Current and/or relevant? Some reflections on autonomy of scientific opinion based on experience of Serbian ethnology/ anthropology at the beginning of third millennium

Abstract

Autonomy of science and art is an ideal of every civilized society. The distance between a certain society and this ideal depends on a large number of parameters, among which cultural enlightenment and consciousness of the main protagonists in realization of these two areas seem to be most important. Unfortunately, Serbia cannot boast with a high level of independency of creative processes. Nowadays, in formal sense, they enjoy a higher level of autonomy in terms of the state ideology; however, at the same time, they are essentially and basically restricted by it. The very notion of autonomy here is related to fi nancial and, more than this, to ideological independence of free and creative thought, that is to the question to which extent scientifi c creativity manage to transcend current cultural-historical-social context and to fi nd universal regularities of human civilization in it. Intensity of social changes and postmodern market ideologies are refl ected both at offi cial scientifi c policy and at internal determination of context and concept of ethnological/anthropological researching which quite often become trapped in the shallow of topicality.