Projects 2006-2010

Project 147020:

Serbia between traditionalism and modernization –
ethnological and anthropological researches of cultural changes

The second half of the 20th century was marked by a number of social processes: urbanization, modernization, secularization, de-secularization and transition, which in turn, initiated profound changes in the Serbian traditional culture. The project will establish and determine the changes brought about by political, economic and social processes that took place in the traditional/rural and contemporary/urban ways of everyday ife. This research will include: a) a follow-up of the particular historical processes and events during the second half of the 20th century, especially in the 1990's; b) the influences of social, legal, economic and political processes on various social institutions; c) recording the impact of external influences (globalization, integration, transition, socio-political events in Serbia) on cultural continuity/discontinuity in the traditional and modern concept of culture. The aim is to determine cause and consequences of the changes and their impact on legal and economic affairs, and social institutions. In order to do so, the project will study habitation, marriage and family, youths, kinship and religion. By applying a multidisciplinary and comparative approach on synchronous and diachronic studies of the changes caused by cultural and social processes the project will provide a better insight of transitional processes and changes in the Serbian society in the second half of the 20th century.

Leader: Dragana Radojičić  PhD

Researchers: Ivica Todorović, Jadranka Đorđević, Miroslava Malešević, Lasta Đapović, Milina Ivanović-Barišić, Aleksandra Pavićević, Ljiljana Gavrilović, Zorica Divac, Marijana Mitrović, Ivana Grubišić 

Project 147021:

Anthropological research of communication in contemporary Serbia

The project examines cultural communication systems within different cultures in contemporary Serbia, through their interactions with the social structures and the types of cultural environment that simultaneously generate them and favor their development. The project compares oral societies (Roma and Vlax) and contemporary, literate Serbian society and its popular culture. The project will contrast variations between group orientation and event-focus in the oral cultures vs. time as a linear concept and supposedly individual orientation in the popular culture. Adopting a modern approach to anthropology of communication, the project analyses the phases of deconstruction/reconstniction, establishment and development of the communication forms within oral and popular cultures, giving priority to aspects of communicational and social use. The goal is to discover how people become competent in and use various communication forms in their everyday lives as a means of maintaining their social identity. Social behaviors that surround the making and using of these communication "artifacts" are the key to understanding cultures as iystems of communication regulated through a social system. The project will contrast and compare the two societies in order to show how the meaning, contacted through various forms of communication shapes the participants' identity, worldview, and social engagement, and how the ssues of power, gender and morality are negotiated through this involvement.

Leader:  Jelena Čvorović PhD

Researchers: Ljiljana Gavrilović, Miroslava Lukić-Krstanović, Miroslava Malešević, Aleksandra Pavićević, Ivan Đorđević, Srđan Radović, Vesna Trifunović, Slavoljub Gacović, Goran Štrkalj       

Project 147023:

Ethnicity: Contemporary processes in Serbia, neighboring countries, and diaspora

The main goal of the project is to contribute to the better understanding of a multiethnic contemporary world, especially regarding environments within Serbia and the Balkans/South Eastern Europe, with a special emphasis on the ethnic minorities and their problems, status and ethnic identity. The project will research an interaction of cultural, political and legal aspects of the problem. The research will include several issues: a lymbolic construction and representation of identity among the minorities as well as majorities; problems of its relativity and complexity; the status of the ethnic minorities recognized by law as well as those "hidden" or contested; interethnic communication and conflict; responses of the minority groups to the processes of transition, globalization and Europeanization; issues of power between majority-minority and/or ethnic group-state; the queries on the minority rights and relationship between political community of the citizens and ethnic group. Today, the concern of minority rights vs. political community of the citizens questions the 19th century notion of state and constitutional rights (sovereignty, legitimism, oyalty, self-determination...), and grants for consideration issues on democratic foundation of shared life among diverse ethnic groups within one state/society.

Leader: associate member of SASA Vojislav Stanovčić

Researchers: Mladena Prelić, Sanja Zlatanović, Mirjana Pavlović, Miroslava Lukić-Krstanović, Miroslav Niškanović, Aleksandar Krel, Gordana Blagojević, Marta Stojić, Dušan Drljača      

International Projects

Projects for research period 2001-2005