Serbian traditional culture between East and West

The project focuses on Serbian traditional culture in a synchronic and diachronic perspective: analysis of its basic categories and their formation processes; traditional notions of space (house, village, village area, waters, roads, holy places), time (days of the week, seasons), nature, material culture, supernatural beings; patterns of ritual behaviour, related to established annual festivities, man’s life cycle (birth of a child, maturation, socialization, wedding, male/female relations, one’s own/other’s, attitudes towards death), legal and other customs; the patriarchal family over time: its structure, power distribution, male/female relations and attitudes towards children; factors that have significantly influenced the development of certain forms of traditional spiritual culture among Serbs and their language during the medieval and Ottoman periods: the position of pastoralist and agriculturalist populations; institutions of village and tribal self-government; common law in the area of ownership, family, inheritance rights, etc.; analysis of a hidden layer of pagan perceptions of the world; Serb perceptions of other nations and confessions and their expression in folklore; the role of folk dances among Serb emigrants and the influence of neighbouring peoples in their creation. Multiple layers of traditional culture and its symbolic meanings will be studied based on the language folklore and various verbal stereotypes.