Routes of Kuçedra

Relation to Water and Authority in Contemporary Albania

Bibliographic Data

ID4200603
AuthorsNataša Gregorič Bon (0000-0001-7141-9632, Karst Research Institute, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume49
Issue3
Pages135-161
Publication date2020-12-31
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTraditiones (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0352-0447 • E-ISSN: 1855-6396
PublisherThe Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3986/traditio2020490307
OpenAlexW3119394422
LanguageEN
References cited33

The article takes the reader along the multitude of entanglements between the social, political, economic, infrastructural, scientific, and mythological meanings of water in Albania. Waterways, along with the routes of the mythical water figure called Kuçedra, continuously bring to the shore the meaning and the relation to authority. The latter used to be an essential part of the unwritten laws or the so-called Kanuns that were managed by the big men of particular patrilines. The article argues that the relation to authority is deeply rooted in the structural terrains of the Albanian society. The changing nature of the water (in similar ways to Kuçedra) always manages to trickle down, permeate, entangle and transgress these ambiguities and generate space-time in contemporary Albania

Aesthetics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Multitude · Mythology · Political science · Politics · Relation (database · Shore · Social science · Sociology · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Classics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Law · Philosophy · Water Governance and Infrastructure