Scientific policies and research entities in historical self-reflection: Institute of ethnography SASA

Abstract

Analyzing a scientific institution and its protagonists in diachronic perspective also entails different levels of (self)assessment - retrospection, introspection, and extrospection, which also points out to turmoils, stratifications, and contradictions of scientific temporal strategies. In this paper I am interpreting processes of the establishment of normative strategies, institutional politics, construction of collectivities, and individual aspirations at the Institute of Ethnography SASA from 1947 until present. Historical self-reflection encompasses five options through which scientific subjectivities and objectivities were formed and confronted: 1. Routinization of meaningful systems and sliding individual inventiveness; 2. Efficiency of the institutional order and distinctiveness in reaching scientific goals; 3. Determined order and individual agility in the zone of enterprising and skillful activism; 4. Consistency of scientific order and constant dynamics in the zones of public visibility; 5. Verifiability in accordance with institutional standards and coordinated work at the collegial level. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 177026: Kulturno nasleđe i identitet]

Keywords

• scientific policies
• research entities
• history
• collectivities
• individualism