This paper aims to discuss the meanings and scope of the ontological turn in contemporary anthropology. It discusses various other approaches usually labelled as "ontological" and explains the ...specificities of the ontological turn itself: reflexivity, conceptualisation, and experimentation. According to the primary authors of the ontological turn, Martin Holbraad and Morten Pedersen, ontology is not the base on which politics, culture, society builds, but the methodological assumptions that centre anthropological knowledge on ethnography as a concept-generating device. Although the ontological turn offers a radical platform for the study of the political, it has not had many followers in regional anthropology. This paper offers a few possible explanations for such a development.
In this paper I address dominant critical discourses of turbo-folk music in Serbia. I suggest that we see music and music related practices as constitutive rather than reflective of identification in ...order to find a more nuanced ways to understand common discourses of (turbo-) folk critiques and its roles. To that aim, I draw from my long-term fieldwork research in the northern Serbian town of Novi Sad to show how public discourses are played out in private spheres, and also how they are created in and through everyday life. I identify the “anti-folk scene” based on univocal aesthetic exclusion that encompasses people from various social backgrounds and social strata. In conclusion, it could be said that despite its huge popularity and public visibility, turbo-folk remains one of the most important examples of aesthetics of others/other aesthetics in contemporary Serbia.
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