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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Vlade Divac
Vlade Divac
In this work I try to establish, by analyzing texts about basketball player Vlade Divac, in what way sport press is representing famous individual sport personalities, as well as strategies with which media is representing but also socially constructs specific identification practices, primarily those connected with the concept of national identity. In doing that, I am starting from the fact that professional sportsmen represent typical example of "transnational citizens and global businessmen who simultaneously inhabit both national and transnational space", but at the same time, consciously and seemingly paradoxically can serve as "national cultural icons in the function of forming and reaffirming national identities". Analyzed details from media presentations of Vlade Divca point out that the smallest common denominator that brought to the basketball player such status is the "proven patriotism". The picture being formed about him represents a series of preferred national characteristics, a quintessence of "Serbian people", thanks to which or even in spite of that, he succeeds to overcome, in the perception here, not too positively co notated America. Also, I am trying to point out how media story about well known basketball player has a structure of transitional fairy tale in which Divac is playing the role of "hero" of the still unfinished transition in Serbia.
Vojislav Radovanović as an ethnologist
Vojislav Radovanović as an ethnologist
Vojislav S. Radovanović (January 27th 1894, Pavlica/Raška - April 26th 1957, Belgrade), was a geographer-geomorphologist by formal education, but in the course of his academic career he also researched in the area of anthropogeography, ethnology and history. He was a student and assistant of Jovan Cvijić; professor of universities in Zagreb, Skopje and Belgrade; corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences (SAS) since 1940. He was one of the initiators of the establishment of the Institute of Ethnography SAS(A), and its first director (1947−1957). Contribution to ethnology by Vojislav Radovanović is somewhat overshadowed by his results in anthropogeography and geography. In this paper ethnological aspects of his work will be discussed. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 177027]
Water bulls of Balkan and other world’s traditions
Water bulls of Balkan and other world’s traditions
The efforts to determine the origin of beliefs in the aquatic daimon called water bull (which are ethnographically attested in Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria), and for which there have not been found parallels in other Slavic traditions, led the scholarship to see it as a recidive from the Greco-Roman period. The two major hypotheses tried to link the stories about killing of the water bull with: 1) the Athenian bouphonia; 2) the mithraic scene of tauroctony. The paper discusses these hypotheses and their weaknesses, and proposes a new approach: shifting attention towards other worlds’ traditions in which the water bulls are attested - those of Yakuts, Mongols, Celts, Mapuche, Khoekhoe and San - with the aim to establish the level, and determine the type of the possible similarities between them. The results of the comparative analysis show a very high degree of overlapping of ideas - those that probably were parts of a pristine concept of a water bull. They concern: the appearance, habitat, characteristics, behavior, as well as a number of phenomena associated with water bulls (predictions, thunder, lightning, storm, medicine). This leads the author to conclude that the conception of the water bull is very archaic and probably originating from a same, although uncertain source, which cannot be explained by intercultural contacts. The beliefs and the religious and magical practice of the Khoisan show that water bulls operate functionally - with the fullness of their religious potential - in animistic type of religious traditions (where the origin of the concept should be looked for). This indicates that these animistic ideas might lie at the root of the bull-like features of the storm gods from the posterior polytheistic religions. Further investigation in this direction is proposed. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 47016: Interdisciplinarno istraživanje kulturnog i jezičkog nasleđa Srbije. Izrada multimedijalnog portala ‘Pojmovnik srpske kulture’]
Water in oral songs of the year cicle
Water in oral songs of the year cicle
Water is a frequent motif in ritual songs of the year cycle. Its meaning of a boundary is important for forming a notion of the place where ritual actions are performed. On the other hand, its fertile potential corresponds with its function of ritual mean or goal. Within the chronotope, it is often connected with temporal boundaries - morning and night. Ritual songs model water as being, to whom the participants direct their songs in the ritual, but it is also the boundary across which inhuman beings enter the human world. It establishes communication with that unearthly world fulfilling the communicative function. Different realizations of water motif in oral lyric show its importance in traditional culture.
We refugees
We refugees
The paper is divided in two related parts. The first one offers a textual chain based on the short text “We Refugees” written by Hannah Arendt in 1943. What does this ‘we refugees’ mean, who are those ‘we’, and could we not once become refugees? The figure of a refugee is read through several instances of the phrase introduced by Arendt, with the special emphasis on the ideas of human rights, citizenship, fear, territory and belonging. The figure of a refugee allows us to introduce an important difference, often omitted within strictly juridical and policy papers, between the right to life and the right to a livable life. The second part of the text examines the hypothesis that a livable life requires three conditions for its possibility: equality, the absence of war and the absence of poverty. The life of a refugee can be thought of as a retraction of these conditions, and thus as unlivable.
Wedding, traditional women’s costume and identity discourses of the Serb community of southeast Kosovo
Wedding, traditional women’s costume and identity discourses of the Serb community of southeast Kosovo
The paper is based on multi-sited fieldwork carried out in southeast Kosovo (Gnjilane with its surrounding villages and Vitina enclave) and among persons displaced from this area to Smederevo, Vranje, and Vranjska Banja (all towns in Serbia). It is an excerpt from a much more extensive study of relations among ethnicity and other forms of collective identifications (religious, regional, local, gender) in a profoundly changed situation following the introduction of an international protectorate in Kosovo in 1999. The focus is on the subjective dimension of life under the protectorate and local knowledge. The paper examines identity discourses which accompany a wedding, a paradigmatic event in the culture of the Serb population of southeast Kosovo, and the use of traditional women’s costume. The wedding celebration in the morning hours is opened by the mother-inlaw (the bridegroom’s mother), by dancing the svekrvino kolo (mother-in-law’s dance) with her kin. This wedding segment symbolizes the community’s collective identity in the fullest sense. Women put on their traditional costume, of whose appearance and preservation to the present day the community is very proud. Discourse on the preserved traditional women’s costume (today reduced to ritual function) among members of the community expresses the intertwining of different forms of identification. The traditional women’s costume is one of the bearing constructs on which the community bases its identity as the old inhabitants of the area, as distinct from the colonists. Other identities such as ethnic, regional, local, gender and family are also interlaced into the discourse on women’s costume. Why is the women’s costume placed on a pedestal as a condensed symbol of the community? Why does the community read complex identity discourses into the women’s costume and the dance of the women at the wedding? One of the spheres in which this paper seeks answers are gender relations. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177027: Multietnicitet, multikulturalnost, migracije - savremeni procesi]
When material world speaks. Slovenian festive food and Slovenians in Serbia
When material world speaks. Slovenian festive food and Slovenians in Serbia
This paper draws on material collected during this author’s fieldwork research in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Ruma in 2008, 2012 and 2015. Obtained by various research methods, particularly the narrative interview, observation methods, and the questionnaire, the data provides an insight into the Slovene immigrant community in Serbia and the importance of Slovene food elements for members of this community and for the community as a whole. Although primarily an element of the material world, food also plays an important role within the context of a different cultural or social milieu. Some elements of food culture, particularly certain dishes, spices, and food preparation techniques, are especially important in the creation and preservation of ethnic identity of immigrant communities and of individual identities of their members. Among the Slovenes living in Serbia, this prominent position is occupied primarily by Slovene festive dishes, which are prepared for all major family celebrations and events. Food and especially festive dishes not only symbolizes the social ties and the division but actively participates in their creation and rebirth. Having become a symbol of ethnic affiliation of Slovenes living outside Slovenia, such food serves to materialize their ethnic identity.
Who are the erased?
Who are the erased?
'The erased' is a local term for an administrative category of people that includes 18.305 individuals in Slovenia. In 1992 they were 'erased' from the registrar of population with domicile in Slovenia due to legal regularities which required an application for a Slovenian citizenship in timely manner. Later decisions of the Constitutional Court of Slovenia confirmed irregularity of this act. The paper presents a history of the erased and a brief review of the current state in legal sense.
Whose 'Cousin from the countryside'?
Whose 'Cousin from the countryside'?
In this paper, I analyze ideological patterns of TV show 'My cousin from the countryside', which aired on Serbian national television at the end of 2008 achi­eving great success and enormous ratings. Produced by, broadcasted and marketed on national television - in Althusserian sense, an ideological state apparatus par excellence - this media text, its creation and reception, make an excellent 'case-study' of ideological streamings and confrontations in contemporary Serbia's media sphere. Defined mainly through conflicts of two opposing (and often confusingly intervowen) paradigms - that of militant nationalism and that of eurointegrations the public sphere opens a space for ideological battles of opposing sides which struggle to gain privileged positions in cultural conceptions of contemporary sociopolitical situation. Transitional circumstances define main points of those conflicts; as seen in the analysis, ethnonational narratives strive to make definite judgements on such relevant topics as Serbia's relation to its recent militant past (with emphasis on responsibility for war crimes), and its relationship with the West/Europe. This show represents such a narrative, grounded in ethno-nationalistic 'identity project'. Creating an image of transitional Serbia in accordance to cultural visions and symbolic of nationalistic imagery, it aims to paint a picture of Serbian identity as seen through nationalist ideological lens. Significant response from the audience shows that this kind of cultural representation succeeds in this intention - appealing to the spreaded views of Serbian nation and state as victims of unjust persecution of the hostile outside (Western) world, it offers its audience a misleading, yet comforting, symbolic resolution of painful issues connected to recent history and its consequences.
Why do first kittens end up down the drain?
Why do first kittens end up down the drain?
In the Slavic folklore, a cat and similar other small animals with soft fur and numerous litters/offspring, represent symbols of a young female, bride, woman, female genitals, home and hearth, appearing thus in fertility rituals, connected with food, knitting, weaving, and magic, but they are also associated with female demons, such as „devour-eaters“, „child and harvest stealers“. All these are the characteristics of the Great Mother Goddess, in her terrifying, chthonic appearance. This paper points out to a possibility that the lexema cat [mačka in Serbian language] originated from the basis of mat- (in Serbian language: mati, majka, in English language: mom, mother): the motivation basis for the both expression/ word for cat/litter (in Serbian language: mačka/kot) could be connected with a representation of female genitals (womb, in Sebian language: materica), birthing, understood here as “expulsion”, and “unfold” of the large number of offspring. Actually, those are the meanings of the verb
Why do first kittens end up down the drain?
Why do first kittens end up down the drain?
In the Slavic folklore, a cat and similar other small animals with soft fur and numerous litters/offspring, represent symbols of a young female, bride woman, female genitals, home and hearth, appearing thus in fertility rituals, connected with food, knitting, weaving, and magic, but they are also associated with female demons, such as 'devour-eaters', 'child and harvest stealers'. All these are the cha­racteristics of the Great Mother Goddess, in her terrifying, chthonic appearance. The origin of the saying 'the first kittens should go down the drain' (should drawn in water) hence should be explained by the existence of the fertility rites, where the first litter of the cult animals was sacrificed to the Goddess in order to ensure future fertility; that is, the litter was thus 'returned' to the fertile water, as a symbol of mother's death. However, a more complete explanation requires ascertaining to an iconic meaning of the lexeme cat and litter which is the subject of the second part of this paper.
Why was the writer cremated?
Why was the writer cremated?
The author discuses the funeral of Yugoslav writer, Ivo Andrić, with a particular focus on his wish to be incinerated. This wish is analyzed from several aspects: through the concept of celebrating great people in the time of socialism and from the standpoint of Andrić’s delicate political position and his consistent attempts to avoid alignment inside offered ideological, intellectual and national frames. On the other hand, his will to be cremated was analyzed from the aspect of Andrić’s attitude towards religion and death, which are visible in his works. Additional light on Andrić’s, already well researched biography, sheds his mason dossier and defining his religiosity and philosophical attitudes as theosophical. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177028]

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