Preliminary Project Report of the FWF Project "The Kosovar Albanian Family Revisited" Project Leader: Prof. Karl Kaser FWF Project Number: P22659-G18 Family in a Fragile State and Economy in Kosovo: The Case of Opoja by Elife Krasniqi The drawing on the cover named ‘My Family’ was done by Erblina Qafleshi (5) in the ‘Sezai Surroi’ school, village of Bellobrad, Opoja. 31.10. 2012 Eli Krasniqi, Centre for Southeast European History and Anthropology, University of Graz 1 Introduction In a postwar country such as Kosovo, societal transformations are inevitable. In regard to family, these changes have impacted not only structure and size but also everyday family life. The project "Family in Kosovo- Revisited" carried out at the Center for Southeast European History and Anthropology (SEEHA) at the University of Graz and funded by the Austrian Science Fund, has been researching changes over time in the Kosovar family in relation to social security and social cohesion. The research has focused on two regions in Kosovo, Isniq and Opoja, in order to track the changes after the war in 1998 and 1999. Isniq and Opoja are prime locations for this study, because of the two PhD projects that were conducted there before the war: Reineck's study about Opoja (1991), and Backer's (1979) on Isniq. Both researches were conducted in very peculiar political periods in Kosovo that surely impacted both social and cultural life. The project team consists of Dr. Carolin Leutloff- Grandits, who focuses on migration in both regions - Isniq and Opoja, Mag. Tahir Latifi (Isniq) and me, researching the Opoja region, as well as Prof. Karl Kaser, who is leading the project. For this project, we have applied the grounded theory methodology while making use of the family- and kinship studies on the Balkans that the Center (SEEHA) has achieved in last two decades (Kaser 2012)1. Apart from this work, valuable research has been conducted before the war in Kosovo by scholars, which examined different legal, cultural and social aspects of family. Worth mentioning is the work of Krasniqi (1962), Popovci (1973) Berisha (1983), Begolli (1987), Rrapi (1995). Besides studies dedicated to the Opoja family life, important publications on the region’s history, geography, traditions and rituals after the war can be found in in the collection of Xhemaj's work (2005) in Shtresime Kulturore, Meleqi (2009) Opoja: studim kompleks gjeografiko-historik, and in the latest historical anthropological research by Qafleshi (2012), Opoja dhe Gora ndër shekuj.. As far as the methodology is concerned, Grounded Theory has its challenges, especially when one is conducting a research in one's own country. Being myself a Kosovar Albanian, in the field it was often assumed that I would know things about tradition and 1 The Center's recent publication - Household and Family in the Balkans, Two Decades of Historical Family Research at the University of Graz, edited by Karl Kaser, has gathered the work of Karl Kaser, Robert Pichler, Siegfried Gruber, Gentiana Kera, Enriketa Pandeljmoni, who are or have been based at the Center in Graz and explored issues regarding the Albanian family in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia (Kaser 2012). Eli Krasniqi, Centre for Southeast European History and Anthropology, University of Graz 2 family and I was considered an ‘insider’. This was especially the case when I would persist with questions in order to understand certain relations and practices or try to come up with meanings. On the other hand, when I assumed that I understood aspects of family, tradition and cultural traits in Opoja, (which happened often), when talking to people in Opoja, I was considered an ‘outsider’ simply for being from Prishtina. In other words, depending on the topics of discussion and certain contexts, I would be seen sometimes as an insider and sometimes as an outsider. As required by this methodology, during the first stage of research, I was observing people's everyday life in Opoja and trying to get more familiar with the setting. I have also focused on issues that people in this region find important to their life and on those that they would mostly talk about. I believe that one also has to pay attention to issues that villagers do not talk about, as this does not mean that those issues are not important. I have noticed that there were several issues that people in Opoja would rarely share with me in conversations, for example issues concerning politics and the state. In the second stage, apart from participatory observation, I have also included unstructured and semi structured in-depth interviews, which helped me structure my initial hypotheses. While attempting to understand the changes in the family in Opoja, whether it concerned issues that villagers talk about or manifested or latent ones, I have observed both the private and the public sphere. To be more precise, I have focused on the family – i.e., on changes in the type of household and in the way gender roles are seen in the public - in the context of a fragile economy and state, in relation to social security. Concerning state laws, economy and social security, further research needs to be carried out in order to gain a closer insight from a micro-level in a day-to-day link with the family. The dynamics between state laws, the lack of family policies and poor economy have caused changes in family life. Living in a village of Opoja, commuting to Dragash, Prishtina and Prizren, conducting in-depth interviews and consulting literature on the topic, for this preliminary report, I hope to answer the following questions: What are the changes in the Opojan family? (Demographic transition; what has changed in the family's household structure in Opoja after the war? Nuclearization and Care-giving. Eli Krasniqi, Centre for Southeast European History and Anthropology, University of Graz 3 In which way has the Opojan family been affected by economy and state policies? (Economic context – past and present) In which aspects do traditional customs prevail? (Wedding and circumcision festivity- different views on marriage customs -gendered practices). What are the factors that influence the depending position of women in family in Opoja? (Education, economy and tradition). Being aware that women are traditionally considered (as habitually expressed) ‘the pole of the family’, I have tried to explore these changes from a gender perspective, by focusing more on women’s lives in Opoja. Before I start explaining my first findings and first impressions, I will first give some background information about Kosovo, and the Opoja region. At this stage of the research it is difficult to conclude on overall transformations in the Opojan family. Therefore, the findings here are to be considered as preliminary results of the project and are subject to change as the research progresses further. Background Information Although the former Yugoslavian regime (see map of Yugoslavia in Annex 1)2, seemed to be a country with an ideal social and political order, in fact it treated Albanians in Kosovo as second class citizens. The inequality was shown not only on the level of cultural differentiation but also in figures regarding industry production and employment. As a comparison, in 1961, Slovenia’s GNP was six times that of Kosovo, growing to seven times in 1979 (Reineck 1991: 34). In 1988 the unemployment rate in Kosovo was 36.3 compared to 2.4 in Slovenia (ibid). On the other hand, the education level in Kosovo was still low, especially among women. Families lived in difficult conditions, especially in rural areas where the main source of living was agriculture. Later on, with the creation of jobs, although very scarce, the overall family budget was increased by wage labor in publicly owned 2 The maps of Yugoslavia and Kosovo were taken from Reineck's dissertation. In the Kosovo map, at the city of Mitrovica I have deleted the part ‘e Titos’ in order not to be confused with the real name of the city: Mitrovica. Eli Krasniqi, Centre for Southeast European History and Anthropology, University of Graz 4 institutions. Yet for the majority of the population in rural areas, the large size of families made decent living difficult. After WWII, natality among the Albanian population in Kosovo kept increasing, and it was perceived and propagated by Serbian state media and politics as a threat of Albanians to Serbs, as the former have outnumbered the Serbian population in Kosovo. The Albanian family was under attack, since the increase of natality was depicted as a trait of cultural backwardness and primitivism. The medical doctor of that time, Rada Trajković, a Kosovo politician today, is still remembered for her infamous saying ‘Albanke se kote’ ('Albanian women are breeding’). However, in this climate of poverty and state discrimination of Albanians in Kosovo, it was the family that provided social security and social cohesion within the Albanian community. Still there were times, considered by many as ephemeral, when the elite class of educated Albanians was in step with the then general modernization and inclusion process, using the benefits of socialism in terms of education and social mobility. Nevertheless, rural areas were slower than urban ones in challenging tradition, which in many ways was the obstacle for inclusion in general socialist society (Gunga, 1986). Furthermore, during political unrest towards the end of the 1980s and the 1990s in Kosovo, people in rural areas returned even more to what felt safely the most – the traditional3 values and order. If during socialism there was a path of changes and women started claiming their merited position in family and society, in 1990s they were back under patriarchal dominance again due to the harsh political changes (Kaser 2008).