COSMOLOGIES in TRANSITION Science and the Politics of Academia After Yugoslavia

COSMOLOGIES in TRANSITION Science and the Politics of Academia after Yugoslavia Dr Andrew Hodges Aquamarine Press, Podgorica 2017 COSMOLOGIES in TRANSITION Science and the Politics of Academia after Yugoslavia Dr Andrew Hodges Aquamarine Press Book Series: Contemporary Ethnographies Book 1 Cosmologies in Transition: Science and the Politics of Academia after Yugoslavia Andrew Hodges Visual Design: Vanja Gagović Print-on-demand Electronic book available at: www.aquamarinepress.com Contents 5 CONTENTS A note to the reader___________________________________7 Acknowledgements___________________________________9 Foreword by Paul Stubbs______________________________11 Introduction: a cosmic postcard________________________17 Chapter one: cosmologies and contexts__________________27 Chapter two: narratives of science in ‘transition’___________59 Chapter three: the scientific community__________________93 Chapter four: credit and credibility_____________________111 Chapter five: hierarchy and academia___________________137 Chapter six: media engagements______________________171 Conclusions: future courses?_________________________199 Postscript: auto-ethnographic reflections on two different academes____________________________207 References________________________________________213 A note to the reader 6 A note to the reader This book aims to contribute to existing anthropological literatures on post-socialist ‘transition’, nationalism and, to a lesser extent, science studies. It is not intended to be a theoretically developed ethnographical monograph – completing a more cohesive and sys- tematic study would have required a considerable amount of extra work. It is experimental in nature, playing with anthropological concepts rather than developing a body of work in relation to other texts in the academic field of science studies. Despite not working on this topic anymore, I have chosen to publish it in this form as I believe it will be of particular interest to publics in the former Yugoslav region and beyond. Were funds available, I would love the book to be translated at some point in the future. The account offered may also be considered one outcome of five years of activist and anthropological engagements in Belgrade, Serbia, Zagreb, Croatia, and Manchester, UK, between 2007 and 2012. It draws heavily on fieldwork engagements at an astronom- ical observatory in Serbia, and to a lesser extent, on interviews and experiences in Zagreb. The perspectives taken move across Anglo-American, Croatian and Serbian anthropological traditions, and the writing process reflected an increasing commitment on my part to write politically relevant anthropology. The fieldwork is classically ‘Western’, based on eighteen months of immersion in the field context, with little knowledge of that context or the language(s) spoken beforehand – I leave it up to the reader to assess the limits of such an approach. Cosmologies in Transition: Science and the Politics of Academia after Yugoslavia 7 Anti-fascist engagements, autonomist Marxist insights and left academic currents popular in Manchester Social Anthropology have also influenced the writing. These engagements resulted in a redirection away from Anglo-American anthropological studies of science and technology, a literature I found generally uninspiring for this project, towards themes in political and economic anthropology. I found these sub-disciplines offered a theoretical toolkit which resonated more deeply with the highly politicised, post-war, post-socialist context in which I was working. I really hope you enjoy the book! Copyright note Parts of three chapters have already been published, in the journals Anthropolog y Matters 15(1), (2014) - chapter three, Antropologija 12(2), (2012) - chapter five, and Narodna Umjetnost 50(1), (2013) - chapter six. Acknowledgements 8 Acknowledgements This book draws on over five years work and couldn’t have been completed without the patience and help of numerous friends and family. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Stef Jansen, for his encouragement and help with this project. Both his deep knowledge of the fieldwork contexts and help with both the practical and academic aspects of this project have significantly shaped both my approach, writing and research direction. Second, with a similar level of support, involvement and solidarity, I wish to thank Dr Čarna Brković, who encouraged me with my writing, from the early days when I was relatively new to anthropology, through what I call my ‘cynical phase’, before a later breakthrough when my future interests and direction crystallized. Your friend- ship and integrity means a great deal to me, and I am sure we will remain friends for many years to come. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank both my thesis examiners (Dr Paul Stubbs and Prof. Sharon MacDonald), the two peer reviewers who gave me detailed feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript, and Dr Penny Harvey for her thoughtful comments on this text as PhD thesis. As regards my fieldwork at the observatory and with students and scientists, I would particularly like to thank Vladimir Janković and Milan Ćirković for their interest in my project, enthusiasm and criticism. I have learnt a great deal through our various discussions and meetings. I would also like to thank everyone at the observatory for their time, coffee breaks and con- versation. This project, and my current writing, wouldn’t have taken the shape it did had it not been for numerous activist engagements, Cosmologies in Transition: Science and the Politics of Academia after Yugoslavia 9 working with comrades on the free education campaigns and of course at the Blokada of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sci- ences in Zagreb. Without these interventions I am certain that my view of both academia and the ethnographic problems I have faced would have been quite different. I would also like to thank my research colleagues who encouraged and stimulated my interest in political and economic anthropology, namely Prof Karen Sykes, Prof Chris Gregory and Dr Keir Martin. In Belgrade I would like to thank Dr Miloš Milenković for his support of my project and help with organising valuable seminars at which I presented and discussed my project. In Zagreb, I would like to thank the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, and especially comments from Dr Ines Prica and Dr Orlanda Obad. Finally, I would like to thank all my friends in Serbia and Croatia who helped me over the course of fieldwork, and later, with my decision to settle in Zagreb. Foreword 10 FOREWORD by Paul Stubbs Although I was the external examiner for the doctoral thesis upon which this book is based, chosen indeed because I was expected to be more favourably inclined to the approach than a disciplined anthropologist might be, I write this foreword in a somewhat different capacity. Before Andrew’s oral examination, I had met him only once, for a brief discussion/interview in Zagreb in which his enrolment within what I perceived as a rather deterministic, class- based, and reductionist Marxism, hardly endeared him to me! As a fellow “stranac”, albeit with over twenty years of living in Zagreb and writing about the post-Yugoslav space under my belt, I had become a little blasé, meeting yet another (invariably young!) researcher who made knowledge claims on the basis of immersive but rather limited ethnographic “engagement”. I quickly changed my mind about Andrew when I first read the thesis. Here was someone striving in very open, direct, and com- mitted ways towards a critically appreciative activist anthropology, successfully breaking free of the shackles of an Anglo-American anthropological tradition and, even more importantly, consciously and explicitly reflecting on the pitfalls and potentialities of positionality between the centre and the (semi-)periphery. Andrew was, clearly, on one of those rapid learning curves which many more “established” commentators of the so-called “region” never reach and which, more tragically perhaps, a smaller number of “new voices” find too dizzying, disappearing from view like shooting stars that burn out overnight. Andrew’s deep and Cosmologies in Transition: Science and the Politics of Academia after Yugoslavia 11 enthusiastic engagement with his topic was very evident in the oral examination. Even more unexpectedly, given the solitary nature of doctoral endeavours and the fragility of ego of anyone in or near academia, Andrew took our insistence on a significant re-write very seriously, almost joyously, since it allowed him to create a much better work – that which, more or less, you have in front of you in book form today. After Andrew obtained his doctorate and he began to spend more and more time in Zagreb and, later, moved to the city, I felt priv- ileged to call him a friend and, indeed, to engage in collaborative writing with him, most notably on one of his many fascinating “obsessions”, that of the study of football fan groups. Although he suggests that that work, and his focus on language use from a linguistic anthropological perspective, are more directly “political” than his work on scientists, I see some obvious continuities. Most importantly he continues to address the complexities of discursive practices, linguistic hegemonies, and situated recalcitrance and resistance, amongst diverse groups in tumultuous and precarious times, at the conjunctions of war, new nation-state building, authoritarian nationalisms and the near-exhausted

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