To deconstruct discourses on motherhood means to answer the questions, how certain gender relationships in the given society are constructed based on the dominant discourse, in which way do they ...become natural relationships and become binding for the members of the community creating the ideal type of woman-wife-mother. If we accept that the dominant motherhood discourse was conceived as the social relation of power, we can also inquire as to its problematizing and transformation. In this paper, on the one hand, religious-magical - practice are analyzed, supporting the discourse of ideal motherhood, and on the other, there is the analysis of the strategies of the magic rites, which form the alternative discourses of - control in the comprehension of woman’s reproductive role in the traditional Serbian culture of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Cultural concepts of motherhood are directed at the fact that woman is not left with much choice, namely, the alternative discourses of motherhood tell us that women ruled over illegitimate knowledge and magic, performed abortions and in that way enabled women to strike a balance between childbearing and their own wishes and interests. However, this kind of discourse is in contrast with the interests of the church and society, that is, their tendency to use women’s reproductive potential accordi- ng to the needs of the society and not the needs of women themselves. By deconstructing taboos and magic rites which are involved in creating the discourse of the good and bad mother it is indirectly pointed at the gender construction and the power relations.
Fenomen vampirizma u tradicijskoj kulturi Srba posmatran je u kontekstu kulta mrtvih i posmrtne sudbine pokojnika u nameri da se ukaže na simboličku predstavu vampira kao osujećenog mitskog pretka. U ...drugom delu rada, argumentuje se hipoteza po kojoj su različiti koncepti seksualnosti u tradicijskoj patrijarhalnoj kulturi implicitno produkovali određene mitološke predstave o vampiru. Kolizija između različitih maskulinih skripti rezultira potiskivanjem onih koje ne pripadaju javnom pravoslavnom diskursu, tako da su procesi latentne hristijanizacije implicitno reprodukovali predstave o vampiru kao osujećenom muškom seksualnom potencijalu.
Povodom knjige: Vjekoslav Perica, Balkanski idoli: religija i nacionalizam u jugoslovenskim državama (1 i 2), Biblioteka XX vek, Knjižara Krug, Beograd 2006
Starting from the insight that practitioners' research is increasingly being recognized as a form of professional development that contributes to the development of educational practice, the aim of ...our research is to determine the reasons for an insufficient representation of practitioners' research and explore the possible solutions for overcoming this problem. The data were collected during an online conference dedicated to professional development which was attended by 157 teachers and professional associates. The data corpus for analysis consists of participants' posts on the Padlet platform, namely, 156 posts dealing with the shortcomings of practitioners' research in relation to other forms of professional development and 106 posts on how to support other colleagues to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings. The data were analyzed using the qualitative content analysis. In the participants' opinion, the reason for an insufficient representation of the research of practice is the low motivation for this type of professional development, and they also cite the obstacles present at the level of school, education system, and society. According to the participants, the ways to overcome these problems include raising awareness of the benefits of research practice, taking responsibility for developing their own practice, and developing themselves as researchers, as well as building a community of research practitioners. The findings are discussed from the perspective of the conceptions of practitioners' research, but also from the perspective of the contextual conditionality of this form of professional development. The findings served to formulate recommendations for improving the position of practitioners' research and practitioners as researchers in the Serbian education system.
To deconstruct discourses on motherhood means to answer the questions, how certain gender relationships in the given society are constructed based on the dominant discourse, in which way do they ...become natural relationships and become binding for the members of the community creating the ideal type of woman-wife-mother. If we accept that the dominant motherhood discourse was conceived as the social relation of power, we can also inquire as to its problematizing and transformation. In this paper, on the one hand, religious-magical practice are analyzed, supporting the discourse of ideal motherhood, and on the other, there is the analysis of the strategies of the magic rites, which form the alternative discourses of control in the comprehension of woman’s reproductive role in the traditional Serbian culture of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Cultural concepts of motherhood are directed at the fact that woman is not left with much choice, namely, the alternative discourses of motherhood tell us that women ruled over illegitimate knowledge and magic, performed abortions and in that way enabled women to strike a balance between childbearing and their own wishes and interests. However, this kind of discourse is in contrast with the interests of the church and society, that is, their tendency to use women’s reproductive potential according to the needs of the society and not the needs of women themselves. By deconstructing taboos and magic rites which are involved in creating the discourse of the good and bad mother it is indirectly pointed at the gender construction and the power relations.
Ethnographic literature from the late eighteenth and during the course of nineteenth and twentieth century, presents us with a diverse but insufficiently conceptualized notions based on which vampire ...could be discussed in the context of aberrant life, untypical death, or inadequate burial practice. The structure of ancestral cult, containing among other things ideas of the "nature" of interrelationships between the living and the dead, is only one of the constructions imitating the ideological discourse of old-fashioned cultural pattern, certain relations in the society and structural order. Relations between the living and the dead are limited to ones on the male side, implying the reciprocal obligation: on one hand, respect of the burial rituals and mourning determine the "posthumous destiny", as well as the obligation of sacrificial offerings to godly ancestors, on the other the requirement of ancestors to protect and watch over their descendants in return. In order to be able to reproduce at all a community must mind the deceased’s soul, i.e. prevent the possible demonization by properly observing the rituals. In that sense, notions of vampires and the devil are emblematic warnings of the fact that each deceased, necessarily, is not an ancestor, and that the ideal model of generational hierarchy and of awe sustained by the proclaimed old-fashioned relations is actually relative, that is to say the notions of vampires and the devil point to the split in generations and to the governing relations in an old-fashioned society. Directly dependant on the male descendents, aberrant life as well as the aberrant "posthumous destiny" are mechanisms for excluding from the social relations with the dead the ones that can not be given the status of ancestors, so we can conceive them as thwarted mythical ancestors.
In the second part of the paper, I endeavored to demonstrate that the conceptions of masculinity could also be deconstructed through analysis of mythical imagery, for mythological images of say vampires are based on contradictions between objectively different scripts – religious and secular ones. Images of vampires could as well be viewed as symbolic constructions of certain masculinity patterns, first of all church, non-Christian (pagan) and secular patterns that collide. The collision of different masculine scripts results in repression of those not belonging to public Orthodox discourse, so the latent processes of Christianization implicitly reproduced the notions of vampire as thwarted male sexual potential.
The revitalization of religion in postsocialism is followed by the revitalization of individual narratives about religious life in socialism. On the one hand, the lived experience is connected to the ...contemporary revitalization of religion and the public discourse promoted by the Serbian Orthodox church on the repression it suffered during socialism, and on the other hand, interlocutors tell of their positive experiences which stand in contrast to official stories. The research presented in this paper is directed toward the conceptualization of individual narratives which actualize the memories of the faithful of the life during socialism. Special attention has been paid to those aspects of the past which interlocutors consider relevant for interpreting their own relationship with religion, meanings attributed to memories and ways in which they are connected and interpreted i the context of the present.
The revitalization of religion in postsocialism is followed by the revitalization of individual narratives about religious life in socialism. On the one hand, the lived experience is connected to the ...contemporary revitalization of religion and the public discourse promoted by the Serbian Orthodox church on the repression it suffered during socialism, and on the other hand, interlocutors tell of their positive experiences which stand in contrast to official stories. The research presented in this paper is directed toward the conceptualization of individual narratives which actualize the memories of the faithful of the life during socialism. Special attention has been paid to those aspects of the past which interlocutors consider relevant for interpreting their own relationship with religion, meanings attributed to memories and ways in which they are connected and interpreted i the context of the present.
The virtual world of the Internet is acknowledged as a potentially innovative way of doing research on faith. Computer mediated religious communication is a relevant field of research at the ...beginning of the 21st century and a significant source of data for researching religious identity, communities and the ritual use of the Internet. Using the examples of two monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church, we will attempt to examine new ways in which the church mediates in the communication of the faithful with god, as well as examine new types of spiritual interactions which occur through Facebook. The first part of the paper describes the look and content of different types of communication of orthodox monasteries and churches which emerges on the Internet. The second parts thematically groups and analyzes the visual materials posted by Facebook us ers, the contents of messages and the descriptions of their religious and spiritual experience, their behavior, and whether and to what extent members of a FB (Facebook) group “like”, share and comment on certain content.
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