Interests and methodology of research

Dr Aleksandar Bošković researches how people present to themselves the world in which they live – through rituals, rites and everyday interactions. This presentation can display through myths and religions, but also through the cultural symbols that people constantly create. The flow of these cultural symbols presents the essence of communication between different societies and cultures. One more important part of Dr Bošković’s interests relates to different methodological assumptions of scientific research, particularly in the domain of research of aspects of the spiritual life of prehistoric and pre-modern societies. Dr Bošković also researches different anthropological traditions (“world anthropology”), and ways in which these traditions adjust to the changes in the modern world, with the globalisation of knowledge and raising of important questions, like the “Anthropocene”.

Education

1996 – Doctoral thesis in Social Anthropology, University of St. Andrews, Scotland, Great Britain. PhD: Constructing Gender in Contemporary Anthropology

1993 – Master’s thesis in Anthropology Tulane University, New Orleans (LA), USA. MA: William Robertson Smith and the Anthropological Study of Myth

1990 – Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade

Employment

2019 – Institute of Archaeology, Research Assistant

2017 – Faculty of Applied Science, UDG, Podgorica, Montenegro, full-time professor of anthropology

2013 – Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, full-time professor of anthropology

2007-2019 – Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade, Principal Research Fellow

2003-2007 – Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade, Senior Research Associate

2003-2006 – Department of Anthropology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, Senior Lecturer

1999-2015 – Faculty of Social Sciences (FDV), University of Ljubljana, visiting professor in postdoctoral programme of anthropology  1999-2001 – Departamento de Antropología, Universidade de Brasília, Brazil, Professor Visitante de EtnologiaEuropea

1994-1996 – Department of Social Anthropology, University of St. Andrews, Scotland, Great Britain, tutor and part-time lecturer

Languages: English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Macedonian, Slovenian, Bulgarian and German

Director of projects

(2018-) Rationality in Anthropology. Project financed by: Collegium de Lyon (France) and OSF (New York, USA).

(2011-2018) Social transformations in the process of European integrations – a multidisciplinary approach, Institute for Social Sciences, Belgrade

(2013-2017) Cognitive Approaches in Anthropological Theory and Practice. Project financed by: DAAD and Max Planck Institut für ethnologische Forschung (Halle, Germany).

(2010) Attitudes of Serbian citizens about gender equality, Project of the Direction for Gender Equality, and of the Ministry of Work and Social Politics of the Republic of Serbia, financed by Sweden’s government agency for development cooperation (SIDA)

(2010) Interethnic relations in the function of conciliation, project financed by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Belgrade)

Participation in projects

(2011 – ) IRS – Viminacium, Roman city, and military legion camp – research of material culture and non-material of inhabitants by using the modern technologies of remote detection, geophysics, GIS, digitalisation, and 3D visualisation

2011- Social transformations in the process of European integrations – a multidisciplinary approach, Institute of Social Sciences, Belgrade

2018- Rationality in Anthropology.

2013-2017 Cognitive Approaches in Anthropological Theory and Practice

2010 Attitudes of Serbian citizens about gender equality

2010 Interethnic relations in the function of conciliation

2006-2010 Democratic models of enhancement of social cohesion, tolerance, human rights and economic development in political and institutional processes of the European integration of Serbia, Institute of Social Sciences Belgrade

2002-2005 Transition of society and economy of Serbia in the process of globalisation and regionalisation – the methods of change and applicative models (1800), Institute of Social Sciences, Belgrade

Memberships

– Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and the Commonwealth (ASA)

– International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES)

– Overseas Fellow, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI)

– European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA)

– International Association for Comparative Mythology (IACM)

– American Anthropological Association (AAA), The Prehistoric Society, American Philosophical Association (APA), Association of South-eastern European Anthropologists (InASEA)

International conferences

• Ratio is Said in Many Ways: Reason, Rationality and Rationalization between the Modern and Contemporary Eras – Napoli (Italija), 2019
• Rationality in the transnational world – New perspectives, ULL2, Collegium de Lyon – Lyon (Francuska), 2019
• EASA Conference – Stockholm (Švedska), 2018
• 18^th World Congress of IUAES – Florianópolis (Brazil), 2018
• World Humanities Conference, UNESCO – Liège (Belgija), 2017
• 12^th ICUPE Conference – Mostar (Bosna i Hercegovina), 2017
• 11^thAnnual International Conference on Comparative Mythology – Edinburgh (Škotska, VelikaBritanija), 2017
• 13^th SIEF Congress – Göttingen (Nemačka), 2017
• Making Anthropology Matter, EASA invited conference – Prague (Češka), 2015
• African Political Systems Revisited – Halle (Nemačka), 2015
• Who are “We”: Reimagining alterity and affinity in anthropology – Cambridge (VelikaBritanija), 2014
• IUAES Inter-Congress – Chiba (Japan), 2014
• The Rise of anthropology ‘on the margins of Europe’, 1945-1991 – Halle (Nemačka), 2011

National conferences

• Društvo nauka progres – Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881), Filozofski fakultet i Univerzitet u Beogradu – Beograd, 2018
• Individualizam, Institut društvenih nauka – Beograd, 2017

Bibliography

Monographs

• Bošković, A. 2017. Mesoamerican Religions and Archaeology: Essays in Pre-Columbian Civilizations, (Archaeopress Pre-Columbian Archaeology, 7) Oxford: Archaeopress.
• Bošković, A. Kratak uvod u antropologiju, Zagreb: Jesenski i Turk.
• Bošković, A. 2006. Mit, politika, ideologija. Ogledi iz komparativne antropologije, Beograd: Institut društvenih nauka.
• Bošković, A. Religija i kultura Maja, Beograd: Kodeks.

Chapters in international monographs and edited volumes

• Bošković, A. Individualizam u antropologiji, u Individualizam, ur. S. Ignjatović, A. Bošković, 4-25. Beograd: Centar za antropološka istraživanja i Institut društvenih nauka.
• Bošković, A. Serbia and the surplus of history: Being small, large, and small again, in Small Countries: Structures and Sensibilities, ed. U.Hannerz, A. Gingrich, 195-209. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Bošković, A. Ignjatović, S. Gender equality in Serbia, in Gender Equality in a Global Perspective, ed. A. Örtenblad, R. Marling, S.Vasiljević, 198-223. New York and London: Routledge.
• Bošković, A. Escape from the future: Anthropological practice and everyday life, in Balkan Heritages, ed. M.Couroucli,T.Marinov, 229-245. London: Ashgate.
• Bošković, A. Eriksen, T. H. Introduction [Other People’s Anthropologies], in: Readings from a History of Anthropological Theory, 4^th edition, ed. P. A. Ericksen, L.D. Murphy, 562-574. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Edited volumes

• Bošković, A. Vukomanović, M. Jovanović, Z. 2015. Rečnik božanstava i mitskih ličnosti sveta, Beograd: Službeni glasnik i Institut društvenih nauka.
• Bošković, A. Hann, C. The Anthropological Field on the Margins of Europe, Berlin: Lit Verlag.
• Bošković, A. Other People’s Anthropologies: Ethnographic Practice on the Margins. Oxford,New York: Berghahn

Papers in scientific journals

• Bošković, A. Anthropology and Nationalism. American Anthropologist 121(4): 924-928.
• Bošković, A. Štrkalj, G. Buturović, Ž. Attitudes of Serbian biological anthropologists toward the concept of race. Anthropologie 57(3): 287-297.
• Bošković, A. Čitanje kultura. Antropologija, arheologija i razumevanje drevne Mezoamerike. Glasnik Etnografskog instituta SANU 66(2): 271-285.
• Bošković, A. 2015 Pisati istoriju. Ili: istorija antropologije kao antropološki problem. Etnološka tribina 45/38: 150-160.