Name and Surname
Branko Banović
Affiliation
The Institute for Ethnography, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Contact email
branko.banovic@ei.sanu.ac.rs
Short Biography
Branko Banović was born in 1982. He completed his studies in ethnology and anthropology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade in 2005. At the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, he obtained a Master’s degree (2007) and a PhD (2010), which earned him the scientific degree of doctor of ethnology and anthropology. The narrower scientific field of Banović’s master’s studies was the anthropology of folklore and he defended his doctoral dissertation in the field of political anthropology. His research includes the fields of identity, political anthropology, gender studies, multiculturalism, cultural heritage, social history. The focus of Banović’s recent research has been on topics from environmental anthropology, mining anthropology and medical anthropology. In his books and scientific works, he strove to offer a contribution to a more complete understanding of issues in which the public has great interest – from the debate regarding Montenegro’s membership in NATO, through the controversies caused by the first Gay Parade in a culture with a strong patriarchal heritage, the understanding of cultural conditioning implementation of measures to suppress the spread of Covid-19, to the current challenges of the green transition and the activities to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Branko Banović works in the position of senior scientific associate at the Institute for Ethnography of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Research abstract
Since the globally present pattern of the combination of nativism and populism has been observed in Serbia, in this research, Banović and Milenković focused their attention on the influence of this combination on ecological reduction, extremist absurdization and paradoxical ethnicization of green politics. This research interprets the findings of comparative ethnographic studies on the socio-cultural implications of the announced opening of the Rio Tinto lithium mine in Loznica, Serbia and the shutdown of the Pljevlja thermal power plant in Montenegro. In both contexts, which are continuously on the verge of major social confrontation, the narrative is driven by populism based on the denial of science on the one hand and econativism on the other hand. One can see a strong narrative charge that pushed the argument away from the conventional set of green policy goals – environmental protection, pacifism, respect for human and minority rights – into a nationalist-apocalyptic idiom, otherwise common in Serbian and Montenegrin societies. Putting the oppressed/studied on the side is a typical technique of anthropology as cultural criticism. The research strategy is based on the assumption that culturally critical goals need not be achieved by culturally critical means; the focus, thus, was on the involvement of foreign stakeholders – an approach that has already led to some success in comparable cases of incendiary social disputes such as inter-ethnic conflicts regarding the preservation of the cultural heritage of minorities. However, such a result turned out to be impossible in this situation, while the findings of ethnographic research are rather gloomy. Green politics today is threatened by an ongoing nationalist appropriation, just as liberal, democratic and pro-European goals have been subject to nationalist appropriation since the early 2000s in a futile attempt to adapt to a deeply re-traditionalized society. In due course, the anti-corporate flirtation with the econativist narrative, which produces anti-developmental consequences in the public eye, should take into account the fact that it calls into question not only the development but also the basic goals of the Open Society.