Folk Culture of the Serbs in Slavic and Balkan Contexts

Project Director

Ljubinko Radenković, PhD

Project Team 

Dragana Djurić, Ma
Ljudmila Popović, PhD
Žarko Trebješanin, PhD
Gordana Blagojević, PhD
Dejan Ajdačić, PhD

 

The Serbs, as a Slavic people, have preserved through their language, ritual practices, beliefs and folklore, many notions of the world that draw their origin from their ancient homeland. Their extent, as well as their function and meaning, may be reconstructed through comparative studies of the cultural heritages of other Slavic peoples. The Serbs are also a Balkan people, living together or in contact with other Balkan, non-Slavic, peoples. This communion or interaction has given rise to a recognizably "Balkan" model of the world. Retrieval of their ancient, both all-Slavic and Balkan, notions of the world requires systematization of the material pertaining to the life and beliefs of the people collected in all areas they inhabit, followed by the reconstruction and analysis of those notions. The research is focused on the conceptualization of the world as it is reflected in linguistic stereotypes, lexis and ritual behaviours, as well as on influences of the cultural-historical background on the formation and distribution of Serbian cultural and linguistic zones.