Aleksandar Boskovic

Studies and early work

Born in Zemun, Yugoslavia, Bošković studied philosophy in Belgrade between 1982 and 1990. He spent some years in the so-called "pro-democracy" journalism in Yugoslavia (1983-1990), in the process working as foreign politics editor and member of the Editorial Board of the Belgrade weekly magazine Student (1984/1985) and writing for almost all of the major (mostly Belgrade-based) Yugoslav magazines between 1984 and 1990. Aleksandar's journalistic texts and interviews dealt with political issues (he interviewed some of the former Praxis School philosophers - including Gajo Petrović, Svetozar Stojanović, and Mihailo Marković), foreign affairs, but also with cultural issues, comics and science fiction.

His early scholarly publications were influenced by the interest in the study of myth and religion, influenced by Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) and Mircea Eliade (1907-1986]]. 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 Non-classical Mythology. Bošković contributed over 150 entries, including all on Australia, Mesoamerica, Africa, Celts, and some on Middle East and Mesopotamia (Baal, Gilgamesh, Ziusudra), and India (Ganesha, Parvati, Rudra, Shiva).

Some of his early texts focused on ancient Mesoamerican religions (especially Maya and Mexican/ Aztec). In 1990, Bošković went to Tulane University in New Orleans to study anthropology with Munro S. Edmonson [1924-2002]. 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 and the tendency by some anthropologists to use material from looted sites. However, he continued to occasionally review books on this topic, especially for the journal Anthropos. He kept in touch with several prominent Maya archaeologists, like Richard E. W. Adams (1931-2015), American archaeologist who taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio, who influenced Bošković with his general perspective and methodological rigor, and leading French Mayanist, Claude François Baudez (1932-2013), from the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique). The interest in Mesoamerica was revisited in a book published by Archaeopress in 2017, Mesoamerican Religions and Archaeology. The book includes a number of review essays, including chapters on The Meaning of Maya Myths, Aztec Great Goddesses, and ways of interpreting the Codex Borbonicus (or Codex Cihuacoatl).

Bošković defended the M.A. thesis (supervised by Munro S. Edmonson), "William Robertson Smith and the Anthropological Study of Myth," at Tulane University in April 1993. From New Orleans he went to do Ph.D. at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. This move was motivated by the interest in contemporary anthropology, combined with the interpretive approach, to which he came through the influence of Clifford Geertz (1926-2006). In St. Andrews, he was first supervised by Ladislav Holy (1933-1997). Holy proved to be a major influence on Bošković's research with his version of methodological individualism. Following Holy's illness, Bošković was supervised by Nigel J. Rapport, and defended his Ph.D. thesis (Constructing Gender in Contemporary Anthropology) on 1 November 1996. The ethnographic part of the thesis focused on the feminist groups in Slovenia. Methodologically, some of the conclusions were influenced by Ladislav Holy's critical interpretative approach, as well as by Marilyn Strathern's and Henrietta L. Moore's anthropology of gender (especially with regard of gender as the social and cultural construct).

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 (1928-2006) concept of the horizontally-structured anthropology. (This will later influence his interest in "World Anthropologies.") In Brasília, Bošković taught courses on gender, myth, anthropological theory, Latin America, but also started to develop some interest in the concept of Europe, as he was actually hired as "Visiting Professor of European Ethnology." His monograph on Mesoamerica (Mesoamerican Religions and Archaeology: Essays in Pre-Columbian Civilizations) was published by Archaeopress in January 2017.

Following the invitation of Robert J. Thornton, in February 2001 Bošković moved to the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa) on the Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship. 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. At Rhodes, 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. 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. 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. Some of these aspects were discussed while he was a guest at the University of Oslo in 2007, following the invitation of a friend and colleague, Thomas Hylland Eriksen.

Aleksandar Bošković was invited to teach in the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Belgrade's Faculty of Philosophy in 2009. He began teaching courses related to history and theory in anthropology, mostly due to the favourable reception of his introductory book in anthropology, published in 2010.In 2012, the Senate of the University of Belgrade elected him as a full Professor, so he teaches full-time in the Department from 1 January 2013. From the 2016/2017 academic year, he also started teaching (as a Visiting Professor) an introductory course in anthropology at the Faculty of Applied Science at the University of Donja Gorica (UDG), Montenegro.

Involvement with human rights

In 2006, Aleksandar Bošković briefly worked as Program Director (in charge of transitional justice) in the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade. The interest in human rights followed on his criticism of nationalism and violence and led to his continuing collaboration with other human rights organizations in Serbia in the 1990s (like the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights). Bošković also worked for the UNDP in Belgrade 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 other totalitarian and discriminatory practices and tendencies within Serbian society. Most recently, he used Christopher Bollas' concept of the "fascist state of mind" to elaborate on the political and social situation in Serbia, in an essay published in the Belgrade weekly Novi magazin, on 15 June 2017.

When considering wider implications of the persuasiveness of nationalism, he recently organized a round table debate dedicated to Benedict Anderson (1936-2015), at the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade. This was at least in part due to the influence that Bruce Kapferer's ideas had on Bošković - as he published a paper on anthropological studies of myths and nationalism in 2013, in the oldest anthropology journal in the world, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. Among the more recent published contributions, there is also a chapter that deals with Serbia's troubled relationship with its own past, and the inability of the country's elites to come to terms with its nationalistic past, based on a conference held at Landskronna (Sweden), in early June 2012. The chapter's title is "Serbia and the Surplus of History: Being Small, Large, and Small Again".

In connection with this rejection of all forms of discrimination, and following up on his research on gender for his PhD thesis, Bošković also contributed on the "Images of Gender and Sexuality in Southern Africa" for The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, as well as (with Suzana Ignjatović) on "Gender equality in Serbia".

Teaching and research

Since August 2008, Aleksandar is Director of Research or Research Professor (French Directeur d'études; in Serbo-Croatian Naučni savetnik) and between May 2009 and February 2017 he was Head of the Center for Political Research and Public Opinion in the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade (Serbia). He has been employed employed in this Institute since 1 July 2003. In October 2009, Bošković started teaching in the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy, and was formally awarded full Professorship by the Senate of the University of Belgrade in November 2012. He was formally hired by the Faculty of Philosophy from 1 January 2013. He teaches Ethnological and Anthropological Theories and Comparative Religion (second-year course) on the undergraduate level, Methodology on Master's level, and History of Anthropology at the Doctoral level. In 2017, Bošković started teaching Anthropology at the newly established Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of Donja Gorica (UDG) in Montenegro.

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. The book presents a contribution to the growing field of "World Anthropologies," as it deals with different national/regional anthropological traditions (including Russian, Dutch, Bulgarian, Kenyan, Argentinian, Turkish, Cameroonian, Japanese, Yugoslav, Norwegian, and Brazilian), all of them located outside of the so-called "central (or dominant) anthropological traditions" (Anglo-American, French and German). However, better known in Serbo-Croatian (and in the former Yugoslav region) is his book Kratak uvod u antropologiju [A Brief Introduction to Anthropology], published in late 2010 by the Jesenski i Turk in Zagreb (Croatia). Serbian edition of the book was published in April 2010, based on a series of lectures delivered at the Rex Cultural Centre.

Aleksandar Bošković also co-edited a volume on the development of anthropologies/ ethnologies in Southeastern Europe between 1945 and 1991, with Chris Hann,, in which he also contributed a Postscript, and published a book in Serbia on Anthropological perspectives He also published a review essay on the uses of rational choice in anthropology in Ethnos in 2012 (with Suzana Ignjatović).

Guest lectures and invited seminars

Since 1986, Aleksandar gave more than 220 guest lectures or seminars and six short courses in 27 countries. He delivered these lectures and seminars at, among other places, University of Oslo, University of Bergen, Goldsmiths College, Vanderbilt University, College of William and Mary, University of Cambridge, Brunel University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Hebrew University of Jerusalem's School of Philosophy and Religions, and University of Hamburg. Following an invitation by Nigel J. Rapport, Bošković spoke on individualism 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, about "Psychoanalysis and Anthropology" at the 113th Gellner Seminar in Prague (Czech Republic). 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), 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.

Selected works in English