Aleksandar Bošković is škovićProfessor of Social Anthropology at the PPGAS, Federal University of the North Rio Grande in Natal (Brazil), who wrote or edited nineteen books and several hundred articles on history and theory of anthropology, mostly from a transactionalist and comparative perspective. In 2018/2019 he was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies (Institut d'Études Avancées) in Lyon. Together with his colleague and economics professor John Hamman (Florida State University), Bošković organized a two-day conference about rationality, at the University of Lyon, on 10–11 April 2019. He is currently editor of the series "Anthropology's Ancestors," published by Berghahn Books, and co-editor of the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures. Since 1 October 2019 he is Senior Research Scientist ("naučni savetnik") at the Institute of Archaeology in Belgrade.
Studies and early work
Born in Zemun, Yugoslavia, Bošković studied philosophy in Belgrade between 1982 and 1990. During his studies, Bošković was mostly interested in the work of Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945), especially in his concept of myth as a symbolic form, but at this time he also "discovered" Paul Feyerabend (1924–1994), who turned out to be a lasting influence. Aleksandar spent some years in the so-called "pro-democracy" journalism in Yugoslavia (1983–1990), and briefly worked as foreign politics editor and member of the editorial board of the Belgrade weekly magazine Student (1984/1985). In this period (1984-1990), he contributed to almost all of the major (mostly Belgrade-based) Yugoslav magazines. Aleksandar's journalistic texts and interviews dealt with political issues (he interviewed some of the former Praxis School philosophers – including Gajo Petrović, Svetozar Stojanović, and Mihailo Marković), foreign affairs, but also with cultural issues, comics and science fiction. In recent years, he has again been active in writing occasionally for the liberal-oriented Belgrade newsmagazine Novi magazin.
His early scholarly publications were influenced by the interest in the study of myth and religion, especially through the perspectives offered by Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) and Mircea Eliade (1907–1986). As a conclusion of the several decades of interest in the study of myth, he edited the Dictionary of Deities and Mythic Beings of the World (in Serbo-Croatian; co-edited with Milan Vukomanović and Zoran Jovanović), a single-volume reference work with 14 contributors, covering Non-classical Mythology. Bošković contributed over 150 entries himself, including all on Australia, Mesoamerica, Africa, Celts, and some on Middle East and Mesopotamia (Baal, Gilgamesh, Ziusudra), and India (Ganesha, Parvati, Rudra, Shiva). More recently, he revisited some of the earlier work on myths, in the edited book in Serbo-Croatian, with some of the classic articles of Joseph Campbell, Beatriz de la Fuente, David Grove, Mircea Eliade, David L. Miller, Milan Vukomanovic, and Alan Watts.
Some of his early texts focused on ancient Mesoamerican religions (especially Maya and Mexican/ Aztec). In 1990, Bošković went to Tulane University in New Orleans to study anthropology with Munro S. Edmonson [1924–2002]. Fieldwork in Guatemala in 1991 was inspired by the interest in Classic Maya ceramics, but this interest gradually waned, mostly due to Bošković's dissatisfaction with the then-dominant "direct historical approach" in Mesoamerican studies and the tendency by some anthropologists to use material from looted sites. However, he continued to occasionally review books on this topic, especially for the journal Anthropos. He kept in touch with several prominent Maya archaeologists, like Richard E. W. Adams (1931–2015), American archaeologist who taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio, who influenced Bošković with his general perspective and methodological rigor; and also with the leading French Mayanist at the time, Claude-François Baudez (1932–2013), from the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique). The interest in Mesoamerica was revisited in a book published by Archaeopress in 2017, Mesoamerican Religions and Archaeology. The book includes a number of review essays, including chapters on The Meaning of Maya Myths, Aztec Great Goddesses, and ways of interpreting the Codex Borbonicus (or Codex Cihuacoatl).
Bošković defended the M.A. thesis (supervised by Munro S. Edmonson), "William Robertson Smith and the Anthropological Study of Myth," at Tulane University in April 1993. William Robertson Smith remained part of his interest, present in his courses on myth and religion, culminating in the recent anthropological biography, published by the Berghahn Books.