Мирослав Јовановић и друштвена историја

English title: Miroslav Jovanović and Social History

The afterword “Miroslav Jovanović and Social History” analyzes the scholarly significance of Miroslav Jovanović in the development of contemporary Serbian historiography, especially in the fields of social and cultural history. It focuses on Jovanović’s effort to direct historical scholarship toward the study of society, culture, everyday life, ideas, language, mentalities, and public representations of the past.

Particular attention is given to Language and Social History: Against Vuk, in which the debate on the Serbian literary language is treated as a social-historical problem. In this approach, language is not only a means of communication or a subject of philology, but a structure through which social divisions, cultural models, elites, traditions, modernization, national ideology, and stereotypes can be understood.

The text shows that Jovanović’s importance in Serbian historiography is twofold: he was a researcher of concrete historical topics, but also an author who raised broader questions about what historiography studies, how it explains the past, and how it deals with myths, stereotypes, and public uses of history.