Jovan Cvijić's psychological characteristics of Southern Slavs and “ethnopsychology” in Serbia

The chosen subject of our analysis is Cvijić’s key anthropological and ethnological study “Psychological Characteristics of Southern Slavs”. The research focuses on Jovan Cvijić’s not only explicitly stated, but also implied scientific views. One part of the analysis reveals the dominant scientific paradigm of Cvijić’s age – the prevailing ethnological theory and the methodology of scientific research, as well as stylistic features of scientific expounding, including the misconceptions of science of his day, prejudices or manners shared by Cvijić and his contemporaries, all of which were, to a certain degree, conditioned both by the social occurrences and the dominant ideology of that period. It also recognizes Cvijić’s original contribution and insights later reached by cultural and psychological anthropologies. Additionally, this paper analyses the reception of Cvijić’s ethnological work, thereby reaching the conclusion that determining the contextualization and intertextuality of the scientific text represents a way to render a more objective evaluation of Cvijić’s ethnopsychological research. The conclusion is reached that the reception of Cvijić’s work by the subsequent generations of ethnologists and anthropologists has been conditioned by the role of Cvijić as a “triple symbol” of its own kind, thus diminishing the possibility of making a more objective appraisal of his role and significance.Zbirka: Scientific Meetings ; book 162 / Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Presidency ; book 10, vol.