Cvijić, Jovan

Created: 2022-Oct-04

Bio: (1865-1927) Serbian geographer, geologist, antropogeographer, and ethnologist. Jovan Cvijić graduated in geography at the Great School in Belgrade in 1888, and the following year he enrolled in the study of physical geography and geology at the University of Vienna. He finished his studies in 1892 and the following year received his doctorate from the same university. He became a professor at the Great School in Belgrade, which in 1905 grew into a university, where Cvijić was one of the first professors. Cvijić mainly studied geography and geology, but he also made an extremely great contribution to the study of Balkan psychological types. He also studied populations, migration, classification, and typology of settlements, delineation of the most important cultural zones and zones of civilizations, and economic activity of Balkan peoples.

He is considered one of the founders of the anthropogeographic school and the founder of ethnopsychology, a scientific discipline that deals with the study of the psychology of peoples, cultural and social groups. He developed his classification of different ethnopsychological types and varieties of Balkan people. Cvijić considered that the primary factor for the formation of ethnopsychological characteristics of the population and their types was the geographical environment and that secondary factors were historical processes and social structure, i.e. occupations, patterns of endogamy and exogamy, as well as migrations. Results of his theoretical work and fieldwork were represented in the books Anthropogeographical Problems of the Balkan Peninsula (1902), and its significantly expanded version Balkan Peninsula and South Slavic Countries (1931).