The paper considers the basic concepts of perceiving the city, first and foremost its polarization against the country or the village and (much later) polarization between the old "solidary" and ...contemporary anomic cities. Aside from this, the paper considers the basic premises and practice of the application of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which are mostly based on safeguarding/protecting premodern cultural elements and - mostly essentialist - group identities, in order to highlight the possibilities of reworking the conceptual framework for the application of the Convention to - heretofore unknown - urban heritages which originated on completely different premises, as well as the issues and dilemmas which can arise from such attempts. The paper considers the relationship between the Convention and the Modern age, the perception/perceptions of the city, the city as palimpsest, and, ultimately the relationship of the Convention with the city and (potential/possible) intangible urban heritage. Attempts to safeguard specific forms of urban intangible heritage have, heretofore, been faced with a slew of problems, stemming first and foremost from the insistence on "backwardness" as authenticity (Hafstein 2013, 45), but also the insistence on exoticism: that which is safeguarded is completely different from contemporary western civilization, completely in line with the definition of the exotic as aestheticization which makes pain (of contemporary poverty as opposed to colonial conquest of yore) into spectacle, and into culture (of global society as opposed to the former colonial empire) (Arac and Ritvo 1991, 3). Every city ever was and always is a crossroads of cultures - in space (those with exist simultaneously), as well as in time (past and future). Of course, the reading of such complex heritage, which constantly changes meaning even if it retains the same or similar appearance, is a daunting task, while its "safeguarding", whatever that may entail in the bureaucratic sense, is almost unfeasible. Culture, definitely cannot be copyrighted (Brown 1998), so neither can "tradition" - not even its material remnants - it cannot stay unchanged whatever we may try. But this does not mean that we should not attempt and keep discovering new ways in which heritage can be built into our everyday lives - safeguarded in spirit, however much the form may vary.
The paper reconstructs the history of digital/computer games in Serbia and (former) Yugoslavia, in the 1980s. Histories of digital games are mostly written based on the history of industry in the US ...and, somewhat later, Japan, and largely ignore local histories, which - at least in their beginnings and especially on the periphery - are very different from global developments. That is why it was important to reconstruct the local story, before it completely sinks into oblivion. It includes both the games themselves, as well as the computers on which they were played and the media in which they were promoted.
The paper is concerned with the restriction of access to knowledge/books in the contemporary digitalized global world, in which the access to knowledge has to be paid for, and wherein definitions of ...modes of payment control who has or doesn’t have the right to knowledge. The second part of the article deals with the struggle for the freedom of words/knowledge, and actions through which the authors/producers of knowledge and art fight the restrictions not only to the freedom of speech, but also creativity and innovation, which should be the aim of all copyright and intellectual right laws, the contemporary application of which has become its own opposite.
The paper deals with traditional technologies as immaterial cultural heritage and offers an ethnography which is the result of fieldwork conducted as part of the project of preparing documentation to ...list the technology of cheese manufacturing in the Sjenica region on the National list of immaterial cultural heritage. As part of this, the traditional technology of manufacture of Sjenica cheese has been considered, as well as the attempts by local actors to protect and preserve this technology. Following this there is an analysis of data collected through interviews with members of the local community - from cheese manufacturers themselves to individuals in different governing positions. This segment focuses on the ideas and comprehension which local actors exhibit on the topic of the importance of the product that they're trying to preserve, and as they themselves state "brand", but foremost on the issues which they face in this process. In the end, the potential possibilities of realizing the project of constructing an application which would help include Sjenica cheese on the list of Immaterial cultural heritage are analyzed. This segment focuses on the actions of local management as well as the possibility of professional anthropologists helping in the realization of this project.
This paper discusses the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, more specifically, its enormous popularity in the United States, Western Europe and Australia, and the absence of any reaction to ...the series in Serbia. By comparing themes regarded as important in western societies to the current situation in Serbia, the analysis shows that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a series that could not have gained popularity in Serbia because it uses the language of fantasy to speak about reality and pose unpleasant questions, which the Serbian public does not wish to hear.
The paper discusses the role of anthropology in the protection of intangible heritage, which significantly pre-dates the bureaucratic concept defined by UNESCO’s 2003 Convention, and takes a look at ...the various dilemmas arising from the Convention’s practical implementation. It looks at social practices that cannot be protected because they clash with the concept of human rights protection, or with contemporary positive legislation; at the exoticization of practices that are in reality still alive, but are represented as though they were not; at the relationship between the global and the local, with the aim of highlighting the various kinds of ambivalence within the concept itself, which the implementers of the Convention are usually unaware of.
The paper examines young adult dystopian novels written in the first decade of the 21st century, as heirs to the tradition of the bildungsroman, and the great dystopias. The focus of this new genre ...has shifted from maintaining “the best of all worlds” – where the young person adjusts and fits into the existing world, to the shaping of the hero’s critical spirit which is supposed to result in the hero/heroine growing up, but also in changes in the world which they inhabit. Two other important characteristics of these novels are the critical relationship toward ancestors and tradition on the one hand, and on the other the positive assessment of non-rational decisions which are made impulsively and are based on emotions, which points to the abandonment of different aspects of the heritage of modernity (the traditions of rationalism and romanticism). Thus they set the stage for a new, different view of the world and the role which the individual is to fulfill by growing from a child into an adult in such a world.
The paper gives an overview of the prevalence of the analysis of science fiction literature and science fiction in other segments of popular culture in Serbian anthropology. This overview is preceded ...by a consideration of science fiction as a genre while keeping in mind the fluidity of the genre and the interweaving of subgenres as well as the transformations which science fiction is undergoing in certain media (books, films, TV shows and video games). In Serbian anthropology research on science fiction is more prevalent than the study of other phenomena, as the number of anthropologists whose work is represented in the paper is fairly large compared to the size of the anthropological community as a whole. The causes for this can primarily be found in a collective focus on questions such as: who are we and who the others are, what the basis of creating and building identity is or what the role of context in recognition of species is. Anthropology gives answers to these questions through the interpretation, explanation and understanding of the world around us, while science fiction does it through the literary considerations of these same questions.
This paper looks at the use of the Serbian terms "kulturna baština" and "kulturno nasleđe" (both of which are translated as "cultural heritage") to refer to elements of culture preserved from the ...past and considered valuable enough to be preserved as part of the musealization of reality in its various forms. It offers an analysis of how, through the (re)introduction of the old/new term baština, patriarchy and essentialism – two elements of non-material cultural heritage that are ostensibly undesirable and not to be retained since they are contrary to international law – are being reinstated in the sphere of culture by bureaucratic means.
PDF
