The Anthropogeographic Method of Jovan Cvijic in the Mirror of Russian Science

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2021-4/297-308

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to investigate the scientific heritage of Jovan Cvijić (1865–1927), a prominent Serbian scholar of the late 19th and first quarter of the 20th century, and explore how the ideas related to his agenda developed in Russia. Cvijić’s profound erudition and field research experience helped him to give his own interpretation to the anthropogeographical principle, popular when he was starting his scientific career. A geographer by training, Cvijić masterfully combined geographic perspective with a historical approach in his activities aimed at studying the nature and economic setup of the Balkans. S. A. Tokarev, a Russian ethnologist, believed that Cvijić deserved much credit for doing so. According to Tokarev, the anthropogeographical method developed by Cvijić was considerably different from the homonymous method of Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) and compared favorably to it. Jovan Cvijić’s teachings had both ordained the traditions of Serbian ethnography of the 20th century and become well-known globally. Their impact on Russian academia was noticeable, too. Some of Cvijić’s works, namely “Nekolika posmatranja o etnografiji makedonskih Slovena” and “L’anexion de la Bosnie et la question Serbe”, were translated into Russian in the early 1900s and published in St. Petersburg. In Russia, too, there emerged a number of scholars pursuing the anthropogeographical vector of studies. Later it contributed greatly to the nascence of “ethnic mapping” and ethnoecology (anthropoecology) in this country. Cultural-geographical classification of various areas of the Balkan Peninsula, the so-called “civilization zones” developed by J. Cvijić, is in many aspects similar to the concept of “economic-cultural types and historic-cultural areas” proposed in the 1970s by Soviet scholars M.G. Levin and N.N. Cheboksarov. The discipline studying humans’ connection to and interaction with the environment is developing and progressing both globally and in Russian academia.

For Citation: Martynova, M.Yu. 2021. The Anthropogeographic Method of Jovan Cvijic in the Mirror of Russian Science. Herald of Anthropology (Vestnik Antropologii) 4: 297-308.