Ognjen Kojanic
Biographic Data
| ID | 732611 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ognjen Kojanic |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ognjen |
| FAMILY NAME | Kojanic |
| SIGNATURE | KOJANIC O |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pittsburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5878-0730 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
A Shifty Island, or How We Learned to Stop Worrying About Mosquitoes and Love Partial Knowledge
This article examines knowledge produced during an interdisciplinary field trip to Persin Island, a politically charged and ecologically dynamic fluvial island on the Danube. Our collective of environmental humanities and sciences scholars came to describe Persin as shifty: an environment where spatial, temporal, and categorical boundaries never fully stabilize but are continually reconfigured by ecological processes, political projects, and huma…
The Social Life of Resilience: From Techno-Politics to Socio-Environmental Justice
Theory from the Peripheries: What Can the Anthropology of Postsocialism Offer to European Anthropology
Micron engagements, macro histories: Machines and the agency of labor in a worker-owned company
Focusing on ITAS, a Croatian metalworking company with a turbulent past characterized by various property arrangements and varying degrees of success in the market for machine tools, I sketch out a shop-floor history of the ways in which the materiality of production continues to matter in contemporary capitalism. Control over machines allowed ITAS workers to negotiate their precarious position in the market. I show how collective and individual …
"Estimations of value in "Belgrade's Amazonia
In this article, I analyze the arguments marshaled in favor of and against the project to build a new port on the Danube River in the wetland area popularly referred to as Belgrade's Amazonia. Building on scholarship on ascribing value to infrastructures and the environment, I use the term estimation to highlight ambiguity in the process of ongoing and open-ended valuation. Estimation denotes a rough determination of value, a process of valuation…
On Redefining Boundaries and Opening New Terrains in a Peripheral Anthropological Tradition
On Redefining Boundaries and Opening New Terrains in a Peripheral Anthropological Tradition Ognjen Kojanić Introduction Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin was one of the most influential Yugoslav ethnologists and anthropologists in the second half of the 20th century.1 Toward the end of her career, Rihtman-Auguštin was integrated into international disciplinary conversations within European ethnology and folklore studies, including a stint as co-president of…
Anthropology of the Balkans
Anthropological research in the Balkans has taken place under different labels—ethnography, ethnology, and folkloristics, to name a few. A throughline that connects the various scholarly histories in the region is the emergence of the discipline under the influence of German Romantic ideas about language and culture. Early anthropological research was entangled with the political goals of nation-building in the aftermath of projects of national l…
Rethinking the Failure of Waste Infrastructures with Jackals
In his essay about the proliferation of golden jackals in Belgrade, Ognjen Kojanić argues that instead of seeing it as a problem of irresponsible citizens failing to properly dispose of their rubbish, one should think of alternative ‘multispecies infrastructures of waste’
Theory from the Peripheries: What Can the Anthropology of Postsocialism Offer to European Anthropology
This article argues for the benefits of a relational approach to understanding centres and peripheries across scales in anthropology, as opposed to an approach based on substantive notions of geographic areas. Based on an extensive literature review, I expose how the salience of the division into Western and Eastern Europe, and, increasingly, into Northern and Southern Europe, obscures the divisions on other scales within and across these divisio…
“We’re all here for the money”: Solidarity and divisions in a worker-owned company
Flipping the Transition Script
You can’t weed out corruption’: Railway workers’ assessments of the state in post-socialist Serbia
In this article, I analyze how railway workers in a small town in Serbia assessed what they perceived as the proliferation of corrupt practices in their company and in the state. Corruption has been both a response to the changes of socioeconomic relations and constitutive of those changes. Narratives about corruption reveal the material bedrock of socioeconomic changes since the 1980s as well as the work that people have to invest in making sens…
Nostalgia as a practice of the self in post-socialist Serbia
This article analyzes nostalgic narratives of railway workers in a provincial town in Serbia. It grounds its analysis in a particular theoretical understanding of neoliberalization, focusing on dispossession and its consequences in post-socialism. It provides an account of the specific historical context of socialist Yugoslavia and Serbia after the breakup of Yugoslavia within the wider capitalist system. It views this context as a field of force…
Nostalgia as a practice of the self in post-socialist Serbia
This article analyzes nostalgic narratives of railway workers in a provincial town in Serbia. It grounds its analysis in a particular theoretical understanding of neoliberalization, focusing on dispossession and its consequences in post-socialism. It provides an account of the specific historical context of socialist Yugoslavia and Serbia after the breakup of Yugoslavia within the wider capitalist system. It views this context as a field of force…
Flipping the Transition Script
Nostalgia as a practice of the self in post-socialist Serbia
This article analyzes nostalgic narratives of railway workers in a provincial town in Serbia. It grounds its analysis in a particular theoretical understanding of neoliberalization, focusing on dispossession and its consequences in post-socialism. It provides an account of the specific historical context of socialist Yugoslavia and Serbia after the breakup of Yugoslavia within the wider capitalist system. It views this context as a field of force…
You can’t weed out corruption’: Railway workers’ assessments of the state in post-socialist Serbia
In this article, I analyze how railway workers in a small town in Serbia assessed what they perceived as the proliferation of corrupt practices in their company and in the state. Corruption has been both a response to the changes of socioeconomic relations and constitutive of those changes. Narratives about corruption reveal the material bedrock of socioeconomic changes since the 1980s as well as the work that people have to invest in making sens…
Flipping the Transition Script
Theory from the Peripheries: What Can the Anthropology of Postsocialism Offer to European Anthropology
This article argues for the benefits of a relational approach to understanding centres and peripheries across scales in anthropology, as opposed to an approach based on substantive notions of geographic areas. Based on an extensive literature review, I expose how the salience of the division into Western and Eastern Europe, and, increasingly, into Northern and Southern Europe, obscures the divisions on other scales within and across these divisio…
“We’re all here for the money”: Solidarity and divisions in a worker-owned company
Anthropology of the Balkans
Anthropological research in the Balkans has taken place under different labels—ethnography, ethnology, and folkloristics, to name a few. A throughline that connects the various scholarly histories in the region is the emergence of the discipline under the influence of German Romantic ideas about language and culture. Early anthropological research was entangled with the political goals of nation-building in the aftermath of projects of national l…
Rethinking the Failure of Waste Infrastructures with Jackals
In his essay about the proliferation of golden jackals in Belgrade, Ognjen Kojanić argues that instead of seeing it as a problem of irresponsible citizens failing to properly dispose of their rubbish, one should think of alternative ‘multispecies infrastructures of waste’
On Redefining Boundaries and Opening New Terrains in a Peripheral Anthropological Tradition
On Redefining Boundaries and Opening New Terrains in a Peripheral Anthropological Tradition Ognjen Kojanić Introduction Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin was one of the most influential Yugoslav ethnologists and anthropologists in the second half of the 20th century.1 Toward the end of her career, Rihtman-Auguštin was integrated into international disciplinary conversations within European ethnology and folklore studies, including a stint as co-president of…
Theory from the Peripheries: What Can the Anthropology of Postsocialism Offer to European Anthropology
Micron engagements, macro histories: Machines and the agency of labor in a worker-owned company
Focusing on ITAS, a Croatian metalworking company with a turbulent past characterized by various property arrangements and varying degrees of success in the market for machine tools, I sketch out a shop-floor history of the ways in which the materiality of production continues to matter in contemporary capitalism. Control over machines allowed ITAS workers to negotiate their precarious position in the market. I show how collective and individual …
"Estimations of value in "Belgrade's Amazonia
In this article, I analyze the arguments marshaled in favor of and against the project to build a new port on the Danube River in the wetland area popularly referred to as Belgrade's Amazonia. Building on scholarship on ascribing value to infrastructures and the environment, I use the term estimation to highlight ambiguity in the process of ongoing and open-ended valuation. Estimation denotes a rough determination of value, a process of valuation…
The Social Life of Resilience: From Techno-Politics to Socio-Environmental Justice
A Shifty Island, or How We Learned to Stop Worrying About Mosquitoes and Love Partial Knowledge
This article examines knowledge produced during an interdisciplinary field trip to Persin Island, a politically charged and ecologically dynamic fluvial island on the Danube. Our collective of environmental humanities and sciences scholars came to describe Persin as shifty: an environment where spatial, temporal, and categorical boundaries never fully stabilize but are continually reconfigured by ecological processes, political projects, and huma…
Political science (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Balkans: History, Politics, Society (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Anthropology (3 works) · History (3 works) · Aesthetics (2 works) · Business (2 works)