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
Pages
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- (In)visible migrants
- The migration of religious minorities from the region of Southeast Europe to North America was not in the focus of ethno-anthropological, sociological and historiographical research until recently. In the last two decades, the main focus in migration studies was on labor and economic migration, and only indirectly to the religious identity of migrants. This paper discusses the migration of one neo-Protestant religious minority - the Nazarenes, who emigrated massively from Yugoslavia to North America after the Second World War. The Nazarenes were pacifists, refusing to bear arms, take an oath, or to be members of political organizations. By adhering to their strict religious beliefs, the Nazarenes came into conflict with the state authorities. After the Second World War, the communist state considered Nazarenes as disloyal citizens and a threat to the government. From 1949, the Nazarenes were condemned to severe prison sentences in the worst prisons such as Goli otok. In this period, the illegal emigration of Nazarenes to North America started. The material collected for the purposes of this paper came to be the result of empirical research, conducted in the United States (March-June 2015) with members of the Nazarene community who emigrated from Yugoslavia between 1950 and 1975. Emphasizing the role of religion in the process of migration, as well as the transformation of the community after several decades in their new setting, this paper analyzes the oral history of emigration of the Nazarenes during communism, where emigration is seen as 'survival strategy' for this religious minority. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 177006: Dunav i Balkan: kulturno-istorijsko nasleđe]
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- (Od)onomastics of Ljubljana and Belgrade - indicator of Serbian-Slovenian ties in recent past
- Naming and renaming of streets and other public spaces is an area of research interest of several social sciences; street names (odonyms), particularly official street names, are seen as symbols in urban space which cater for various politics of identity and memory. This paper compares odonomastic landscapes (urban onomastic landscapes) of Ljubljana and Belgrade, more precisely their segments which commemorate Slovenia and Slovenians in Belgrade, and on the other side Serbia and Serbian persons in Ljubljana. The focus of discussion is street (re)naming in capitals of Serbia and Slovenia from the 19th century till present (encompassing the periods of the long nineteenth century, interbellum Yugoslavia, World War Two, socialist Yugoslavia, and present independent states). Streets and squares named after members of these two nations, and after terms and toponyms from these two countries (which are a part of the urban nomenclature of the two capitals), indirectly point out to types of symbolic connections established between Serbia and Slovenia in the last hundred years or more.
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- 15th August on the Aegean island of Tinos
- The most important festival on the island of Tinos, the 'Dormition' of the Panagia (the Virgin Mary), is celebrated on 15th August. During the festival an official procession, carrying her icon (image) in its midst, is important but also popular customs as the importance of fetching holy water and earth having a long tradition within Greek religions. The article presents the festival on Tinos, thus exploring the relation between the official and popular religion, also related to gendered values.
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- A brief overview on the emergence of football fans in the Kingdom of SCS/Yugoslavia
- With the development of football in the interwar period, when this sport became an important part of everyday life for many people in Yugoslavia, it also led to the rise of the phenomenon which followed football around the world: commercialization, professionalism, social stratification, but also the phenomenon of sports fandom. This paper aims to give a brief overview of the history of football fans in Yugoslavia during the interwar period, to determine the basis for further research, to try to explain the causes of the emergence of fan movement (if it can even be considered a movement), how football fandom manifested, how was it perceived by its contemporaries, and what were the fandom rivalries (local, regional, national and political). Since the early history of Yugoslav football fans was scarcely studied in historiography and other social sciences, one of the main purposes of this paper is to serve as an introduction of sorts to further research of this fascinating subject. The paper was written on the basis of available archival material, relevant literature, available press clippings and preserved memories, memoirs and diaries.
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- A century of Levi-Strauss
- The paper presents a critical overview of the life and career of Claude Lévi Strauss, who turned 100 on 28 November 2008. He has been labelled as one of the most influential anthropologists of the last century, and this paper presents a brief outline of the methodology associated with structural anthropology. The author emphasizes important shift from the total social fact to the actual understanding of the fundamentals of human society, as well as mentioning some of his key works.
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- A contribution to the investigation of folk medicine in the Tamnava Region
- olk medicine in the Tamnava region means different forms of healing - from approaches based on rational conclusions and experience, right down to numerous magic interventions - which are the basic focus of this work. The ethnographic material presented, in combination with suitable research aims, should serve as a starting point for complex observation which concerns the structure of magic thought, that is in an even wider sense the basis laws of human thought. The basis of the majority of observed activities and beliefs are magic thoughts, based on the idea that one can influence reality simply, by ritually codified activity on the primary substance that is - the energy which exists in the basis of total reality .
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- A contribution to the vampire studies among Serbs or vampire stories from Luznica
- This paper is the result of original fieldwork performed in the village of Strelac, in southeast Serbia during August 2003. All Slavs believed in the existence of a vampire; still today, this belief is widespread among Serbs. According to the folk stories, a man can become a vampire during his life or after death. It is believed that certain persons have a predisposition to become vampires: informants argued that the condition could descend by inheritance, or if an animal steps over a deceased person. A man can also become a vampire during his lifetime if he suffers from certain illness, but does not take medications, or if, when ill, he is left alone or abandoned by his family. In most cases a vampire hunts his relatives or neighbors, or disturbs their cattle. A vampire makes noise, troubles its relatives, jumps on their back, and sometimes sucks their blood. There are two ways of protection against a vampire: to scold and push a vampire away, and to face the creature in order to "speak out". The "speak-out" method means that a vampire needs to be told about everything it did as a vampire. If a vampire is a vampire-deceased, it is possible to "lure" it with round bread, and banish it from the village. The villagers here use "vampire's bone" for this purpose. These beliefs encourage people to take care of their sick - the ones who do not do so get frequent visits from a vampire.
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- A cultural trauma
- This paper discusses the outcomes of the system change in post-socialist Poland. The author discusses various important and inter-related issues in the Polish societal sphere: shock therapy accompanied by the changes since the 1990's, unemployment, uncontrolled privatization, cultural trauma and cultural plaint. Theoretically, the paper belongs to anthropology of transformation, and it is based on sociological literature for the most part. The paper also discusses 'societal diagnosis', its creators, crisis in confidence as a consequence of social and cultural traumas, the weakness of political elite and criteria used to measure poverty levels. Lately, there has been a change in mythical representation about easy life in Poland related to the state' affiliation with EU. The change includes a lack of global crisis influence, resistance of the Polish society toward media influence, a rise in optimism and decrease of cultural plaint. Is this change in attitude due to cyclical alteration between phases of depression and euphoria? What will happen if depression returns? Did the Polish handle the trauma of transformation exceptionally well? Possible answers to these and other relevant questions are sought by the author in this paper, who uses, as additional sources for research, a world of local communities and individual accounts.
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- A few questions concerning exterior migrations of Yugoslav population during the second half of the 20th century
- The territory of the former Yugoslavia (within all of its structures and forms during the second half of the 20Č century - from FPRY, SFRY, FRY, to Serbia and Montenegro) was the subject of more or less intensive external and internal migrations. The first larger wave of emigration occurred immediately after the end of World War II, mostly due to the political events in the country that concerned ideological orientation of national-liberation war winners. In most cases, the furthest destinations of these emigrants were overseas countries. The remoteness of the new "homelands", among other reasons, made these relocations permanent. In the beginning of 1960's a new wave of mass immigrations occurred due to the "liberation" of Yugoslavia's economy and politics, and the need of labor force in the countries of Western Europe. These were the economic, so-called labor-migrations that were supposed to have a temporary character. During the period of 1964-1973, Yugoslav citizens living in Western European countries numbered approximately one million and one hundred thousand, out of which two-fifths were Serbs. In the mid 1970's, a migration trend seemed to slightly decline, only to increase again in the 1980's, and especially during the 1990's, however with the new socio-economic-political background and different characteristics than the preceding ones. It could be argued though, that these new migrations of Yugoslav citizens sum up all the characteristics of the preceding ones, being, at the same time, very dramatic in nature considering that the migrations were most of the time the only available option for emigrants. In general, these migrations are characterized by relocation of whole families, absence of a long-term plan considering the future (duration of stay, return to the home country), money investment in the home country, and relatively high although diverse educational level. Actually, based on comparison between censuses in 1981 and 1991, it is evident that in 1991 more people with a high school diploma gymnasium, higher and academic education have left the country than in 1981. The available data from 2001 census consist only of a relative number of Yugoslav citizens living abroad, around 400,000, but this number does not include citizens from Kosovo and Metohija, or Montenegro. Only when the final census data come out, will it be possible to analyze and compare migrations from 1991 -2001, although considering census gathering and its limitations, it is clear that many trends will remain hidden.
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- A multidisciplinary study of significant migrations on the territory of Vojvodina in the 20th century
- Migrations of population in a particular area and/or at a particular time represent the phenomenon of global proportions. As such, they require multidisciplinary approach to research. The most common questions posed by the individual, but also multidisciplinary scientific disciplines are: Who is moving? Where are they going? Why do they go? What are the natural and economic conditions of migrations? Why do migrations occur and how they maintain over time? Multidisciplinary research of migrations is very important for a more complete understanding of this process, primarily from the physical, historical, economic, ethnographic, anthropological, legal, politicological, sociological, etc. The aim of the paper is to highlight the importance of multidisciplinary research through the representation of some major migrations in Vojvodina in the 20th century. As a subject of research the following has been singled out: colonization (immigration) of population from 1919 to 1930, 1945-1948 (there are some similarities among them (population decline, new social and political conditions and legal regulation, difficulties to get used to new ways of life, mixing folklore and customs with the local population). The paper includes the emigration of the German population from Vojvodina, 1944-1950, as part of one of the largest (e) migrations in Europe in the 20th century. This migration, seen from legal, economic, historical and political aspects has consequences today, during the approach of Serbia to the European Union. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. III47007 i br. III47027]
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- A new approach to magic
- This paper uses the example of traditional practices of magic to suggest ways to incorporate cultural behaviors within the evolutionary paradigm. The first suggestion is to restrict hypotheses to only identifiable variables. This means avoiding the temptation of following the nonevolutionary social sciences in the practice of basing explanations on unverifiable guesses about what beliefs (or memes in evolutionary jargon) may or may not inhabit people's brains. In contrast with previous explanations that magical practices result from beliefs and memes whose primarily purpose is to reduce anxiety, we propose that magic is a form of communication that promotes cooperation and often avoids anti-social behavior. This effect of increased cooperation could explain why traditional forms of magic have probably existed and had significant positive consequences for the participants. To be effective as a means of communication, magical rituals must specify both the content of the message and the receiver of the message. Although the content of the communicative message differs with different types of magic, all magical acts serve a purpose to influence the behavior of the party involved and that is the most significant identifiable effect of such behavior. An advantage of this approach over many previous explanations of magic is that because it focuses on identifiable phenomena, the definitions and explanations used in this approach can be falsified.
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- A review of the research on Serbian as the language of Diaspora from philological and linguistic perspective
- This paper argues that Serbian as the language of Diaspora represents a phenomenon of interest of a number of disciplines qualified as humanities and social sciences, including philology and linguistics. It examines how Serbian as heritage language has been explored since 1968 to the day and it reviews mainly the work of the authors from the territory of Serbia, as well as those from the ex-Yugoslav republics that have enabled the maintenance of continuity in this stream of research. An exception is made for a brief review of the research on Serbo-Croatian as the language of migration conducted by a research team at the Lund University in Sweden in the 1980s. In the corpus, particularly significant are the publications that explore different linguistic, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and philological aspects of the Serbian language in Diaspora, as well as those that are concerned with the education in Serbian as heritage language. In spite of their importance, we note a remarkable scarcity of the research for the lapse of almost four decades and we note that these phenomena can be thoroughly and systematically explored only from an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspective. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 178014: Dinamika struktura savremenog srpskog jezika]