Aleksandar Bošković

Aleksandar Bošković
Born 5 June 1962
Zemun ,
FPR Yugoslavia
Nationality Serbian, Macedonian
Fields Anthropology Social anthropology
Institutions University of St Andrews
Universidade de Brasilia
University of the Witwatersrand
Rhodes University
Institute of Social Sciences, Belgrade
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade
Alma mater University of St Andrews
Influences

Aleksandar Bošković (born 5 June 1962) is a social anthropologist from former Yugoslavia, who published several books and a number of articles dealing with history and theory of anthropology, from a transactionalist and comparative perspective.[1][2] He is Professor in the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology (Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade),[3] and previously taught at the Universities of St Andrews[4] (1994), Belgrade (then Yugoslavia, 1998), Brasília (Brazil, 1999-2001), Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa, 2001-2003), and Rhodes University[5] (Grahamstown, South Africa, 2003-2006). Between 2000 and 2014, Aleksandar Bošković was teaching in the Post-graduate Program in Anthropology of the Faculty of Social Sciences (FDV), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia).[6]

Studies and early work

Born in Zemun, Yugoslavia, Bošković studied philosophy in Belgrade during 1980s, but never quite got interested in it. Spent some years in the so-called “pro-democracy” journalism in Yugoslavia (1983-1990), in the process working for the Belgrade magazine Student (1984/1985) and writing for almost all of the major (mostly Belgrade-based) Yugoslav magazines at the time. Aleksandar's journalistic texts and interviews dealt with political issues (he interviewed some of the former "Praxis school" philosophers), foreign affairs, but also with cultural issues and science fiction.

His early scholarly publications were influenced by the interest in the study of religion, and they focused on ancient Mesoamerican religions (especially Maya and Mexican/ Aztec).[7] In 1990, went to Tulane University[8] in New Orleans to study anthropology. Fieldwork in Guatemala in 1991 was inspired by the interest in Classic Maya ceramics, but this interest gradually waned, mostly due to his dissatisfaction with the then-dominant “direct historical approach” in Mesoamerican studies. Bošković defended the M.A. thesis (supervised by Munro S. Edmonson [1924-2002]), “William Robertson Smith and the Anthropological Study of Myth,” at Tulane in April 1993.[9] From New Orleans went to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, following up on the interest in contemporary anthropology, combined with the interpretive approach, to which he came through the influence of Clifford Geertz (1926-2006). There, he was first supervised by Ladislav Holy (1933-1997), who influenced him with his version of methodological individualism.[10] Following Holy’s illness, Bošković was later supervised by Nigel J. Rapport, and defended his Ph.D. thesis (“Constructing Gender in Contemporary Anthropology”) on 1 November 1996.[11] The ethnographic part of the thesis focused on the feminist groups in Slovenia, and methodologically, some of the conclusions were influenced by Holy, as well as by Marilyn Strathern and Henrietta L. Moore.

Academic career

Bošković taught his first academic course at the University of St. Andrews in the Martinmas Term of 1994 (“Mesoamerican Pre-Columbian Civilisations”, at the Honours’ level), and began teaching part-time at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana in 2000 (“Contemporary anthropology” and “Anthropology and feminism”, at the M.A. level). However, his first important teaching experience was when he moved to the Department of Anthropology of the University of Brasília, where he was influenced by Mariza Peirano's and Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira's concept of the horizontally-structured anthropology. (This will later influence his interest in "World Anthropologies."[12]) In Brasília, Bošković taught courses on gender, myths, but also started to develop some interest in the concept of Europe, as he was hired as “Visiting Professor of European Ethnology.”

Following the invitation of Robert Thornton, Bošković moved to the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa) on the Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship in 2001. There he taught courses on religion, myth, and ethnicity. While in Johannesburg, he was fortunate enough to meet (and have opportunity to discuss anthropology with) W.D. Hammond-Tooke (1926-2004), the last of the great 20th century South African anthropologists. In 2003, Bošković was hired as Senior Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology of Rhodes University, a department that Hammond-Tooke helped establish during the 1960s. It was there that Bošković further developed his interests in the history and theory of anthropology. This Department provided a brilliant academic setting, with Chris de Wet, Robin Palmer, Penny Bernard, among others. Furthermore, his interest in history and theory of anthropology resulted in publication of several books in the last ten years. His book Myth, Politics, Ideology was published in late 2006 in Belgrade, and it covered different theoretical aspects of the study of myths, understood (in Raymond Aron’s sense) as part of ideology.[13] The book also included several chapters on different aspects of Mesoamerican religions – some in revised versions from their original publications, and some previously unpublished. This also coincided with Bošković's interest in the study of ethnicity and nationalism, and his overall view that multiculturalism is an essential component of all human societies.[14]

Return to Belgrade

In 2006, Aleksandar Bošković briefly worked as Program Director (in charge of transitional justice) in the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade.[15] The interest in human rights followed on his criticism of nationalism and violence and his association with other human rights organizations in Serbia in the 1990s (like the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights), and he also worked for the UNDP on several short-term contracts, again on topics related to transitional justice. Throughout this period he has been an outspoken critic of nationalism, as well as of all totalitarian tendencies within the Serbian society.[16]

Since August 2008, Aleksandar is Director of Research or Research Professor (French Directeur d'études; in Serbo-Croatian Naučni savetnik) and (since May 2009) Head of the Center for Political Research and Public Opinion in the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade (Serbia), where he is employed since 1 July 2003. In October 2009, Bošković started teaching in the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, and was formally awarded full Professorship by the Senate of the University of Belgrade in November 2012. He teaches Ethnological and Anthropological Theories (second-year course) on the undergraduate level (as well as Comparative Religion, as an elective), and History of Anthropology at the Doctoral level.

Recent work and publications

Following the invitation of Nigel Rapport, Bošković spoke on individualism[17] at the Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies and School of Modern Languages, University of St. Andrews (Scotland), on 23 March 2011, and, on 28 April 2011, also spoke on “Psychoanalysis and Anthropology” at the 113th Gellner Seminar in Prague (Czech Republic). He edited a volume Other People’s Anthropologies: Ethnographic Practice on the Margins (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008; paperback edition in 2010), a book that received very favourable reviews, and is being used as a reference work on the topic.[18] The book presents a contribution to the growing field of “World Anthropologies,” and it dealt with several anthropological traditions (including Russian, Dutch, Bulgarian, Kenyan, Argentinian, Turkish, Cameroonian, Japanese, Yugoslav, Norwegian, and Brazilian), outside the so-called “central anthropological traditions” (Anglo-American, French and German). However, better known locally is Kratak uvod u antropologiju [A Brief Introduction to Anthropology], published in late 2010 by the Jesenski i Turk in Zagreb (Croatia).[19] Serbian edition of the book was published in April 2010, based on a series of lectures delivered at the Rex Cultural Centre.[20]

Aleksandar Bošković also co-edited a volume on the development of anthropologies/ ethnologies in Southeastern Europe between 1945 and 1991, with Chris Hann,[21] and published a book in Serbia on Anthropological perspectives[22] He also published a review essay on the uses of rational choice in anthropology in Ethnos in 2012 (with Suzana Ignjatović)[23] and, another one, on anthropological studies of myths and nationalism, and focusing on Bruce Kapferer's approach, in 2013, in the oldest anthropology journal in the world, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie.[24] As a conclusion of the several decades of interest in the study of myth, his most recent edited book is Dictionary of Deities and Mythic Beings of the World (in Serbo-Croatian; co-edited with Milan Vukomanović and Zoran Jovanović), a single-volume reference work with 14 contributors, covering all the world traditional cultures, except the Greek and the Roman. Bošković contributed over 150 entries, including all on Australia, Mesoamerica, Celts, and some on Africa, Middle East and Mesopotamia (Baal, Gilgamesh, Ziusudra), and India (Ganesha, Parvati, Rudra, Shiva).

Since 1986, Aleksandar gave more than 180 guest lectures or seminars and six short courses in 26 countries, including at University of Oslo, University of Bergen, Goldsmiths College, Vanderbilt University, College of William and Mary, University of Cambridge and Brunel University. In recent years, he also spoke about topics such as rationality (both at the IUAES Congress in Manchester in 2013, and at the Inter-Congress in Chiba, Japan in 2014), identity (at the meeting of the Croatian Ethnological Society in Zagreb in 2013), Giambattista Vico (at the ASA Decennial Conference in Edinburgh, 2014), ethnicity (in the Masters’ seminar at the University of Leipzig, 2014) and anthropology in Belgrade (at the Institute of Social Anthropology, Wilhelms University of Münster (Germany),[25] in 2014). He co-organized (with Salma Siddique) a panel on "Anthropology and psychotherapy" at the ASA conference in Exeter in April 2015, and presented a seminar on Edvard Munch at the Comparative Sociology Department of the University of Leiden. With Professor Günther Schlee, he organized a Workshop commemorating 75th anniversary of the African Political Systems at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, 10–11 September 2015.[26] In October 2015, Aleksandar Bošković participated at the "Making anthropology matter" EASA conference at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, and presented a paper at the Anthropology Colloquium at the Institute of Social Anthropology of the University of Hamburg. In early January 2016, he gave a seminar at the Ben Gurion University at Ber Sheeba (Israel), on the limits of "World anthropologies," as well as a guest lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's School of Philosophy and Religions, Faculty of Humanities, on William Robertson Smith's influence on "myth-ritualists," marking a return to the topic that he studied over two decades earlier. [27]

References

  1. ↑ "Curriculum Vitae+Bibliography" (PDF). Retrieved 2015-09-05.
  2. ↑ "Writing history of anthropology as an anthropological problem". Etnoloska tribina. Retrieved 2015-12-23.
  3. ↑ "Zaposleni | Univerzitet u Beogradu - Filozofski fakultet". F.bg.ac.rs. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  4. ↑ "University of St Andrews - Scotland's first university, founded 1413". St-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  5. ↑ "Rhodes University". Ru.ac.za. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  6. ↑ "Fakulteta za družbene vede". Fdv.uni-lj.si. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  7. ↑ "The Meaning of Maya Myths". www.anthropos.eu. Retrieved 2016-02-23.
  8. ↑ "Tulane University". Tulane.edu. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  9. ↑ "ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON MYTH" (PDF). Forel.idn.org.re. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  10. ↑ "Knowledge and behaviour". www.qub.ac.uk. Retrieved 2015-06-02.
  11. ↑ "Constructing Gender in Contemporary Anthropology". www.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 2015-12-26.
  12. ↑ ""World Anthropologies"". Anthropos.eu. Retrieved 2016-04-09.
  13. ↑ "Law and Ideology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  14. ↑ "Alle nasjoner er multikulturelle". uniforum.uio.no. Retrieved 2015-06-02.
  15. ↑ "Home - Fond za humanitarno pravo/Humanitarian Law Center/Fondi për të Drejtën Humanitare | Fond za humanitarno pravo/Humanitarian Law Center/Fondi për të Drejtën Humanitare". Hlc-rdc.org. 2015-05-21. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  16. ↑ "Home - NIN". Retrieved 2015-08-25.
  17. ↑ Lukes, Steven M. "individualism | politics and philosophy | Encyclopedia Britannica". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  18. ↑ "Other People's Anthropologies : BERGHAHN BOOKS : Oxford, New York : Celebrating 21 Years of Independent Publishing!". Berghahn Books. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  19. ↑ "KRATAK UVOD U ANTROPOLOGIJU - aleksandar bošković". Jesenski-turk.hr. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  20. ↑ "Antropologija kao jaka kritička teorija društva". www.politika.rs. Retrieved 2015-06-02.
  21. ↑ "The Anthropological Field on the Margins of Europe,1945-1991 (Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia) (9783643905079): Aleksandar Boskovic, Chris Hann: Books". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  22. ↑ "Aleksandar Bošković : ANTROPOLOŠKE PERSPEKTIVE" (PDF). Idn.org.re. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  23. ↑ "Special Issue: Learning Possession" (PDF). Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology (Tandfonline.com) 77: 290–296. 2012. doi:10.1080/00141844.2011.644314. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  24. ↑ Bruce Kapferer, ed. (2012). Legends of People, Myths of State. Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia (PDF). Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-0-85745-436-2. Retrieved 2015-05-27.
  25. ↑
  26. ↑
  27. ↑ "ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON MYTH" (PDF). Forel.idn.org.re. Retrieved 2015-05-27.

External links

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