, emigration and immigration trends significantly determine the relocation of the urban population, immigrant population, the population with a higher educational level and population in the tertiary and quaternary sector activity at the beginning of the XXI century. Finally, the display density and concentration of migrant population in the contemporary period also indicates the importance of economic, social and other determinants of spatial development in the transition of migratory phenomena in Serbia.
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- Positioning of sponsorships on the cultural events market
- The paper deals with the relationship between cultural events and financial possession through which a complex web of communication can be discerned, in positions of social responsibility and consumerism. In the first part of the paper, sponsorship is described in its historical context in order to point out its key features and transformations over time, especially in the socialist and post-socialist period. By contextualizing sponsorship strategies and messages, one can accurately track the representations and values attached to the positioning of cultural products in the zone of national and global policies. Musical spectacles (concerts, festivals, assemblies etc.) are attractive and useful products in the sponsorship market. The EXIT festival, Jelen beer, Guča, Telenor, Alpha Bank, Bogoljub Karić, Zepter, Beer Fest, Tuborg, Kustendorf are just some examples - patents of sponsorship of cultural manifestations in the transitional period. This paper constructs three forms of sponsorship strategies in the domain of cultural festival scenes: ownership, leadership and partnership. In the domain of partnership between collective and private property, sponsorship strategies are based on an ethical mimicry of old/new rules and their enforcers within a gift economy, thus creating arbitrary spaces for action adjusted for crises (the grey economy, money laundering, unstable economic policies etc.). Leadership is a sponsorship strategy which entails complete domination in the sphere of decision making, utilization and spending, without the possibility of outside control. In leadership there is no opposition between owners and sponsors, and everything is subject to the authority of the individual as the one and only, inviolable self-sponsor. Partnership is based on the power of choice in the domain of competition and opposition as bipolar ownership. The tandems of spectacle - sponsor and enjoyment - monopoly, are viable projectors of various strategies for the shaping of ownership, leadership and partnership, thus projecting idealized perceptions and simulacra of common good and social harmony, which are actually just a disguise for various interests and antagonisms in a politically and economically unstable place such as Serbia. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177027]
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- Post-socialist transformation and new forms of identification in the Serbian society
- Post-socialist transformation in Serbia has introduced various changes and novelties including a formation of special categories of losers and winners of transition. The parameters defining these categories allow a possibility of identification with either one within the society. This paper presents analytical terms appropriate for discussing the given identification, as well as problems associated with it, further pointing out to the complexity of this issue. The categories of losers and winners of transition are ever-lasting, accompanying a process of social transformation itself. This however does not imply they are irrelevant considering they represent a sense of self and others in time characterized by important economic, political and cultural turbulences.
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- Postmodernism and the humanities
- Postmodernism, as a specific ideal orientation, typical of the last three decades of 20th century, reached historiography with certain delay. Particularly with the thesis of impossibility to know the past, postmodernism strongly influenced historiography as a literary form. Cognitive skepticism and denial of the scientific nature of historiography were the direct consequence of the influence of Postmodernist thinking on historical science. In traditional societies like the Serbian one, historical consciousness had been built on myths for a long time, because of the nature of the society itself, and also because many historians followed irrational ideas from its nations past. What represents a spectrum of historical science (criticism and irrational overview of the past and adequate adoption of valuable judgements) confronts a mythical heritage which determined the historical consciousness. Postmodernism especially negated the neutral pretension of historiography and questioned its scientism. Elimination the need for knowledge was the key factor of the breakdown of the system of values in Serbian society in the last two decades and it was also a key factor for the advent of the phenomenon of culture and scientific regression. In a modern society, in the research of history from the earlier times, you can see an important possibility for building a general culture which would be used for a more complete overview and a more precise understanding of a world that’s become more and more complex. The modern humanist science fights emotions with common sense thus expanding a person’s freedom. Because of that, Serbian Science Community can’t accept the marketing principal in making knowledge. The scientists, especially historians, must use their acquired knowledge of the past to build an intellectual opinion that will establish a new identity for this science. The author underlines the view that the science dealing with the study of the past must never again be perceived as a motive of totalitarian propaganda in the service of a specific ideological pattern.
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- Power of categorization
- The paper is based on fieldwork conducted over the course of a period from 2003 until 2006 at refugee centers in Serbia proper and Southeastern Kosovo more specifically in a part of the area known today as Kosovsko Pomoravlje. The paper is intended to present preliminary results of the probe into the issue of relations between the native Serbs and Serb in comers (colonized in the area after 1918 as part of the agrarian reform drive). Incomers from Southeastern Serbia to whom the native population ascribed the 'Sop' identity are the focal point of the research.
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- Pre-marital relations
- Investigation was carried out in north-east Serbia, in the region which is known for more freedom in male, female relations and marriages between minors. To prepare children for early marriage, the community takes care to introduce them to the world of adulthood through customs and to speed up their sexual maturity. Thus, on certain holidays, freedom in the behaviour of the young and the possibility of their getting to know each other more intimately was the accepted and publicly approved custom, although at the same time the strict rules of patriarchal morals, which prescribed the submissiveness in the behaviour of youth in daily life, were valid.
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- Pregnancy in Rađevina customs
- The paper discusses the representation of pregnancy in the customs and beliefs of a region in Serbia known as Rađevina. The research was aimed at recording and preserving the customs and lexis regarding pregnancy in this part of Serbia. We obtained the lexis through topic guided conversations with the informants. The article is divided into several sections: on pregnancy before pregnancy, prohibitions during pregnancy and consequences if they are not observed, revealing the baby's gender, conclusion and glossary. Rađevina used to have a system of regulations that the pregnant woman had to adhere to. Special attention was paid to the behavior of the pregnant woman herself. It was in larger part regulated by means of numerous prohibitions and limitations. Most of those prohibitions were based on the assumption of a magical relation of the future mother and the fetus in her womb. It is interesting to note that some prohibitions were observed before pregnancy itself, during the wedding ritual. In this period, the community tended to facilitate the bride's conception of a fair, healthy male child. During pregnancy itself the pregnant woman used certain objects to protect herself from evil and negative influences of her surroundings. The largest number of prohibitions during pregnancy were implemented so that a healthy, but also fair child should be born. Apart from that, the prohibitions were intended to influence the child's longevity. The section on pregnancy before pregnancy lists the techniques applied in the wedding ritual which influenced the bride's fertility with imitative magic. We also shed some light on the traditional revealing of the future child's gender, and the paper is ends with a glossary.
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- Pregnant women on the move and the response of the Slovenian health system to their needs
- In the article we present our research on health care provided to female asylum seekers in Slovenia, and more specifically, analysis of some of their experiences when searching for medical help in the field of gynecology and obstetrics. In the introduction we briefly present general aspects of female migrations and discuss the complexity of pregnant migrants/refugees through a broader context, describing some crucial aspects of their health issues related to pregnancy. We then show how in the context of Slovene health care system their vulnerability is emphasized through three main levels of obstacles. Through qualitative research with ten asylum seekers we demonstrate that the first level of obstacles is due to their hindered access to healthcare institutions. Despite that legislation in Slovenia secures equal health rights to the majority of pregnant asylum seekers as to nationals, these women experience many difficulties when searching for health care. In the second level no dissemination of information concerning their entitlements and use of health service is exposed. With the third level we analyse language barriers that are related to language misunderstanding and the lack of professional interpreters/intercultural mediators.
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- Presenting as a problem, acting as an opportunity
- Serbian migration practice is the result of often conflicting policies at the regional, state and local level. The manifold values and interests constituting the concepts on which these policies were based have led to the transformation of the presence of migrants in certain areas into an object of political manipulation. Thus the presence of migrants became a focal point of conflicts between the state and local government, or between people with different interests.
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- Problems of burial in modern Greece
- This paper focuses on issues of complex relationships between religion and local tradition on the one side and needs of modern society, government laws and migrations on the other, as exemplified by funerals in modern Greece. Overcrowding in big urban centers, especially in municipalities of Athens, consequently led to a lack of space for traditional long-term burial by inhumation. Exhumation follows after three to five years, when family members are forced to face (often un-decayed) remains of loved ones .The question arises concerning the ethical dimension of such a procedure and the emotional traumas it causes. Skeletons stripped of flesh undergo secondary burial by being laid into an ossuary. Cremation is not practiced, although cremation societies of citizens interested in it exist and Greek Parliament voted for the permission to build and operate crematories in 2006. However, Greece is still the only country member of European Union without a crematory. In Greece, Orthodox Christian faith is the official religion with significant social influence, which, consequently leads to a failure of implementation of cremation on its territory even for local and foreign citizens of other faiths and atheists. The deceased are being transported to the cheapest crematories in Bulgaria or, on rare occasions, to some of the “prestigious” ones in Western European countries. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177027: Multiethnicity, Multiculturalism, migrations - contemporary process]