Albania: From Hunger to Consumer Society – A Price?
Albania: From Hunger to Consumer Society – A Price?

Summary/Abstract: The article considers the dramatic and unprecedented changes in Albania since 1990 and the scale and depth of the transition over those years from an impoverished autarkic communist state to a neo-liberal economy. Although this has brought many material advantages to all the Albanian people, and has opened the country to a normal position in the international relations system, it has not come for free. Like all small country cultures and languages, Albania is threatened by the homogenising forces of globalisation, and there is a danger of a loss of national cultural identity and cultural tradition. Serious problems have developed affecting both the environment as well as the failing infrastructure, including problems of pollution and environmental degradation. Insufficient attention is paid to basic local agricultural production, producing a food import bill that threatens to destabilise the economy. Nevertheless, there are grounds for some optimism given the youth and energy of the population, increasingly close pan-Albanian relationships with kinship groups in neighbouring countries and the prospect of developing more secure and functional state institutions.

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