Humiliation and reconciliation in Northern Albania. The logic of feuding in symbolic and diachronic perspectives
Sociologus Beiheft/Supplement 1.1999:133-152
##In Northern Albanian kanun discourses, violence is intended to be "fenced in" (cf. Elwert in this volume) through a normative and social system of order implying self-regulation outside any state monopoly of violence and promoted by certain interest groups. In this ideal of a "self-stabilising" system (ibid.) feuding or reconciliation can be understood as normatively required reactions to competitive village status politics. Guided by sacral and profane prescriptions which are informed by the ideal of family cohesion, status politics provide for the granting of respect to a family or the violation of its integrity (humiliation) or strategies of inversion. In short, the logic of feuding implies reconciliation interferes (honour, belonging, alliance), humiliation (alienation) and restitution (revenge). Restitution, i. e. killing in feud, infers the option for peace while reconciliation the option for violence through its violation (humiliation). By using these options, positions of power, subordination and the access to resources in the community, are regulated.##
Keywords: feuding, violence, revenge, reconciliation, norms and violence, status and feuding, honor, alliance, power and feuding, subordination
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