Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography SASA
О гласнику Часопис Гласник Етнографског института САНУ објављује оригиналне, претходно необјављене радове: оригинални научни рад, прегледни научни рад, научна критика и полемика, приказ, научна библиографија. Часопис Гласник Етнографског института САНУ доступан је у режиму отвореног приступа. Публиковање у Гласнику Етнографског института САНУ је бесплатно. У часопису Гласник Етнографског института САНУ објављују се радови из области етнологије и антропологије и сродних друштвених и хуманистичких дисциплина. Радови могу бити написани на српском и сродним језицима и на енглеском језику. Радови на српском језику штампају се ћириличним писмом. Гласник Етнографског института САНУ излази минимум два пута годишње. Објављује и специјалне бројеве, са посебном тематиком и гостујућим уредником. Сва издања Гласника Етнографског института САНУ, почевши од првог броја, доступна су на следећој адреси: https://dais.sanu.ac.rs/handle/123456789/4515
REVIEWS · REPORTS · CRITICAL ESSAYS
Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography SASA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Бела Крајина. Срби у Словенији: Насеља и порекло становништва, обичаји.
Copyright (c) 2023 Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography SASA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Rea Kakampoura & Aphrodite-Lidia Nounanaki, Ta Mimidia (memes) tis Pandemias COVID-19. Psiphiaki Laographia kai Humor sta Ellinika Mesa Kinonikis Diktiosis [Memes of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Digital Folklore and Humor in Greek Social Media]
Manolis Varvounis & Georgios Kouzas, Eisagogi stin Astiki Laographia, Theoritikes Prossegisis, Methodologia, Thematikes [An Introduction to Urban Folklore. Theoretical Approaches – Methodology – Themes]
Internet Memes as Heritage in Becoming and its Problems: The Methodology of Heritization and the Formation of Cultural Memory in Cyberspace
After defining Internet memes and their place within broader popular culture, this paper examines the methodology and interpretation of a large-scale collection of Internet memes used by the KnowYourMeme database. By observing the changed context in which Internet memes are created, shared, or forgotten, questions are raised about the formation of meme cultural memory in cyberspace, leading to critical commentary on the ways in which they are collected. By analyzing the heritization of Internet memes, this paper addresses the following issues: the formation of the future meme heritage, scope of cultural memory in cyberspace, redefinition of remembering and forgetting within the panmnemonic tendencies of online heritage projects. Using the KnowYourMeme database as an example, the problems of cyberspace heritage are discussed, and the different online projects dealing with Internet memes as heritage are compared. By defining “on-the-fly” memory, which indicates the simultaneity of the process of creating and preserving heritage, this paper offers a critical review of the existing cyber projects of “saving everything”.
Digital Immortality – from Science Fiction to Potential Internet Reality
The development of technology and biotechnologies in the modern society has seemingly made immortality more approachable to humanity than ever before; medicine is advancing, life is getting longer, anti-ageing techniques are becoming more common, and artificial intelligence developers claim to be able to offer the possibility for internet users to make digital clones. Through research of existing practices and interviews with internet users who have lost someone, this paper will offer the answer about how much are these practices actually commonplace and available to all. This empirical research looks into the reality of digital immortality, especially when it comes to the social networks and the online sphere.
Neither Germans nor Czechs? Expatriates from the Czech lands in Romanian Banat in the Trap of Ethnicism
In our opinion, the scholarly and general ways of perceiving the emigrants from the Czech lands are based on methodological nationalism, which identifies the concept of society with the modern national state. Based on this, Bohemian resettlers who founded several settlements on the southern border of the Habsburg Empire in present-day Romanian Banat in the early nineteenth century have hitherto been divided, in the spirit of ethnicism and methodological nationalism, into Czechs (Böhmen) and Czech Germans (Deutschböhmen). Against this, an alternative research perspective, represented by the concept of national indifference, can be applied. The object of this article is hereby to re-assess of the collective identity of emigrants resettlers from the Czech lands towards its nationally indifferent character. We propose to overcome the ethnicist framework of the research on Bohemian resettlers by introducing what we term as the inclusive approach to expatriatism. This article is based on archival and local written sources and ethnographic field research (interviews) collected during the years 2010–2017.
Ghosts in the Streets of Athens: Ghostlore and Social Media
Ghostlore or ghost-lore is, in short, a subgenre of folklore that focuses on ghostly tales which can be found in both pre-industrial and contemporary contexts. The majority of these stories are connected to houses and other buildings that are either dilapidated or inhabited but can be described mainly as private places. Due to the nature of public places -whether they are connected to people’s experiences or could be described as non-places- it is odd to ‘find’ ghosts there, as it is odd to ‘find’ them in parks or streets. However, they remain social places open to multiple interpretations and symbolisms. Through pertinent online entries, mostly uploaded by groups describing their practices as ‘investigating’ the paranormal or the occult, this paper aims to discuss the connection between ghost-lore and public places, mainly from the city of Athens. Furthermore, a very important aspect demonstrating the effectiveness of these online entries are the comments made by the netizens following these ‘investigations’, which result in the formation of new groups. These groups are created online, but are driven by a common interest in ghosts in the offline world. Thus, in order to study how the physical public space is being reinterpreted in light of the supernatural, the paper intends to approach the digital public space of social media.
Copyright (c) 2023 Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography SASA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Symbolic Functions of the Urban Belgrade Landscape Components – Children’s Perspective
This anthropological paper views the urban landscape of Belgrade as a system of signs, consequently discussing the functional aspects of those urban landscape components, which children attributed the status of symbols. In a methodological sense, the work is based on the results of two field surveys – the first one, conducted in March 2021 in the Primary School “Kneginja Milica” in New Belgrade, and the second one, from November 2022, which increased the representativeness of the sample, raised the age limit of the respondents, and expanded the territorial coverage of the home city of the children who participated in the research – providing collectively a sample of 70 children aged 7–14. The aim of the work is to provide an input to the (so far rare) contributions at the intersection of two subdisciplines – urban anthropology and anthropology of children/childhood, as well as to encourage further research in this area.
Copyright (c) 2023 Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography SASA https://creativecommons.org/licenshttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/es/by-sa/4.0/
“On the Streets of Diversity”. Urban Space as a Birthplace of Free Expression and Artistic Creation: the Case of Nikolas Asimos in the Exarchia Area of Athens
Artistic creation depends to a great extent on man-made environment and relationships that connect the artist with it, as well as on his/her experiences and perceptions. The singer and actor Nikolas Asimos still remains, 35 years after his death, an emblematic figure of Exarchia, a central area of Athens, frequently associated with intense anti-authoritarian activity. In this research, we focus on the social-cultural conditions that prevailed in the area, between 1976–1988, a period when Nikolas Asimos lived there and created the majority of his work. Through content analysis of the opinions of people who knew him or dealt with him on a professional basis, we argue that the urban space of Exarchia greatly contributed to the creative mood of the specific artist, providing him with the appropriate conditions for free expression of his work and ideas.
The Musical Identity of the Roma People on the Streets of Belgrade
This paper deals with the musical street practice of the Roma people on the territory of Belgrade. An attempt shall be made to present this practice in its entirety, with all its particularities, based on data obtained in the field (through interviews with performers), Internet sources (YouTube videos, texts, etc.), and academic literature. The Romani practice is possibly the most common street musical practice on the territory of Belgrade, and while it is undoubtedly diverse, it still possesses numerous characteristics which shape its particular identity. Therefore, the elements of the aforementioned musical practice shall be presented and analyzed, including: 1. forms of musical performance, 2. Types of performing ensembles, 3. choice and condition of the instruments used in performing, 4. choice of musical repertoire, 5. the language being sung in, 6. choice of public spaces at which it takes place, 7. events and special occasions during which this musical practice occurs, 8. career development and 9. Child exploitation. The aim of the paper is to provide a relevant insight into the special musical identity of the Romani street musical practice in Belgrade by way of analyzing the segments of this street musical practice presented. Moreover, the goal of this research is to construct a model which may serve to conduct further research into the Romani street musical practice in other Serbian cities, as well as enable a comparative analysis and insight into the common, general features of this musical identity.
Committed Travelers, Reluctant Listeners: Playing Music and Displaying Authority on Public Transport in Modern-Day Greece
This study deals with the use (and misuse) of music in modern Greek public transport, particularly in the long-distance buses, commonly known as KTEL (from their acronym). In short, Greek drivers seem to impose their own repertoire, often loudly, through speakers on passengers, who are not able (or willing) to react efficiently. This happens despite official restrictions by the Ministry of Transport on the public use of music both for drivers and passengers. This phenomenon, allied with other incidents of inappropriate treatment of passengers, has been seen by the latter as a display of power or a sign of indifference. It is also connected with other (occasional) violations by some drivers, such as smoking and talking on mobile phone (both prohibited by the law). Furthermore, the use of music is placed in the broader context of musical entertainment in modern-Greek daily life. This is probably the first such study in Greek bibliography, and among the few in international bibliography, where the issue has recently been taken up. Although I was not allowed to take formal interviews, I managed to talk to several passengers (and to a lesser extent to drivers) and keep detailed notes on the spot. Therefore, my study may be said to employ the methods of empirical investigation and participant observation in a loose sense, since I have been a regular passenger for several years.
The City as Multispecies Space: Dog Walking in Downtown Belgrade during the COVID-19 Lockdown
This paper represents an autoethnographic account of dog walking in a residential area of downtown Belgrade during the COVID-19 lockdown of early 2020. It is also an attempt at, or rather, the result, of the largely experimental practice of canine-assisted ethnography, as my dogs Dita and Ripley were instrumental during fieldwork. The lockdown, with its ill-thought-out and constantly changing rules about dog walking underlined three basic issues: 1) in a city with a huge dog owning population, public policy with regard to this issue is virtually non-existent; 2) the city lacks public green spaces, and 3) the movement patterns of dog walkers tend to converge due to the fact that the needs of the canines (both biological and social) are embedded into the architecture and planning of local neighborhoods. In this sense, the city emerges as a multispecies space, and the social patterns and walking routes of its residents who keep dogs are influenced, if not completely determined by the human-animal bond at play. This became especially visible during lockdown at times when dog walkers were the only people allowed outside. Thus, this paper analyzes how interspecies (in this case human-dog) relationships shape the functions of urban space in Belgrade.
Pedestrians and Pedestrian Streets in Belgrade: An Anthropological Take on Space, Mobility, and Hospitality Industry in the City Center
In the past decades, Belgrade experienced a significant transformation of its downtown area also with regards to an increasing number of public spaces turned into pedestrian zones, primarily by closing roads for automotive transport, and establishing new pedestrian zones. This trend of pedestrianization of urban cores in Europe (initiated in the mid-20th century), found its strongest expression in Belgrade in the eighties with the complete transformation of Knez Mihailova street and its paving, and later with the expansion of the pedestrian zone to the adjoining streets. With the beginning of the 21st century, a special rise of a commercialized type of “street life” occurred – an increasing number of outdoor restaurant facilities were established. In the last twenty years, the services sector has become one of the most important in the city’s economy, and the tourism and hospitality industry employs a significant number of people; thus, the urban public space is increasingly adapting to the needs of consumers of such services, residents and guests alike. The visible expansion of restaurant facilities on public pedestrian areas in Belgrade raises questions about priorities in the use of public space. This paper will examine questions of space use, pedestrian mobility, and hospitality industries.
New Manifestations and Meanings of Orthodox Lity – Preservation of Identity and Sacralization of Space and Time in the Belgrade’s (and Broader Serbian) Context
In the text, we primarily deal with the observation of the latest manifestations of the Orthodox lity procession ritual and ways of sacralising the space on the example of Belgrade. Accordingly, attention is also paid to the symbolism of different spatial landmarks, which is emphasized at the level of several semantic layers. Recent events have once again actualized the importance of the Lity procession ritual – deeply rooted in both folk tradition and religion – as well as its manifestations, both in the Republic of Serbia and in the wider Serbian ethnic area. The basic and most visible function of Lity is the consecration and marking of space, but also of time, with special significance for a certain ethnic-social context, community or place. However, Lity also have a pronounced cohesive and identity function, as was particularly clearly demonstrated in the example of the defense of holy sites, i.e. of basic religious rights, precisely through Lity in Montenegro. Consequently, Lity proved to be one of the most effective weapons against attempts to deconstruct the Serbian identity. In accordance with the relevant indicators, in our work, with a multidisciplinary approach, various structural and semantic dimensions and possibilities of Lity are considered. This primarily refers to the level of the Belgrade area, but in a more general sense it is also directly related to field and other research on related issues, which were carried out in a much wider area during the previous decades.
“Urban Landscape Transformation”. Religious Places that also Function as Secular Squares: an Ethnographic Example from Greek Urban Space
In this study, we deal with all aspects of the topic of church courtyards of Orthodox churches in urban Greece. As an ethnographic example of this phenomenon, we examine the courtyard of the church of St. Antonios, in the municipality of Peristeri, in Athens. We will focus in the multilevel functions that these spaces have. In addition to their ecclesiastical use, these also function as parks and squares, particularly in towns, where there is little open space and areas of greenery are very limited. As a consequence, church courtyards are frequently used both as parks and as multifunctional spaces that host a multitude of social, cultural and recreational activities. In addition to examining how the space is used, we also look at the feelings experienced by those visiting the area, that is, what they experience when they visit the courtyard and what they feel about the metamorphosis, as it were, that the area undergoes, as manifested by the various activities taking place there during the late afternoon and evening.
Visual Folklore in 1960s Greek Popular Cinema: Athens at the Threshold of Tradition and Modernity
Despite its slow and ambivalent transformation, particularly after WWII, Greek society strived to present a novel and relatively modern face during the 1960s. While tradition in all its facets had been a long-lasting staple, even affecting critical aspects of everyday life, modernity began to take steps and seek changes: peasants left the countryside to explore new opportunities in the urban centers, immigration rose, education emerged as a means to escape poverty, while technology penetrated the Greek household slowly. Such urban shifts have been particularly documented in the popular Greek films of the 1960s, providing a rich framework to explore the notions of tradition and modernity in visual folklore. By employing a qualitative approach, this article focuses on how Greek popular film reflects the critical tensions surrounding everyday urban life by examining customs, rituals, identities, and material culture as represented in particular film case studies. It will argue that the popular Greek film of the 1960s documents glimpses of tradition still surviving in the city and presents to the Greek audience ways of handling, preserving, or even rejecting tradition, while flirting with modernity.
Mobility, Identity(/ies) and Various Functions of the Urban Space: Case Studies from Belgrade and Athens
Jasmina Tumbas, “I am Jugoslovenka!” Feminist Performance Politics During and After Yugoslav Socialism
Гордана Благојевић, Словачко наивно сликарство у Србији. Етноантрополошка студија идентитетских пракси
Наивно, књижевно, фолклорно – стваралаштво маргине у контексту треће културе
The Last of the Living: Quarantine as a Critique in Two Popular Culture Apocalyptic Narratives
This paper analyzes two popular culture narratives created in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic: the movie Songbird, made in 2020, and the TV show The Last of Us, from 2023. The main idea of this paper is to analyze the ways in which popular culture, through different pandemic narratives, perceives the future of social systems after the appearance of the deadly disease, as experienced in current reality as well as in pop-cultural narratives. The paper will point to the pandemic apocalypse as an environment of a new social reality, that is, the quarantine as a critique of state organization and regulation.
Children’s Birthday Celebrations in Public Green Spaces in Belgrade – an Example of Projecting Cultural Content onto Physical Space
In this paper we present the results of preliminary research into children’s birthday celebrations in public green spaces in Belgrade during the second decade of the 21st century. This period is characterized by the widespread practice of celebrating children’s birthdays in commercial children’s playrooms. Birthday celebrations “in nature” were very rare in comparison. Thus we decided to focus on birthday celebrations held in public green spaces. This social practice is analyzed in the context of utilizing urban public space, public greens for organizing private events with the intent to consider the reasons for its appearance at a time when children’s birthdays were becoming part of the processes of the institutionalization and commercialization of childhood. The analysis is based on empirical material gathered through informal conversations with parents who organized birthday parties “in the open”, “in nature”. Children’s birthday parties we attended were organized at the Sava quay, in Košutnjak and at Ada Ciganlija. The fieldwork was conducted periodically from 2014 to 2018, and entailed the application of classical fieldwork methods in ethnology and anthropology (participant observation and interviews with the participants of the events).
The Motif of the “Lost Paradise” in Blockbuster Films Set in the Post-Apocalypse
Considering that mythology and storytelling are an integral part of the human experience, in this paper we will take a look at contemporary iterations of certain archetypal myths. While the authors do not espouse the idea that “science fiction is the mythology of modern society”, we believe that there is something to be said about popular culture as a medium of narrative transmission in post-industrialist society. In this sense, the paper analyses the utilization of origin myths in post-apocalyptic science fiction movies: Waterworld (1995), The Matrix franchise (four installments 1999–2021), Wall-E (2008), the Mad Max franchise (four installments 1979–2015), among others. Common to all of these narratives is that they are set after a global catastrophe that frames the “Earth before” as a paradise that was lost due to human agency. Some of these narratives also feature a search for the remnants of that lost world (most notably Waterworld and Mad Max: Fury Road), as well as “lesser” origin myths that pertain to groups of survivors themselves (e.g. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome). In the context of current debates on the Anthropocene, an era rapidly leading towards a global catastrophe, and following Donna Haraway’s work on storytelling, we believe that the act of telling these stories, and the ways in which they are told is of vital importance if we, as a species, are to survive. Furthermore, post-apocalyptic science fiction offers not only a warning but also possible outcomes exemplified through new, emerging and different naturecultures. These naturecultures range from the emergence of new and better adept bodies of a minority (which triggers stigma), to bodies which are increasingly dependent on other actants, e.g., AI. We argue that within the genre of science fiction these novel postapocalyptic naturecultures are framed as imperfect, and that such framing strengthens the myth of Earth before the apocalypse as a lost paradise. Consequently, posthumanist bodies are seen in a Biblical manner as bodies “after the Fall”, rather than as bodies which have not only the potential to survive but also to prevent the catastrophe.
Women in Bulgarian (Post) Socialistic Theatre on and beyond Stage
This paper attempts to draw a rough sketch of several major, intertwined lines of Bulgarian cultural and social history that will have a long-term effect and influence on many processes in the next few decades. As a beginning, it looks into the early phase of the establishment of state socialism in Bulgaria, focusing simultaneously on the processes taking place in the theatre system as part of the larger new political and ideological project of industrialization and modernization and the social role prescribed to it in this intensely changing social landscape. At the same time, the paper follows the parallel introduction of two somewhat contradictory new visions about women’s role in society: giving them full election rights and encouraging them to enter the labor force, while simultaneously introducing measures like the “bachelor tax”, stimulating men and women to enter marriage, creating a network of policies and notions, and encouraging women to give birth to as many children as possible and to be the main caregivers in the household. That is why the foundation of this research is precisely the paradoxical situation in which women were in the socialist theatre and outside it.
Women’s Press in Socialist Yugoslavia – Mediaportrayal of Dobrila Smiljanić in the Women’s Magazine “Bazar”
This paper examines the way in which the character of Dobrila Smiljanić was presented in the media discourse of socialist Yugoslavia. She was a fashion designer who, using motifs from the traditional thesaurus, created the fashion brand Sirogojno style, recognizable on the national and international markets during the second half of the 20th century. The work aims to: 1) recognize and distinguish fabricated media images of Dobrila Smiljanić; 2) point to the degree of harmonization of those (and such) media representations of the fashion designer with the official socialist idea of women and “female nature”, and 3) discuss, in the context of socialist ideology, the manifest and latent role of the messages that were thus sent to the Yugoslav readers’ audience. In a methodological sense, the paper relies on the data obtained from the analysis of textual and visual messages in the highly circulated Yugoslav women’s magazine “Bazar” during the 1970s (issues no. 129–389), as well as the data obtained from a semistructured interview conducted in 2014 with fashion designer Dobrila Smiljanić.
The Role of Women in the Production and Distribution of Series in Yugoslavia – Creators of Socialist Cultural Heritage
The paper deals with the research of the presence and roles of women in the creation of series in socialist Yugoslavia during the sixties and seventies of the 20th century. Besides the primary objective of identification, this study aims to identify specific patterns in work allocation, highlight significant female contributors, and underscore their contributions to the development of television series, thereby shedding light on values, cultural patterns, and societal practices. Also, Cultural Identity Theory was implemented to provide a valuable framework for understanding how women’s contributions behind the scenes in Yugoslav television series production during the 1960s and 1970s are intricately linked to the construction of cultural identity. Further, the paper analyzes the list of employees involved in the creation of 17 Yugoslav series created during the 1960s and 1970s. All information about the employees was found on the site IMDB.com. With the help of a specially constructed code list, they were listed and classified, and descriptive and comparative statistics of data analysis were carried out in the SPSS 24.0 program. In the second part of the analysis, the most significant women in this process were singled out and presented. The re sults clearly demonstrate that women held significantly fewer positions than men, with a distinct division of labor based on gender roles. Men are more often those who relate to the main positions in making series, and women to logistics and aesthetics of the characters. Also, the conclusion of the research is that, in order to be successful, a woman in that period often had to be supported by a man, but that, when she was recognized, she played a significant role in many projects, thus participating in defining the cultural heritage of an entire era.
The Ambiguities and Contradictions of the State-Socialist Way of Women’s Emancipation in Hungary (1948–1989). Overview and Search for the Traces of Feminist Resistance
The literature about the ex-state-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe raised the questions in what way women benefited from the legislation guaranteeing equal rights and the measures of emancipation during the decades of state socialism. The authors that also argued after 1990, the time of the social, economic and political transitions in the region, that women became the big losers of the changes. The paper aims to reflect on these examinations of gender relations during the state-socialist period and point out the contradictory ways of the introduction of women’s emancipation that led to ambiguous results in the propagated program of gender equality. Furthermore it discusses in which ways women’s positions remained subordinated and how the sexist representations of women increased in public life, the media and culture in Hungary after the 1970’s. A review of the main findings of earlier research accumulated so far concerning women’s lifes and gender relations in Hungary during state socialism will be followed by the question of in what ways these controversies of the system were articulated by the contemporary oppositional voices. Did the activists of the dissident Hungarian democratic opposition embrace the ideas of feminism and women’s issues in their criticism of the one-party system? On the base of contemporary documents and recent interviews with ex-activists it will be examined how feminist voices were articulated, yet controversially marginalized among the dissidents.
Girls Build! Female Architects who Shaped the Modern History of Novi Sad
The recovery from the Second World War brought significant changes and the implementation of socialist ideology in Yugoslavia that went in parallel with the emancipation of women. This is particularly noticeable in the rise of women with university education and their enrolment in various occupations, such as construction engineering and architecture. The increased interest in pursuing architectural education among women has been rising since the 1950s, when they already represented 46% of total students at Belgrade University. The rebuilding of the country meant great urbanistic and architectural projects, with radical reconstruction and reconceptualization of cities and public spaces. Young female architects embraced an opportunity to be equally involved and active in urban development. Their roles and impacts were diverse: they held positions within planning institutes, architectural bureaus, and public offices in urbanism and construction; furthermore, they were responsible engineers at the construction sites; and they became teachers and educators for the new generations of architects and civil engineers. They worked individually, in pairs, and in teams, demonstrating the ability to be actively and equally involved in the profession in every possible aspect and domain. The research positions their roles and contributions within the broader framework of the process of female emancipation in socialist Yugoslavia, focusing on three remarkable architects engaged in the postwar reconstruction of Novi Sad: Julka Majtan, Tatjana Vanjifatov Savić, and Milena Đorđević.