Mbi studimin e qytetit NË ETNOGRAFINË SHQIPTARE TË PERIUDHËS SOCIALISTE
The Ethnographic Research and the City During the Socialist Period

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to offer a theoretical analyzes related to the subject matter of ethnology, or socio-cultural anthropology in Albania. The principal questions raised in the paper are: why the ethnographic research in Albania during socialism, and some times after, was concentrated in village and village life and organization? And, was this a theoretical approach valid only for Albanian ethnography? The first part of the paper offers an analyses of ethnology in Central Europe and Southeastern European countries, influenced by German Volkskunde, based on Herderian concept of volk-people and volksgeist - spirit of the people, which was considered to be found pure among villages, and villagers were considered as its principle bearers. The second part of the paper continues ëith an analyzes of American and British cultural and social anthropologies. This part explains that anthropology was concentrated in the study of tribal peoples or peasant societies, in a continuous research for the exotic other. The paper goes on explaining the practical and conceptual shift of Anthropology towards the city and city life, a shift that was reflected even in the ethnological research of some Balkan countries during the 1970-ies. The third part of the paper consists in the analyzes of the few articles of Albanian ethnography of the socialist period on city and city life, and ends by proposing that Albanian ethno-anthropologists should embrace the abovementioned shift, and that research should not be divided, or in the villages or in cities, but should be done there where important topics on social, economic and cultural changes are to be found.

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