Kinship Developments In Suburban Areas. The Case Of Albania

Abstract

The development of the big cities is determined by the development of the suburbs and inevitably the confrontation of the new arrivals with the new social reality will produce an inevitable tension. The new inhabitants come mainly from rural areas. The way of life conceived in social memory keeps alive the cosmology of the previous ties based on kinship. City life dictates individuality and obscures the possibility of preserving tribal ties. The conflict becomes serious considering that the writing of the space with the new suburban housing corresponds to the creation of entire neighborhoods with residents who have blood ties to each other. This social morphology has created few opportunities to break kinship ties and their influence. Precisely this tension will be the subject of this article. From the decision to move to a new settlement, the imagination of the city, the selection of the settlement and the writing of the space, the meeting with the locals and the new way of life, the old connections and the new connections, the influence of the cosmology of kinship and the tendency to detach from it will be some of the issues that will be addressed. The Kamza area will be taken as an example, one of the most typical pre-urban areas of Albania and which mainly represents the main model of how the suburbs of large cities have developed after the fall of the 50-year dictatorship. Direct interviews, surveys will be used, and in particular the technique of the author's direct participation in the daily life of the inhabitants of this area. The ethnography of photography will serve to reflect processes, cases, rituals, events that testify to the way of developing the themes we have analyzed.