Customary Laws, Folk Culture, and Social Lifeworlds: Albanian Studies in Critical Perspective

The Institute of Comparative Law in Belgrade launched this year a Festschrift in honour of Valtazar Bogišić (1834–1908), a jurist, law historian and folklorist. His most notable works are researches on family structure and he is primarily known as a codifier of civil law in Montenegro, which he prepared on the basis of a voluminous questionnaire. One of his main informants was the leader of the Kuci lineage, at the border of Montenegro and Albania and reputed of Albanian stock. Obviously, he was also well acquainted with the customary laws of the neighbouring Albanian lineages of Gruda, Hoti and Kastrati. In this way he came to know considerably the structure of the traditional lineage society not only in Montenegro and Herzegovina, but also in northern Albania. Actually, he collected a very precious material, which will be published much later, and his contributions might be considered as a basis for later researches on customary laws and traditional societies in Balkan studies, including Albanian studies. Surely, of utmost importance in Albanian studies, as elsewhere, is the critical handling of ethnographic and historical sources of information on actual Albanian life. Taking lead from the Bogišić Festschrift, in this paper I will show how and why the exploitation of North Albania in particular at the beginning and at the end of the twentieth century turned out to consciously or unconsciously promote a kind of literature, as a pure constructed act of ethnocentrism and