Da li su antropolozi dužni da budu (ne)religiozni?
Are Anthropologists Obliged To Be (non)religious?

Summary/Abstract: In the last twenty odd years we have witnessed an intense process in which religion has become topical again and traditional churches have restored their social importance. Religious beliefs have returned to the historical scene and the variety of meanings, complexity and, not rarely, dramatic nature of this process have reflected the scope of the crisis of meaning in the modern world. The interpretation of this process within our national academic scene has often been simplified, related to the political, social, and economic crisis, the collapse of the country and wars that were waged in the former Yugoslavia. Insisting on this causal relation, however, testifies more to the dogmatic functionalist and utilitarian axiom of the rationalized (scientific) image of reality, than to reality itself. Transition in the southern Slavic region has somewhat contributed to the reactualization of religion, but more as an additional in- fluence to this process than its “driving force”. The collapse of the country only re- moved the pretense of a welfare state and security, where untenable global principles on which contemporary civilization is based have only been revealed. My attempt in this paper is to point to the fact that the anthropological interpretation of these proc- esses is determined by the (non)religiosity of ethnologists/anthropologists, that there are different possible aspects which can be used to interpret the phenomenon of return to religion, and that there are also different aspects of the relationship between the (Serbian Orthodox) church and the society/state.

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