‘You can’t eat shame with bread’: gender and collective shame in Albanian society

Abstract

The impact of the recent totalitarian past continues to structure contemporary social relations in Albania. In this paper, I examine the remnants of that system that contribute to the subordination of women in Albanian society through an analysis of the normative structure of collective familial shame that was utilized by the Enverist system as a means of control and coercion. Directing attention to the dynamics of recent totalitarian social forces, such as collective familial shame, I argue, allows for the development of a more relevant model for understanding contemporary gender inequalities that avoids ethnocentrism.

Keywords:

• Albania
• gender
• post‐communism
• tradition
• honour

Notes

1. Unlike the bulk of daily newspapers in Albania, Gazeta Metropol is a tabloid newspaper that is not identified with any particular political party or group, nor does it explicitly advocate a particular political or ideological line.

2. ‘E vraftë buka që I kam dhënë, më shkatërroi familjen’ [May the bread that I have given him kill him, he destroyed my family], Gazeta Metropol, Wednesday 15 December 2004, Tirana.

3. ‘Kushërirat e larguara ‘leçiten’ nga familjet për koritje’ [The cousins that escaped from the families are ‘banished’ for shamefulness], Gazeta Metropol, Wednesday 24 May 2006, Tirana.

4. Particularly critical of this tendency is Michael Herzfeld (for example, Herzfeld 2005).

5. The references to Clarissa de Waal’s text come from an electronic version, and therefore may not accurately reflect the page numbers in the published version.

6. The reference here to the kanun being practiced in the north of the country is also troubling. Certainly, since the end of communism there has been a reoccurrence of the kanunic code of ‘blood feud’, in particular in some isolated northern areas. At the same time, however, there is arguably a popular regional prejudice in Albania towards those from the ‘north’, considered to be more ‘backward’, ‘traditional’ – even ‘barbaric’, etc. – from those originating from central or southern regions of the country. The perception that the kanun is being practiced in those regions contributes to negative and prejudicial images of ‘northerners’. In this sense, the representation of the kanun as being a phenomenon largely restricted to the north has the danger of playing into regional prejudices, and the veracity of this ‘northern’ tendency is difficult to separate from those prejudices.

7. Examples of such references usually utilize the terminology of kanun, originating directly from the perpetrators of violence, or overlaid as a sensationalist explanatory discourse by journalists. In terms of the former, an article in the daily Gazeta Panorama in January 2008, for example, reported on a self‐confessed murderer, in Tirana, who justified his actions as revenge for the killing of his two sons in 2004, on the basis that the kanun is above state law (Dashamir Biçaku, ‘Motër e vëlla, i vrava për Kanun’ [Sister and uncle; I killed them for the Kanun], 5 January 2008). In another incident, in Peshkopia, in north‐east of Albania, in October 2007, Shpëtim Ziza raped and killed 10‐year‐old Bekim Çenga. Ziza was, at the time, suffering from mental illness, and as a result was institutionalized. In response, in September 2008, Çenga’s father attempted to kill one of Ziza’s cousins. The daily, Gazeta Shqiptare reported the claim of members of Çenga’s family that by the rules of kanun a revenge killing is necessary and will be carried out in the future (Trendafile Visha, Gazeta Shqiptare, ’Daja i Zizos: Më prenë në besë, do të marr gjak’ [Zizos’ uncle; the oath was broken, I will take blood’]). At other times, the mystique of the kanun is provided by journalists. For example, in October 2008, the daily newspaper Gazeta Korrieri reported on two murders, occurring 10 years prior, involving two different families. Since the members of the two families would not identify the perpetrators or discuss the incidents with the media, the journalist took this as evidence of the application of kanun (Elona Elezi, ‘Gjakmarrja 35‐vjeçare’ [Blood feud, 35 years ago], 5 October 2008).

8. Interview with ‘Ibrahim’, 24 April 2007.

9. Interview with ‘Anita’, 13 June 2007.

10. Interview with ‘Agron’, 8 June 2007.

11. Interview with ‘Agron’, 8 June 2007.

12. Interview with ‘Mustafa’, 9 July 2007.

13. Interview with ‘Ibrahim’, 26 March 2007.

14. Collective familial punishment was also utilized in other communist regimes; commonly, for example, in Romania, and occasionally in East Germany. I hope to make the comparative study of collective punishment under communism the subject of future research.

15. Albania was officially proclaimed an atheist state in 1967, after which religious leaders were persecuted and religious buildings were either destroyed or used for new state‐sanctioned purposes.

16. Interview with ‘Jonida’, 3 July 2007.