Faculty of Theology

The emphasized spatial positioning of football fans in Novi Sad is a topic that has not been explored in the relevant literature so far. This spatial positioning is based on numerous parameters: ethnicity, stratification, culture, relative distance from the center of the town, the time period when the given quarter was inhabited, and others. The study examines how football fans from Novi Sad construct their local (Novi Sad and narrower than that) and regional (Vojvodinian) territorial identity. It examines the discrepancy between the young men needs for belonging to the global youth subcultural lifestyle on the one hand, and on the other, for commitment to certain neighborhoods that express specific local urban identity. The results of the research indicate that in contrast to the concepts of group solidarity and masculinity, the territoriality of football fans has not been sufficiently studied in literature, although this phenomenon is quite significant, thus, a new widely applicable model for analysis is described in this paper, which can shed more light on this issue.

This research is involved in constructing of gender identity in young men who live in environment that is traditionally considered as feminine (based on it's phonetic expression) ie research is dealing with football fans from Novi Sad who do not support Partizan and Red Star, the most successful serbian clubs, but Vojvodina, the most famous city club. The main focus of the paper is masculinity as the constitute of subclutural identity that is specially connected with the style and collective solidarity. It was conducted a couple of qualitative researches during the process of material collecting: analyses of the media and relevant theoretical resources, unstructured interviews, the opservation with the participation of various activities of the members of the group „Firma 1989“ and fun groups of clubs who played against Vojvodina in the reported period. The plenty of interpretations about masculine narratives in the literature, especially in the context of violence, is the proof of relevance of this problem in the world and in our society. The author argues that during the process of socialization of young men in an urban context, masculinity of fans as an exemplary model, could replace or supplement the lack of such model in the family or society, without necesarilly negative connotations.

At the end of the 1980s, the international movement of football fans experiences a renaissance, contributing to establishment of new and reshaping of existing organized groups throughout the Western world. This specific urban subculture, mostly of youth and males, has been occupying the attention of society for three whole decades with undiminished intensity, due to its aggressive and rebellious activism. The sociological study of authors from Zagreb on the group “Bad Blue Boys” ("Navijacko pleme" from 1989) and later "Torcida - pogled iznutra" by Drazen Lalic (1993) represent the first large-scale studies of football fans in the former Yugoslavia - the phenomenon which was still in the initial phase but still connected to the tempestuous political events of that time. Since that time many Serbian sociologists, criminologists and anthropologists studied certain types of behavior in the widely-defined sport audience, mostly fragmentary and from political and security perspectives. However, the football fans of FC Vojvodina were described for the first time only by the British historian Richard Mills (2010). The direct theoretical-empirical approach to the problem is still missing, including the adequate expert methodology in collecting the ethnographic material on fans of local clubs. Therefore this paper intends to be the first such study on football fan subculture in Serbia.
It was determined that football fans have several identities that are impossible to separate, and in various contexts they have different levels of importance. This paper studies how these identities are constructed by the members of the local structured group known as “Firma 1989”, supporting the Football Club Vojvodina, but there are also remarks on other football fan groups from Novi Sad (Korida, Delije and Grobari) as well as other groups from Serbia and neighboring countries. In solving the chosen theoretical problem it was not possible to stay within a single scientific discipline. Although this study tends to belong to anthropology of football, the theoretical-methodological concept of the paper also continues upon the previously stated general theoretical positions on gender studies, anthropology of religion, urban anthropology, ethnicity, and national and political identity.
The material for this study was collected through: observation with participation in various activities of members of group Firma 1989 and fan groups of clubs that FC Vojvodina met in the period 2012-2014; unstructured interviews with football fans; survey of internet websites and forums, newspaper articles, magazines and other texts, oriented by their content to past and present of the football fan group Firma, published from its establishment in 1989 to this day.
The first chapter of this paper deals with the historical framework, following the genesis and development of the football fan movement, FC Vojvodina and the group Firma. Then in the general discussion the fans are observed as a specific urban youth subculture, building its global identity in three contexts that they consider important: collective, territorial and gender/sex (masculine). In this context there are also separate discussions on visual style, rebellion and resistance to globalization. In the second thematic unit the complex contextual approach to study of numerous identity of Firma members is further analyzed, and the problem was studied from several standpoints with a special stress on their territorial identity as a scale of patriotism - from the broader (national, regional) toward the narrower context (city, borough, block, street). The ethnic or national belonging turned out to be a pronounced catalyst of many activities and it was observed as part of political identity, also discussed through presence of pronounced antagonisms (unitarists and autonomists, left and right political option). Also studied was construction of religious identity of football fans, determining how they express their belonging to Orthodox Christianity, the folk religion, and how they respond to challenges of secularization. Other recognized forms were some phenomena of ritualized behavior, elements of non-verbal communication and football fan symbols. The paper ends with analysis of persons considered particularly important by members of Firma, as they are considered their subcultural heroes.
I believe that genesis and function of football fan behavior may be followed in two directions: existential (since the prehistory people chanted loud cheers, both in collective hunt on dangerous game animals and in mass battles) and free time (since the ancient civilizations people have been gathering at specialized places to observe the most important secondary thing in the world that exists at that time). These events, personified in the ancient metaphor bread and circuses, at first had a strong religious character that gradually acquired the final secular features. To the contrast, the football fans seem to relapse to the level of culture of hunter-gatherer communities, and during their very complex socialization period they are not marginal characters but mostly adolescents attracted to belonging to a subculture, which, in time of transition of everything including the value orientations, offers to the young people a strong identity and cognitively directed activity, norms that pertain to everyone and protection of group members.
This text includes the more important chapters from a Master thesis completed in 2014 at the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology of Philosophy Faculty in Belgrade, under the mentorship of Professor Dr Vladimir Ribic. I am very grateful to Professor Ribic for expert help, support and patience.

The paper deals with the study of genesis and the development of a specific philosophy based on patristic theology and aesthetics. Although this chapter of Russian culture is fairly written, the author thinks that a modern review is needed which will further confirm and outline the original lines of this school of thought. In order to define the concept and subject of visual art aesthetics in a specific time-historical context, it is necessary to point to the sources of inspiration on the basis of which Russian aesthetics developed their own system. These influences were more: from ancient, essentially pagan, philosophical cosmology, through Orthodox patristics, to the influence of German romanticism in culture and idealism in philosophy. As a result of these assumptions, a unique concept of the content of creature and figurative of the form – which is concerned with the philosophy of nature (cosmology) and philosophy of art (aesthetics) – has been formed – defining a Russian, religiously oriented, speculative thought to unite these themes. The author concludes that both are treated as ontological in Russian interpretation, and take on specific forms of a comprehensive gnoseology: “total-unity” and sophiology in the field of cosmology, as well as iconology and symbolism in the field of aesthetics.

According to William Robertson Smith’s and Paul Florensky’s thesis that the ritual as a cult foundation is the base of every religion and culture, this paper explores the interdisciplinary structure, dynamics and understanding of the sacral space in which the Holy Liturgy is practiced within the Serbian Orthodox Church. With the theoretical and methodological guidelines of the anthropology of Christianity, this paper studies the liturgical and theoretical function of the temple with the goal to analyze the liturgical ritual in a concrete space in relation with the posturing and positioning of the body, the orientation, direction and kind of movement of the liturgy participants. The author claims that it is necessary to place the operative focus on the naos, the part of interior intended for participants, since its use is most susceptible to variations which can be relevantly empirically monitored. Thus the subject focuses on the spatial behavior in the mentioned part of the temple and its border zones, both during the Holy Liturgy and individually, passing from doctrinal into the sphere of folk Christian orthodoxy.
orthodoxy.

The theme of this paper deals with an interdisciplinary study of the structure, dynamics and meaning of the central religious service intended for the Eucharistic assembly of laity and all the fullness of the Church. The primary subject of the analysis is the function of the nave, with the Eucharist as the starting point and the final indication. As the church is one of the ecclesiological paradigms of the Christian Church, so the nave is ecclesiological icon of “people of God”. The paper therefore wants to summarize in a concise form a multitude of aspects from which this complex problem can be perceived, and among other things analyzes the dynamic devotion of worship in the nave, given the posture and position of the body, the orientation, the direction, and the way of the participants in the worship service. In order to decode the liturgical-theological function of this place, this research is particularly studying the purified mathematical-architectural symbolism of the nave, understood as the “new creation” in Christ. The author concludes that the harmonious proportions, the boldness of the construction and the experience of the volume of the nave with their beauty and richness of meaning, just as the iconography does, creates the liturgical ambience of an adequate transcendence of the Eucharistic symbol.

The  construction  and  function  of  the  masonry  pendentives, defined  as  a  triangular  section  of  a  sphere,  have  been  extensively  examined.  However,  its  genesis  and  the  very  conceptual  definition  continue  to  raise  doubts.  Therefore,  the  main  topic  of  this  paper  is  the  origin,  development  and  application of this constructively, acoustically and aesthetically functional element, which is the most commonly used in church architecture for the constructive transition from the circular base of the dome to square body of the building. The paper examines the problem of terminology, noted in our and foreign literature, and gives an overview of constructive assemblies in which this spherical  element  is  included.  The  paper  focuses  only  on  brick  and lime mortar pendentives and examines their morphology, method  of  execution,  static  properties  and  structural  content.  The  goal  is  that  through  historical  analysis,  research  bring  us  closer  to  the  answer:  how  and  when  did  pendentive  occurs  and what are the main lines of its development? Was it Middle Eastern,  Hellenistic  or  Roman  in  origin,  and  was  it  result  of  pervasion of all those influences and normatively shaped in the period from the IV-VI centuries? A typological analysis of sample models  was  also  conducted  to  understand  the  transformation  of  design  methods,  from  squinches  through  a  sail  vault  to  a  dome  on  pendentives.  Examples  of  the  use  of  pendentives  before the Hagia Sophia from the sixth century indicate that its builders  had  predecessors,  but  they  undoubtedly  deserve  the  credit for the first use of this solution on such a large scale and so extraordinarily constructive and artistically composed.

The paper explores the christian-intoned philosophical aesthetics of the figurative arts during the silver age of Russian culture. In this period, which covers the second half of the nineteenth and the first two decades of the twentieth century, Russia’s speculative thought, based on the Orthodox patristic and philosophical idealism, promoted the original religious philosophy, which highly valorized the importance of comprehensive gnoseology and ontology of “total-unity”, true knowledge sought only through the absolute - an ideal which in itself synthesizes a real beauty, truth and goodness. That is why the Christian fi ne arts and aesthetics of this period in Russia were built only as an organic segment of a holistically interpreted philosophy of life, recapitulated by its essential principle - Christ. In order to systematize various aspirations, ideas and concepts of this artistic aesthetics, the paper singles out and explains three major themes that are intertwined. These are: the beauty (integral with goodness and truth), Christlike according to Dostoevsky, ideal-real according to Solovyov; theurgical creation, viewed both as artistic (free and transformative) and as an ascetic likeness to God; and the icon, which – through a philosophical-theological interpretation of an apophatic-kataphatic antinomy, reverse perspective and symbolism – integrates the issue of beauty and creativity into a common discourse, entering the Orthodox apologetic front before western art and culture, from the renaissance to the modern digital age.

The paper deals with the artistic composition of Divine Wisdom in the wall painting of Nemanjic’s Serbia in the 14th century, with special reference to the genesis, development and disposition of the display, as well as its dogmatic-theological and visual art aesthetic connotations. Divine Wisdom, as a person (hypostasis), participates in creation, Incarnation and the Eucharist, but it is also one of God's Energies, as a principle of cosmic structure and harmony, and a source of divine inspiration and wisdom for people. This conceptual ambiguity in theology influenced the formation of very diverse types of artistic expression, with different distribution and influences in the Eastern Christian, primarily Slavic world. The emergence and long perfection of the iconographic canon took place in special historical circumstances that prevailed within the Orthodox Christian Balkans, under an atmosphere of political, cultural and even doctrinal tensions, especially during the Christological controversies that followed half a century.