The role of Jovan Cvijić, especially his anthropogeographical school in the early stages of the development of ethnology in Serbia was undeniably significant. Today its influence is largely obsolete, which is not surprising given the temporal distance from the time the discipline was founded, in the late nineteenth and early twenties centuries. In spite of that, in some recent critical reviews, Cvijić’s work and its importance for the development and shaping of ethnology as a discipline in Serbia are contested as highly controversial. In this paper the author tries to discern why has this occurred, and whether it would still be justified, from today’s perspective, to consider Jovan Cvijić as one of the founding fathers of Serbian ethnology. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177027, Multietnicitet, multikulturalnost, migracije - savremeni procesi]