Life in Liminality
Life in Liminality

Ethnography of Dispute Settlements on Land in a Post-Totalitarian Situation

Summary/Abstract: The paper aims to explore how local legal knowledge (customary law or Kanun) classified by the state as inferior and a sign of backwardness, has been used to solve disputeson agricultural land property at the moment of de-collectivization in Albania. The process of de-collectivization (1991–1993) is chosen to be analysed for the simple fact that it represents the moment, together with the instruments, of how the state unmakes a society by creating another one. The de-collectivization process started with the end of state Socialism. As a historical momentum, the end of the socialist totalitarian state, for many societies including the Albanian one, represented a kind of liminal zone, articulated in political, economic, social and cultural crises. Suddenly, the post-socialist society in many states produced betwixt and between crises enhanced by the new type of market-driven uncertainties and expectations. It is in such context, as the case of the decollectivization process in Albania will show below, that people use both local and state legal knowledge in order to articulate their needs, social status, identity, and dignity.

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