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From shortage economy to second economy: An historical ethnography of rural life in communist Albania
Abstract Few accounts exist of the nature of everyday rural life in communist societies, such as those which existed in Eastern Europe between the end of World War Two and circa 1990. In this paper we use oral-history testimonies from older people to reconstruct an ‘historical ethnography’ of rural life in Albania, the most isolated and repressive of the East European socialist regimes. We build our analysis around the dialectical relationship between the ‘shortage economy’, which was all-pervasive and derived from the Albanian regime's Stalinist policy of prioritising mining and heavy industry over consumer goods and agriculture, and the ‘second economy’ which developed as a bottom-up strategy to overcome some of the imbalances and blockages in the official or ‘first’ economy. Fieldwork was carried out in clusters of villages and settlements corresponding to cooperatives and a state farm in four locations in different parts of Albania. Within the symbiotic or ‘lubricating’ relationship between the shortage economy and the second economy, we examine the ‘institutionalised hierarchy of access’ that gave some people and groups privileged access to scarce goods, whilst others remained in a marginalised and partially excluded state.
Highlights The first study to explore everyday rural life in Albania under communism. Employs a unique oral-history survey to compose an historical ethnography. The shortage economy was informally supported by the so-called second economy. Despite communist ideology, there was a hierarchy of access to goods and services.
From shortage economy to second economy: An historical ethnography of rural life in communist Albania
Abstract Few accounts exist of the nature of everyday rural life in communist societies, such as those which existed in Eastern Europe between the end of World War Two and circa 1990. In this paper we use oral-history testimonies from older people to reconstruct an ‘historical ethnography’ of rural life in Albania, the most isolated and repressive of the East European socialist regimes. We build our analysis around the dialectical relationship between the ‘shortage economy’, which was all-pervasive and derived from the Albanian regime's Stalinist policy of prioritising mining and heavy industry over consumer goods and agriculture, and the ‘second economy’ which developed as a bottom-up strategy to overcome some of the imbalances and blockages in the official or ‘first’ economy. Fieldwork was carried out in clusters of villages and settlements corresponding to cooperatives and a state farm in four locations in different parts of Albania. Within the symbiotic or ‘lubricating’ relationship between the shortage economy and the second economy, we examine the ‘institutionalised hierarchy of access’ that gave some people and groups privileged access to scarce goods, whilst others remained in a marginalised and partially excluded state.
Highlights The first study to explore everyday rural life in Albania under communism. Employs a unique oral-history survey to compose an historical ethnography. The shortage economy was informally supported by the so-called second economy. Despite communist ideology, there was a hierarchy of access to goods and services.
From shortage economy to second economy: An historical ethnography of rural life in communist Albania
King, Russell (author) / Vullnetari, Julie (author)
Journal of Rural Studies ; 44 ; 198-207
2016-02-17
10 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Book reviews - Privatizing the land. Rural political economy in post-communist societies
| Online Contents | 2000
The social economy of rural life: an introduction
| Online Contents | 2000
| Wiley | 2004