Modernity and the Unmaking of Men 9781789208634

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MODERNITY AND THE UNMAKING OF MEN

New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations Series Editors: Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University; Lissa Caldwell, UC Santa Cruz The anthropology of Europe has dramatically shifted ground from its emergence in descriptive ethnography to the exploration of innovative theoretical and methodological approaches today. This well-established series, relaunched by Berghahn Books with a new subtitle, invites proposals that speak to contemporary social and cultural theory through innovative ethnography and vivid description. Topics range from migration, human rights and humanitarianism to historical, visual and material anthropology to the neoliberal and audit-culture politics of Schengen and the European Union. Volume 1 Modernity and the Unmaking of Men Violeta Schubert

MODERNITY AND THE UNMAKING OF MEN

Violeta Schubert

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2020 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2020 Violeta Schubert

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Schubert, Violeta, author. Title: Modernity and the Unmaking of Men / Violeta Schubert. Description: New York: Berghahn Books, 2020. | Series: New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations; 1 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020017587 (print) | LCCN 2020017588 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789208627 (hardback) | ISBN 9781789208634 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Masculinity—Macedonia. | Older men—Macedonia. | Bachelors—Macedonia. Classification: LCC HQ1090.7.M33 S38 2020 (print) | LCC HQ1090.7.M33 (ebook) | DDC 155.3/32—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017587 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017588

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78920-862-7 hardback ISBN 978-1-78920-863-4 ebook

CONTENTS

 Notes on Translationvi Introduction1 Chapter 1.  ‘A Village Is for the Old and Dead’: The Disappearing Village Scape

26

Chapter 2.  A Kinship Frame of Mind

60

Chapter 3.  Marriage and the ‘Order’ of Life

89

Chapter 4.  The Invisible Significants: Women and the Androcentric Social Imaginary

113

Chapter 5.  The (Dis)Orderly Individual

147

Chapter 6.  The Decoupling of Time and Order: Aging Bachelors and the (Un)Productive Ethno-Nation

167

Conclusion.  On Being Stuck

182

References188 Index216

NOTES ON TRANSLATION

The spoken language quoted in this book is mostly in local dialect. A guide to standard Macedonian phonemes is as follows: Cyrillic ‘Latinski’* IPA transcription** Уy

Uu

[u] rounded vowel as in ‘put’, or in Mac. ‘ubavo’ (‘beautiful’)

Јj

Yy

[j] palatal approximant as in ‘yellow’, or Mac. ‘Jas’ (‘I’)

Шш

Šš

[ʃ] unvoiced hushing sibilant as in ‘shop’, or Mac. ‘maš ’ (‘man’)

Жж

Žž

[ʒ] voiced palate-alveolar sibilant as in ‘vision’, or Mac. ‘žena’ (‘woman’)

Ќќ

Кј/kj

[k’] voiceless palatal stop as in ‘cute’, or Mac. ‘kukja’ (‘house’)

Ѓѓ

Gј/gj

[ɟ] voiced palatal stop as in ‘Montague’, or Mac. ‘Gjavato’ (name of village)

Чч

Č/č

[tʃ ] voiceless postalveolar affricative as in ‘cheddar’, or Mac. ‘čupe’ (‘girl’)

Цц

Cc

[ts] voiceless alveolar affricative as in ‘bits’, or Mac. ‘Capari’ (name of village)

Њњ

Nj/nj

[ɲ] palatal nasal as in ‘news’, or Mac. ‘zemvanje’ (gerund. ‘getting’)

NOTES ON TRANSLATION

vii

Џџ

Dz/dz

[dʒ] voiced postaveolar affricative as in ‘just’, or Mac. ‘badzanak’ (wife’s sister’s husband)

Зз

Ds/ds

[dz] voiced alveolar fricative as in ‘buds’, or Mac. ‘dsid’ (wall)

Хх

Hh

[x] voiceless velar fricative as in ‘hot’, or Mac. ‘duh’ (soul, spirit)

Pp

Rr

Alveolar trill

* The use of ‘Latinski’ denotes Macedonia standard conception of Latin or English letters. ** Square brackets enclose International Phonetic Alphabet (cf. Hall 1960: 86–87; see also Lunt 1952; Koneski 1983; Vidoeski 1983; Friedman 1993).

INTRODUCTION



‘Dragi’, lanky, tall, slightly stooped, a once handsome face weathered into middle-age, somewhere between forty, fifty years of age . . . He climbs without aid to the tips of the Molika tree, the native species of pinus peuce, to collect the much-prized pine cones seeds. Precariously perched on the tip, he starts to sway its supple, whimsical branches, to and fro, to and fro, until enough momentum gathers to grab hold of a branch from its neighbour tree. Then, in a deft move, effortless it seems to the onlooker below, he latches onto the other tree, simultaneously releasing his hold of the now coneless one. As he moves, rustling from one tree to the next, his bulging sack is the only cue for descent. When it’s time to empty the sack, his almost opposable toes cling to the sides with a deftness that seems natural and yet conditioned through the years of effort. The cones then need to be taken back to the village and the seeds removed and packed, ready to be sold to pharmaceutical company traders. Though foraging is common, particularly the collection of berries, mushrooms, nuts, seeds, wild herbs, and grasses for folk medicines and potions, there is also a growing market for those with knowledge and skill to turn what they do into commodities. Here, Dragi is in a league of his own; able to supplement his sporadic earnings in the village factory to pay for his daughter’s city education. —Excerpt from fieldnotes, 1996

I

n the folk imaginary of individuals such as ‘Dragi’ modernity provides hope in the promise of a better future. Central to such conceptualisations of modernity is the idea of individual discernment: a capacity to navigate change through being more self-aware and open to new ways of thinking and doing. On surface introduction Dragi appears nothing if not a typical villager: his dress and mode of bodily carriage, the weathered face and stooped body, reflect years of physical toil. In conversations with Dragi, typically sitting at his kitchen table while his wife prepared coffee, he would often take pains to distinguish himself from ‘this village’, or ‘these villagers’. Being an educated and well-read ‘modern man’ made Dragi out of place and out of sorts from those around him. He would often say that there is no hope in the village. For Dragi, hope is directed not at himself, he has resigned himself to the village.

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Rather, Dragi’s hope rests with his daughter getting an education, finding a city job, and maybe then she would find a good man ‘not like these villagers.’ The conundrum for many village actors, such as Dragi, is not a lack of modernness. Being modern is a given. In fact, as a mode of distinction asserting that you are modern is passé for many contemporary village actors in rural Macedonia.1 Being modern is highly individualised and conceptualised as residing within – brought forth perhaps by education or work in a city, but still more about a state of feeling and engaging irrespective of their locality or socio-political positionality. Posited along the lines of individual qualities, discernment and capacity, a ‘modern’ person, in other words, can be found anywhere. The difference, however, is in the manner that modern subjects externalise and objectify sites and relationships. In the interactional domains between local actors there are always tensions between social distinction and embeddedness. Most individuals would often assert that they were ‘not like the others around here’ and yet, they were also clearly part of the local village world. In the pursuit of individual distinction and claims to modernity the distantiation and disambiguation from others in the village is crucial. But there is also a compulsion to have that individual distinction acknowledged by others. Acknowledgement, however, sits alongside judgement. Modernity as some kind of process, and modernness as the internalisation of it, is but one aspect of an often competitive local social arena. The problem for many individuals is that they are perpetually blocked or denied such acknowledgement. That is, as with Dragi and many other rural Macedonians, the cause of individual anxieties about navigating modernity and the frustration to have their modernness yield desirable outcomes rested with ‘this village’ or ‘these villagers’. The term ‘modernity’ is undoubtedly, as Tomlinson highlights, ‘ambiguous and chronologically elastic’ (2002: 140). As a central leitmotif of social science, modernity has been extensively interrogated for what it implies about relationships, power and identities. The interrogation of the discourses, symbolic representations and fields of interactions have debunked to a large extent dichotomies such as the ‘West and the Rest’ (Hall 1992), East and West (Said 1978), or the construct of ‘The Balkans’ as the antithesis of modernity in the Western or European imaginary (Todorova [1997] 2009). Nonetheless, the hegemonic framing of modernity as ‘sitting in place’ reinforces various kinds of symbolic and interactional fields of engagements in which power and domination are implicated: something that Western (European) societies ‘have’, for example, and those of the non-West fall short of possessing. To be sure, the ethnocentric purveyance of modernity has also generated various kinds of counter-narrative. Even in counter-narratives such as notions of ‘alternative’ modernities, however, inference of deviation

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or rejection of the presumed norm – of refractions, shards, adoptions, rejections, or fusions – reaffirm European sense-making and sensibilities as modernity’s origin and pivotal site. The reference to the ‘pursuit’ of modernity is replete with analogous terms such as ‘process’, ‘roads’ or ‘pathways’ that dominate developmentalist logics and interventionist agendas. As in the case of the ex-Yugoslav state of Macedonia following 1991 independence, being ‘on the road to modernity’ (Arsovska 2007) is often found wanting. In many studies, the pursuit of modernity engenders a struggle to enact and make sense of change at both a societal and individual level (see Thiessen 2007, 2010; Janev 2011a, 2011b, 2017). In a similar vein, where modernity is associated with cities, being from a village automatically relegates even the most modern person such as Dragi to a non-modern positionality. In the conundrum that individuals face between being socially constituted and true to self, the presumption of immovability – fixity, intransigence and immobility – can have fundamental consequences for navigating meaning in and of life.2 Some categories of people are stuck, be it in ideas, relationships and identities or localities and such immovability stands apposite to notions of modernity. Rapid depopulation or the ‘dying’ of rural communities attests to the powerful hold of the imaginary of modernity as residing beyond such localities. Where individuals’ self-realisation is rendered possible only through movement toward the city, rural sites are found wanting: places to leave. And, for those who cannot move, the ready judgement is of some kind of deficiency in navigating modernity. That is, if modernity is about the ‘liberty to transgress’, or to ‘consume in an unfettered world of desire’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999: 293), it not only ‘falters’, as the authors argue, but can also be blocked. Constraints of structure and identities that stick as a priori categorisation are powerfully embedded and can be difficult to break through. In any given society, changing social structures leave some categories of people behind, irrespective of their endeavours to illustrate individual discernment and capacity for navigating modernity. Change brings about a rupture of social institutions and modes of living that call for a new set of life skills and values, interlocutions between illustrating and performing modernity that are not automatically possible or available to all. Human subjectivity and the ontological possibilities it affords within modernity (cf. Heidegger 1987, 2000) is nowhere entirely in the hands of an individual. The valorisation of the western ‘Self ’ as a sacred entity, a bounded self that has internalised modernity in its totality (and all the responsibilities as well as potentialities that come with it), makes it seem as if the structures and social, economic and political systems that created such reifications are irrelevant. Instead, in the ‘ethos of individualism’ the privilege afforded to

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the ‘western’ individual stands in opposition to the supposed sociocentricism that produces ‘dividuals’ in other, non-modern sites.3 The pursuit of personal liberty, however, is conditioned on the cooperativeness of others. And, it also depends on the sensibilities and skills accrued by individuals for navigating and negotiating a balance between self-integrity and social embeddedness. As Goffman notes, there is a ‘reciprocal influence of individuals on one another’s actions’, but it is not simply as he suggests brought forth by being ‘in one another’s immediate presence’ ([1956] 1959: 15). The internal dialogue is set at the barometer of the social as the mediator of personal reality and integrity. An individual may want to be seen one way, but may instead be relegated to a different positionality, viewed as the apposite of the right way for a ‘modern’ person who keeps up with the shifts in markers for what it constitutes. The kind of decisions individuals make and how they seek the meaning of existence is not simply a matter of ‘essence’ (meaning in the sense of Sartre [1956, 1960]) and authenticity (being true to self ). Essence is socially constructed, indeed, can be experienced as an imposition. If existential angst resides between the cracks of the transcendence of ego and nothingness, the ‘void’ (Žižek 2008, 2017) is often filled by the social conscience residing within. The true void is essentially the loss of the social and the lack of moral guidance or ‘anomie’ (Durkheim [1897] 1951) taken onto the individual body and disposition. In this sense, habitus, or the dispositions that provide the ‘feel for the game’ (Bourdieu 1990: 82), reinforces the importance of being in the game. The problem, however, is where the sense of the game is lost, can no longer contain the necessary beacon of light for navigating individual or collective behaviour. Such a break is aptly captured by Bourdieu: Only for someone who withdraws from the game completely, who totally breaks the spell, the illusio, renouncing all the stakes, that is, all the gambles on the future, can the temporal succession be seen as a pure discontinuity and the world appear in the absurdity of a future-less, and therefore senseless, present, like the Surrealists’ staircases opening on to the void. The ‘feel’ (sens) for the game is the sense of the imminent future of the game, the sense of the direction (sens) of the history of the game that gives the game its sense. (1990: 82, original emphasis)

Some categories of individuals are caught between or within systems, structures and values that cannot accommodate them; they are both the outcome of modernity and its refuse. As such, the forms of navigating through life are both unique and, yet, typical of structurally non-containable modern beings. In short, the frame of meaning-making in relation to modernity is not a matter of questioning whether one is a subject, an individual or a ‘self ’, but, rather, the form that the subject should and does take in the context of the

INTRODUCTION

5

social world they occupy and which occupies them. Modernity as process and discourse is enfolded into these worlds, interwoven into the repertoires and various strategies and tools of individuals in daily meaning-making. However, the social world that we are part of, or the local worlds that we occupy at any particular time, presents a range of contradictory messages about norms and expectations, desirable and undesirable qualities and behaviours. The reflexive individual may pre-empt or even counter-perceive social norms and expectations; however, it is a second-guessing exercise that can misfire or go wrong. The mercurial nature of social norms and expectations, including the shifting expectations and values about how to be socially present or what constitutes modernness, may be negotiated only to a degree.

TOO MANY MEN: AGING BACHELORHOOD AND RURAL PRECARITY IN MACEDONIA The intersections, continuities and discontinuities in the trajectories of rural decline experienced in Macedonian society in varying degrees both mirror and diverge from those of other rural (village) communities in Europe. Generally speaking, the kind of rural life mitigated by agricultural or other rural activities for the most part appears to make the rural ‘sector’, and thus rural people, disadvantageously placed vis-à-vis broader structures and processes. For instance, within the Marxian school of thought the ‘peasantry’, whether a distinct class or not, are posited within the frame of economic activity at odds with urban or global modes of capitalist production (see, for example, Wolf 2001: 230). Writing of peasants and revolutions in the 1960s, Wolf uses phrases such as the ‘increased order and disorder’ and concludes that ‘the advancement of one sector has been bought at the price of dislocation and rearrangement in the other’ (2001: 231). In contrast, Hann reminds us that for Hungary, and more broadly perhaps of the post-socialist world of Eastern Europe, in the privileging of neo-liberal societal transformations ‘the rural sector has been penalized heavily and the gap between town and countryside has widened again’ (2015: 904). Alongside the precarity that is brought forth by broader socio-political change, there is also considerable discussion of the mindset, mentality or behaviour of rural people, the way in which they think and do things, the habitus that for Bourdieu forms into ‘tradition’ (see Reed-Danahay 2004: 96). Bourdieu, as a ‘home’ anthropologist undertaking ethnographic research ‘in his own natal region, among people he knew, even having his own mother serve as an informant’ (Reed-Danahay 2005: 32; see also Silverstein and Goodman 2009: 8; Mead 2016), is particularly scrutinised for his nostalgia, the imaginary of a ‘pristine traditional society’ that cannot withstand the ad-

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vances of enormous social, economic and political change. The deployment of the dichotomies of ‘urban vs. rural’ and ‘peasant vs. city-dwellers’, argues Reed-Danahay, are a ‘strong thread linking Bourdieu’s early work in these two societies’ (2004: 95–96); the ‘theme of rupture and a break with tradition is prevalent’ (2004: 97). The imposition on the rural of the outside – in the case of Bourdieu the influences of the nation state or the broader social, economic or political transformations – resonates with a strong trend in scholarship of rural societies in terms of transition, disruption and dislocation. Indeed, ‘rupture’ seems to perpetually beset, amass and confront the rural. Moreover, the analytic treatment of rural ‘peoples’, ‘communities’ or ‘societies’ of Western Europe (the cradle of modernisation, industrialisation, cosmopolitanism) is often distinguished from the rest of Europe. For instance, in his historical lens on the Macedonian town of Kruševo, and its place in the national imaginary as the site of the 1903 Ilinden Uprising, Brown highlights the western imaginary of the peasants of Ottoman Macedonia as ‘passive victims of fate, awaiting salvation from outside intervention, whether divine or European’ (2013: 41). Thus, Brown argues, ‘if peasants turned out to fight, most analysts conclude, they must have been coerced or duped by external agents – either in another country or from the urban centers of the empire itself ’ (2013: 43). This leads to the point that in the case of the Balkans and/ or post-socialist spaces, it is not simply about how the rural-urban divide is conceptualised but it also speaks of the inherent schism that is often noticeable in the imaginary of difference between the ‘west’ and ‘east’, particularities of nation-state formation out of the rubble of empires, and in the case of the ex-Yugoslav region, the impact of the social engineering that accompanied socialism. Alongside the various expressions and articulations of socialism and the social engineering associated with reframing the rural context that this entailed, in the case of Yugoslavia Halpern and Kideckel argue that ‘the greatest shift in social relationships has occurred as a result of the postwar processes of urbanization and industrialization’ (1983: 385). Irrespective, be it about a ‘transition’ to a socialist, capitalist or global economy or shifts in societal values and norms, there continues to be differences of some form or another between the ‘rural’ and ‘urban’, and the problematics associated with how rural peoples navigate change, shifts in policy, political or economic systems and processes or, more broadly speaking, modernity. Importantly, there are invariably tensions associated with change that are often presumed to place rural societies at a disadvantage. And, as a site of rupture, disruption, contestation, dislocation, resistance or nostalgia, the ‘rural’ is fundamental to the construct of the ‘urban’, and modernity. Tempered by different socio-political and nationalising contexts, the particularities of rural precarity in regions such as Macedonia are more often

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than not presumed rather than critically investigated. To be sure, the impacts of more powerful social, economic and political forces are not everywhere experienced in the same way. In the case of Macedonia, the precarity of village societies and rural subjectivities in the face of rapid depopulation and changing structures are especially notable in the impact on men. The significant disparity between numbers of unmarried men and women is noticeable across an overwhelming number of villages. Overall, across many of the villages where I conducted fieldwork in the mid-1990s, I found the average ratio of stari bekjari (‘old bachelors’ past the socially appropriate age of marriage) to unmarried women was nine to one. Most locals are apt to claim that stari bekjari are more prominent in lower status or remote mountainous villages. To be sure, in the lower socio-economic state of development in some regions or band of villages, such as the flatlands of the Palagonia (surrounding the river Crna), there are many stari bekjari. In one village in the region, for instance, there were forty-five unmarried men to six unmarried women in a total population of just over two hundred inhabitants. Likewise, in my own natal village, situated broadly in this region, there were around sixty unmarried men to five unmarried women, with a similar total population of just over two hundred. However, a large number of unmarried men were equally present in so-called high social status villages. In high status villages, such as Capari in the Caparsko Pole, a similarly high imbalance was notable, with sixty-four unmarried men to nine unmarried women, or approximately seven men to one woman. So too, in Gorno Orizari, a virtual suburb of the town of Bitola, with a tobacco factory and a population of approximately 1,000 inhabitants, the sex imbalance in 1997 was 115 unmarried men above the age of twenty-five and only sixteen unmarried women. In short, rural Macedonian men whose self-identity is framed around being ‘high-status’ villagers (and thus presumably holding a competitive advantage in the marriage market over other village men) are equally confronted by the exodus of women. In the 1990s, the issue of stari bekjari, or having unmarried men aged in their late thirties or well into their forties, was a cultural shock and treated as an unpalatable new phenomenon. The problem of too many unmarried men, however, is no longer a cultural shock. Though abhorred, the exorbitant number of unmarried men in the 1990s was only a familial problem. For stari bekjari, and their families, there continued to be hopefulness that the state of things in the present was not indicative of how they would be in the future. Hope rested upon the possibility of marriage, and regeneration, in the future. Thus, though they perceived a delay in the realisation of self through marriage, a future for the men and their families seemed still in sight. In the 1990s the men were referred to, at least symbolically, as part of the category of mladi (youth, unmarrieds). Even if being nominally referred to as stari bekjari the men were at least in the category of bachelors.

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In the two decades following the start of my fieldwork, the very same men I interviewed in the 1990s are now aged well into their fifties, sixties, and even a few in their seventies. Two decades later, the men are not even afforded the derogative label of stari bekjari. The men are instead simply described in terms such as ‘He never got married’, i.e. they had become of a never-married rather than not-married category. Hopefulness has given way to resignation and despondency. An unimaginable point had been reached of the inevitability of the desolation of the kukja (house) and thus the familija (family), a reality that is difficult for a society accustomed to universal marriage. In an attempt to describe the situation in her village where there was an increasing number of stari bekjari past the age of sixty years, one woman said, ‘We have many dry [dead] trees’ (‘Mnogu suvi drva imame’). Many of these stari bekjari were the very same men who had been described by their mothers in the mid-1990s as ‘beautiful boys’ from ‘good families’. Given the cultural precept of adulthood constituted at marriage, the inevitability of the desolation of the familija, of being unable to transfer authority before death to a never-married son, is something unimaginable and, yet, now a reality. For parents of stari bekjari in the 1990s, the idea of their sons living alone was often expressed as the death of their own sociality. Socialising with others was often avoided; fear of being judged a pitiful household that could not maintain social status equivalence and of others gloating of their achievements in having a son to marry ahead of their own was emotively expressed by one mother as being ‘Smrt’ (death) for her. Aging bachelors have not only lost the ‘feel for the game’, but are also unclear about what game they are participating in. The body of practice is at odds with emergent changes to structures and values. In this sense, aging bachelors are automatically consigned the status of the non-modern ‘other’ within their own societies: sandwiched between structural positionality within rurality, kinship, family, age and gendered identities that cannot be transformed into actualisation of modernity. Rural men are thus socially present, but often as a derogatory category, a visible reminder of failure, and the tools they draw on to illustrate their modernness are perceived as a camouflage for a less than modern heart residing beneath their inherent villageness. To put it differently, aging rural bachelors are both the outcome of modernity and its refuse.

THE BACHELOR SPECTACLE AND THE PRECARITY OF RURAL COMMUNITIES Aging rural bachelorhood is a rising phenomenon that has become particularly noticeable in the last few decades across many societies. The problem

INTRODUCTION

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of aging bachelorhood has reached ‘manic’ proportions in some countries, referred to as a ‘ticking time bomb’, even a ‘bachelor bomb’.4 Various strands of scholarship on aging bachelorhood such as in Asia, for instance, have particularly focused on the tensions between modernity, ‘agonistic masculinity’ and the perceived ‘crisis of masculinity’ (see, for example, Chowdhry 2005; Reeser and Seifert 2003). Thus, aging bachelorhood is typically explained as a product of male bias, son preference and a discrimination of women that has led to gender imbalances.5 The profound impact of sex selective abortions and female infanticide in some societies has resulted in what Sen famously referred to as ‘missing women’ (1992, 2003; see also Tilche and Simpson 2018). Indeed, increased social instability and security, crimes against women and a growing trade in sexual trafficking in some cases is explained as a direct result of male-biased sex ratios (see Jin et al. 2013: 4; Zhou and Hesketh 2017: 5). From the perspective of the men, experience of life as a dead-end – stuck in a village, tied to family and land, and rejected by women as undesirable for marriage – has led to various forms of self-destruction. The desperation of men disadvantageously placed in the marriage stakes and who regard their fate as hopeless has led to increasing rates of suicide, alcoholism, and psychological and other forms of ill-health across many societies.6 That is, for aging rural bachelors the social pressures that are created by existing structures of property transmission and morality in an age of massive rural depopulation are profoundly significant and personal. Where the known ways of navigating life, sociality and presentation of self are in discord with the changing world around them, there is no returning to some old ways of being or moving on. They are structural victims of systems and values that cannot accommodate them. Marriage, and where it sits in the cultural imaginary of the meaning and order of life, is correspondingly a critical site of contestation for negotiating modernity. Needless to say, marriage strategies, inheritance systems and the connection to land found in rural sites frame discursive identities and discriminations between men and women more broadly but also internally within the form of kinship and family. For Bourdieu (1976, 2004, 2008), as for many others, the demise of rural men in the symbolic marriage market is undoubtedly connected to more powerful external economic and political forces that cannot withstand local customs and kinship systems, such as the overarching emphasis on male primogeniture in inheritance. Bourdieu argues that delayed marriage and high rates of permanent bachelorhood in Béarn are directly related to parental strategies focusing on the designated heir (1976: 122). In the marriage strategies of parents and the primogeniture inheritance system, as long as there is an heir (older son) who can marry, a younger son can be ‘sacrificed to the imperatives of the land’ (1976: 551). As Bourdieu elaborates,

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No doubt there were other ways in which a younger son could become a confirmed bachelor, from the marriage that did not materialize to a gradual process of getting used to the situation until it was ‘too late to marry,’ all of this taking place with the complicity of families who were, consciously or unconsciously, glad to keep such an ‘unpaid servant’ in their service, at least temporarily. (1976: 556)

The younger son, depicted as either stuck servicing aging parents or compelled to leave home ‘to make his living in the city or to seek his fortune in America’, is a common feature of the stem-family that as Bourdieu says is concerned with the ‘preservation of the patrimony’ (1976: 556).7 That is, a younger son being unmarried is a problem primarily for the individual pitted against an unbending system that valorises the transmission of property intact to a single heir. Thus, Bourdieu argues, the younger son is ‘the structural victim, that is, the socially primed and therefore willing victim of a system that lavished a panoply of protective devices upon the “house,” a collective entity and also an economic unit or, better, a collective entity based upon its economic unity’ (1976: 557, original emphasis). The differential positionality of older and younger sons within marriage strategies and primogeniture that have compelled younger sons to be ‘structural victims’, however, stands in stark contrast to the plight of older (designated heir) sons who are unable to marry. In his book, The Bachelors’ Ball (2008) the problematic of the older son (designated heir) who has become unmarriageable is for Bourdieu ‘a highly significant social fact’ (2008: 2, 4). Again, Bourdieu turns to the local custom and kinship forms that relegated the younger son to be ‘the structural victim’, by posing the somewhat rhetorical question, ‘By what paradox can men’s failure to marry appear to those men themselves and to all around them as the most striking symptom of the crisis of society which has traditionally condemned its younger sons to emigration or bachelorhood?’ (2008: 9). It is at this point that it becomes clear that for Bourdieu local customs and kinship systems valorising older sons cannot withstand more powerful social, economic and political forces. Bourdieu argues that the ‘social enigma of the bachelorhood of eldest sons in a society renowned for its fierce attachment to the principle of primogeniture’ serves as a, concrete and visible realization of the market in symbolic goods, which, as it became unified at the national level (just as it is, now, with homologous effects, on a global scale), had thrust a sudden, brutal devaluation on those who were bound up with the protected market of the old-style matrimonial exchanges controlled by families. (2008: 4)

Bachelorhood of older sons, the heir-apparent, is a threat to the economic and symbolic capital of a family, a looming threat of collapse of the ‘house’ and village hamlets that is a structural travesty, a ‘brutal devaluation’ and

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‘the most striking symptom of the crisis of society’, as Bourdieu emotively evaluates. In a broader sense, the plight of aging rural bachelors reflects the discriminatory positionality of the ‘peasant’ vis-à-vis the broader society. Even in the interactional domains of communal life, such as the village ball described by Bourdieu, the broader society’s judgements of the ‘village’ and the ‘villager’ (or ‘peasant’ as he refers to it) are clear. The plight of aging bachelors, as with villagers more generally, is simultaneously enfolded into, and driven by, the broader social and economic conditions. The discriminations and prejudices associated with being a ‘peasant’ for Bourdieu influence the ‘mediation of the consciousness that men attain’ through the village ball, of a self-awareness of an individual as ‘grasping himself as a “peasant” in the pejorative sense of the word (2008: 86). Confirmation of this, argues Bourdieu, is found in the fact that ‘among the bachelors one finds either the most “empeasanted” peasants or the most self-aware peasants – those most aware of what remains “peasant” within’ (2008: 87). That is, the villager, being a peasant, marks habitus and constitution and somehow seeps into the consciousness of individuals that makes them disadvantaged, discriminated against and bypassed for marriage consideration by upwardly mobile (urban focused) women. As Jenkins points out, however, in Bourdieu’s account there is a danger in assuming an overwhelmingly pessimistic story of the rural ethnographic subject, be it the aging bachelor or the village that cannot withstand the more powerful external forces but can only internalise their own defeat or domination (2010: 151). Indeed, Bourdieu’s depiction of aging bachelorhood, ‘with the pitiless necessity of the word “unmarriageable”’ (2008: 4), is for Jenkins nothing more than the scholar’s ‘pity’ (2010: 142, 153). That is, we cannot assume the village as an isolate locality or the villagers (or ‘peasants’ as Bourdieu refers to them) as passive, agentless and inconsequential rural people. Irrespective, aging bachelorhood in the recently renamed ‘Republic of North Macedonia’ is no less ‘exceptionally dramatic’, to use Bourdieu’s phrase. In contrast to the case of Béarn presented by Bourdieu, however, among the Macedonians the phenomenon of aging bachelorhood is not connected to the inheritance or marriage strategy based on male primogeniture. In the case of Béarn it is clear that a younger son and an heir-apparent are equally ‘structural victims’, at very least, the former of the fierce attachment to primogeniture, the latter of the more global forces and shifting values that relegate a rural man undesirable for marriage. In contrast, Rogers notes that in the case of an Ayeyronnais community, Sainte Foye, education is afforded to younger sons but denied to the designated heir, which had ‘the effect of trapping the designated heir on the farm, reinforcing the pattern of male primogeniture’ (1991: 150). In short, depending on what structures we are

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referring to, there is always likely to be some kind of ‘structural victims’. In the Macedonian case, for instance, women are undoubtedly the ‘structural victims’ of partible inheritance among brothers and the androcentric bias that even though a sister is able to legally claim a share of patrimony alongside her brothers, social norms work against her doing so. Further, widows were, and continue to be to a great extent, bypassed from claiming a share of the patrimony of their deceased husbands. The pivoting of the kukja and familija (family) as an agnatic moral universe leaves little room for the inclusion of women (see Denich 1974).

RURAL WOMEN AND THE WITHDRAWAL OF COMPLICITY In contrast to rural men who are overwhelmingly presented as agentless and unsuccessful in the new marriage market, women’s agency is especially highlighted in accounts of the rising rate of unmarried women in cities, such as in Asia (see Jones 2005: 99; 2010). The rising rate of unmarried women in cities is typically explained as an outcome of women’s empowerment, access to education and work that affords greater choice in the kind of partner they seek and the expectations they have of men (see Sorge 2008: 815; Yan 2006; Hamilton and Seyfrit 1994). Although many rural women leave for purposes of education and work, there is often an assumption that the exodus from rural sites is connected to gender empowerment. Moreover, rural women’s exodus is often assumed to be permanent but many continue to visit or send remittances home. Irrespective, what is clear is that the exodus of rural women is most pronounced in the withdrawal from marriage to rural men. It is in this sense that the phenomenon of rural aging bachelorhood is stereotypically described as caused by the exodus of women. Nonetheless, scholarly attention on rural women as individual subjects and how they enact their agency as individuals is rare. That is, the exodus of women is incorporated in general, rather than specifically investigated, in accounts of rural depopulation and aging bachelorhood. Indeed, accounts of aging bachelorhood, including Bourdieu’s, have to a great extent omitted to explore more directly women as agents and how they impacted on the decline of rural societies and the flight from marriage. To be sure, for Bourdieu the generational shifts and the ‘gulf between the sexes’ (2004: 587) is hyperbolically expressed at such events as the village ball. The difference is expressed not simply as a ‘gulf between the sexes’, however, as much as in the implication that while men remain the same, women’s choice-making has significantly altered. In short, notwithstanding explanations for disparity in rural sex-ratios due to ‘missing’ women as mentioned above, there is clearly an exodus not simply of but by women.

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That is, women appear to be far more successful in navigating changing social and economic conditions. This may be because the systems of inheritance either ignore or disadvantage women or compel them to seek higher social status further afield and beyond local sites. But, it may equally be the case that the aspirations of village girls to get away or never to return, and further of city girls never to condescend to living in a ‘village’, speak to women’s withdrawal of complicity in the androcentric imaginary of order. If women’s participation in upholding the androcentric imaginary is voluntary, in other words, once choice is available, they are not only exiting the village but also opting out of marriage, or marriage to ‘just anyone’. Of course, rural women are not necessarily vocal about their reticence to remain in the village or to marry a village man. Such candour is typically expressed among women friends rather than as a publicly voiced ideological stance or personal preference. In fact, with some individual exceptions, women most often avoid public confrontations of any form; such attention may bring censure. Many indeed prefer to navigate experiences of discrimination through complicity with the androcentric imaginary of order, at least in the public domain. The strategy of women to navigate local customs without overtly challenging the androcentric imaginary of order may be gleamed from the standard tropes of resignation expressed especially by older generations of women: ‘that’s how things are’ they would say, or ‘You can’t argue with them [men]’. In the case of Macedonian rural women, especially those who are studying in cities and come home for the weekend, they would often say to me that ‘there is nothing in the village’. They would on occasion evoke being modern or emancipated subjects by rejecting having anything to do with village men. For contemporary Macedonians, there is an onomastic violence inferred in the very label of ‘village’ (selo) or ‘villager’ (seljani) that is especially abhorrent to modern women seeking to disassociate themselves from such labels. Women have no compulsion to remain in or return to a village once given the opportunity to leave. In the 1990s the exodus of women from rural sites was everywhere apparent, mainly due to marriage with men living outside of the village but also as a post-study decision to remain in a city.8 For many women, even living in town as a stara čupa (old girl, i.e. unmarried woman past the socially appropriate age of marriage) was preferable to remaining amongst villagers and the gnawing selski mentalitet (‘village mentality’). That is, where the familiar modes of asserting selfhood for men is through the prism of one’s positionality within kinship, and, where the competitiveness associated with agonistic masculinity is becoming unstuck, this is not because of the machinations of the state to reform subjects or because of some omnipotent forces such as ‘industrialisation’, ‘globalisation’ or ‘modernisation’ processes, though all these are clearly present. Rather, the de-

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stabilisation or stuckedness of rural men largely stems from the fact that women have made better use of opportunities and shifting societal contexts and processes. Indeed, women have contributed to a fundamental reshaping of modernity, and the consequences for men and the androcentric family are enormous. Further, the withdrawal of women from rural sites (or more accurately from rural men) has not only reshaped social and kin identities and relations but has also impacted more broadly on society. In his classic model of circulation of women, Lévi-Strauss ([1949] 1969) argues that the circulation of women is axiomatic to the shaping of kinship and social relations between groups. Although criticised by some feminists, Lévi-Strauss was not wrong; women do make the world go around. Contrary to his thesis, however, women’s mobility in contemporary societies is not a consequence of men forging alliances with others. Nonetheless, women’s mobility undoubtedly has significant implications for men. The rural exodus of women, or their lack of complicity with marriage norms, for instance, has reinvigorated the focus on marriage and the ‘marriage market’. In the pursuit of external women, the reformed marriage market has led to an increase in the role of intermediaries (match-makers). The state or religious institutions have also participated in this space. However, what is different perhaps is the manner in which the reformed marriage market has also implicated women’s capacities to navigate structural and social disadvantage. The reinvigorated practice, and in some cases industry, of intermediaries most often involves pursuing women from neighbouring ‘poor’ communities or foreign countries (through deploying new technologies such as the Internet). That is, the pursuit of brides for aging rural bachelors points to the diversification of marriage strategies in the face of shortage of women (Kaur 2004: 2599) but also reformations of gender divides and the discrimination of some categories of women alongside changing marriage patterns. Typically, poor, uneducated or rural women of some other peripheral sites of modernity are filling the gaps left behind by modern or educated women.

MODERNITY AND THE ‘UNMAKING’ OF MEN Modernity does not simply evoke tensions (cf. Habermas 1987) but also presents as a vibrant interactional domain in which the very concept of ‘modern’ is enacted, played with in various ways to navigate, include and exclude some positionalities, identities and relationships. In this, notions of desirable and undesirable qualities of ‘man’, ‘manhood’ and ‘masculinity’ have particularly come under fire as a site of contestation.

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The call to make ‘gender visible’ and render structural transformation itself as a ‘crisis of masculinity’ (Spike Peterson 1997: 199) has in many ways coalesced modernity with the unmaking and remaking of men. Alongside the rising attention paid to gender equity and the empowerment of women, scholarship on men, manhood and masculinity has been significant. Demographic shifts – such as the phenomenon of aging population, low fertility rates, delayed marriage and increased numbers of unmarried people – are part of broader structural shifts that are often connected to changing gender relations and identities that have brought forth scrutiny and critique of male bias, especially displays of particular forms of masculinity. Notable in the growing attention on men is the implied link between rejection of particular expressions of manhood and masculinity and resistance to the male bias of power. There is a strong tendency in studies of gender to portray particular expressions of manhood and masculinity as lingering manifestations of undesirable, archaic sexist values and behaviour unbefitting of a modern subject. Whether it is within the family or household arrangements or in the more political and public domains, androcentricism or male bias is typically contested not only as undesirable but also a form of deviance. In the concern with Western gender roles and identities, for instance, Connell’s notion of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (1985) is especially influential in giving shape to ideas of male bias and domination (see also Donaldson 1993; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). However, the notion of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ has also been extensively critiqued. The tendency to essentialise masculinity (Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994: 3), for instance, often runs in tandem to the concern with the Western-centric purveyance and prejudice in constructs such hegemonic masculinity. The construct of hegemonic masculinity omits the racialised, classist undertones in depictions of ‘other’ men (see Amar 2011). Further, the lack of inclusion of ‘marginalized and subordinated masculinities’ (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Messner 1994: 201) has led others such as Demetriou to conclude that the problem with Connell’s thesis is in its ‘elitist’ view of a process where ‘subordinate and marginalized masculinities have no effect on the construction of the hegemonic model’ (2001: 345). Masculinity has to a large extent been ‘dislocated’, to borrow Cornwall and Lindisfarne’s (1994) phrase, in that it can no longer be treated as an essentialist category. But, displays of ‘hegemonic’, ‘agonistic’, or whatever label is given for undesirable expressions of manhood, have to a large extent been relocated. That is, the perpetuation of male bias and discrimination against girls and women may be found as a general condition of gender roles and identities. However, particular displays of aggressive, hegemonic or agonistic masculinity is often associated with marginal socio-economic positionalities and localities. In the pursuit of distinction and disambigua-

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tion about what is desirable or undesirable in a modern being, such terms capture the popular imaginary and are deployed in various strategic ways within the interactional domains of meaning-making. Located among the non-moderns within a modern society, in peripheral, exotic practices, or a part of a bygone era such as Guttmann notes of how Mexican informants conceived ‘machismo’ (2007: 221), some forms of manhood and displays of masculinity are conceptualised as the antithesis of what is desirable in modern men. Indeed, ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is a presumably all-encompassing ideology and practice that is readily drawn upon to problematise deviance and violence against women and used in interventions seeking to address them through the call for re-educating men and boys (see Jewkes et al. 2015). Although somewhat different from the scholarship of masculinity discussed above, in anthropology there is a wealth of literature on the gendered nature of identities and relations and the importance of examining the relational aspects of gender constructs. In particular, Mediterranean and south European studies of kinship, gender and village societies are especially rich in exploring men, manhood and masculinity. Whether in furthering family business (Campbell 1964) or engaging in men’s business more generally, there is often much importance attached to male sociality as an interactional domain within which manhood is displayed, reaffirmed and challenged (Loizos and Papataxiarchis 1991). Interestingly, Herzfeld (1985) draws a parallel between the persistence of agnatic kinship on the one hand and the competitiveness associated with agonistic masculinity on the other. Within the world of male sociality in the community referred to by Herzfeld as ‘Glendi’, the performance of manhood is reported to involve male performativity of various kinds such as sexual prowess, risk taking, drinking or pitting oneself against the state. In such an arena, the essentially relational nature of masculinity is not only reaffirmed but also enfolded in meaning-making. As Herzfeld argues, it is not enough simply to be a man but it is rather about ‘being good at being a man’ (1985: 16). That is, the ‘poetics of manhood’ is connected to the sacrifice, strength and fortitude coalesced into an expansive ideational construct of positionality of men within family, and the social and political world they occupy. Again, as with ‘hegemonic masculinity’, Herzfeld’s account has been critiqued for presenting a ‘single point of view’ that does not necessarily capture variant constructs of manhood (Loizos 1994: 77). As Cornwall and Lindisfarne argue, what is important is to look ‘in detail at everyday usage and the contexts in which people talk of masculinity’ where the complexities become apparent (1994: 2). This of course does not necessarily mean that everyday ‘usage and context’ might be different from what is often reported as typical of forms, ideals or displays of manhood and masculinity. However, it is important to consider the inflections, modalities

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and expressions found in particular localities and contexts. Change, transitions from one system or another sit alongside shifting expectations not only about how to navigate change but also the reconfiguring of relationships along the process.

VILLAGENESS AND SCHOLARLY ENDEAVOURS Scholarly attention on villages is inflected with its own political and academic currencies and trends. A significant body of anthropological scholarship on European village societies emerged in the early to mid-twentieth century. Alongside groundbreaking works such as by Redfield (1941) in Mexico, many turned to the peripheries of Europe.9 Although occasional references to emigration and modernisation are made by many, anthropologists could still find in villages that which seemed to have disappeared in cities or, at least, existed in a seeming vacuum from the drastic changes evident in Western European modernities. As a picture of a world out of step with modernity, they seemed to cling to tradition. Unaffected by change or in the process of transition, villagers seemed to go about their lives with an insularity (or lack of mobility) that ensured discreet, if not, ‘unifying principles’ across not only villages, but also regions. For most Western anthropologists, the turn to the peripheries of Europe coincided with the surge of independence movements emerging out of the rubble of the crumbling European colonial empires that rendered accessibility to the classic sites unfeasible.10 The unconscious attachment to conceptual and methodological precepts, however, was reflected in a continued focus on compact ‘communities’, or small-scale societies of the colonial ethnographic subject. The work of ‘Mediterraneanists’ established a renewed comparative focus on ‘culture areas’, with the aim to construct a ‘unity’ of shared values, mores and kinship structures and systems (see Peristiany 1965, 1976; Davis 1977). Indeed, though later critiqued (notably in Brandes 1987; Gilmore 1982), the purveying frame of analysis has resulted in an impressive body of scholarship, in which relations are dominated by kinship, rituals and modes of self-governance based on such codes as ‘honour and shame’. Such an endeavour encompassed not only features of specific peoples but also geographically bounded entities such as the ‘Mediterranean’, ‘Southern Europe’, ‘South Slavs’, and ‘the Balkans’ (see, for instance, Pitt-Rivers 1976; Davis 1977). The turn towards European village societies at the point of their virtual disappearance is more often a lament for bygone ways that reflects the romanticism of the observers rather than the realities of how life may have been conducted.11 Moreover, in anthropology’s ‘reflexive turn’, the post-

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modernist aversion to essentialisms rendered ‘culture areas’ and ‘village’ societies as somehow out of step with changing fashions of thought. Although subsequent scholarship has moved beyond the ‘village fetishism’, as Gilmore (1982: 184) notes, the contributions by ‘Mediterraneanists’ have left a lingering image of village societies. Just as colonial ethnographies have framed the purveyance of ‘kinship systems’, ‘clans’, ‘tribes’ and the like, so too have such notions as ‘honour and shame’, ‘localism’, ‘familialism’, ‘regionalism’ and the gendered dichotomies of space and identity remained powerful. Further, in turning to European societies, anthropologists trained in Western institutions made ‘theorising’ a point of distinction from the mere descriptiveness of the indigenous ethnologists (Claes 1996: 99). Yet, in the case of the Balkans, it made for a peculiar kind of symbiosis between Western and native anthropology (or the ‘ethnologists’ and the ‘folklorists’). The early twentieth century, to the period of the outbreak of World War II, generated significant ethnological and ethnographic interest in the Balkans. The key themes, beyond the social evolutionary paradigms of Serbian human geographer Cvijić (1918a, 1918b), focused on social organisation.12 The ‘south Slavs’ as a ‘culture area’ was definitive in subsequent scholarship as a site of a distinctive form of social organisation, the zadruga or extended jointfraternal household, alongside various shared customs and beliefs.13 The work of ‘Yugoslav’ ethnologists was especially fruitful for ‘Western anthropologists’ who drew on their accounts of social organisation among the peasantry, especially the zadruga.14 Similar themes of traditionalism, communalism and kinship continued to reverberate in Mediterraneanist and ‘Southern European’ discourses in mid-twentieth-century scholarship, often referencing the earlier village-cum-zadruga model. The zadruga also shaped a lasting impression of ‘southern Europeans’ or ‘south Slavs’ kinship as the ‘anomalous’ case amidst the Mediterranean bilateral kindred (see Davis 1977; PinaCabral 1992; Schubert 2005b). The few studies of Macedonians in the period of early to mid-twentieth century likewise focused on themes of social organisation found within villages.15 The analytic frames of the South Slavists and the Mediterraneanists, however, served as a pivotal point for historic judgement in the scrutiny of nationalist assertions following the independence of the ex-Yugoslav state. In the early 1990s, protests by Greece over the name of the newly independent ex-Yugoslav state and the use of ancient Macedonian symbols would hold up international recognition for nearly three decades. The ‘name issue’ or ‘name dispute’ also brought anthropologists into the broader debates relating to (ethno)national identity. Indeed, as of the early 1990s Macedonia became, as Brown highlights, ‘a major site of ethnographic production’ (2010: 817) and a vast volume of literature emerged from this period that primarily focused on shifting identities and identity politics, frequently drawing on

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history and the geopolitically framed ‘Macedonia Question’ and occasionally also on previous ethnographic studies. Where the study of village communities was in a state of hiatus for a number of decades, the turn toward contested identities in the 1990s provided an impetus for the emergence of anthropology of Macedonia. Anthropologists who had conducted fieldwork in predominantly village communities of northern Greece where people of Slav-Macedonian origin often referred to themselves as ‘locals’ (see Danforth 1989: 65; Cowan and Brown 2000: 5; Cowan 1990: 39) were particularly prominent in engaging with the name issue.16 With some trepidation, northern Greece specialists drew attention to the ‘Slavo-Macedonian’ minority alongside the plight of the ex-Yugoslav state in pursuit of international recognition. It was taken as a given that locals of northern Greece shared ‘the same socio-cultural background and they were all Slav peasants’ (Agelopoulos 1995: 255). But, ‘national’ was distinguished from ‘ethnic’ identity, and both were seen as part of a range of socially constructed, subjective narratives of belonging and solidarity (see Danforth 1995; Brown 1998: 111). Moreover, as Karakasidou notes, the ‘area-studies paradigms of the Cold War era’ and the connection to national cultures and ideologies came under ‘radical critique’ (2000: 415). But, there is a discernible reframing rather than abandonment of ‘culture area’ approach notable as of the 1990s. The hegemonic framing of the Macedonia region as a contested category and the people that refer to themselves as ‘Makedonci’ as an exemplar of the problems associated with shifting and contested identities (see, for example, Cowan and Brown 2000: 3; Cowan 2008: 340) was difficult to avoid as the central or stand-out feature. Amidst the political sensitivities at the height of the name dispute in the 1990s there was understandably a need for anthropologists of Macedonia, as Brown argues, to steer clear of ‘making claims to adjudicate between competing truth-claims embedded in different uses of the term’, and concomitantly, challenge ‘the hegemonic and essentialist “western” views of the Balkans’ (2010: 818). Challenging hegemonic and essentialist western views, however, sits alongside a purveying discourse of difference that continues to reaffirm ‘the Balkans’ as a category or entity in various ways. The representation of the region as the ‘Other’ of Europe (Todorova 1994, [1997] 2009) continues and often in unexpected ways as a subtext, for instance, of the problematic continuities of kinship systems and mentalities. The ‘patriarchy’ of the ‘ethnic’ Macedonians, Albanians or other peoples of the region would occasionally draw on early to mid-twentieth-century ethnographic studies, for instance, to substantiate assertions that the discriminative treatment of women was grounded in kinship and the value hierarchies espoused within village societies (see, Bošković 2002; Halpern, Kaiser and Wagner 1996). Nonetheless, there were

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few in-depth studies of Macedonian village communities, lifeworlds and experiences especially within the now Republic of North Macedonia, beyond concerns with (ethno)national identity.

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE RETURNING GAZE ON ‘VILLAGE’ As is attested by a number of recent studies, including special essays in journals such as Critique of Anthropology (2015, 2017), the study of village societies is a long way from being complete. Moving beyond the accounts of the bounded, isolated and essentialised unity of rural sites or the conceptualisation of a rural-urban dichotomy, many have pointed to the village being ‘good to think’, to borrow Lévi-Strauss’ (1963) phrase. The reinvigoration of village ethnographies is a reminder, as Herzfeld highlights, that ‘no village community has ever genuinely been totally isolated from the larger world’ (2015: 339). As Eriksen stresses, no ‘local community is completely selfsustaining and unchanging through time’ (2015: 75). Nonetheless, Grandia, for instance, argues that ‘villages are marvellous sites for telling small human stories against a large canvas of political economy’ (2015: 319). As Gallo, among others, also notes, ‘villages lie at the heart of increasing connections between mobile people’ (2015: 249; see also Shnederman 2015: 319). Villages are indeed ‘spaces’ and ‘sites’ that reify the pursuit of meaning-making around not merely spatial and temporal terrains but also relational terrains (Vasantkumar 2017: 367). That is, a focus on the shifts in sociality, intimacy, reciprocity, relationality, mobility and the advance of technologies of connectedness makes any essentialist or unitary divide between rural and urban seem nonsensical. Certainly, there is greater mobility, technological creep if not sophistication in use of such networks and devices as the Internet or mobile phones that speaks to the rural being emplaced within the global and the urban sites. But as Chio rightly argues, ‘differences matter, even when these differences are flexible and when the rural–urban distinction is more of a continuum than a certainty’ (2017b: 424). Likewise, relationality invariably encompasses difference and hierarchy (Stasch 2017: 445). Though not always expressed in spatial or temporal terms perhaps, there continues to be a dynamic in the encounter between urban and rural people where some kind of difference is both felt and experienced (see, Koleva 2013: 148). Re-engagement with ‘village worlds’, as Sorge and Padwe (2015: 241) have phrased the returning gaze on village studies, may indeed point to closer attention to difference as an important factor in analysing social identities and relations. Indeed, difference is a feature of many of the more classic studies mentioned in the previous section. In these more classic studies of villages,

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the comparative approach highlights various aspects of differences. For example, difference is found to reside within kinship systems and structures, local socio-political strata and positionality, and gender relations and identities. The link between differences and precarity of village societies has also been notable and highlights connections between village societies as well as the manner of differentiation of villages from national, global or symbolic worlds. Thus, I would suggest, it is not difference per se that is called for in a reinvigorated contemporary study of villages but, rather, the shifting modes of significant difference in the changing forms and consciousness of what constitutes ‘modern’ subjectivity. In short, contemporary village ethnography is not simply about villages as locations (sites) nor some kind of opportunity to lament culture loss, defeat and despondency. Although there are many cases of loss (death of villages, looming threats of extinction, etc.), villages are also sites, ‘microcosms’ if you will, of the local–global and global–local continuum of relationality. The urban/rural divide and where the ‘village’ sits in the imaginary order of modernity persistently present as an ideational foil for meaning-making endeavours of ‘modern’ subjects in navigating the complex terrain of both shrinking and expanding relationality.

FIELDWORK AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH As Geertz highlights, ‘the locus of study is not the object of study’ (1973: 22). Anthropologists, argues Geertz, do not study villages so much as ‘they study in villages’ (1973: 22, original emphasis). Further, Geertz cautions that the ‘methodological problem which the microscopic nature of ethnography presents’ is ‘not to be resolved by regarding a remote locality as the world in a teacup or as the sociological equivalent of a cloud chamber’ (1973: 23). Herzfeld too is mindful of distinguishing location (locus) from personal proximity – the pursuit of building knowledge and understanding through more ‘intimate’ relationships between ethnographer and the people they study: the emphasis should not be on types and sizes of location, but on degrees and kinds of social intimacy. The markers of social intimacy are often clear: code-switching to more informal forms of talk and gesture, accelerating reciprocity and hospitality, increasing distance between official rhetoric and confidential explanations. Villages are indeed great places for achieving such personal proximity, without which the telling detail that is ethnography’s special contribution would simply be impossible. (2015: 339)

As an ongoing research agenda, villages have been a central scholarly concern for me since conducting fieldwork for my doctoral research in the mid-

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1990s. Privileging sites of village above town was to me ‘both familiar and strange’, to borrow Srinivas’ (1997: 22) phrase. It drew attention to the multiple subjectivities that cut across the researcher/subject paradigm as well as the divergences and convergences between insider and outsider accounts. I not only study villages but was also born in a village. I spent the first eight years of my life in a Macedonian village located along the southern border between Greece and the ex-Yugoslav republic. In many ways, even in migration to Australia the village came with me. Most of those we associated with in the transposed Australian context were ex-villagers, maintaining rituals and celebrations that exaggerated ‘local customs’ at weddings, christenings and annual celebration of the village slavas. Although I conducted fieldwork in regions quite removed from that of my birth village, and entered as a stranger with no social or kin connections, locals would often remind me of my village origins. Many people in the villages I studied across the Bitola, Ohrid and Prespa regions were especially interested in situating me within the context of my villageness. The village I was born in and the stereotypes of its character or identity were not only presumed to be innately embedded within me but were also evident in the occasional slippage to my local dialect and the mode of engagement and presentation of self among them. Mindful too of what Doja refers to as ‘the ideological foundations and political practices of scholarly production’ (2014: 291), I often found myself straddling ‘Western’ academic training and the sentiments and sense of ‘knowing’ that is engrained in being a Makedonka (fem. Macedonian). The discrepancies and convergences of outsider and insider accounts of ‘Macedonia’ and ‘Macedonian’ have generated enormous scholarly debates, which from my own personal perspective have at times been confronting. The representations of what I understood as ‘my culture’, but also the charge of the politicism and historicism clouded by (ethno)nationalist prejudices of local scholars, are especially acute in the case of writing about the much contested categories of ‘Macedonia’ and ‘Macedonians’. No simple statement of the ethnographic subject can be made without inviting comments, even among scholarly peers, to make a qualification such as ‘Slavo-Macedonians’, those of ‘ex-Yugoslavia’, ‘not Greek’ or to add a note that such an identity is inherently contested, and further, that others also identified with or felt connected to ‘Macedonia’ or a ‘Macedonian’ identity. This dilemma was best addressed, according to my doctoral supervisor Roger Just, by taking as my cue how people refer to themselves. Further, with ethnographic study having the potential to be noticed, under surveillance and scrutiny (see Zadrożna 2016), I often assumed the role of a ‘fly on the wall’ – absorbing what was said and done without actively

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engaging in often heated political debates. As I would join men on their sojourns to city nightclubs or political rallies, I was not only careful to avoid expressing my personal views about what they did but also to avoid engaging with institutional or more powerful actors. Of course, as naturally happens in social interactions, my endeavours to navigate between engagement and neutrality would on occasion backfire. As a woman studying the world of men, I was partially ‘sister’ and ‘diplomat’ as some of the men would say, but still a ‘woman’ and, furthermore, a perceived villager. For example, in the social world of local villagers (women predominantly) no one is exempt from being a target of gossip, and in my embarrassment at becoming such a target, the judgement, according to an interlocutor, was that I was behaving like a villager, that I behaved as if I had a ‘fly on the hat’ (muvata na kapata); that is, I was affording others power over me that no self-respecting local would allow, giving fuel to the gossip in my display of discomfort or embarrassment that is automatically assumed to point to some truth to the rumour. The incident was a reminder of the importance of two-facedness (dvoličnost), where the public ‘face’ guards against potential entry of harm and differentiates between intimacy and that which should or should not be displayed to others through ‘holding up’ one’s ‘head’ (see Herzfeld 1985: 45). In the social world of the Makedonci (pl. Macedonians), as elsewhere, keeping up appearances and the presentation of a public self that is distinct from that shown to the more intimate members of one’s social and personal world were crucial to maintain. So too, rather than a timely reminder of the dangers of transgression, of going ‘native’ or having ‘gone troppo’ as it was once referred to in anthropology (see Marcus 2001: 109), the incident highlighted the challenges of engaged ethnography and the need to remind myself that as Coffey aptly describes, ‘fieldwork is personal, emotional and identity work’ (1999: 1, original emphasis). That is, if you were to become a truly engaged ethnographer, you might be called to assert your presence as an individual in an often uncomfortable social arena. Furthermore, locals often referred to the naivety of visiting ex-villagers; in my case, I was excused as an Australianka (fem. Australian) who was presumed to have either forgotten or did not know how to navigate gossip or the other modes of interaction appropriate in village sociality. In the end, through some individuals taking me in their confidences, my discomfort at hearing that there was some gossip directed at me actually served as a way of developing more genuine interpersonal relations. Thus, as fieldwork went on, this tension between the expectations of scholarly detachment, straddling ‘embedded’ ethnography, and becoming ‘familiar’ or ‘intimate’ with the ‘ethnographic subjects’ emphasised that I too was a subject of study for them.

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NOTES 1. The much contested issue over the name of the ex-Yugoslav state of ‘Republic of Macedonia’ that emerged as of independence in 1991 and following vehement campaigns by Greece was eventually resolved in February 2019 with the state agreeing to change its official name to the Republic of North Macedonia but nonetheless insisting on the right to reference as a cultural group by the name ‘Macedonians’. 2. For further discussion of (im)mobility see, for example, Salazar and Smart (2011); Adey (2006). 3. For discussion of the notion of ‘dividual’, see Dumont (1965, 1970); see also Marriot and Inden (1977); Marriot (1976); Strathern (1988); Holland and Kipnis (1994); Busby (1997); Sökefeld (1999); Whittaker (1992); Spiro (1993); Wikan (1995); and La Fontaine (1985). 4. The reference to high rates of aging bachelors in China has frequently been described as a ‘ticking time bomb’ or ‘bachelor bomb’. For an overview of aging bachelorhood in China, see, for example, Liu et al. (2014); Tucker and Van Hook (2013); Guilmoto (2012); and Hudson and den Boer (2008). 5. There is an enormous volume of literature on the gender imbalances in Asia, especially for China and India but also in many other societies in the region. For an overview of the phenomenon in the region, see for example, Bongaarts and Guilmoto (2015) and Jones (2007, 2010). 6. A number of studies of aging bachelors have pointed to ill-health and deviant behaviour. See Scheper-Hughes ([1977] 2001); Tilche and Simpson (2018); Jin et al. (2013); Zhou and Hesketh (2017: 5). 7. Bourdieu alludes to the fact that the plight of younger sons within kinship systems that focus on the older son and thus the preservation of patrimony intact may be common in other societies. Bourdieu notes, for example, that ‘Japanese peasants experienced a form of expulsion from marriage very similar to that of the peasants of Béarn’ (2008: 4). This is reaffirmed by various studies, including the study of the Japanese stem-family by Kitaoji (1971). 8. In a brief search through Capari council records, for instance, I found that out of a total of 102 marriages, 96 were out-marriages: 48 women married men from the nearby city of Bitola; 42 women married ex-Macedonian men residing in foreign countries and subsequently emigrated with their new spouse; and, 6 women married men from other Macedonian cities. Overall, there were only 6 marriages of women to local village men. The pattern of out-marriages described here resonates with local informants’ accounts where they would often emphasise the high status of their village. That is, where Capari women sort to marry men outside of the village they desire men from the city, rich foreign countries or men of comparatively equivalent status villages as their own. 9. For some notable studies of village societies in Europe see, for example, Arensberg and Kimball (1940) for Ireland, and for the Mediterranean and Greece, Pitt-Rivers ([1956] 1961); Friedl (1962); Campbell (1964); Peristiany (1965); Du Boulay (1974); Loizos (1975b); Davis (1977); Ott (1981); Dubisch (1983); and Herzfeld (1982). 10. See Wolf (1975); Cole (1977); Claes (1996); Pels (1997); Ross (2008); and Schneider (2012) for a discussion of anthropology’s turn to Europe. 11. For disappearing village communities see, for example, Friedl (1962, 1964, 1976), Du Boulay (1974) and O’Rourke (2006) who conducted fieldwork in Greece.

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12. Though it is difficult to pinpoint when the term ‘south Slavists’ came into scholarly discourse, one of the earliest mentions is grounded in the evolutionist paradigms by Serbian human geographer Cvijić (1918a, 1918b) and his students, such as Stanoyevich (1919) and Filipović (1965). For Cvijić, mirrored by Stanoyevich, ‘the Macedonian type’ represented the least evolved or modern. 13. Many anthropologists of the Balkans – such as Mosely ([1940] 1976a, [1943] 1976b [1953] 1976c), Halpern (1965), Balikci (1965), Hammel (1968), Rheubottom (1971), Lockwood (1972) and Buric (1976) – drew reference to Cvijić’s work on the zadruga. The work of sociologist Vera St Erlich, published in her book, Family in Transition (1966), a phenomenal feat in which she surveyed 300 Yugoslav villages during World War II, covering the variety of customs and beliefs, was also influenced by studies of the zadruga and peasant society of the earlier indigenous scholars; her work, too, is often cited by Western anthropologists. 14. The influence on western anthropologists of the work of ethnologists may be explained in the pedigrees of association. Cvijić trained Filipović who was a close friend of Mosely (who was also a colleague of Margaret Mead and collaborated with her on projects relating to the Slavs). Mosely was also Halpern’s mentor (see Halpern 2002). In the establishment of the state of Macedonia within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the dominance of Serbian ethnology can be seen in both theoretical and methodological approaches (see Bošković 2008; Risteski and Dimova 2013), as well as the academic posts by those trained in Serbia, such as Filipović (see Halpern and Hammel 1970). 15. From the early mid-twentieth century till the outbreak of World War II, ethnographies specifically focusing on Macedonians were scarce. The work of Polish anthropologist Jozef Obrebski, who conducted fieldwork in the Poreche region of Macedonia (1932–1933), became known to English readers via Halpern (2002) and Halpern and Kerewsky-Halpern (1976), posthumously. Though not ethnographic, the work of Brailsford (1906) is fascinating for its delving into the 1903 Uprising and the plight of ‘Bulgarian’ peasants in Macedonia at the time of the British and European humanitarian relief effort. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were a few studies of ‘Yugoslav Macedonians’, notably the work of Balikci (1965), who conducted fieldwork in the Bitola region (Skočivir, now completely depopulated), Rheubottom (1971, 1980) in Skopska Crna Gora, and Ford (1983) in the capital city Skopje. It should also be mentioned that many anthropologists of ‘South Slavs’ have also studied Macedonia, such as Hammel (1980), from the perspective of the joint-fraternal household (zadruga), and Halpern (1975a, 1975b), in relation to migration. 16. See, for example, Cowan (1990, 2000); Karakasidou (1993, 1997); Danforth (1993, 1995); Sutton (1997); and Vermeulen (1981), to name but a few anthropologists of northern Greece.

CHAPTE R 1

‘A VILLAGE IS FOR THE OLD AND DEAD’ The Disappearing Village Scape



Like leaves in spring, the young are blown away, Without the sorrows of a slow decay; I, like yon withered leaf, remain behind, Nipped by the frost, and shivering in the wind; There it abides till younger buds come on, As I, now all my fellow-swains are gone; Then, from the rising generation thrust, It falls, like me, unnoticed to the dust. —George Crabbe, 1783, The Village: Book 1, lines 206–15

I

n many scholarly and literary works the village scape brings forth a range of superlatives about the character and spirit of people forged by closeness to nature (the wild) and distance from modernity (the ‘city’) and the kind of stresses it compels. The subjectivity typically imposed on villagers of quaintness, lack of movement, (im)mobility of body as well as thought, serves to differentiate the modern self from past forms of being. As a time capsule that speaks to what it must have been like prior to modernity, the witnessing of a presumably ‘simpler life’ in the village becomes a reminder for many of what the moderns have gained, just as much as what has been lost in the process. The heightened sense of awareness of the imperative of movement also makes for a lament, if not a judgement, of the ‘sorrows of a slow decay’, as Crabbe (1783) describes it, in which what is left behind are those that cannot move. Indeed, the death or decay of villages has been a recurrent theme for many centuries. Moreover, the shifts and wanes of power, invasions and mi-

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gration, and the currencies of politics and policies are woven into the village scape. I draw on Appadurai’s notion of ‘scape’ in what he refers to as the ‘deeply perspectival construct, inflected very much by the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of different sorts of actors’ (1990: 296). Although Appadurai was concerned with global cultural economy, he includes ‘face-toface groups, such as villages, neighbourhoods and families’ in the ‘multiple worlds which are constituted by the historically situated imaginations of persons and groups around the globe’ (1990: 296–97). Villages are not merely an assemblage of the multiple sites that we occupy, however; they are central to the very notion of what constitutes modernity. The rural or village scape is fundamental to the imaginings of modernity. Villages compel the necessary adjustments that need to be made in constructing and acting upon the self. They are a microcosm of intimacy, mutuality and individuation in which cultural values and political imaginaries are imbued with temporal and socio-spatial placement.

NUANCED DICHOTOMIES: THE WILD AND THE TAMED The entrenched division between village and city is not about geographic distinction but rather a cognitive framing of modern and non-modern subjectivity. Although there are minute degrees of separation between urban and rural sites, the conceptual divide is colossal in the schema of social distance. For most people in Macedonia, asserting that a village can be ‘modern’ is an oxymoron. Being a ‘modern’ person is grounded in the distinction between urbanites ( grag jani) and villagers (seljani). The most readily accessible understanding of modernity is simply that it is the opposite of the village (selo). Villages are ‘backward’ (zaostanati), and the people ‘uncouth villagers’ (prosti seljani). Some kind of marker is invariably found to point out the distastefulness of ‘village life’ (selski život) or ‘village mentality’ (selski mentalitet). The village interior serves as the sensorial and experiential construct of the nemesis (and thus the epicentre) of modernity, as a site of the wild, primitive and self-sufficient entities. In the urban imaginary, the villager lacks the pressures of a modern existence because they are ‘closer’ to nature. A villager is considered more resourceful and self-sufficient, able to survive with what they can gather in the valleys and mountains, or with the produce of their agricultural, horticultural and pastoral endeavours. Urbanites would often compare their own plight of struggling economically with the inherent advantage of villagers who can forge a living, or at least remain afloat, by supplementing their livelihoods by working the land or exploiting natural resources. In fact, in

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times of economic hardship both villagers and city folk alike turn to the wild or undomesticated scapes of the village surrounds in the mountain, forest or meadows, where they collect herbs, nuts, berries, mushrooms or wood. Traditional medicines and ingredients for witchcraft and potions of healing, too, are found in these wild surrounds. The bajač (faith healer) and folk healers or traditional healers (naroden lekar) possess indigenous knowledge of the potentials of the natural surrounds. Likewise, the vegetable plot (bavča), predominantly attended to by womenfolk, is often supplemented with foraged stinging nettles and other ‘greens’ (zelje) to be found naturally. During the communist era (1947–1991), excursions into nature were especially prolific. Cheap hotels, caravans and campsites appeared to accommodate the ‘working’ class, and busloads of schoolchildren frequently arrived seeking mountain ski lodges during winter and lakeside bathing in summer. Likewise, there was a continual scurry of youth brigades and village cooperatives undertaking mass replantings of fast disappearing forests (an activity since resurrected as ceremonial ‘National Tree-Planting Days’). And, as villages were sites of romanticism, evoking a compulsion to escape the city, many ex-villagers during this time reclaimed old family homes to build ‘weekenders’ (vikendici), or returned on weekends to maintain the bavča to supplement irregular city incomes.1 Mountains and forests also play a significant part in the imaginary of spirituality and paying homage to particular saints. There are many ritual visits to monasteries (manastiri) that scatter the fringes of mountains and forests. Individuals or small groups also undertake spiritual sojourns on nonreligiously significant saint days. Alongside such sojourners, animal herders, the occasional European trekkers and bushwalkers, and the village forester (šumar) may be seen in the distance traversing the mountains and forests. Moreover, there are locals whose affinity or attachment to the mountains and forests is especially notable. That ‘eccentric’ (odkačeni) and deviant individuals also abound in these ‘natural’ sites is often mentioned by locals. With both admiration and mirth, villagers often recount the peculiar affinity with the natural, with the wild, that some locals have, such as ‘Dragi’ who climbs the tips of the Molika pine tree to collect seeds. Another local man from a mountainous village caught national attention with the death of his ‘daughter’, a bear that he had raised from a cub who was shot in suspicious circumstances by a ‘jealous’ co-villager. In historical and contemporary folk accounts of political troubles, mountains and forest are also most significant. Where there are no roads, and only goat or donkey tracks, the mountains afford some protection from the gaze of authorities. Roads and highways herald both civilisation and potential threats. Suspect autonomous Macedonia agitators, for instance, would escape into the mountains and forests, using them for refuge, as a source

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of protection, and as sites for meetings and preparation. Many older village women would retell mythic accounts of the hardships they endured being left in the villages as their menfolk escaped into the mountains to avoid the Turci (Ottoman authorities). Mountains and forest sites were the preeminent grounds of political agitation even on the eve of independence from Yugoslavia; paramilitary training occurred in many such surrounds. Furthermore, the rough terrains of mountain passes continue to be used extensively for border crossings between neighbouring states. Remote settlements meant distance from the gaze of authorities, a lesson learnt from experience that the villages and towns settled along main roadways or flatlands were the first to be invaded.2 That is, the development of agriculture in the plains and valleys that compelled the creation of roads for access to markets also left these same places susceptible to rapid change and subject to the incursion of foreigners and traders and, thus, to shifting fortunes. The precarity of remote mountain village communities is especially notable for the pastoralists and animal herders. The presence of fertile lands, resource rich mountains, and an abundance of water typically mark the ‘rich’ as opposed to the poor or ‘burnt’ villages: i.e. the truly backward from the more progressive. Yet, pastoralist communities were the first to disappear with rural depopulation. The isolation of mountain villages prevented them from taking advantage of the process of modernisation, interaction with cities and reformed modes of engagement in economic development. The development of cities may have served as points of interaction between different rural peoples, especially for the more isolated mountain villages and the folk that ‘come down’ to sell their wares, trade or visit kinfolk in lower surrounding villages. For most villagers, the pazar (bazaar, market) in the city served as a point of limited interaction with urbanites. Understandably, in some places the larger villages lying at the foothills of the mountains swelled with migrants from the mountain interior. Today, however, even the larger villages are rapidly depopulating in favour of settlement on the outskirts of nearby towns. In the imaginary of the village scape, agriculture is the quintessential work of villagers. Agriculture continues in many ways to contribute significantly to the overall economy but the neglect of investment in services and infrastructure during the Yugoslavian period and by the various parties that formed government following independence is glaringly obvious. There is a renewed focus on rural sites today, driven by various factors such as the need to respond to the demographic ‘crisis’ of rural depopulation, political ambitions (re-zoning of electorates to consolidate power), and reform imperatives brought on by the entry of external development agency actors.3 Predictably, to counter the intensification of the processes of rural depopulation, reform of agriculture has been touted as a priority area of investment,

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including incentives for younger ‘farmers’ and a hope for repopulation of rural sites.4 But, the new paradigm of focus is ‘agriculture’ as an economic sector rather than ‘villages’ per se. Moreover, the much-worn phrase, – ‘We all wait [depend] on villages’ – no longer has any meaning since nowadays produce is largely imported and many agricultural plots lie abandoned. Paradoxically, irrespective of the precarity of many village communities, there is a tendency to gift visiting urban relatives or friends with bags full of potatoes, nuts, peppers, white cheese or pickled vegetables. During the Yugoslavian period, the rapid urbanisation and centralisation process was especially important in reinforcing the social divide between village and city.5 In the ‘tremendous expansion’ concentrated in the larger cities (Spangler 1983: 90; Halpern 1975b; Buric 1976: 125), Macedonia was ‘the most urbanised republic’ in the then Yugoslavia. The modernisation policies of the Yugoslav federation greatly influenced the perceptions amongst the Macedonians that cities represented progressiveness or forward thinking. Alongside this, with the concentration of secondary and tertiary schooling in towns, the exodus of youth was inevitable. Many youths simply did not return, especially young women who had become settled in towns living with extended family members. The overwhelming trend today is migration of youths below the age of twenty-five with a relatively higher level of education (i.e. those that had settled in the cities for secondary schooling). The exodus of young, unmarried women is especially intense. In fact, youths are now generally leaving the country ‘in droves’.6 Such sojourns reinforce the objectification, or disconnect, between the modern urban and the closeness to nature with which villages are particularly associated. Closeness to ‘nature’ is presumed to reside within the village body. And yet, the extent of environmental degradation is massive and speaks to an ambiguous relationship with the natural surrounds. Both local villagers and city folk alike carelessly strew waste across ‘pristine’ natural sites. Likewise, there is a troubling level of deforestation and formal and informal felling of trees in order to see out the harsh winters, to fuel stoves, or to build frames for houses. For villagers, there is an overwhelming sense of an imperative of both a contextual and symbolic disassociation with villageness. The nearness of nature, working the soil, and the comfort of ‘knowing everyone’ in the community cannot compete with the seemingly endless opportunities of selfrealisation offered in the beyond. The obsessive concern with filing down the sharp edges of identification that come with asserting that one is ‘modern’ is engrained in the imaginary of village difference. For villagers, the city is a site of drama and theatre, of escaping and losing oneself in the masses. Cities offer endless possibilities of self-expression and individuality, of finding like-minded individuals based on choice (associations), rather than fixity

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(ascription). Urban sites invite the deviant, disillusioned and disappointed villagers, who assume that they are moderni people that have somehow been thwarted by happenstance of birth from the ‘natural’ place of modernity. Thus, although there is daily drama and theatre in the village too – gossip, people fighting, and crazy individuals that lighten the droning sense of nothingness – the lure of escape or losing oneself in a city or foreign lands (stranstvo) is all encompassing. The problem with cities, however, is that there are often few opportunities and resources to enable one to make a living. Many ex-villagers also find themselves caught up in the derision of the ‘old city-settlers’ (stari grag jani) and, when living with or near ex-village kinfolk, there is often a continuity of the gnawing selski mentalitet they once sought to escape. Indeed, even where life in the village has become a distant memory of the ‘old house’ that lies decrepit and unused, many ex-villagers find themselves compelled at every turn to continue to illustrate their modernness. Being from a village requires a concerted effort at expulsion of a bodily and psychic essence, presumably over several generations. Denying that one is a ‘mere villager’ or, inversely, affirming that one is a ‘modern person’, is fruitless. Recent village settlers in cities are often dismissed by stari grag jani, the ‘old’ city folk, whose imaginings of self rest with the idea of an absolute absence of any connection to a village. For grag jani, ex-villagers are stereotypically viewed as a particular kind of nuevo riche class who display their obsession with ‘new’ things in a manner that reinforces their villageness. That is, grag jani are particularly apt at distinguishing their own discernment in bodily carriage and refined tastes as speaking to their truly modern subjectivity. One socialite in the town of Bitola, for instance, said, ‘You can tell the villagers from far away’ (Seljanite se poznavat od daleku). Their villageness somehow continues to be embodied, whether they visit the city on market days (pazarenden), or live on the outskirts of towns in newly constructed houses built from money from animal herding or other village endeavours. Villageness and village difference, in other words, continue to be crucial to identity constructions, whether as sites of historical significance or as the butt of collective jokes about the more ‘primitive’. Being a ‘modern’ person is grounded in the distinction between urbanites and villagers.7 The most readily accessible understanding of modernity is simply that it is the opposite of village (selo). The stereotypical view of village character is both wild and tame, stemming from baser sentiments, such as the sexual mores of some village girls. As one man from Bitola explained, ‘Women from Mariovo are enthusiastic’ (Mariovkite ženski se meraklivi). Alternatively, ‘You’re dressed like a Mariovka’ is often heard as a derogatory reference to garish or multi-coloured outfits as an indication of crassness or backwardness. Many grag jani even go so far as to relegate Macedonia itself to one big

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village, lacking the necessary refinements and appreciations of civilisation. This compels many grag jani to look further afield; that is, although villagers seek towns, many urbanites aspire to find an exit to the country. The pursuit of modernity is always in the beyond. The pursuit of the ideal beyond, of a place where modernity resides, makes for a country of restless individuals.

THE DEMISE OF VILLAGE COMMUNITAS In most respects, organically formed village communities kept together by exchange and reciprocity, especially in terms of marriage, no longer exist. With rural depopulation there is a loss of memory of the unique histories and cultural traits, not only of individual but also whole bands of villages. Regardless, regionality continues to be a concrete form of identity that is typically conveyed in terms of dialect, mannerisms, dress codes, shared histories and complex interwoven social and kin relations. In the cultural typologies of regions, village bands play a crucial role in structuring identities and relations. One of these bands of villages is that of Caparsko Pole. Caparsko Pole is situated approximately seven kilometres west of the southern city of Bitola under the Mount Pelister Ranges and is typically described as a ‘rich’ and physically ‘beautiful’ region. Accessible land in this mountainous region is limited and generally agriculturally non-productive or eroded (Dimovski-Colev and Pavlovski 1982: 13), but heavy snowfalls during winter, an abundance of water from the melting snow, and a relatively high rainfall in spring have enabled locals to engage in economically viable agriculture. Akin to Ferdinand Tönnies’ ([1887] 1957) sense of gemeinschaft (community), there is a complex web of social relations and contact between the villages of Caparsko Pole.8 Mainly in terms of kinship connections, shared use of natural resources, economic exchange and shared historical experiences, the key to collective identity as Makedonci (Macedonians) is familiarity. The inclusion into categories of belonging is typically phrased as those that are naši (ours) as opposed to the ‘others’: ‘Ne se naši lugje’ (‘They’re not our people’). In the notion of ‘our people’, ethnic and linguistic similarities and differences provide relatively strong lines of collective identity as well as demarcation. During the Roman Empire, Caparsko Pole formed a passageway along the main highway, the Via Egnatia, linking Rome to Asia Minor (see Rossos 2008). The settlement of Ramna, in particular, is attributed to its establishment as a station for garrisons or traders along the Via Egnatia. Remnants of the Via Egnatia are still visible above Capari and Gjavato, however, there has been much destruction, looting and neglect and it remains lost except as a memory of the older generations. During the Ottoman Empire of the four-

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teenth century onwards, it continued to be a major roadway and the region was used as a resting station for garrisons (Dimovski-Colev and Pavlovski 1982: 15). Although various ethnic and linguistic groups have settled in Caparsko Pole, the majority claim to belong to one of three: Albanci (Albanian), Vlasi (Aromanian, Wallachians) and Makedonci (Macedonians).9 The Makedonci are predominantly settled in the villages of Capari, Gjavato and Rotino in the more fertile valley in the foothills of the mountains. Within the valley there are mixed populations of Makedonci and Tosk-speaking Albanci (south Albanian heritage) in the villages of Lera, Ramna, Kažani and Gorno Srpci. In the village of Dolenci approximately 80 per cent of the population comprises Tosk-speaking ethnic Albanians. Typical of pastoralist settlements, the Vlach villages of Gopeš, Metimir and Malovišta are located in the mountain interiors. There were no ‘Turkish’ (Ottoman) settlements in Caparsko Pole and, thus, no other ethnic groups have been recorded. It is worthy of note that there are no permanent settlements of Roma, but they are typically invited to perform as musicians during two major annual slavas, including as fortune-tellers in Barbari festival events in Capari and, during the forty days of the Easter period, female performers, referred to as Lazarki, make daily visits and for a small gift ‘sing’ for the prosperity of households. In Caparsko Pole, as in many other regions, ethnic difference predominantly focuses on Albanians. The Albanians of Caparsko Pole settled in the region in the seventeenth century with the encouragement of Ottoman rulers (Dimovski-Colev and Pavlovski 1982), typically in the low-lying villages by the main roadways through which the garrisons passed. Until recently, folk conceptions of local Albanians were that they were interlopers. Though the self-labelling of Albanians is drawn upon by the endonym, Shqiptar, the use of the term Šiptari (pl.) continues to have a derogative nuance.10 Albanians are also, on occasion, referred to as Torbeshes but, more often than not, collapsed into the all-encompassing category of ‘Muslims’.11 During the Ottoman period, Albanians were encouraged to settle with free land and work consignments for the garrison (see St Erlich 1976: 248). The perpetuation of the conceptual distance from local Šiptari, as synonymous with the ‘Turks’ (i.e. Muslims), continues in many ways. In the imaginary of the struggle for nationhood, the need to continue what their ‘grandfathers’ started in the Ilinden Uprising (and before) was central, and the Albanians remain a symbolic reminder of the need to protect the nation from becoming Islamised. Many locals, for instance, would reference the Ilinden Uprising of 1903 and the clear divisions between them and the Makedonci who were a significant contingent. Local četas (guerrilla bands) from the villages of Gjavato, Capari, Rotino and others continue to romanticise their contributions as well as their strong ties with Smilevo, a key site in which the Bitola chapter of

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the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO) organised the Uprising. The Šiptari, they say, were spies for the garrisons and, thus, planned the attack on the village of Ramna by the local četas (see Brown 2013: 196). Mixed villages are markedly divided into enclaves that are reminiscent of the religious enclaves of the Ottoman period. In contradictory fashion, there is a growing discourse of collegiality or a heightened concern with the idea of finding a way to coexist. As one local said, ‘We have to live with them’. The term Šiptari is now generally avoided in place of Albanci. Likewise, in a conversation with a local Albanian, the issue of dissipating ethnic tensions was presented as a matter of necessity. As his mother filled the table with coffee and various sweets, he explained that it was important to ‘calm the spirits’ (‘da se smirat duhovite’), and for ‘all of us’ to get along (‘site treba da se prilagodat’). He added, however, that when others begin to talk politics in the staffroom, he remains quiet lest the resentments directed at ethnic Albanians be turned towards him. Although the post-2001 revolt had brought in a new discourse of consubstantiality, he was still conscious that the Makedonci are a dominant voice, and even when he felt uncomfortable and wanted to say something, he would remain quiet. In the identity politics that abounds, intimacy is presumed to be all but impossible and intermarriages between Makedonci or Vlasi and Albanians are rare.12 The only exception is a marriage that took place before the 1990s between a Macedonian woman and an Albanian man from neighbouring villages. Since then, according to some villagers, the woman typically had infrequent interaction with her natal family and did not visit them unaccompanied. Nonetheless, it was presented as a moral tale of the ‘loss’ of sociality that comes with intermarriages between Albanians and Macedonians. In recent years, more effort has been made to accommodate or ‘understand’ the imperative to coexist. One man, for example, who was vehemently opposed to Albanian political assertions of constitutional representation in 1996, in 2006 said that, ‘we have to live together. We have no choice’. He then recounted the story of an Albanian wedding of the daughter of a work colleague that he attended, citing his main point of contention to be the fact that no alcohol was served, even at a table comprising solely of Makedonci. Alongside accusations of the treachery committed by local Albanians, there was just as much of a discourse of internal (intra-ethnic) divisions. They often spoke of individuals and familji who had ‘turned’ on their kinfolk and fellow villagers. Further, Capari had also been invaded by Bulgarian troops. In the 1996 local government elections, for instance, many aggrieved stari bekjari, who were vocal in campaigning for Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity Macedonian (VMRO-DPMNE), felt that there should have been loyalty and unity among the villagers, among all Macedonians. They would point to par-

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ticular families or ‘houses’ and accuse them of having assumed various political identities and allegiances, like Bugarci (Bulgarians), Serbi (Serbians) or Grci (Greeks). Additionally, there were many in the village who had not disassociated from the Yugoslav project, some having served in the communist party or having gained high ranks in the army. The steadfast komunisti (communists) were typically, but not exclusively, members of the SDSM (Social Democratic Union of Macedonia) party. Throughout all the labelling of political accommodations and factions were the VMROVci (VMRO-DPMNE party members, supporters), who for some locals were simply: ‘stubborn nationalists’. With such damning proclamations, it became difficult to separate the past from the present. The identification and interactions between local Aromanians (Vlasi) and Slavic Macedonians exhibit greater nuance. Many local Vlachs would simply say they are Macedonians, or at least that they are very ‘alike’. Linguistically, the Aromanians, typically referred to as Vlasi, are similar to the Koutsovlachs, described by John Campbell as ‘an ethnic minority group speaking a romance language akin to Romanian’ (1964: 2–3).13 Few in-depth studies, however, have been carried out on the Vlasi of Macedonia (Poulton 1993: 95), much less in the region of Caparsko Pole. The language of the Vlasi is not taught in regional schools and remains a communal, personal form of communication rather than a literary one. The Vlasi Macedonians have maintained their separate identity, language and customs without any significant increase in civic or political presence either at local or national levels since independence. From the local Makedonci perspective, there is acknowledgment of the significant contributions made by Vlach leaders, such as Pitu Guli and Nikola Karev, key figures of the Ilinden Uprising. Although acknowledged for their cultural heritage, they are often not celebrated nationally as a distinct cultural or ethnic group but simply as national heroes. Aromanians have also been subjected to periods of extreme prejudice, particularly during the German and Bulgarian occupations of World War II. In 1941, for instance, the entire population of Gopeš was forcibly removed and compelled to go to Bulgaria to work in concentration camps. Nonetheless, in comparison with Albanian villages, local Macedonian and Vlach villages have undergone a far more rapid rate of rural depopulation. Rural depopulation is a particularly ‘Macedonian’ phenomenon but most of the villages in Caparsko Pole, irrespective of ethnic composition, are also gradually declining. As with most village bands, the greatest impact in depopulation is due to urban drift but also economic emigration to other countries. Until the 1990s, the most visible signs of rural depopulation were the collapse of villages located deep within mountain interiors. In the 1991 census, for instance, the total population of the thirteen villages that comprise Caparsko Pole was 2,464 inhabitants. Within five years, however, the overall population fell dramatically to 1,793 inhabitants, and by the 2002 census

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it decreased further to 1,424.14 Notwithstanding the imposed relocation of village inhabitants with the construction of a dam in Streževo Ezero (lake), Svinište and Gopeš have been entirely abandoned as well. By the mid-1990s, only two villages, Capari and Dolenci, had viable or sustainable populations, including operational primary schools..15 The Vlach villages have been especially affected by rapid depopulation. In the 2002 census, there were no inhabitants in Gopeš, ten in Metimir, and eighty in Malovišta, with an overwhelming number of aged people living alone. In Malovišta, it is only a matter of time before inhabitants are forced to move to the city in search of work and to ensure their children receive a higher level of education. The obstacles to education were most apparent in the romanticised accounts of a sole boy from Malovišta who walked every day without fail to the Capari primary school. Although he was admired for his determination, the story was often recounted as an inevitable outcome of living in a remote mountain village. A lone child from an upper mountain village struggling to obtain a basic education was neither cause for concern about the demographic crumbling of the region, nor an incentive for villages to band together to make things easier for him, nor a reason to advocate more broadly on the issue of educational and other disparities and disadvantages. The atomisation of villages and loss of regional communitas is reflective of the broader collapse of the political significance of rural people. Indeed, throughout the country the lack of political mobilisation among village communities is pronounced. There is no collective voice of rural or village peoples, nor does there appear to be cooperation at the regional level. The lack of resistance to the re-zoning of village councils, for instance, is lamented on occasion as proof of the erosion of village autonomy. As of 2001, the restructuring of municipalities enfolded many independent village councils into regional towns, including the relatively larger ones, such as the main village of Caparsko Pole, and its namesake, Capari. The reframed regionality transformed villages into peripheral sites of city polities. The re-zoning is typically justified on the grounds of efficiency and ensuring greater accountability of ‘local government’, part of the broader development agenda. As some authors note, however, it also consolidated political power for the then ruling VMRO-DPMNE party.16 The majority of disbanded village municipalities incorporated into the enlarged city of Bitola already had a depleting rural populace. Such reforms have, however, also foreclosed inter-ethnic cooperation. Despite the advantage of some ethnic groups over others in the previous municipal structures, there was also greater opportunity for interaction. As on many occasions of religious significance for children in the Capari village primary school, for instance, Albanian mothers would bring sweets to the school and would in return be wished salutations on the coming of Ramadan and other special religious celebrations. So too, during

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local elections, there would be an endeavour in the campaigning strategies to mobilise support or work across ethnic lines that at least had a semblance of acting beyond one’s own circumstances. With re-zoning, this has all but disappeared.

‘EVEN THE BEST OF THEM FALL . . .’ For a long time, the ‘rich’ and historically significant village of Capari seemed to be immune to the drastic rural depopulation facing other settlements in the region.17 From the 1950s, however, where there were just under 2,000 inhabitants, the population dropped to 702 in 1996 and by 2002, there were only 493 residents. For Caparci, theirs is a village among villages. Caparci proudly point their history, independence, political autonomy, unique cultural customs, socio-economic markers of modernity and their contributions to the making of the nation. The stereotypical trope of village distinction is grounded in perceptions of communitas: cooperation, loyalty and care for the buildings, monasteries, roadways and other infrastructures in the absence of an engaged state. Likewise, many in the village diaspora also frequently post on social media about the unique heritage of their native village. Caparci typically point to their progressiveness and achievements alongside the natural beauty of the surrounds and the abundance of water, evident in the fact that most households boast indoor plumbing and telephones, and the village has asphalt roads, a number of general stores and bifes (equivalent to kafana or cafés). There are also various tourist postings of trekking sites along the Pelister mountain ranges that bring occasional contact with Europeans and they too would now post social media photos and travel tales of coming across a beautiful village with traditional buildings, churches and the St Petka monastery. The village often captures public attention on local television with regard to traditional village customs, such as the ‘Capari Wedding Rituals’, and the annual pre-Gregorian New Year, ‘Vasilica’, in which they hold the ‘Caparskiot Karnival Pod Maska’ (more commonly referred to as the ‘Barbari’ festival). Perhaps the greatest pride for Caparci is their contribution to the Ilinden Uprising of 1903 and other historic moments of nation building.18 Moreover, although various external powers have left their marks, Capari is one of the few villages that was not invaded or settled by an Ottoman Turkish population.19 Many features in Capari also attest to the legacy of Yugoslav-type development. The disaggregation of people and land at the height of Yugoslav collectivism transformed many a villager into a ‘worker’ and small landholdings into mono-agricultural state endeavours. Remnants of the growth of this period are still seen in the rural landscape, such as Višni cherry groves,

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apple orchards and other mono-agricultural endeavours surrounding the perimeters of the village, and the pre-eminence of a collective building, the ‘Dom za Kultura’ (House of Culture), taking pride of place in the centre. During the Yugoslavian period, the market-socialist mode of economics provided locals with an opportunity to make advances where many other villages seemed to have remained relatively unchanged. But Caparci are historically renowned traders (trgovci). Scores of men were accustomed to short-term travel for trade purposes to nearby towns and the villages, across the ‘flat plains’ regions of Mariovo and Palagonia, to sell apples, potatoes and other garden produce. They also travelled to nearby communities just across the border in Greece to sell, for instance, charcoal and wood products in the northern Greek town of Katerino.20 Extended sojourns in foreign countries for the purpose of seeking economic fortunes, referred to as pečalba, was also a common feature of many Balkan societies in the period of the Ottoman Empire. Both short-term and long-term travel outside the village was typically an exclusively male phenomenon, and men’s return to their village of origin was always considered imminent (Rheubottom 1996: 19). Few unmarried Caparci were involved in pečalba, most of whom were political and/or legal dissidents who feared remaining at home or, as in one case, a thirteen-year old boy who ran away from home and eventually settled in America.21 The only reason women travelled was to join a husband already residing in a foreign country. Most pečalbari, however, left their wives and children behind. The women of pečalbari have ample stories and recollections of hardship during their husbands’ absences, which extended for sometimes close to thirty years. Often, women remained under the extreme scrutiny of their husband’s parents and other household members. Similar to the account provided by Papataxiarchis of Greek island women who were left ‘to fill the vacuum’ of absentee men (1995: 234–35), Macedonian women were often solely responsible for raising children and maintaining the ritual and social obligations of their absent husband’s household. Of course, pečalba sometimes backfired. Some pečalbari returned penniless and others permanently abandoned their families, choosing to establish new ones in their countries of adoption. While the ‘traditional’ songs of the plight of pečalbari continue to be sentimentally evoked, the change in migration patterns since the late 1960s, however, are distinctly non-pečalba like. With pečalbari, the promise of return provides a semblance of hope for village societies.22 Furthermore, with family size being generally larger, the absence of one son rarely impacted on the capacity of a household to function, or on the overall village population. In contrast, the opportunities offered by countries such as Australia changed the pattern of migration irrevocably. Whole-family emigration in the 1960s and 1970s had a markedly different impact on the extent of deficit it left in

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villages. Typically, family members that have settled in Western Europe tend to make an annual visit during the summer, often inflating the village population quite significantly during these months. With the exception of some who might return to their home village every few years, the majority settled in countries such as Australia and visit infrequently. Many pečalbari send remittances to kinsfolk or bestow donations to their village of origin, but few return to settle in the village. Those that do return do so as retirees living off foreign pensions and are not active in working the land, or they settle in nearby towns only occasionally visiting the village. The visible markers of progress achieved through pečalba are imprinted in the personal landscapes – pristine two-storey houses with fences high enough for privacy, yet allowing for passers-by to glimpse the immaculately cared for lawns and flowerbeds built by the returning gastarbeiter (guest workers) of Germany and other European cities. Moreover, following the collapse of Yugoslavia, larger scale agricultural activities ground almost to a halt. In particular, with the internal Yugoslav market for fresh produce affected, orchards have all but been abandoned. Trade-oriented travel also changed dramatically in the last few decades and inter-village movement had virtually ceased by the 1990s. Nowadays, economic exchange is conducted almost exclusively in city markets and the Dom za Kultura is increasingly propped up by patchworks of render and paint, crumbling with disuse as Capari no longer holds municipality status following local government reforms. The proclivity for village folk to wear the ‘uniform’ of the kolektivo (collective) of the navy blue jacket is perhaps the only sign of Yugoslav continuity, used by the old shepherds, school cleaners or factory workers. Post-independence, the lack of commitment and investment by the state in the rural sector is glaringly obvious in Capari as it is across the country. The neglect of rural communities by the state sat alongside lack of attention to the rapidly declining economic situation. Such neglect may be explained as a by-product of the volatile political situation following independence, with Greek protests over the name of the state barring international recognition and rising tensions with ethnic Albanians. However, it was also typical of the complex societal transition post-socialism. At the local level, the decaying infrastructures, the closing off of internal Yugoslav markets for fresh produce, and the inability to tap into the more lucrative European or global markets, impacted severely on agricultural industries. Additionally, the precarious economic conditions were further exacerbated by the collapse of the TAT Savings Bank. Implicated in the pyramid schemes that had also caused havoc in Albania, the collapse of the Bitola-based TAT Bank in 1997 brought about enormous economic hardship for locals.23 Many factory workers as well as other villagers lost their life

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savings and joined the mass protests in Bitola, especially against the SDSM political party that had been implicated in the schemes. After a prolonged period and various other controversies implicating prominent business and political figures, customers of the failed bank succeeded in retrieving only a very small portion of their overall savings. Moreover, the village was the site of a textile factory built with funds from locals, and the majority of households had a member employed there at one time or another. In the push for liberalisation and privatisation postindependence, however, the textile factory experienced significant decline. Trade embargoes in the first few years blocked the exchange of products intended for European and other markets, and worsening labour conditions followed economic liberalisation and privatisation. Although village workers held shares (akcii), the textile factory was, nonetheless, a government ‘owned’ facility. The director of the factory at time of privatisation in the early 1990s was initially in a position to ‘buy’ many of the workers’ shares to become a private owner. There were many tensions among the villagers during this period of transition. Controversy arose among the villagers in 1996 because a number of workers had presumably gifted their shares to the gazda (the ‘boss’) with a promise of ongoing employment. Many workers, however, lost their jobs anyway. More politically active youth were particularly vocal in their endeavours to convince workers to keep their shares. A woman worker described the sense of pressure and stress with some despondency: ‘What am I to do? If I don’t work, I lose my staš [work years necessary for pension eligibility] and, after that, what will happen to my family?’ Retirement pensions are based on a defined minimum years of work and therefore accruing staš is the only future security. The sense of insecurity about the future meant that people were often willing to work with no wages and gift their increasingly ‘worthless’ shares.24 Worsening conditions in the factory led to protests by some workers, predominantly women, who were mentioned in the 1996 Helsinki Human Rights Watch report following beatings by police in an attempt to break the picket lines. The factory was later sold to foreigners, changing hands a number of times. Foreign orders continued to dwindle, and most contracts were short turnaround orders intended for Western European markets (Greece and Holland, in particular). Irrespective of the changing fortunes, the seemingly incommensurate difference between village and city confounds Caparci for whom modernity is synonymous with the visible markers of fashion – the possession of ‘new’ things and the corresponding disclaiming of the value of the ‘old’, with a few exceptions such as the Sveta Petka Monastery and the village church. Indeed, the daily flow of people between village and city and the influences of popular culture continuously reinforce the idea that modernity and the external

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appearance of urbanism are essential for social status. As noted above, until the municipal re-zoning, Capari was the home of the local council, a relatively well functioning primary school that served the Caparsko Pole villages as well as the textile factory. In all, Capari was a ‘main’ village and alongside ongoing agricultural activity the sense of socio-economic distinction was strong. Further, with a regular bus service, locals working in the city and the daily commute between the village and nearby Bitola, the inherent sense of mobility made the divide between village and city seem nonsensical. The sense of distinction, pride in being Caparci, is especially important to local men. In their interactions with outsiders, especially in the cities, many locals would claim that there was no difference between their village and the city. However, such assertions would often be counter-productive. For instance, there was a lively discussion between an aging unmarried woman who continued to live in the city with a married brother and his family. She rejected her village boyfriend’s proposal of marriage by saying, ‘I escaped from a village. I’m not going to another one’. Likewise, in interactions in city cafés, women would often avoid village men. In a heated debate that arose in a city café between village and city youth, one city woman unable to tolerate the ‘pretensions’ of a Capari man who was attempting to persuade her of his village’s ‘city-like’ character retorted: ‘You Caparci can praise yourselves however much you want, but a village is a village. And, in a village, you have to do village tasks. And, you have to deal with villagers!’ For the city woman, the socio-economic status that the Capari man claimed was achieved through village work. The man’s assertions of progress, in other words, were grounded in ideas inherent to seljani. In short, fighting against the hegemonic divide between village and city is often futile. Despite harsh economic and political experiences, and the looming threat of depopulation, Caparci continue to describe their village as modern and forward-thinking. Caparci believe they have capitalised on opportunities to become moderni (modern) or napredni (forward-looking) people, mainly due to progress and resources accrued through pečalba and trade. Being ‘who’ they are and having achieved extraordinary development affords a right to be acknowledged as ‘ordinary’ (prosečni lug je), which for Caparci is akin to people of the city, the grag jani. The insistence of ‘ordinariness’ and the pursuit of a prosečna život (an ordinary life) is grounded in a perception of their extraordinariness of character as patriotic, hardworking and adaptable to change, and their identity as proud gorno selci (‘upper village [people]’). They would frequently distinguish themselves from the villages of the flat plains of the Palagonia or Mariovo regions, which were often referred to as ‘burnt out’ because there is ‘no water or shade’. Or, even more derogatively, some village men would refer to ‘plains’ villagers as sakmari, wearers of the distinctive rough woollen cloaks typical of ovčari or shepherds. Ca-

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parci take as their due that there is no comparison between them and the ‘poor’ or ‘backward’ villages. The constant struggle for most local youths, and aging bachelors in particular, is in distinguishing themselves from ‘these villagers’ by avoiding engagement in behaviour deemed typical of prosti (simple, banal, backward) seljani (villagers). But individuals are confronted daily by the selski mentalitet (village mentality) of fellow villagers obsessed with competition for status equivalence, ruled by the judgement of others, and in constant need to be on guard against ‘talk’ (gossip). That is, individuals, even the most modern youth, navigate social presence by assuming the tropes of village interaction, simultaneously rejecting them. Moreover, beyond the local context, youth are most likely to be judged by outsiders in a similar vein as the supposedly more backward or prosti villagers.

‘VILLAGE WORK’ AND THE COMPETITION FOR ORDINARINESS Generally speaking, the essentialist rural/urban divide and the place of the village in the Macedonian imaginary rests with distaste relating to selska rabota (village work) and the presumed frame of mind it engenders, that is, the selski mentalitet. As noted above in the case of Capari, be it a ‘village among villages’, or the supposedly less developed, ‘poor’ or remote ones, the impact of rural depopulation has been tremendous. Irrespective of the cause of precarity – emigration, urban drift or changing economic systems – a ‘village is a village’ as the city woman said to the man from Capari. In village societies, the measure of ‘ordinary life’ (prosečna život) is based on the ongoing competition for relative social ranking that necessarily implies the envy of others. The village, as a conglomerate of unrelated households, provides an arena for continual comparisons of the actions and possessions of others. Most villagers are obsessed with material upgrading and the acquisition of ‘new’ things in order to maintain a certain socioeconomic standing. Even in the timing of activities relative to when others do them, living ‘an ordinary life’ entails a hyper-sensitivity to social context. Villagers readily say of fellow locals, ‘They will burst [ke puknat] if they don’t do things the way others do’. There are many jokes that reinforce the compulsion to avoid relative disadvantage. For example, I was told the story of the villager and God who appeared as an ‘old man’ seeking ‘dirty’ water to drink: An ‘old man’ walks past another man and asks if he could have a drink of water. The man replies that it is dirty washing water and not for drinking. Nonetheless, as the old

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man insists, the other man capitulates and lets him drink. The old man then reveals himself, saying he is God and will grant him a wish, but anything he grants him will be given twofold to his neighbour. The man thinks for a while and says, ‘Take out one of my eyes’.

This same theme recurs frequently. On another occasion, a group of men sitting at the village café hyphenated the moral of a situation that had occurred with a spiteful old man with the story of God who took pity on a man crying over the death of his cow. God offers to replace it, to which the man replies, ‘No, just kill my neighbour’s cow!’ The desire to exceed comparable social categories by having a slight advantage is juxtaposed against the social imperative of not lagging behind others. The economic standards aspired to are usually framed around notions of being a self-sufficient household, ‘to have what you need’, so that ‘you are not dependent on others’. Most often, this amounts to hoarding items that might one day become useful. The intent is not necessarily to exceed comparable social categories, though of course that would be welcomed, but rather to avoid the experience of stram (shame, embarrassment, discomfort) attached to lagging behind. The judgement of fellow villagers is taken seriously. As one informant said, ‘They keep comparing each other. Everyone is envious. They’ll burst if they don’t have the same as the others.’ One of the central points in the competition for status equivalence is that of the physical and symbolic entity of the house. The connection of the house to kinship will be discussed further in the following chapter. Suffice it to say that as a significant physical and symbolic site, the house, referred to as kukja, is not only synonymous with the agnatic kinship system but also with the economic and social status of all of its inhabitants. Given its enormous social value, the house is typically treated as a monument and generally preserved from overuse. Typically, the main house is not disturbed except for the storage and display of precious household items, and for receiving important visitors. Everyday tasks related to cooking are performed in the letna kujna (summer kitchen), a separate building adjacent to the kukja where ‘smelly’ cooking is carried out and ordinary (neighbourhood) visitors are received. As most of these ‘ordinary’ visitors are women who are quite ready to downgrade the household’s status, the supposedly less restrictive space of the letna kujna is also treated with some reservation. Some households go so far as to cook particularly ‘smelly’ foods such as fish or the roasting of peppers for the traditional relish, ajvar, on a third stove in a covered shed outside in the yard! Outside the house and yard, there are fields, livestock or bavči (pl. vegetable garden plots) to attend to. Although there have been shifts in agricultural activity, most farms continue to be small family holdings. In this, too,

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a history of abandonment of some activities and the adoption of others in an endeavour to maintain economic viability has left a patchwork landscape of decay in some places and vibrancy in others. Typically, there is one main agricultural activity such as the relatively large-scale production of potatoes in Capari or tobacco in Gorno Orizari. Remnants of mono-agricultural activities of the communist era are also evident in most rural sites that are no longer economically viable. Višni cherries and apple orchards no longer attended to are overgrown with weeds and sit alongside the churned soil in preparation for the main crop. Although many of these large-scale monoagricultural activities are now a form of zombie economy, many continue to pursue cultivation. Throughout the country, pastoral activities, including sheep herding, are increasingly rare. Typically, if one family turns to a new activity, many others are sure to follow. That is, in maintaining existing activities or pursuing new ones, relative positionality and timing in relation to others often takes precedence over market knowledge or analysis. In the androcentric imaginary, to describe a task as ženska rabota (women’s work) is to render it insignificant. Women’s economic contribution is substantial, however, just as it is in other agricultural societies typically associated with men. Women are often responsible for the milking and are the primary cultivators of bavči, alongside work related to the house. In contrast to large crops cultivated in the fields, the produce of bavči is essentially for home consumption, although some produce such as white beans fetch high prices at city markets. Many villagers are keen to economise and often sell excess produce from their gardens to supplement their housekeeping budgets. Moreover, the task of estimating the achievements and actions of other people is viewed as a particularly female pursuit. A woman’s efforts as a domakinka (mistress of the house) are integral to the overall reputation of a self-sufficient and competent household. While men often deny any interest in such things, their reputation is tied to their family’s economic and material stability, which is showcased through their house and their familija. To have an incompetent wife who does not keep up with the trends of the other village households – including the most insignificant tasks such as making ‘exotic’ sweets – is considered embarrassing or shaming and ultimately reflects poorly on men as heads of the household and as hosts. Typically, village women serve as the mediators between households and are especially concerned with the status of their own familija. Cleanliness and avoidance of smells is an important aspect of good housekeeping, and one that significantly affects the nature of interactions within the familija and between households. The imperative for cleanliness is not drawn from a concern with hygiene so much as the fact that ‘It would be shameful if someone should come and find us like this’. In the uncompromising arena of village competition there is continual reference to others, what they do and

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don’t do, and have and don’t have. Being ‘seen’ to work is just as important as working. The invariable question upon seeing anyone in the village is ‘what are you doing?’, or ‘where are you going?’ To which they typically reply, ‘I have work [things] to do’ (‘Imam rabota’). Industriousness is a virtue, laziness a social sin. More critical than cleanliness and culinary skills for a married woman’s self-esteem and her relative social ranking is her ability to maintain similar timings for activities. Delays in activities relative to others is akin to being accused of laziness for a domakinka and might be talked about or even ridiculed by other women in the village, especially those of her mala (neighbourhood).25 It would be difficult for a domakinka to specify what she seeks for her household and herself, beyond that which is possessed or achieved by others. All major work in a village is timed according to the schedule of others, more so than to the dictates of the seasonal cycle. Mothers of aging bachelors are particularly concerned with hoarding goods and illustrating self-sufficiency, not only to maintain status equivalence in the community but also to attract prospective brides. If a house cannot support its existing members, it is difficult to prove that they could accommodate a bride who, in the cultural ideal, comes empty-handed. Social prestige and status in households rests with economic and social substance. Having a son who is a star bekjar, where a neighbour’s son of a similar age is already married, perhaps even with children, is unbearable for a woman. In one woman’s case, her neighbour’s bragging about a new bride in the house not only felt as if it were directed at her, but also seemed as if fate had dealt her alone an unjust blow. The resentment at being precluded from such luck was palpable: ‘It is torturous (to me), she just shows off ’. The mere existence of a son who is a star bekjar, in other words, has the potential to demote even households who have achieved a relatively high economic status. Having an aging bachelor as a son challenges the ability of a household to maintain status equivalence. A domakinka cannot maintain the status of her household and family if others with sons of the same age are already grandmothers when she herself is ‘struggling’ without a nevesta (bride), much less grandchildren. Marriage is a means of status upgrading for all members of a household that cuts across all other criteria, such as economic self-sufficiency. By marrying and having children, for example, a low status man from the most economically insignificant household can rise above men who would otherwise be considered his social superiors. If everyone had unmarried sons, there would be no issue. The humiliation for mothers is that the sons of some women are getting married whilst their own are not! It is particularly difficult for stari bekjari as their mothers, the gatekeepers of the family’s social standing, intensify their endeavours at maintaining

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status equivalence in other activities. Given that a certain socio-economic standard is assumed to be a prerequisite for attracting brides, a household that has achieved a relatively good material standing but continues to have unmarried sons past the age of twenty-seven is nonsensical. Thus, striving to remain in the game, so to speak, many families with aging bachelor sons feel compelled to work even harder to maintain a level of socio-economic standing in the hope of attracting a bride. Nonetheless, there are many households that lag behind others, mainly because they do not have able-bodied adults or they no longer have the ability to mobilise other people to support their labour intensive endeavours. An ailing widow with a heart condition who lived alone with her aging bachelor son insisted, for example, on planting large fields of potatoes, much to the annoyance of her son. The son, a public servant, was not keen to pursue agricultural work and did not often contribute to the work parties of other households, except those of his closest friends. Despite this, his mother not only planted potatoes above what they needed for self-sufficiency but, in order to maintain socially connectivity, also contributed to the work party of another household. Being ill, she worked herself too hard and a doctor had to be called in. Her son furiously asked her afterward why she insisted on doing so much. She replied, ‘They [potatoes] will come in handy’, meaning that they were useful as a form of exchange or for extracting favours in the city. Her status was also maintained in the village, as would be that of her son for prospective brides, because they would not be pitied as a small or ‘dependent’ (zavisna) household of a widow with a star bekjar for a son.

VILLAGE DRAMA: GOSSIP, SHAME AND COMPETITION Life is particularly mundane in village communities – same work, same people, same gossip – time and seasons pass, as does life itself. Paying ritual attention to the marking of time and work serves to demarcate sacred and profane moments and activities, but also creates meaning for people as they envelope routine chores and actions with a cloak of purposefulness in an otherwise mundane existence. The Church, both as symbol and physical structure, provides the focal space around which everyday ritual practice can be carried out. The upkeep of the Church is in the hands of the villagers and a priest visits upon the request of individual families to perform ceremonies relating to major life events – births, marriages and deaths – or to collectively mark various ‘sacred’ days relating to the religious calendar.26 Alongside the religious ritual calendar there are also various folk beliefs about what should be done or avoided throughout the week.27

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The concern with when and how things are done means that there is an obsession with shame, gossip and competition. In village societies gossip and insinuations are rampant, and everyone endeavours to hide information from others (or to deflect gossip) in order to avoid stram.28 Even the most heated gossip is considered manageable as long as people ‘act as if nothing has happened’. The common saying is that ‘If you don’t reveal yourself, no one will find you out’. Shame (one’s indiscretions being revealed to others), rather than guilt (or an internalised and individualised morality), governs modes of interaction and relative social placement. Shame relates to an overriding concern with appearing to be in sync with others. The importance of not bringing stram to oneself or one’s familija, of not standing apart from others, in a socio-centric society that maintains status equivalence based on the behaviour (and not necessarily morality), is all encompassing. This is clear in the multiple meanings attached to the term stram (shame). The term is used frequently and varies in meaning from shame, as it is generally understood, to shyness, embarrassment, regret and pity, and serves to regulate the status and positionality of individuals and households in a relatively egalitarian community in which there is a sense of familiarity. Shame depends on timing and positionality relative to others. Social skills in navigating relations beyond those with whom one is ‘truly’ intimate are dependent on balancing when to be ‘open’ or stand apart and when to keep quiet or detract attention from oneself, i.e. to remain ‘closed’. Thus, an individual who is naturally shy (‘stramliva je mnogu’) is likely to be confronted by family members saying, ‘Why are you so shy’ (‘Oti se stramiš tolku?’), or scolded for not being a bit more ‘open’ (otvorena) in contexts where others appear to be so. Indeed, being shamed before guests, and knowing when to feel ‘ashamed’, are key modes of enculturation and children soon learn what brings them about. Training children in social skills involves bringing to their attention when to be open and closed. Children soon learn there is a difference in being described as naturally ‘shy’, ‘rude’, ‘embarrassed’ or any of the many textual meanings of the term stram. One father, for example, apologetically pointed out that his young daughter did not greet the guests because ‘the young one is shy [or embarrassed]’ (‘Mu je stram na malate’). The regulation of social interaction and the continual realignment of the categories of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ is, of course, a matter of cultural intimacy. The typical reference point is to distinguish those who ‘feel’ shame, rather than guilt, from those who do not, because only relative insiders understand the rules of social engagement. Typically, mothers would send their children on errands in the village, not necessarily to avoid going out alone, although that too is of concern, but, rather, to avoid ‘their business’ being known, especially if they are visiting a household empty-handed and returning with borrowed items. Children can risk rejection since they do

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not, as yet, have an innate sense of the implications, thus avoiding the potential embarrassment (stram) of adults of being declined in person. The brazenness of some individuals who ‘go their own way’ with an apparent lack of concern for shame is either a source of envy for those who are unable to go against the social grain, or a source of contempt for such non-moral or non-social beings (and, thus, persons who are unworthy of engagement as relative equals). In this sense, the very old and the very young are excused from shame because they are not constituted persons of a regulated field of social relations. For an ‘ordinary’ person, however, shame is an all-encompassing sense of being a socially constituted person. On occasion, saying or doing something unexpected or socially unacceptable brings shame. On other occasions, doing what is expected brings undue attention and embarrassment that can lead to shame at being ‘caught by shame’ (‘Stram go fati’). Putting oneself forward is embarrassing. Whether it is because they lack something, cannot resolve a need of some kind on their own, and thus are compelled to ask others, this brings embarrassment (‘shame’) even in asking, especially if it is more than once. Then again, ‘there is no shame in asking’ for help on occasion and drawing on social networks, even strangers, for support, depending on the context and who is doing the asking. Irrespective, shame is a critical component of engagement in a regulated field of social relations in which inappropriate forwardness can be viewed as a weakness, as if the gesture was intended to make oneself stand out, to look important, or inversely, indicated deficiency in the skill of hiding and of thus becoming ‘open’ unwittingly. Forwardness, whether brought on by the individual or by the revelation of another, might unduly thrust them into the spotlight. The overarching compulsion is to navigate individuality with the appearance of being enfolded within the collectivity. Thus, standing apart from others, or being made to feel different, automatically brings shame for some unprepared individuals. If others bring something to a neighbour’s home, for example, one is ‘ashamed to go empty handed’. Further, Makedonci rarely go out alone and would often call on companions, because ‘I am embarrassed to go alone’ (‘Mije stram da odam sama’). Based on the notion of following red (the proper custom or order), there are many associated terms that relate to respect. The terms, poštuvanje (gerund, giving respect) or ‘čes’ (n., respect), are presumed to be regulated by various aspects of positionality in terms of socio-political status, age or kinship but also strength of personal relations. The term stram reinforces relationality. The need to show respect for others is in some ways similar and yet quite distinct from the Mediterraneanists’ account of the ‘honour-shame’ dichotomy (see Gilmore 1987b). One’s presentation of oneself as a respectful person is primarily focused on not being ashamed because you have done or not done something according to appro-

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priate custom. Thus, having stram means having an integral awareness of the place of respect in the performance of a socially constituted self. In navigating social existence, stram is in many ways expressed as far more important than internal or personal integrity. Individuals are trained to guard against stram more than they develop and protect personal integrity. In a village community familiarity can readily erupt into daily bickering and confrontations. Furthermore, shaming others or bringing ‘talk’ (gossip) upon them is not simply a mode of regulating wayward behaviour but is also drawn upon in competition for status equivalence. There is no inherent contradiction for most villagers in referring to themselves as ‘peaceful people’ (mirni lug je) and still engaging daily in confrontations with familiar others from the village. On some occasions, knowledge about one’s opponent (drawing on the repository of gossip stored over the years) serves as a powerful tool for redressing social status imbalance by attacking their actions and motives and weakening their position. Confrontations are also common among fellow villagers, occasionally ‘open’ in the sense that they occur in public or communal spaces where onlookers assume an understanding of the cause or issues. Squabbles and fights are a daily occurrence, especially arguments over shared or communal resources such as the rechannelling of water by one person before another is able to complete the watering of their garden. Some confrontations may appear to be open, yet the causes are often more obscure. Even in the heat of the moment, there are attempts to mask the real reasons for certain interchanges between individuals. To shout without others hearing, even during physical fighting, is often part of a code. Although they seem visible or public, the ‘real’ reasons are obscured in order to avoid more spiteful or longer lasting damage to the reputations of individuals. One evening, for instance, a fight ensued between two men. A man was seen ferociously hitting a fellow villager outside a local café. While the victim lay defeated on the ground, the aggressor shouted, ‘Don’t touch my rabbits again’. The story was told and retold several times in fits of laughter and became an inside joke at the café. As the regulars recited the story, they explained that it had nothing to do with rabbits. Both victim and aggressor were aware of the real reasons, as were a number of onlookers. The aggressor was, in fact, a husband who had suspicions that the victim was having an affair with his wife. The aggressor could not publicly refer to the real cause of the confrontation because it would make him an object of ridicule and gossip – a pitiful man cuckolded by another. Although gossip still abounded over the incident, there was still some semblance of escape for the aggressor because of the small margin of error in the retelling of the story relative to what others had observed him to say. The difference between ‘intimates’ and others rests with the level of knowledge and information they are privy to. Relationships of intimacy are,

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thus, relatively small. Even within one’s supposed circle of intimates (family), only a select few, if any, are privy to all knowledge. Once members of a familija, for example, have established a house of their own, be it locally or in a foreign country, they may not necessarily be privy to the same level of intimacy about the affairs of their natal household. The greatest compliment, therefore, is to describe a relationship in terms of ‘I tell her/him everything’, where there is presumed to be an absence of concern with shame. The categories of people frame the social and moral universe grounded in the symbolic distinctions between degrees of intimacy and closeness of relations among some but not others.

PEOPLE, GUESTS AND OTHERS There are differing categories of ‘people’ (lug je) depending on occasion. Fellow villagers are typically described as naši (‘ours [people]’) or domašni (home people) relative to non-locals, terms that are also on occasion used to refer to ethno-national or cultural identity.29 Such a category of insider presumes familiarity that comes with daily interaction and being privy to knowledge. Fellow villagers are insiders to the extent that they know the rules of the game and have certain degrees of intimate knowledge built up over a lifetime of daily exchange, confrontation and awareness of ‘secrets’ that individuals cannot presume to cover up through the presentation of self in the public domain. Yet, in comparison to one’s own familija and circle of intimates, they are nonetheless outsiders potential opponents in the arena within which the quest for social status equivalence is played out. Within the village, for instance, guarding against fellow locals and potential ‘talk’ (i.e. gossip) makes them the antithesis of intimates. In the category-making endeavours, both kinfolk and acquaintances attending a funeral or one of the many death-related rituals are referred to as lug je rather than gosti (guests) as one would expect for a wedding or celebration. Equally, kin can be described as gosti or domašni (home people, i.e. householders) depending on occasion and not simply residential proximity. Further, although confrontations with strangers do occur, as with tradesmen (maistori) whose quality of work might be questioned, the offering of a meal to some and not to others is an important indicator of temporary incorporation. Maistori, for example, are offered a meal, but it is not automatically extended to Roma (commonly referred to as ‘gypsies’). Roma are offered food in exchange for services, such as fortune telling or if they come begging, but it is taken away and not consumed as a meal. The boundaries between insider and outsider are particularly reinforced through hospitality and the ritualistic exchanges between host and guest.

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Being gostoprimlivi lug je (‘hospitable people’) is an important social status marker. The game of generosity makes it seem as if there is an open invitation by the host to the guest: ‘my house is your house’. But this display of hospitality is not supposed to be taken literally to mean privileged access to intimate knowledge or incorporation into the house. Gosti are expected to acknowledge the generosity, while also understanding their place as outsiders. There is an art to gostoprimlivnost (hospitality, receiving guests) and the manner of display; the abundance of food and drink is complemented by grandiose gestures by the host to partake in the offerings. Gostoprimlivnost serves to reinforce clear structures of distinction between insider and outsider. Gostoprimlivnost reaffirms a lack of incorporation even of the visiting émigré family members, typically referred to as turisti (tourists). Although locals deride the lack of subtlety or understanding of turisti guests, obligations abound for the household in receiving them, not only because they might be ‘family’, but also because there is general pride in being able to play host. A woman scurrying past her neighbour who invited her in for a coffee declined with pride, saying, ‘I can’t. I have work. Guests are coming [to me].’ Such occasions are vital opportunities to display hospitality. In particular, the reception of guests associated with celebrations of slavas of the ritual Orthodox calendar marks a significant and auspicious occasion for a household. Throughout the year, there are many formal (sacred) occasions that correspond with the religious calendar and the celebration of specific slavas where households play host to both village and non-village guests. The religious calendar serves to demarcate specific saint days that are celebrated by individuals (Imenden, i.e. name day of men), houses (kuknja slava), slava of the neighbourhood, and the general village slava (selska slava), for which no invitations are issued as it is accepted as common knowledge. The main village slava, in particular, occurs during summer. A village slava serves as a key moment for households to mobilise their social and kin network beyond the village, and there is implicit competition to illustrate the extent of hospitality according to the number of meals served on the day. The most typical kind of gosti are married daughters and the associated affines (svatoj), as well as maternal and matrilateral kin, given the limited mobility of women to and from the village at marriage. Children of daughters and other close kinfolk are sent to the village for prolonged stays (na poseta), often for several weeks prior to the main slava. Other branches of a familija from the city and elsewhere make mandatory visits to various households during the village slava. Work and army acquaintances are also prolific, in fact, even a slight acquaintance with someone in a village is enough for people to feel they ‘should go’. The stream of other (non-close) guests would often claim that they would need to make even a brief visit to a household ‘to give respect’ (‘za čes da my napravime’) and partake in mezze

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(entrées, nibbles), but the household in which they have the main meal is indicative of closer relationship. A household that serves a meal to thirty or more guests on the day is usually proud to advertise the fact in the days following the slava. Any kind of penetration or crossing of the boundary between intimates and others, or gosti and domašni, has the potential to weaken or raise questions about one’s social positionality. To give an example, I was invited to meet some ‘distinguished’ guests of the village school one day. The guests were comprised of intellectuals and filmmakers and we quickly became engaged in a lively debate. After they left, the school director called me in to the office, asking, ‘Why did you debate with the guests?’ Feeling contrite, I apologised for overstepping my place as a guest only to find a look of embarrassment on the face of the onlooking staff member. The staff member explained later that ‘They consider you as a domašna [home-person]. You have given them a little freedom to see who you are as a person, and now the director feels a freedom to talk to you like that’. Guests, in other words, keep their distance by hiding or not revealing ‘who they really are’, as do hosts; they do not engage in debates or loud discussions that appear as heated arguments. A guest is expected to be careful of what they say and do while simultaneously engaging in an exchange of words that appear intimate. Both guest and host give enough of themselves to be welcomed or welcoming, but not so much that their human frailties or opinions are revealed. The game between host and guest is one, ideally, of hiding as they reveal. But, such performative interactions between gosti and domašni are set aside in the more nuanced engagement amongst relative insiders (i.e. fellow villagers). Among fellow villagers, interaction is premised on the idea that no one has the right to ‘tell’ you what to do or how to behave. As in the above example, if I were no longer a guest and, as such, open to scrutiny, criticism and argument, I would automatically be in the game of competition for social ranking. My lack of pride or indignation at the director’s effrontery made the staff member ‘ashamed’ on my behalf. After all, the staff member said, ‘Who was the director to tell you how to behave?’ Although an insider of sorts, I was, nonetheless, a ‘naive Australianka’ (i.e. typical returnee émigré) who had forgotten or did not fully appreciate the rules of engagement and how important the moment was for reaffirming my equal or superior social status in relation to the director. My treatment as a domašna meant acceptance of a sort, otherwise the school director would not dare to argue with a gostinka (female guest). Likewise, it allowed space for my re-positionality, depending on the form of any contestation or confrontation, rather than the avoidance of it. For the staff member, it was the moment that I should have argued with the director and pointed to the shameless ill-treatment of me as a gostinka. Or, if I were to accept my now domašna status, I should have ar-

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gued that the director had no right to chastise me as if I were a social inferior. Apologising or being contrite is indicative of an insider who accepts a lower social standing than the instigator. Unrelated households, as with individuals, cannot maintain status equivalence by showing weakness or admitting that they have done wrong. The guarding of self, and the presentation of a particular version of self in public, is critical for participation in society. Displaying one’s weakness is likely to be exploited. Indeed, the naiveté of outsiders, or even of ex-villagers who had lost cultural intimacies, is often a source of amusement among villagers, particularly of returnee émigrés who fail to ‘read’ the subtleties of interaction. But the émigrés, too, have their own accounts of the lack of accord with cultural subtexts. One elderly Macedonian, for instance, spoke of the first time he had contact with an Australian in his home, some forty years earlier. A neighbour, who was cutting his grass, came to the door looking for something to borrow. As was expected of a good host, he invited the neighbour inside. The neighbour proceeded to take off his dirty boots, but in accordance with the ideal of hospitality the man insisted, ‘No, no, you don’t need to take your shoes off ’. Much to the surprise and later disgust of the man, the neighbour left them on, thinking it impolite to counter his host. Afterward, the man went around the house incessantly complaining to his wife that ‘My house smells of dog shit!’ The incident represents a form of irony, whereby if you are not in on the joke, if you do not understand the idiom of hospitality in the same cultural vein, you face a breakdown of relational potentiality. The idiomatic ironism involved in hospitality and humility is taken for granted in the interactions with those from within and, though it can lead to misunderstandings cross-culturally, it is at least excusable because they don’t know ‘our’ ways. The difficulty is where cultural subtexts are unknowable and not simply unknown, as with outsiders or foreigners. Performing humility is a mode of demonstrating accordance with others, and only the socially naive would actually take grand gestures literally. Hospitality for Macedonians is concerned with clearly defining the boundaries of intimacy. Through the symbolic breakdown of the boundary between insiders and outsiders, it is in fact well understood by both host and guest that the distinction is being reaffirmed. Social pivoting requires a nuanced understanding of culture, such as the idiomatic ironism deployed to ‘run yourself down’ so as not to appear as if you are showing off or ‘think’ you are above others. It compels one to appear simultaneously open (hospitable and generous) and humble. The performance of humility requires the ability to be agile in articulating both humility and pride concurrently. The more extreme the contrast, the greater is the nuance of pride in achievement. If complimented on the ‘incredibly beautiful house you have’, the owner is beholden to dismiss it as ‘the old

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shack’! Likewise, although the undertone in the response to praise makes it obvious that you have done well, pride in your family requires some form of counter praise such as ‘What a well-behaved child you have’, deflected with, ‘Ah, but she is a cheeky one’. This ritualistic humility is a form of social gamesmanship in the endeavour to ‘time’ or to pivot oneself relative to others. Thus, refractions point to some kind of insignificant imperfection or flaw but not to a true fault. In the quest for social status equivalence, the imperative is to ensure that you are neither lower, nor significantly higher, in rank to others. Refractions reinforce one’s social standing or personal and familial achievements. Everyone knows that you are not putting your family down; this can be used as fodder for ridicule or gossip. In the gamesmanship of social pivoting, you maintain the ‘fortress familija’ code of not divulging intimate knowledge. Knowing what kind of imperfection or flaw to point to is the essence of a nuanced cultural interaction. So too, the one who compliments is well aware that it is refraction, not a true complaint or downgrading of one’s own people (as in ‘cheeky’ daughter). Both host and guest are conscious that the daughter stands out, but the former does not want to appear as if he valorises egoism.

VILLAGE STASIS AND THE RECONSTITUTED VILLAGENESS Increased mobility and changing social, economic and political structures do not necessarily resolve the social and moral universe, the status equivalence imperative or the distinction and categorisation of people according to degrees of intimacy. Indeed, in changing circumstances, the reframing of degrees of intimacy and the pursuit of status equivalence have merely transmuted and refracted in various ways. Although there is undoubtedly both human and technological movement, the lasting impression of village stasis belies the continuous interweaving of village, city and global cultural frames. The broader social, economic and political strategies of states are imprinted in village landscapes. In villages such as Živojno, located along the Greek border, for example, there continue to be streams of soldiers going to the border patrol stations in the hills above alongside informal sojourns between relatives across political boundaries.30 Border villages were also the primary recipients of an influx of refugees during the population exchanges after the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). Many such villages were also key sites of massacres, heroism and ‘ethnic’ and ‘national’ tensions, as the competing Balkan states endeavoured to reorient local loyalties during a scramble for territory with the imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Yugoslav era, too, has scorched the earth, visible in the remnants of mono-agriculture, working on the kolektivo (collective

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farms) and in the massive arrangement of white stones in the shape of the petrokaka (communist star) imprinted in the hills above the village. Stories of both the hardships of collectivism and the sense of communitas and opportunity that it afforded were reminders that in the past, as with the present, the village scape played more than a significant role in shaping modernity. Both low and high status villages encounter similar judgements. For instance, the village of Vevčani in the Ohrid region is in many ways comparable to Capari. Vevčani, similar to Capari, often captures media attention in which its unique history, identity and customs are emphasised. But, Vevčani is also much larger and has substantially constructed itself as a tourist destination not only for returning émigrés but also Europeans who frequent the UNESCO heritage town of Ohrid. Furthermore, in 2002 Vevčani was unique in asserting political resistance to what locals perceived as a backlash to the ethno-national ideals of the state. Albeit short-lived, the village declared itself ‘Republika Vevčani’ (Republic of Vevčani). The micro-nation issued its own passport, erected a ‘gate’, and welcomed eager tourists with a large banner at the entry to the village. Vevčani also reinvented itself through the capture of that which defines them, villageness. Indeed, villageness was a valuable commodity. The strategy to convert the village into a site of authenticity, culture and adherence to ritual practices such as the Old New Year Karnival, led to significant tourist development. It captured the tourist trade from nearby Lake Ohrid, which boasted cafés, restaurants and tourist shops selling traditional crafts and antiques, and which offered global mainstays such as free wifi. Alongside the swell of returning émigrés during the summer, this satellite mountain village enjoyed a reinvigorated unity, cohesiveness and pride. However, Vevčani has its critics as its staunch declaration of autonomy also represents a threat to the pursuit of multi-ethnic collaboration championed by external actors and adjudicators and thus an embarrassment to the state. But, here too the challenges of rural depopulation are notable. When it declared its autonomy in 2002, Vevčani’s population was 2,433 people, an incredibly large number that was atypical of the rapid rates of depopulation of other regions. The road to Vevčani is unmade, however, the pathway to this modern oddity weaving through other villages, grazing animals and fields full of activity. Vevčani is a thoroughly modern village, but many ‘locals’ are, in fact, workers taking advantage of the village tourism industry, ex-villagers who nonetheless return home to Ohrid at the end of the business day. The village is finding it difficult to remain steadfast against the exit-oriented mentality of youth. In short, there are many paradoxical accounts of both the autonomy and lack of agency of village communities. In an age of massive depopulation the precarity of village communities is keenly felt and challenges local customs and mores. Likewise, the political efficacy of drawing on the village scape

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is ever present. The state is especially implicated in drawing on village culture as national identity. Political actors, irrespective of party or ideological platform, often have a vested interest in referencing villageness as a means of reaching deep into the lives of rural people. In the case of Macedonia, it is within village histories that the stories of ‘us’ reside. The mythic battles, betrayals and massacres are central to a key genre of folk songs that showcase the ‘unique’ culture and customs that capture the national and popular imaginary of identity as a narod (people, nation).31 Many villages are also sites of new projects. The recent upsurge in archaeological projects points to significance-making, to a reimagining of national identity through the resurrection of long neglected sites of cultural heritage, which are tapped into as cultural and political currencies that resonate with the compulsion to situate self in relation to whatever is central to the broader social, economic and political debates. Furthermore, the nature of social ties (kinship), connection to land, and an egalitarian ethos that compels the pursuit of status equivalence are all part of a dominant folk discourse of socio-political distinction that continues to be rooted in the village scape. The shifting fortunes of rural communities are significant in contributing to the shifting forms of kinship and family and the inherent kinship frame of mind of both individual and collective identity, especially for aging bachelors.

NOTES 1. Ex-villagers residing in nearby towns reclaiming old family homes to build vikendici (weekenders) is also common in Serbia, as noted by Halpern and Kerewsky-Halpern (1972) and Kerewsky-Halpern and Halpern (1992: 55). 2. Building settlements away from main roads was undoubtedly a feature of survival strategies during the Ottoman period (see Kerewsky-Halpern and Halpern 1992: 54). 3. Nowadays, scholarly attention is more likely to be on ‘rurality’, especially rural depopulation, as distinct from ethnographies of villages. Typically, rural depopulation is approached from the perspective of demographic transition and poorly devised economic or political policies. For Macedonia see Botev (1990); Buzalka (2008); Dragovic (2011); Bornarova and Janeska (2012); and Azderski and Popovska (2015). 4. Rural reform and investment in modernising agricultural production is noticeable in a range of development projects such as the World Bank country partnership strategy (2010) and the Republic of Macedonia Economic Reform Program (2018– 2020). The incentives for farmers below the age of thirty-five is set out in the draft document for the economic reforms of agriculture in 2017. Small-scale production and land fragmentation have been a key policy focus (see Dimitrievski et al. 2014: 122). 5. As noted by Buzalka, ‘the socialist state succeeding in relativizing the urban-rural division’, but it was ‘far less effective in transforming ideology’ (2008: 760). See also Pine (1996, 2002: 162).

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6. The ‘brain drain’, of educated youths leaving Macedonia, is becoming especially noticeable in the second decade of independence. See Janeska, Mojsovska and Lozanoska 2016; Temjanovski, Dimitrova and Arsova 2017; and Mujanovic 2018. 7. See Friedl (1964: 569) for similar notions of the comparison of the standards assumed of urbanised societies. The main difference is not so much ‘lagging emulation’; irrespective of achieving similar standards of living as the urbanites they cannot contest the derogatory label assigned to them by city folk of seljani (villagers). 8. The list of the villages within the area defined as Caparsko Pole are: Malovišta, Metimir, Gopeš, Rotino, Capari, Kažani, Dolenci, Lera, Gjavato, Gorno Srpci, Ramna, Streževo and Svinište. There are a further two villages, Smilevo and Crneec, that are sentimentally attached, but are part of a neighbouring territorial division. 9. The dialect spoken by the Caparsko Pole inhabitants is similar to the dialects of Lower Prespa and Resen-Ohrid (Vidoeski 1983). These dialects share certain features, such as the dropping of voiced consonants, diphthongs, and the use of a husband’s first name to refer to and address a married woman. 10. For discussion of the term Shqiptar see, for example, Rusakov 2017; Bieber and Daskalovski (2004); and Jovic (2009). 11. In most reports on the ethnic situation in Macedonia, there has been an assumption that the categories of ‘Muslim’ and ‘Albanian’ are congruent. However, Muslim populations in Macedonia are not ethnically homogeneous, comprising of Albanians, Turks, Roma (Gypsies) and Muslim Slavs (Gaber 1997). The Albanians in Caparsko Pole do not appear to be Slavs who have converted to Islam, or ethnic Turks, but are sometimes referred to as Torbeshes. At other times, the loose term ‘of Albanian origin’ is used. See Poulton (1993: 39, 55). 12. For a more extensive discussion of identity politics, intimacy and transgressions across ethnic lines, see Neofotistos (2010a, 2010b); and Lambevski (1999). 13. On the issue of Vlach identity and language, see also Friedman (2001); and Minov (2012). 14. Figures for Caparsko Pole derived from Republic of Macedonia, Karta Na Makedonija (1997) and Popis 2002 (Census) (2002: 501). More recent data is difficult to disaggregate given the re-zoning of municipalities and the presentation of conglomerate figures for places such as ‘Bitola’ municipality, which consists of sixty-five villages. 15. Until the start of the millennium, children from Rotino and Dolenci attended primary school in Capari. The school is all but closed today, with a reduced number of children and staff. 16. Although some local government reforms began from independence in 1991 and were cemented with the 1995 Law on Local Self-Government, re-zoning became a key aspect to the 2001 Ohrid Agreement following the Albanian secessionist conflict, including the introduction of a revised (new) local government law (see Siljanovska-Davkova 2009; Risteska 2013; Fazliu 2016). That re-zoning is inherently political was evident for many scholars (see Willemsen 2006; Lyon 2013; Günay & Dzihic 2016). The Bitola municipality incorporates sixty-five villages within its administrative portfolio. 17. The establishment of Capari in the seventeenth century is attributable to a few families of animal herders descending from the steep mountain regions around the village of Malovišta. A number of families in Capari have surnames that are considered to be Vlaški (of Wallachian origin). According to local legend, the name ‘Capari’ came

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19.

20.

21.

22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

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about in one of two ways. In one version the name stems from ‘Cap Cap’, which is onomatopoeic for strutting goat hooves. In the other version, the typical catch cry of the trade-oriented Caparci – ‘How much [money]?’ (‘Cka pari’) – is said to be the origin (Dimovski-Colev and Pavlovski 1982: 24). The stereotypical connection, however, is a joking reference to Caparci (people of Capari) as being stingy, a feature said to be particularly Vlach! Brown makes brief mention of Capari in the Ilinden Uprising, including the contribution of Naum Vrčkovski (2013: 196). Many individuals from the village also contributed to the ‘anti-fascist’ liberation movement that led to the formation of Yugoslavia. Capari was a site of many conflicts with both Ottoman authorities as well as Balkan states. Serbians, and particularly Bulgarian forces, occupied it during the various surges in the scramble for territory. There are stories of misadventure and harsh treatment by ‘tough’ Greek priests endeavouring to re-educate them about true faith and, thus, ‘national’ identity. Du Boulay also mentions ‘Katerini’ as a trading town for wood and forest products (1974: 32). In fact, there was frequent exchange across the Greek-Macedonia border for social and economic purposes throughout the villages of the Bitola region, for instance, in the border village of Živojno, according to many older informants, including contraband products such as salt, sugar and ‘piper’ (paprika). In the case of Capari, pečalba encompassed Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Constantinople in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Dimovski-Colev and Pavlovski 1982: 190). From the twentieth century, however, Caparci went outside of Europe, travelling in the early years to the United States and Argentina, and later to Australia and Canada. For a discussion of pečalba see Halpern (1975a, 1975b); Schwartz (1993); BieleninLenczkowska (2010); and Hristov (2015). See also Crampton (1981: 184) and Campbell (1964: 13), among many others, in reference to economic migration and sojourns. Such travel was economically motivated and usually restricted to the boundaries of the Empire. Shifts in migratory patterns are also discussed by Gaber and Joveska (2004). See Phillips (2004: 70) on the connection between the collapsed TAT Savings Bank and Albanian pyramid schemes. In the volatile period post-independence, many factory workers across the country were often labouring without pay, paid only partial wages or, as mentioned in a tongue-in-cheek way by one worker, remunerated with a block of cheese that they were expected to sell at the city market to compensate for missing wages. The term mala is a remnant of the Ottoman system of administrative divisions that now refers to sections of a village that are closely akin to a neighbourhood of houses. It is also occasionally used in the city to refer to immediate locals with whom one associates daily. There are many collectively celebrated events. Every village celebrates a general village slava (selska slava), households have a kukjna (house) slava, and individuals (males only), whose names fall on or close to specific saint days or sacred days, celebrate Imenden (name days). Added to this, there are many routine observances prior to and during sacred days such as Christmas, Easter, Day of Resurrection, Day of Pardon (Pročka) and St George’s Day (Gjurg jovden), among many others.

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27. There is much concern with avoidance and taboo in the everyday. For instance, one should avoid Mondays for slaughtering animals at home, Tuesdays are inappropriate for going to someone and congratulating them for anything, on Wednesdays one should avoid rich, oily foods (‘ne se msrsi’), and Thursdays are the luckiest days for something new to happen, as are Fridays, which are also best for auspicious occasions such as the ‘getting’ of a bride, on Saturdays one should avoid opening something new, and Sundays are for weddings. 28. See Du Boulay (1974: 6) for Greece, and Pitt-Rivers ([1956] 1961: 27), Gilmore (1987) and Brandes (1987: 130) for Spain. Further, gossip usually occurs away from the person being referred to, and those who are being gossiped about are rarely confronted or condemned directly (see Campbell 1964: 307 for Greece). 29. On occasion there is reference to the term naši reported in northern Greece (see Cowan 1990) in relation to national or ethnic identity debates, i.e. in that they do not think of themselves as a coherent ethnicity or nation on the basis of the use of the term naši. It is an evocative and nuanced meaning referring to those who consider themselves to belong, in which there is no need to be more specific, part of cultural intimacy without the need to clarify, a form of group solidarity that is understood by insiders. 30. For an interesting account of notions of borders, see Yosmaoğlu who argues that ‘Macedonia is a borderland par excellence’ (2010: 160). 31. As noted by Buzalka, rurality is ‘ingrained in memories and expressed in narratives, rituals and symbols’ that has little to do with where the ‘peasants’ are located (2008: 760).

CHAPTE R 2

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or most people, navigating the often hostile world necessitates paying attention to kin and social relations in order to survive. Assuming that, as many locals say, ‘All is politics’, the most successful are those who can navigate the systems of the state and other relations of patronage. Artful sociality is a tenet of social competence. Maintaining a complex web of interactions compels an interest in people, a shrewd deployment of hospitality, and the ability to keep tabs on favours. Living in a volatile socio-economic or political site means that it is crucial to keep an eye out for opportunity, to know ‘who works where’ and to understand not only the formal systems and mechanisms of the state but also any weaknesses that may be potentially navigated or exploited. The romanticisation of the realisation of the self through the ‘nation’ presupposes a relationship between intimates, and yet people readily objectify the ‘systems’ and ‘structures’ of the state as inherently distant from, if not counter-intuitive to, their needs and desires. Until recently, for instance, paid maternity leave of nine months was awarded to women at a rate equivalent to their salary at the time of going on leave. This policy compelled one man to approach someone in a firm that he knew to give his very pregnant wife a job a month before she was due. He offered 20,000 denari to the director and, within a month of the woman’s employment, she left on maternity leave, receiving the same monthly amount throughout her leave. Such manipulation of the system led to changes in the relevant laws, whereby women are required to have worked a minimum of one year before they are eligible for maternity leave. The old age pension is also awarded according to years of service. People are willing to remain in jobs that pay very little or stay in positions where they are exploited or maltreated without complaint in order

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to secure it. One woman in her fifties recounted the erratic behaviour of the gazda’ (owner) of a textile factory who constantly yelled at women workers, calling them stupid, and refusing even small breaks while they finished orders for a Western European fashion label. The women worked extended hours without overtime pay and only a few minutes for break with the gazda inspecting everything they did. Fatigue and nervousness compelled some to make mistakes, only to be yelled at even more. Still, the woman said, ‘at least I have a job. My husband was retrenched, hasn’t worked for two years. You have to endure’. The woman’s reference to the saying, ‘you have to endure’ (‘Ke istrpiš’), drew on the typical ideals of women’s fortitude and endurance but was, for her audience, a sign of naivety and, indeed, of being ‘dumb’. Another of the women present said, ‘Don’t be stupid’. For the commentator, the problem was not about endurance but, rather, that it called for being ‘clever’, to exploit the gaps in the system, or to draw on those you ‘know’ to make the system work for you. You need people, your own people, to get things done. In other words, without family and personal connections, you are nothing! People are expected to exploit any gaps in the system, lest they be accused of incompetence (nesposoben). In many villages, for instance, the old age pension is delivered in the form of cash distributed by the postman who often simply hands it over to anyone from the familija to pass onto the pensioner. The system would often lead to the elderly being cheated by offspring or grandchildren who spend the pension or skim some off the amount before handing it over. The pension is also manipulated as an asset that can be transferred, a symbolic patrimony distributed along agnatic lines. A woman immigrating to live with her daughter, for example, prepared paperwork to allow one of her deceased husband’s nephews (his brother’s son) to receive the monthly payment on her behalf, the logic being that it formed part of the deceased husband’s patrimony (to be dispersed along patrilineal lines). The significant improvement in the nephew’s circumstances aroused envy and conflict among other members of the deceased husband’s familija, but to the non-involved villager it simply pointed to the ‘craftiness’ of the man to secure such a fortune. So too, political activism or loyalty to political parties is typically assumed to enable economic benefit or employment of some kind. What are often referred to as examples of nepotism or corruption are, for locals, modes of navigating systems that are crucial for survival. Although the interactions between local Macedonians and Albanians are often fraught with tensions, many orchestrated political alliances are forged. Such ethnic consubstantiality, for instance, was evident during the 1996 local government election. The two mayoral candidates were from the largest village, and there seemed little doubt that the new mayor would be a Macedonian since they were nu-

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merically dominant in the region. The official parties involved in the elections mirrored national political affiliations. The Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) party, comprised predominantly of ex-communists or those sentimental about the socialist project, were often targeted by younger men of the village as anachronistic, and a potential threat to moving forward, i.e. accused of wanting to revive a decaying communist system. In forming a coalition with the largest Albanian political party, the fortunes of the local SDSM-PDP party changed significantly. Local Albanians were almost unanimous in their support of the Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP), even though it appeared less influential at first than the coalition between the nationalist Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (VMRO) and the new Democratic Party of Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE). The problems with the Makedonci were, yet again, presented as internal bickering and political dissonance. As one informant argued, if the Macedonians exhibited the same level of uniformity or political loyalty to a single party (as did the Albanians), the Albanians of the region would not have had any real success in gaining seats in the 1996 local government election. Regardless, drawing on even limited social and kin links with Albanians was a crucial factor for the SDSM-PDP coalition’s success. The success of the cross-ethnic coalition was due, in no small part, to the networks of women, especially the perceived bridging kinship established between a Macedonian woman who married an Albanian man. During the elections, this woman was instrumental in mobilising the Albanian community to support her brother’s family and his political aspirations to form the SDSM-PDP alliance. Indeed, the elections proved significant for many reasons, but the visibility of kinship networks of women in mobilising cross-ethnic collaboration was extraordinary. Voting along family lines was evident in local electioneering, just as it was at the national level. Relations of patronage and clientelism seem to have been reaffirmed with each twist in the election outcomes alongside the various accusations of nepotism and corruption across political party allegiances at both national and local levels. The modus operandi of power was cemented through such links; it was not simply a matter of drawing on symbolic kinship (i.e. ethnicity). As such, all political parties endeavour to reward not only party faithfuls but also many of their broader kin and social networks with advantageous government positions. Moreover, being in power enabled the currying of favour and also the ability to pressure industry to employ ‘our people’. In fact, the loyalty and hard work of party members is openly described as a strategy anticipating the delivery of promised favours. The same kind of obligation is extracted of political parties to look after their own as it is within kinship relations. Elements of the continuity of

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the corporate familija were preeminent in the political arena alongside the ethno-national imaginary. Navigating systems of governance in which the State is perceived as hostile and dissonant from the collectivity reaffirms kinship forms and values as being central to survival. Through shifts in power, deprivation and conflict, the importance of keeping a tight hold on the reins of kinship forms and values as a defence against the circumstances of life, of maintaining faith in red (order) to form a ‘fortress familija’ mentality, is vital.

THE ZADRUGA POLITY AND ITS MACEDONIAN (DIS)CONTINUITIES Although kinship studies of the contemporary Macedonian family are scarce, those that do exist almost invariably reinforce the importance of the family plot and the patrilineal inheritance ideologies that structure kin relations and mitigate the nature of social identities and positionalities (see Buzalka 2008: 760). Macedonian kinship is typically collapsed into the exceptional case of the European kinship of the ‘South Slavs’ characterised by a wellstructured system of authority based on the extended joint fraternal household, commonly referred to as the zadruga.1 Pina-Cabral refers to the zadruga as a type of (segmentary) society with ‘agnatic identity arising from the continuation through time of the relation between the descendants of brothers [that] at times approximates patrilineal descent’ (1992: 28). In a similar manner to Africanists’ concern with ‘lineage’, such households seemed to make sense for many scholars as evidence of the absence of a functioning state. The classic South Slavic zadruga presents as an alternative state. The mode of governance within stands in opposition to that of a hostile empire or the mode of governance of a modern state. For Mosely, ‘the strong family household was the centre of personal security, economic effort and social satisfaction’ that gave the zadruga ‘a strong lease on life into the twentieth century’ (1976b [1943]: 60). The ‘Balkan zadruga’ is typically awarded an anomalous position vis-à-vis Mediterranean and southern European kinship (Schubert 2005a). It is also somehow reminiscent of Balkan exceptionalism, a witness to the continuities of the ‘Romantic Movement in European philosophy’ as Hammel refers to it, in which ‘the social organization and culture of the Balkans’ was presumed to be ‘a still-living example of what life must have been like in the misty past of the Indo-European peoples’ (1980: 242). Romanticism is no less evident in the ethnographic accounts of the zadruga where ‘time’ and ‘structure’ play a significant role in any analysis.

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The focus on the South Slav zadruga in anthropological writings emerged at a time when it was in the process of disintegration or had already disappeared and, thus, the bulk of writings are based on secondary material, and only marginally on first-hand data.2 On occasion, writings on the zadruga read like hearsay evidence from a few informants romanticising about how it used to be when we all lived together.3 Many anthropologists endeavoured to reconstruct what it must have been like by observing the contemporary form of social and familial organisation. Ethnographic accounts of Macedonian kinship in the 1960s and 1970s, similarly, focus on the close association between social institutions found at the time of research and their correlation to the, by then disintegrated, zadruga. Balikci, for instance, makes a rather drastic leap backwards in time, providing an example of the process of zadruga fission, some forty years after these large households had disappeared in Veliko Selo. He states, ‘As a number of recorded hostilities reflect patterned relations within the extended family it is necessary to describe briefly the internal organization of the zadruga’ (1965: 1458). Balikci notes that the large Macedonian households in the village of Veliko Selo during the Ottoman period possessed the characteristics of ‘a named patrilineage, soj, and the male descendants of a known ancestor. Their wives belonged to the household but were not part of the soj’ (1965: 1458). As with other writers on the zadruga, Balikci makes fundamental assumptions about the impact of the past upon the present. So too, Rheubottom states that the ‘lives and thoughts of the contemporary peasants can shed light on the lives of their ancestors’ (1976: 230). Macedonian agnatic groups or clans are not jural in the sense defined by Fortes of ‘certain aspects or elements of right and duty, privilege and responsibility laid down in the rules that govern social relations’ (1970: 89). Clans do not own property and inheritance is transferred from father to sons (or to a daughter’s children if there are no sons). Nonetheless, there are social implications, even sanctions, for a lack of respect for the assumed moral obligations between clansmen. The term delenici, for instance, continues to encompass non-resident married brothers as well as the extended agnatic group.4 The continued sentiment of their predecessors (‘at some time’) having shared a residence lingers beyond one’s lived experience. Sharing a surname, for instance, is an integral marker of agnatic identity, but the link to delenici brothers who can be reasonably surmised to have come from the same original familija or kukja is the foundation for the construct of mutual obligations. Agnates are more than sentimentally linked; they not only cooperate far more frequently than matrilineal kin, but are also expected to be far more loyal. It is far more critical for a man to side with his father’s kin because his own social identity and the core of his social relations outside his own kukja are in large measure based on agnatic links.

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The cultural sense making of the agnatic character is powerful, notwithstanding generalisations about the similarities between past and present forms, about the unity of the kinship of South Slav societies, and about whether certain features have remained as pronounced as in the zadruga heydays (if there were such times). As Comaroff states, ‘Macedonians express their patrilineal ideology with singular commitment’ (1980: 14).

THE MACEDONIAN KINDRED, FAMILIJA AND THE ‘HOUSE’ OF MEN The familija is a dominant social reality, particularly for stari bekjari. The moral ascendancy of links through blood, as is implied in the description ‘rodnini sne’ (‘we are relatives’), frames a divided social world between kindred and the rest of humanity. The term rodnini refers to bilateral kindred. The motives of non-relatives are automatically considered suspect, whereas those of rodnini are presumably based on love, protection, a sense of ingrained duty, or an obligation to provide support. The importance of mobilising the full network of kindred for momentous occasions such as weddings cannot be understated. On occasions when the display of a person’s social power and status is important, rodnini are almost always present. A man’s household, for instance, endeavours to invite all recognised rodnini to a svadba (wedding), although the emphasis is on agnates. The assistance and support between agnates during major household events is considered critical if things are to appear ‘proper’ and worthy of respect. The zemvanje (‘getting’) of a bride would be seen as ‘pitiful’ without agnates to form a procession to the bride’s house, or the bulk of gosti (guests) at the wedding.5 The standard question asked of people is ‘How are you related?’ (‘Kako sve rodnina?’), which invariably leads to the elaboration of kin links beginning with siblings. First cousins might say, for instance, ‘We are children from a brother and sister’; second cousins might respond, ‘My mother’s mother and his father’s mother are sisters, that’s why we are second cousins’. The sentiment of ‘closeness’ between bilateral cousins drawing on a sibling link is emotively evoked with the phrase ‘We are the same as brother and sister’ (‘Isto ko brat i sestra sne’). Reference to being bliski rodnini (close relatives) also structures the relationships of those of non-marriageable categories. When parents of an unmarried man say, ‘Rodnini sne so neja’ (‘We are relatives with her’), it means ‘don’t marry her’. Although it is not desirable, it is possible to marry a matrilateral third cousin, but never a patrilateral third cousin, a prohibition grounded in notions of common agnatic ancestry, sharing the same surname or being of the same familija.6 Although first and second matrilateral cousins are equally bliski rodnini, they are not automatically

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presumed to be of the same familija or ‘of our house’ (‘Od našata kukja’). Not only is the term for ‘cousin’ (bračed/bračeda m./f. respectively) an extension of brother (brat) – or perhaps more likely a shortened version of the phrase, ‘Čeda od brakja’ (‘children of brothers’) – but patrilateral cousins are viewed as members of the same corporate grouping, the same familija.7 Matrilateral cousins may be considered bliski (close in kin propinquity), but they cannot be referred to as members of the same kukja as ego (unless ego lives with the mother’s natal familija). Evoking any kind of krvna vrska (blood link) is instrumental in navigating the broader social world, but one’s personal identity is fundamentally connected to the father’s agnatic familija. The first question asked of an unknown person, for instance, is ‘Od koj lugje si?’ (‘Of which people are you?’), or ‘Čije čupe si?’ (‘Whose girl are you?’). The answer expected is the name of a father, not a mother. The key symbolic nuance of familija is that only the father is able to pass down both membership and the essential personality traits (see Herzfeld 1985). Negative qualities are invariably blamed on the mother and the traits passed down from her natal familija. Pina-Cabral argues that the vamilija [ familija] of the South Slavs no longer has the unity of descent systems, although it continues to function through the ‘prolongation of sentiments of identity corresponding to past experience of unity’ (1992: 33). The extended familija still functions in many concrete ways (Schubert 2005b). Where a single household is counted for census and other official purposes as a household (semejstvo), individuals do not refer to it as ‘my household’, but rather ‘my family’ or ‘our house’ (našata kukja). Social identity and allegiance are associated with the corporate household or a man’s kukja and once a woman marries, she is assumed to be totally incorporated into it, as are her children. Although kinship relations and kinship terminology are not always consonant, it is interesting to note the extent of congruence in relation to the Macedonians, as among south Slavs more generally.8 In the case of Macedonians, kinship terminologies provide a window into the depth of the agnatic framing of life, and are a shortcut for understanding how people are ‘placed’ in terms of their positionalities, identities and presumed loyalties. The most elaborative kin terms in Macedonia relate to the positionalities of individuals within a household frame of existence. As with other South Slav societies, one of the primary features of Macedonian reckoning is the distinction between a father’s and a mother’s relations – brothers, consanguines and affines – those ‘of our familija’ or ‘of our house’, and those who do not belong to a corporate household grouping. Household allegiance is not ambiguous and, ideally, it brings about well-defined and exclusive loyalty (see Rheubottom 1980: 243). Thus, although the idea that ultimate loyalty should be reserved for members of one’s own household is common in many other

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Southern European societies, Makedonci also make a distinction between the love owed to grandchildren ‘of the house’ and non-resident grandchildren.9 Frequent assistance given to a married daughter (who lives away from the natal house) is likely to cause conflict, particularly if there are married sons with children of their own in the house. Married women, moreover, who visit their natal homes frequently and whose children are more comfortable there are often criticised and may be accused by their husband’s household of ‘taking’ the children away from their ‘natural’ place. Frequent visits by a woman to her parents’ house arouses suspicions of marital trouble among the villager community. Typically, a woman describes her husband’s rodnini (particularly his patrilineal kin) as being ‘of our family’, despite their not being personal kin. The husband’s parents are symbolically her adoptive parents. Initially, she is treated as a daughter, addressing them as Majko (mother) and Tatko (father), while still referring to them as her svekrva (husband’s mother) and svekor (husband’s father) in conversation with others.10 From a woman’s point of view, there are specific reference terms for a husband’s brother (dever) and his wife ( jatrva) along with a husband’s sister (zolva).11 A husband’s siblings, and the wives of his brothers, represent critical relations for a woman, not least because they are likely to be co-residents. A husband’s sisters leave the household at marriage and are often affectionately addressed as dada or ceca (older sister). A nevesta is a communal reference for a new in-coming bride who is eventually referred to by the communal term snaa (wife of a son, brother or nephew) by both a man’s parents and his siblings. Where there are two or more incoming ‘brides’, both are referred to as jatrvi, a plural form of jatrva, meaning the wife of a husband’s brother. In folk mythologies, the fission of the agnatic house is invariably blamed on jatrvi, demonstrated in the phrase ‘They fight like jatrvi’ (‘Se karat ko jatrvi’). As with the term nevesta (‘bride’), women’s incorporation into a household often fits into general categories that exempt them from any moral rights to property and resources. Women may be referred to as ‘od kukjata naša’ (‘of our house’), but even with recent changes to family law, they have no rights to a share of their husband’s patrimony. Upon divorce, a woman is able to claim a share of the marital assets, but any resources owned prior to the marriage remain the rightful property of the man, to be passed to his sons (or daughters if he has no male heirs). Under formal law, sisters have a right to patrimony but they too refrain from seeking a share to avoid ‘trouble’ with their brothers. Outside of a wife’s natal household, there is minimal incorporation of her kindred into the husband’s familija or rodnini. A husband might use his wife’s kin terminology to address some of her relatives, but he does not consider

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them as his own personal kin.12 For instance, a man uses the term fnuk to describe his wife’s nephew, but he usually makes it clear that ‘He is a nephew from a brother to my wife’. His brother’s son, by contrast, is described as ‘My nephew from a brother’. Affines have virtually no rights to command loyalty, though married sisters may socialise, badžanci (men married to female agnate) may have frequent interaction, and ‘out of respect for a wife’, a man may visit her familija, attend many of her kin events, and be present during her natal household and village slava. A man is a gostin (guest) in his wife’s natal household, spoilt with hospitality, but distant from involvement in household affairs.13 Likewise, the natal household of a woman is most reluctant to appear as if they might be ‘pulling’ her backwards toward them. As they say, ‘Zet ko met’ (‘A son-in-law is like honey’), worthy of getting out the good rakija when he visits. As one elderly woman said, this is important because ‘if you treat him well, he won’t return her’! The symbolic ascendance of agnatic kinship is reinforced in a myriad of other ways. In the classic fictive kinship relationship, referred to as kumstvo, transmission follows ‘houses’ and inherited agnatic lines.14 The relationship between men and their houses is, likewise, ritually reinforced in the celebration of slavas (holy saint days, as identified in the Orthodox Christian calendar). All households host an annual village slava. People do not wait for an invitation to slavas. The household prepares as if they will receive guests, for both a quick stop before visiting other houses to pay respects or for a meal if they are ‘close’ family or friends. Moreover, there are also specific house slavas (Kukjna Slava) and Imenden (name days, when Christian names coincide with a holy day). Significantly, the names of female members of a house are not celebrated as Imenden. In the slava of Sveti Jon (St John the Baptist) in Capari for example, several households of a neighbourhood (called a mala) take turns in receiving each other as guests. A full meal is shared by households in the neighbourhood that are of the ‘same cross’, and each one takes turns being the annual host (decided by a rotation system based on the next house situated to the right of the last one). The most important event of the Sveti Jon celebration is the ritual transfer of responsibility from one household to another of certain sacred objects, including a cross. Money is also collected on the night of the gathering, which is used to improve a neighbourhood belonging to the same cross. People refer to each other as Sveti Jonci. In a similar manner to weddings and christenings, a kum (or numko) is appointed to be the most revered guest. The Sveti Jonci relationship is perceived as equivalent to fictive kinship and a similar prohibition on marriage exists between members of the same cross. For instance, only one such marriage could be recalled in Capari; it was strongly disapproved of and the despondent parents of both bride and groom attempted to dissuade the couple. Villagers even suggested that the

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frequent quarrels and problems within the marriage were directly related to this ‘incestuous’ union. The emphasis of the Sveti Jon rituals is on the relations between men who are representatives of their kukji. In the main ritual of the first of two evenings, for example, a blessed loaf of bread is ‘broken’ by the eldest male member of the host household. In some villages, men and women are seated in separate rooms, with the men in the main reception area and the women in the kitchen. Even the younger and supposedly more ‘modern’ generation adheres to this convention; men are hosts who await guests, and a house without a man does not prepare for slava celebrations. Makedonci have a saying: ‘A house without a man is desolate’ (‘Kukja bez maš je pusta’). It is also bereft if there is no domakinka. Women do not represent a kukja, but their role in upholding the status of a household is critical. The social status of households, and therefore men, is greatly affected by the kind of slava reception that is prepared by the womenfolk. In the case of one widower living alone with his three unmarried sons, the house was seen as desolate as there were no woman to take charge of the running of the household and the preparations for gosti (guests). The difference was, however, that the widower, or any of his three sons, could bring a woman into the house at any time that would ensure it remained intact. A house without men cannot rejuvenate itself. If a widow remarries, ideally she will vacate the old house and move into her new husband’s house. The option of bringing in a domazet (house-husband) for a widow with only daughters is unlikely since it is not in the hands of a woman who does not stem from the house to decide on matters relating to property transmission of her husband’s estate. The stress on agnation and the perpetuation of kukji is consonant with the emphasis on the marriage of men as a means of producing legitimate heirs. Although marriage is, as Davis argues, ‘the key movement, the mainspring of the domestic cycle’ (1977: 195), the start of shifting relationships and the possible division of a household occurs with the birth of children. In discussing South Slav societies, Denich argues that ‘the most essential function of women is, obviously, to serve as bearers of sons for the patriline’ (1974: 252). But, as Denich adds, the emphasis on legitimate heirs necessarily makes households feel beholden to women and to their sexual integrity (1974: 253).15 A woman’s position within her husband’s household is perceived in this sense as fragile until she ‘provides’ children.16 Macedonians often joke about the lack of clear proof of paternity in comparison to the absolute certainty of maternity: ‘There is only one mother, as for fathers, hundreds!’ (‘Samo edna majka je, a tatkovci, sto!’). The need to be ‘certain’ of sexual integrity continues to frame relationships. An eighteen-year old girl, for instance, shyly broached the uncomfortable topic of abortion with me, saying ‘I’ve heard it is painful when you abort’. Unsure of how to reply,

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I remained silent. She later detailed the crux of the problem by stating ‘He said he will “get” [marry] me only if I cleanse myself [abort], even though he knows it’s his [child]’. Her boyfriend’s insecurity was not necessarily based on a lack of trust, but since the child would be identified with his house, he felt it necessary to be siguren (sure). To marry her in a pregnant state might arouse suspicions as to the true paternity, especially if the child was born ‘prematurely’, and outside the ‘normal’ period between the getting of a bride (i.e. cohabitation) and the actual wedding ceremony (see Pitt-Rivers [1956] 1961: 109). Suspect paternity is cause for significant tensions, not only due to the humiliation of a man being ‘cuckolded’ (Pitt-Rivers 1965: 46–51), but also the fundamental implications for inheritance rights and the social identity of the child with their father and thus with his kukja or familija. In the case of one man whose new wife gave birth to a boy seven months after they commenced co-habitation, the excited father sought out the doctor, anxiously asking after the child’s health even before visiting him on the day of his birth. The doctor replied that there was no need for anxiety for a healthy, ‘full-term’ baby. The man left the building and never saw his wife or child again. With the full weight of social and moral right on his side, his second marriage was to a čupa (a never-married woman), normally considered an inappropriate category for a divorced man. Furthermore, a widowed or divorced woman commonly leaves behind children in their father’s household or, on occasion, in the care of her own natal familija. A new husband rarely accepts the children of woman into his household if he has his own or if he is marrying in order to produce his own prodigy. The shift in allegiance of a Makedonec (Macedonian man) from his family of origin to his wife and children depends greatly on the relations between his wife and the members of his kukja. If a shift of allegiance occurs, it is usually due to the wife’s insistence as she demands his primary loyalty because they have children. The birth of grandchildren is the most significant factor affecting permanent changes in the relations between the adults of a household. Various tensions are associated with this process, but the transfer of authority from parents to a son and his wife becomes quite evident after children are born. Children are eagerly awaited and no house is considered vibrant, alive or complete without them. Households comprising elderly couples, or even one elderly person, were quite common, mostly as a result of migration, but they were seen as tragic, rastureni (collapsed) or zapusteni (desolate). The predominantly patrilineal organisation of houses is both complemented and compromised when there are no male heirs. Patrilineality is especially compromised in the case of childlessness, and the perpetuation of a house is most often the main motivation for the adoption of a child from rel-



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atives. Although there are numerous repercussions and emotional traumas associated with this, a zemeno dete (received child) is exclusively linked with its adoptive house and receives full property and other rights accordingly. There is a preference for adopting a child with a blood tie (krvna vrska). Aside from fostering a poor or orphaned child, referred to as raniče by elder villagers, formal adoption is typically from among the wife’s kin.17 Seen from a different perspective, children are typically adopted from a man’s affines. As one adoptive mother said, ‘I already loved him as a nephew’ (‘Jas i taka go sakav ko fnuče’). Motherly love, for her, was viewed as natural or easier because of the blood link with her adopted son. Moreover, the arrangement did not pose a threat of fission between agnates, nor any confusion about loyalties. For a husband, the wife’s kin are not part of his kindred (he visits his wife’s kin irregularly) and, thus, the essentially ‘distant’ affinal relationship is not likely to present any conflict of loyalties or closer ties for the child after adoption. Agnatic clarity is essential. In the case of one zemeno dete whose birth parents continued to be co-resident in the village, however, it proved untenable when he learned through ‘loose talk’ at the age of 17 that the woman he called ‘mother’ was actually his vujna (mother’s brother’s wife). Even worse, he was a friend of his ‘cousin’ who was, in fact, his biological brother, and who also claimed to be unaware of the exact link. Although the man continued to relate to his biological mother as his ‘aunt’ and his brother as a ‘cousin’, and continued to live with his adoptive parents, he became a heavy drinker and even had some problems with the law for disorderly behaviour. The man’s biological mother was the target of both the zemeno dete and the community’s scorn. The love she felt for her childless brother was understandable, but most villagers saw it as her opportunity to economically advance the opportunities of one of her sons. Nonetheless, she was a nervous ‘wreck’, and frequently quarrelled with her star bekjar son at home because, as he rhetorically exclaimed, ‘How could she give one son away?’

ABANDONING ONE’S HOUSE AND THE PLIGHT OF THE DOMAZET The androcentric imaginary of life is such that men are presumed to be nothing if not embedded in their familija and kukja. The ultimate humiliation, social degradation, befalls a man who marries a symbolically higher status woman without brothers, and then ‘abandons’ his own house to live in his wife’s father’s house. A domazet (house-husband) is a complete reversal of the social expectations of men to perpetuate their own kukja, and to have offspring identified solely with their familija. Accepting the role of domazet,

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however, is sometimes the only alternative open to a man who is from an economically poor household and/or one of many sons and, thus, unlikely to receive a share of his father’s land and resources, or at least one that is adequate enough to support him. Or, a man may be an orphan who cannot be absorbed or adopted into another related household. Regardless, as Hammel noted for the zadruga, ‘a domazet did not bring a share of his own patrimony with him, but relinquished it to his brothers’ (1968: 18). The social stigma associated with the symbolic reversal of gender identities and roles is all-encompassing. In seeking a woman that ‘gets’ him, the domazet is akin to a woman; a man gets a bride and not the other way around. A domazet marriage is nothing to boast of, and both individuals and the familji of the couple share in the community’s pity, or in the case of onlooking men, contempt. Typically, the svadba of a domazet couple is quite different from the normal case of a household mobilising the full extent of their social and kin network to celebrate success in getting a bride. The role reversal is something that women are just as acutely conscious of. A woman described her domazet husband’s socio-economic status as follows: ‘When we “got” each other, he didn’t have shoes. My father bought them for him’. The anticipation of women is that as a nevesta, they are adorned with gifts and claimed by her husband’s familija with pride. Thus, to be obliged to adorn her new domazet husband is a bitter pill to swallow. Unlike his own father who would gradually transfer household authority to him, his wife’s father resists and remains the head of the household until he is totally incapacitated or dies. Children may carry their (domazet) father’s surname, but to the community they are ultimately identified with the wife’s father’s lineage.18 Moreover, a domazet is never considered master of his house, or of his wife. Likewise, for a man (father of the bride) to accept another into his house is a sorry admission that he did not produce sons of his own to perpetuate his house. The domazet exists as a perpetual reminder of failure, and understandably there is great tension between a domazet and his wife’s father. For instance, a domazet was struggling to find work and this caused further tension with his wife’s father. One day, as he sat at the table to eat, his dedo entered the kitchen only to say ‘Oh it’s like that, not only do you not work, you also eat my bread’. As is often mentioned in Macedonian folktales, it is shameful for a man to ask too much of his wife’s father. A zet (son-in-law) is supposed to be a guest in his wife’s natal household. After all, he has already ‘taken’ the most valuable thing a father can give, his daughter. The ‘shame’ of the domazet’s ongoing demands from his wife and her father to ‘feed’ him is a situation described in the most-often quoted Macedonian folktale, ‘The Raven and the Domazet’, in which a young man trying to shoo a raven (messenger of death) away from the house, was told by the bird: ‘You have no right to speak since

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the house where you abide isn’t yours, but your wife’s. If you crow someone will tell you to shut up’. The raven concludes, ‘See whose life is blacker, yours or mine?’ (Cepenkov 1989: 70). The ultimate insult for a man, in other words, is to be likened to a domazet. For instance, a man arrived from Australia for a visit to introduce his bride to the family. The visitor was raised in the village, but he and his parents and siblings were infrequent visitors. It was automatically assumed that the visitor would make his base his father’s house, now occupied solely by his grandparents. From his first day in the village, however, he caused an uproar as he settled into his mother’s natal house, occupied by his maternal grandmother and great grandfather. He was chastised by a fellow member of his familija, a ‘second’ cousin (FFBSS), because, as he said to the visitor, ‘Out of respect for your own father, you should go for at least one night if not more’. When the visitor refused, the agnate later concluded, ‘If he doesn’t respect his father’s house, he doesn’t respect himself ’. Most of the familija of the visitor’s father became involved in the affair. His paternal grandmother, accompanied by one of his paternal aunts, visited the maternal grandmother’s house begging him, ‘Come home, come to “our” house’. When the visitor refused, they accused the maternal grandmother of lacking morality, of interfering and creating fission between the man and his familija, claiming, ‘She is getting involved in family matters where she has no right to do so’. The reactions of the paternal grandmother and aunt are understandable, given the social priority awarded to the father’s, over the mother’s, natal house. But for the ‘second’ cousin who initially accused the visitor of disloyalty to ‘their familija’, it went far deeper. As he explained later: ‘My grandfather and his grandfather are delenici. We are from the one house. I see Dedo Boris every day and since my own grandfather died, I respect him even more. I am offended that he [visitor] has disrespected him’. He added further: ‘As if he is a domazet. He doesn’t stay in his own house!’ It is just as demeaning for a man to be tied to his mother’s household as to his wife’s. The gossip that proliferated as a result of the man’s refusal to sleep in his father’s house repeatedly drew reference to his actions as ‘not being in order’ (‘Ne je vo red’). The paternal grandparents and certain agnates accused him of betrayal by refusing to sleep in the house that his own father built. Further, especially as his mother had no brothers, this attachment appeared suspiciously as if the visitor had abandoned his own patriclan and become a domazet of a kind. One day, an irate agnate yelled out to the turist, ‘Hey, they are going to make you into a domazet as well, are you from us or not?’ If not for the diligence and strength of such agnates, a weak man might allow his allegiance to slip! A story circulated among some bachelors about a fellow villager who married a ‘rich girl’ in the city and changed his surname at her insistence (a most

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infrequent occurrence). The bachelors responded with a level of disgust that perhaps seemed more consistent with an anecdote about castration: ‘Look, to become a domazet because he is poor, has too many brothers, or is an orphan, that too is not good, but it is necessary. But to change his surname . . . Fuck him . . . what kind of a man is he?’ A domazet is immediately identified to outsiders, which implies that the man is not a natural member of the community (usually domazeti are from other, and most often lower social status, villages). The household that receives a domazet is also socially degraded because the woman’s father is perceived as ‘obviously’ weak since he could not produce a son. Finally, the woman also faces social degradation when her usually high expectations of marrying a man of at least equal social status to her fellow villagers remain unfulfilled. Thus, the whole household bears the brunt of society’s condescension, if not ridicule. Men’s fear of becoming even a symbolic domazet is genuine when his household allegiance might be questioned if he spends an undue amount of time at his wife’s, or even his mother’s, natal home. A man may even be jokingly referred to as domazet simply because his wife has no brothers, but this is also often cause for resentment and tension. Husbands of women without brothers typically receive a greater than usual amount of assistance from their wife’s natal households, but the men can always claim that they are not domazeti because they do not share residence. Unmarried (ex-Macedonian) turist women who arrive in the village in search of husbands are automatically assumed to be searching for domazeti. Their relatively higher social status is not based on material wealth, or even residence in a ‘rich’ country, but rather on residential proximity. The couple would necessarily have to reside away from the husband’s household and closer to the wife’s, even if only until the husband could contribute to a joint house. Thus, a wife would be in familiar surroundings whilst her husband would be a stranger. In all, she is viewed as possessing the upper hand. As one man said, ‘You get some kind of nothing so that you can get out of here and she acts like a princess all your life’. A domazet marriage can be a painful reminder to men of the potential loss of self and the inherent connection to agnatic identity and status. Even if the qualities of the husband and wife are mechanistically balanced, they cannot ever achieve status equilibrium. On a social level, a man needs to feel a relative status equivalence with other men in order to relate to them ‘like a man’. For a man to reverse the cultural norm and allow himself to be ‘got’ by rather than to ‘get’ a bride is akin to agreeing to his own emasculation. As one bachelor said, ‘He must feel he is unworthy of being counted “as a man” by marrying her’. A domazet can only convey his manliness and strength through displays of the most superficial kind, i.e. heavy drinking, smoking

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and/or gambling. In navigating the social world, men need the backing of their kindred, their familija or their house.

DIVIDED BROTHERS, UNITED HOUSE The likelihood of tension, even animosity, between brothers in relation to patrimony is taken for granted by Macedonians. Ideally, there is a clear understanding of who gets what and at what point in time. The last son to marry, invariably the youngest, remains in the stara kukja (‘old house’) with his parents.19 He inherits the property upon his father’s death in the legal sense, but in all other respects the transfer of household authority happens much sooner. For this son to establish himself as the head of the household, the most crucial requirement is that he becomes a father. The expectation for an older brother to become delen (divided) from this point is great, irrespective of whether relations between household members are cordial. His share of the patrimony is typically transferred at this point. Once an older brother becomes delen, either physically or symbolically, he is placed in an almost no man’s land between his household of origin and the unit created by himself and his wife. If he is in the same compound or yard, the older brother continues to cooperate in most work tasks but is expected to be detached or independent in certain affairs of the stara kukja. From the point of view of other household members, although he is shown respect as part of the same familija, he is now slightly distinct from it.20 So too, a younger brother would be socially stigmatised as a ‘weak man’ if he did not stop a delen older brother interfering too frequently in the decision-making of his old house. As they say, ‘It is not good for a delen brother to get involved in the affairs of the old house’. In light of such social imperatives, it is understandable that in the case of two married brothers who continued to live in the old house with their widowed mother, social censure abounded amongst the villagers. The older son, in particular, was accused of laziness and incompetence for failing to set up his own house, irrespective of the meagre patrimony left by the father. Likewise, the younger brother was judged weak, lacking the necessary resolve to compel an ‘agreement’ with his brother so that matters might be ‘clean’ (‘čisti raboti’). Despite the great desire to be ‘set up’ in the city, it is more likely that an elder brother would be provided with separate land, resources and physical assistance to build a house next to the stara kukja. Typically, villages resemble compounds of houses that reflect points of fission among brothers. A special type of architecture, the dvovratni (two-front doors) house, reflects this. Even if separate houses are built, they are most likely to be ‘in one yard’

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(‘vo eden dvor’) or, as some say, ‘We’re divided by a wall’ (‘Dsid ne deli’), often with a connecting point for daily communication.21 In some villages, typical split-level houses are a visible, albeit neglected and crumbling, reminder of the zadruga epoch and the joint fraternal household with animals underneath and members of the familija sleeping above, or with large barnlike structures with similar divisions of space. Where parents today assist a son to build in the city, elements of the extended household structures continue. Many city houses have separate quarters or split-level divisions in multi-story structures to accommodate a son and his family, or separate levels for each married son and aging parents. Even among ‘old city’ residents, if space permits another house is built in the same yard, such as the residence of a Bitola doctor whose older son received help building a new house, leaving the ‘old house’ to the younger brother. This older son was also a star bekjar, however, and the new house remained half-constructed and unused. Likewise, many families in villages prepare for the advent of a bride by building a ‘new’ house for an older son within the yard (dvor), or in an adjacent field, even before a son thinks of marriage. The ‘new’ houses belong to the family, however, and the older son does not reside in it alone, nor can he dispose of it legally. He is not the master of the house until he marries, and, with prolonged bachelorhood, the ‘new house’ may never be used. As one bachelor said, ‘I didn’t want them to build a house, but the “oldies” wouldn’t listen. The mice rejoice, they built a house for them!’ Accommodation of married sons is kept at a minimal distance, or in close enough proximity as parents say, ‘So that we can help them’, especially in the minding of grandchildren, which is normally considered the primary task of a man’s parents. Living in adjacent houses, sharing the same yard and/ or resources prohibits even the most hostile of siblings from keeping themselves completely separate from each other’s affairs. Positive and negative experiences between agnates become cemented and are reflected beyond the original generation of delenici brothers. One unmarried man, discussing the building of a house for use after his marriage, said ‘I just want things clear so that I don’t have problems with my brother or my son with his son’. Although they may become formally divided in terms of separate houses, or at least separate household finances and eating, these delenici continue to view cooperation as crucial and are more likely to depend on each other, like their fathers before them. During the time of intensive labour in the fields, ‘city’ brothers return to their stara kukja to assist, and if they are not able to do so personally, they send their children. The significance of the agnatic principles of ownership and engagement with their lands and resources lingers even when delenici emigrate. Issues

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relating to their lands and house in Macedonia, for instance, confront most Macedonian migrants in Australia. Typically, the brother(s) who remained behind, or an agnate cousin of the ‘same familija’, are afforded user rights of land on the understanding that it still ‘belongs’ to the émigré man and rarely, if ever, to non-agnates. In one case, I was asked by a middle-aged man to ‘read’ a Macedonian court order that he had received to confirm that he had forgone his share of the patrimony, because there was no will and testament left by the deceased father. Unbeknown to the man who was in frequent communication with his two brothers in Macedonia, they had petitioned the court to exclude him by claiming that the émigré brother had forgone his share. A sister who also emigrated received the same order because legally she too is entitled to a share. As expected, the sister simply stated that she was not interfering in the affairs of her brothers. The fact that the brothers behaved with duplicity made the émigré despondent, as if they were cutting him out of the family, denying him the right to be recognised as a legitimate son of the deceased father. He refused to respond to the order and cut off communications with his brothers. When he heard of the death of one of his brothers through a fellow village émigré, he said that it was too late for him to call the widow to give his condolences. In a more tragic tale, ‘talk’ abounded in one of the villages about the tragic suicide of a younger brother because, according to locals, his brothers ‘cheated’ him and he was left with no share of the patrimony.

THE ‘GUARDING OF THE HOUSE’ AND ANCESTOR-MAKING ‘House’ is synonymous with life itself. Similar in idea to the ritual protection offered to a newborn in a christening ceremony, a house is considered in need of protection from evil as a living or spirit-filled entity. Cleansing and strengthening rituals are performed when a house is built. At a critical point in the construction of the foundations, an animal is sacrificed and its head is entombed in the foundations of the building. When construction is complete, a blessing and cleansing ritual is performed by a priest to ensure that no malevolent spirits gain access. The new house is then guarded (vardenje) by close kinfolk, mostly agnates and members of the ‘old house’ who sleep there for the first night. Even in the event of the death of a household member, patrilineal kinfolk are primarily relied upon to ‘guard’ the deceased for the necessary twenty-four hours before burial. They will also be required to participate in three years of rituals for the deceased: a transformative period, referred to as odpevanje, during which the deceased becomes an ancestor who guards over its living familija. In both types of vardenje (guarding), the

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critical notion is the same: the house, like the newly dead person, is neither fully alive nor fully dead, and is particularly susceptible to occupation by evil spirits. Houses are symbolically protected by a totem animal, sometimes referred to as a ‘yellow snake’, which is said to live in the house foundations, the stone structure in the yard compound, or in a partition between the fields of the owner. The wellbeing of the snake is connected to the wellbeing of the household members, and it is assumed that as long as it is alive, so too will be the occupants of the house. The killing of the house snake is automatically assumed to bring doom and people say ‘The house will collapse if you kill the house snake’. Many stories similarly reinforce animal totemism, such as the death of a man after he had killed a snake in the hallway of his house, its presence there being seen as evidence that it was the man’s own totem snake. Even in a dream the killing of a house snake is said to bring about a death. As one woman related, ‘The snake came inside the house and I killed it. And, here, a year hasn’t passed and father (in-law) died!’ In short, the house is a vibrant but also vulnerable living entity. The house is just as vulnerable as its occupants to malevolent spirits, to becoming an abode for lost souls due to untimely or unresolved deaths on its grounds, or to the machinations of an enemy who invokes a curse upon it. A typical curse evoked by villagers is for ravens (seen as messengers of death) to perch on the roof of a house. A most potent and feared curse, however, is for infertility, the ultimate form of destruction of a kukja. As told by a number of older women in a village, one such infamous curse was placed on a local family whose three sons have remained childless. For locals, kinship, the familija and kukja are central to relations and ideologies and reinforce the sense of an overwhelming structure that requires navigation, contestation or rejection. A patrilineal ‘structure’ that emphasises gendered reproduction of identities and positionalities of power can present as an all-encompassing ‘noose around the neck’ that is difficult for men to extract themselves from. The fact that patrilineal kinship discriminates against women is undoubtedly clear; they are omitted from the stories of the familija, from origin myths, heroism, inheritance and, often, respect. This omission, however, also enables women’s greater mobility. While unmarried women have the potential to move away from the gnawing ‘village mentality’ either before or at marriage, men are tied to land and family. Familial and social reproduction is primarily vested in furthering an androcentric imaginary of life that is fundamentally weak in accommodating men when women withdraw their complicity. Of course, membership to any kind of institution is conditional upon individuals’ acquiescence of the group norms but, in the case of men, it is impossible to construct a self without some kind of perceived lifelong belonging to the familija. Men do not

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necessarily think of leaving, even after marriage, because they are co-opted into the discourse of a familija as their rightful place and the kukja (and/or land) as their possession.

SATELLITE KINSHIP AND THE RETURNING TURISTI Just as village communities are becoming eroded through depopulation, they also reinvigorate kinship through migrancy. In one sense, villages have simply relocated to towns or migrant host societies. The inclination is to congregate in a nearby town or create an urban periphery settlement where most of one’s neighbours are likely to be either kinfolk or fellow ex-villagers. Congregation of ex-villagers is a pattern that is also evident among migrants outside of the country. Once an émigré is settled there is a strong sense of obligation to assist other kin to migrate or to accommodate newly arrived ones. When new arrivals settle it is often in close vicinity to those who supported them. A similar pattern of settlement is evident in the rural to urban settlement patterns within the country. Many houses built in the city typically follow village-style architecture or, more precisely, the architecture of joint fraternal households, with separate living quarters for married brothers, or a son and his parents. In some cases, there is virtually a whole village migration pattern. Some outer settlements in Bitola, for instance, resemble reformed village communities with an overwhelming number having migrated from the same place. The interdependence between family left in the village and those residing in the city is also notable. For those who are fortunate enough to receive a share of patrimony and be settled in the city, the issue of whether parents relocate is often filled with tension. There are many married sons who have been provided with an apartment or house as part of their share of patrimony who, despite vehemently asserting their independence, often rely on their village familija to assist in supplementing their income due to the volatile economic circumstances. The precarity of economic circumstances faced by many in the towns makes for even greater dependence on parents remaining on the land. Dependence on the elderly left in the village, however, is proving increasingly difficult. Working until they are no longer productive in often harsh conditions while maintaining the mental and physical stamina required to attend to village tasks as parents makes for a difficult relationship with city-based married children. Parents are either guests (despite paying for the house) or in a perpetual state of waiting for a son and his wife to agree to live together. That is, the split-family architecture, alongside the continuing dependence on parents left in the village, reframes the village-town co-existence.

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Although this is gradually changing, both within Macedonia and among the diaspora, living in the same compound in the vicinity of kin as well as fellow ex-villagers continues to frame the dominant mode of households. The host site serves as a crucial portal from which the shifting relations and ideas between those in the home villages and the satellite branches of families converge. Whether via telephone, social media or through visits to the village, the extended family and village networks of locals and émigrés keep up with issues, gossip and, on occasion, even arguments. The reconstituted village of migrancy is particularly pronounced in reaffirming the inherent tensions in kinship. In one example, parents provided money for a son to build a house. At the point when they became too old and wanted to move in with him, the son and his wife said no and the parents’ forty years of effort in Australia were to no avail and their entire investments/savings gone. In another case, a son reluctantly accepted his widowed mother moving in but upon his untimely death the daughter-inlaw kicked her out. Having already bequeathed all her resources (‘you are old why do you need money’), the widow was left homeless, with no funds even to rent temporarily and no other family to rely on for support. Eventually, the woman’s grandson moved out of his parents’ house and went to live with his grandmother in a small apartment but the two struggle to survive on her pension. Given that she did not feel that as a woman she had a right to a share of her deceased husband’s estate, she could not imagine contesting the son’s ‘right’ to it. The exchange and interaction between locally present and non-present kin is enormous. The stereotypical turisti (i.e. returning émigrés), particularly older émigrés on a rare visit back ‘home’, seek reaffirmation of a village life they left behind several decades earlier. The home society is also in many ways a refuge for the first world émigrés: a place of healing (seeking out doctors, soothsayers and cheap dental work) with the aid of local family networks. In the exchange between local and satellite branches of families, émigrés often send remittances to support kin facing economic hardship in the village. Stories abound across villages about turisti, especially in the case of wayward youth or ‘druggies’ in trouble with authorities being sent by parents to be straightened out by a grandparent, uncle or aunt. The turisti are often confronted with culture shock, as are the local branches of family hosting them. The disjuncture between the realities observed and the carefully constructed imaginary of their home village, ‘culture’ and familija would often be a cause of comment by both turisti and locals. In one case, a turist from Australia said to his uncle (father’s brother), ‘Everyone says that they do not have money, that they are poor. But, see how they eat every day. We don’t eat like this’. When he left the kitchen, his uncle, visibly upset, said ‘Of course we put out good food for him. He is our

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guest. He is my brother’s son. Even if I have nothing to eat tomorrow, I am going to do it’. The brother’s son did not realise how offensive his comments were. The visiting nephew could not appreciate, according to the uncle, that hospitality demanded that he be treated not ‘as if at home’, but ‘better than home’. Only when trust is present can turisti be privy to the intimacy of family business and the shortcomings inside the pantry that were filled by drawing on favours from others or buying on credit in one of the local stores. Nonetheless, a few days later, the wife of the uncle was approached by some women on the way home from the fields and asked the mandatory question, ‘How are your guests?’ The woman replied that they were fine. But once out of sight, she said to me quietly, ‘It’s good that they [guests] went for a holiday so that we have a little peace in the house’. The turisti had expectations about being entertained when the household had much work to do, or worse for the woman, expected that they take him on outings when money was tight. Of course, many turisti likewise confessed that their visit was proving too costly because they felt obliged to buy everything all the time! Visits by aging bachelors, offspring of pečalbari, are especially significant during summer and it is these turisti that can become the greatest source of family tension. Many visiting aging bachelors are encouraged to travel ‘home’ to find a bride amongst local women. Such visits exacerbate the stress for many families who have unmarried sons of their own, especially since turisti are far more successful than local men in attracting women. Hosting visiting aging bachelors also involves a concerted effort on behalf of kin in looking out for potential brides and if a marriage eventuates they often stand in lieu of the visiting bachelor’s parents in terms of hosting the ceremonial getting of the bride, or even the wedding. The interactions between local and visiting kin also bring to the fore the inherent tensions in shifting perceptions of kinship. The personalisation of kin relations is nowhere more apparent than in the incongruent perceptions of satellite kin. As turisti, the visiting émigrés evoke sentimental attachments based on kin links as well as rejecting mandatory obligations to interact with local kin based simply on red. The visiting émigrés are ‘guests’ (gosti) and, although kin, have been separated from the everyday relations and necessities of forming social networks. The turisti often wait for invitations by local kin to interact. Likewise, they are selective in who they ‘see’ among their kin. The preconceptions of kinship and the idealisation of what such links mean in compelling reciprocity are complex and interwoven with the experiences of negotiation between personal and collective relations. Some aspects of the value systems of host societies carry forth into the ‘home’ culture, such as those of Australia where the ethos of individuals is celebrated as are the structure of work and increasing individuation of social life. Mem-

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bers of satellite familija romanticise kin relations and the obligations they impose on individuals just as they challenge them for compelling the obligation to interact with all of them. Lingering commitment to kinship ideals can often require prioritising some relationships over others, but often the sentiments and attachments formed, such as those based on past experience and stories of affection or dissent relayed by their parents, are more likely to be influential in selective engagements. The mode of individuating kin relations and sentiments by turisti is of a different order to those of their local familija. Although similarly concerned with personalising relations, turisti are also reforming notions of kinship that are more individualised than collective. The tourists report back upon their return about their experiences of interaction and are grilled by members of their [satellite] familija about whether they ‘saw each other’ with this or that kin member (‘Se vidovte so . . .?’) or whether they had been invited or received as guests (‘Ve pokanija?’). The validation sought in interactions with local kinfolk is further individuated through the relations of being a ‘long lost brother’, ‘prodigal son’ or beloved nephew or niece: beloved because a father or mother’s love for a brother or sister is assumed to flow in the veins of those they visit. Asserting an obligatory kin link is the same as asserting Macedonianness: ‘Of course, I’m from here, I never mix English and Macedonian, I speak all Macedonian, no one senses that I live in Australia’. That might be so with strangers in the city, but people in his village of origin and kinfolk know him, know that he lives in Australia, that he is here for a visit. As his matripaternal aunt said: It’s good for him. His time is his, can do what he wants, see who he wants to see. All he has to worry about is how he spends his time here. But we have to work. I can’t stop work just because he is here. Last time he came, we had my granddaughter’s zemvanje, we waited for him to arrive because he is my brother’s son, but you know what? He said yes, he’ll come, then he didn’t show up – went someplace on an outing. That day!

The effrontery of the nephew, however, also compelled the son of the woman to add: ‘I don’t care anymore. I did my best. I showed respect but I’m not going to be shamed by him. He doesn’t want to. That’s fine. I don’t have to “see” him this time’. Such cases are not atypical of the interactions between local and visiting turisti. The same woman described a visit by her brother a few years earlier. The woman spoke of the joviality of receiving him. The brother had contributed to buying twenty kilos of meat and crates of drinks for a skara (a BBQ party) and the sister and her son were hosts to fifty local guests at their home; the party, however, didn’t reflect their own preferences or network of relations. Some attendees were people that the woman did not like and others she did not associate with because of some slight or experience in the past. But,

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the visiting brother appeared unconcerned about such things, nor was he troubled about the extra costs incurred by his sister’s household in terms of the food, drinks and time that hosting him took away from work or household chores for the three weeks of his stay. The brother, in other words, behaved and was treated as a gostin (guest), not an intimate who would be aware of the kind of hardships and impositions his behaviour would impose on her and her familija. He showed no regard for the efforts she had made to maintain her social and kin positionality, or for the networks she had built through the years based on experiences of mutuality, obligation or respect; these were ‘foreign’ to him. He was not oriented towards maintaining a network for the purposes of survival, for finding work, or navigating institutions and systems of the state. This became apparent in the ensuing discussion. The woman’s son complained of not being respected by his visiting cousin (mother’s brother’s son) who had seen everyone but him. During the visit, he had apparently attended a neighbour’s wedding, much to the man’s affront: ‘What are they to him?’ The woman, in defence of her brother and how much she loved him, irrespective of his or his son’s behaviour, continued to make attempts at reaching out to her visiting nephew. Her aging bachelor son, however, insisted that she desist, stating ‘Do you want to undermine me, disrespect me? Then keep trying with him’. His positionality as a man, irrespective of his marital state, compelled respect at least from his ‘own’ kin, especially as he lived with a widowed mother and was, thus, the head of the household. Socially speaking, he couldn’t afford to look like a man of insignificance; he had a business and contacts/connections/links (vrski) with important people, he was approached for favours and he could draw on the favours of others. So, to be seen as socially snubbed by the visiting cousin was no small gesture of a naive Avstralijanec (Australian). He shouted at his crying mother, ‘Enough is enough. If he doesn’t want me, I’m not going to keep searching [him out]’ (‘Ne kejo baram ako ne me saka’). Matching kinship sentimentalities to the ideal of bliski (close) relatives in the face of individuation and the lack of a sense of mutuality in supporting each other’s social positionality has the potential to break relations. The felt experience of the obligation to maintain social or kin networks because ‘you need people’ to get things done in a chaotic socio-political context is something that a turist is rarely able to comprehend. Although they may also rely on networks to find work or get things done in their host society (‘wog’ business), and they may need the support of local family members during their visit, the tourist does not necessarily have the same conceptual framework of how kin obligations play out in everyday life. For the turist, kin are required for the duration of the visit. Though they may evoke kinship selectively and strategically and be notionally aware of the import of

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kin obligations and sentimentalities, they will eventually leave and not have to ‘face’ people daily. Moreover, irrespective of whether one is a local or a turist, tapping into sentiments or imperatives of obligation imposed through kinship is not a rule in itself so much as a well-worn tool or strategy that is evoked for particular ends. Some individuals stick to the ideals of the obligations imposed through kinship: ‘I’m doing this for my brother, because he is my brother’. Tensions between adult siblings often arise because of the perceived incongruence between obligations that they should have, as opposed to obligations that they choose: ‘But you are my brother, you should help me’. Irrespective of tensions within the familija, kinship relations impose obligations to interact, to contribute to each other’s events, as well as to cooperate in some way for economic or political purposes. The presumption that there was once a stronger love and greater mutual respect and cooperation and that it is only ‘now’ that this has faded is, of course, a sign of the tendency to romanticise, to be nostalgic about the past. As discussed below, contexts may change but tensions, fissions within the family ( familija), are inherent in kinship, individual ‘values’ and desires juxtapositioned with the imperatives of collective or group obligations. The challenge for individuals is to find a place within structures that is agreeable to the self as well as to the collective. In the manner of identity, inheritance, negotiating reciprocity or compelling the obligation, even ‘love’, of others, kinship is central for navigating one’s social world that often forecloses complete individuation or freedom to move beyond it.22

KINSHIP, MODERNITY AND CULTURAL SUBTEXTS OF IDENTITY AND BELONGING Ironically, as post-colonial subjectivities incorporate kinship in identity politics, anthropological critiques of the discipline’s prior theorising of the term have made for hesitancy in drawing reference to it. Contemporary anthropology, however, has not challenged the ‘prior text’ of early kinship theorists. In many ways, the discipline continues to be plagued by the analytic frames that it established.23 The discipline has moved away from presumptions about discreet small-scale ‘societies’ in which kinship seemed to loom larger in the absence of a state. Yet, terms such as ‘patriliny’, ‘matriliny’, ‘clans’, ‘tribes’ and ‘moiety’ are now part of broader discourses, and are typically taken for granted as speaking to realities, rather than to problematic theoretical debates in anthropology.24 Regardless, the subtext of modernity is that family and kinship loom larger in the peripheries, among the less developed, the ‘traditional’ and the

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conservative, indigenous communities, ethnic migrant enclaves and villages. Kinship is relegated to the elsewhere of whatever is imagined as epitomising the essence of a modern society. Within Western societies, for example, political platforms that emphasise family are often judged as part of the conservative or reactionary spectrum of political ideologies. Moreover, the dissonance between modernity and kinship is just as evident in the counter-discourses presented in developing societies or among ethnic minorities in Western societies. A greater concern with family is rendered as cultural capital that distinguishes the marginalised from the mainstream by asserting that ‘they’ are more family-focused and attend to their old rather than consigning them to living alone or in ‘horrible aged-care facilities’. Indeed, in many folk discourses, kinship is a central paradigm of cultural and sociopolitical distinction. Nowhere is the juxtaposition between kinship and modernity, however, more evident than in decisions relating to marriage and child-rearing. The issue of marriage and decisions relating to childrearing (having children as well as how many to have) confounds the tension between familial and societal fields of relations and identities and the desire for convergence as well as distinction.

NOTES 1. The term zadruga is not native to the Macedonians and, even among the Serbs and other societies with zadruga-like households, it was not commonly used (see Hammel 1968: 13). For studies of the zadruga, see Mosely (1976a [1940], 1976b [1943], 1976c [1953]); St Erlich (1966); Buric (1976); Sicard (1976); Simic (1969, 1983a, 1983b, 1991); Halpern and Kerewsky-Halpern (1972). 2. For reliance on secondary material in discussions of the zadruga, see, for instance: Davis (1977: 171–72); Halpern and Kerewsky-Halpern (1972: 26); and Rheubottom (1976: 218). 3. Besides the lack of first-hand data on the zadruga, there is also much shared information and reliance on studies and assumptions made by earlier writers. For instance, Hammel (1968: 7) shared the same information as Pavlovitch and Simic who worked in Borina. Even in the classic study by Mosely, most informants were no longer living in such large households, as was also the case in the Macedonian village of Veliko Selo where Balikci conducted research (1965: 1458). 4. Hammel refers to similar notions of delenici: ‘Descendants of a corporate household up to three generations formed a recognised social unit called delenici, “those who have divided”’ (1968: 20). 5. Rheubottom similarly describes the bulk of wedding guests as agnates (see 1980: 243). 6. This is similar to Hammel’s description of ‘agnatic stringency’ on marriage during the time of the zadruga as complemented by a ‘leniency’ on marriage between matrilateral cousins (see 1968: 32).

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7. The term čeda (pl.), or čedo (sing.), refers to a baby, infant or child in more colloquial speech and suggests a more emotive attachment than the standard word for child, deca (pl.) or dete (sing.). In contrast to the Serbian kinship terminology that distinguishes the children of a brother or a sister (see Hammel 1968: 29), no such distinction is made in Macedonia. 8. The reference here is drawn from the persuasive arguments presented by Needham (1974: 41) and Herzfeld (1983: 158) that kin terms and relations are not necessarily consonant. The debates relating to kinship and kinship terminologies are also well captured by Scheffler who argues that it is important to note that ‘the evidence for the existence of an underlying opposition between “consanguines” and “affines” is not independent of the kinship terminology’ and cautions that there is ‘some danger that the argument for the existence of the opposition, as well as for its presence in the system of kin classification, may be circular’ (1977: 871, original emphasis). 9. See Schubert 2005a for the distinction made between grandchildren ‘of the house’ and non-resident ones. Although further research is needed on the issue, this might be a factor in the lack of attention paid to dowries for daughters: they go ‘emptyhanded’ to their husband’s household and are thus completely absorbed by his familija who subsequently the children belong with. Although a somewhat different context, the distinction of resident and non-resident grandchildren is also noted by Du Boulay (1974: 169) for Greece. 10. Likewise, Rheubottom notes that in Skopska Crna Gora a bride is initially treated like a daughter (1980: 245). 11. Of note, there is no reciprocal term for the relationship. A woman uses the household’s reference of zet (husband of a kinswoman) for a husband’s sister’s husband. 12. Typically, there is an extension of kin terms for siblings of a spouse to incorporate his/her cousins. The term for ‘wife’s brother’ (šura), for instance, is used to address all of her male cousins as well. By further extension, spouses of a šura are referred to by the term šurna. The term sveska refers to a wife’s sister as well as any of her female cousins, just as a wife’s sister’s husband (badžanak) is extended to address the husbands of her female cousins. A similar extension occurs from a woman’s point of view with a husband’s brother (dever), and husband’s brother’s wife ( jatrva), used for a husband’s male cousins and their spouses. It may be that this kind of extension or projection to include cousins (and their spouses) reaffirms the cognitive separation between a man or woman’s own kindred and that of their spouse – consanguines and affines remain polarised, at least in kin nomenclature. 13. As Herzfeld argues, ‘intensification of the rules of hospitality’ seems to increase with the social distance (1987: 77). Herzfeld was discussing the ‘stranger’ as guest, but his observation is also applicable in principle to the manner of reception (prečekuvanje) of a zet (son-in-law, daughter’s husband). 14. For a further discussion of the ‘inherited’ position and role of the kumstvo, see Hammel (1968); and Pitt-Rivers (1976, 1977). For a contrasting view, see Herzfeld on the notion of the ‘koumbaros’ or baptismal sponsor relationship as ‘an intensive use of baptism to create political alliances outside of the village’ and as a means of establishing a truce among enemies (1985: 82). The significance of the baptismal relationship to further individual or family interests is also noted by Davis (1977: 223); Loizos (1975a: 87–88); and Pina-Cabral (2010). 15. See also Rheubottom (1980: 242); and Halpern and Kerewsky-Halpern for Serbia (1972: 103).

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16. According to Rheubottom as well, ‘the couple emerge as a conjugal unit only with the birth of their first child’ (1980: 245). Likewise, Campbell noted for the Sarakatsani that it was the birth of children, and not marriage itself, that shifted the allegiance of a man to threaten group unity (1964: 70). 17. In reference to the zadruga, Hammel also mentions that ‘the children of close relatives might be brought in if orphaned or to provide a male heir’ (1968: 13). 18. In contrast, Milicic reports of a domazet in Selo, Croatia being perceived as ‘shrewd and successful’ and although the children are identified with the wife’s house nickname, there is no ‘loss of face’ for the man (1995: 135). Similarly, Du Boulay argues that an esogambros (the Greek equivalent of a domazet) may be ‘in her house’ and ‘cultivating her property’, thus ‘all the legal and economic power rests with her’, but he is nonetheless ‘superior in all matters relating to his masculine position in the house regarding his wife and children’ (1974: 126–28; see also Davis 1977: 177). 19. Various versions of partible inheritance, and thus the decision for one of the sons to remain in the old house with parents, are also noted by Campbell (1964: 81); Du Boulay (1974: 19); and Kligman (1988: 39) among other ethnographies of European societies. 20. The argument that marriage is the critical moment of shift in family and kinship is especially well noted among the ‘alliance’ theorists (see Lévi-Strauss [1949] 1969). In the case of Mediterranean and South European societies, many scholars note the weakening of solidarity among siblings after their marriage. See, for example, Campbell (1964: 54); Loizos (1975a: 67–77); Gilmore (1987b: 43); and Pitt-Rivers ([1956] 1961: 104). Further, Davis argues that fraternal joint households are a ‘latent principle’, a cultural ideal that is rarely actualised or is of a temporary nature when it does occur (1977: 174–75). He adds further that ‘all households divide sooner or later’ and, ‘the general rule is that marriage creates a new household’ (1977: 176–77). The situation amongst Macedonians is not, however, as clear. 21. See Rheubottom (1980: 222); Mosely ([1976b] (1943): 34) on accommodation for married sons within the same house or in the same yard. 22. Although not specifically focused on kinship, Cole’s critique of structural-functionalist anthropology was that it did not consider ‘individuals as agents in the making of their own social world but rather on institutions from which individuals derived rights and obligations’ (1977: 357). In many ways, critiques of past kinship theorising as being overly concerned with systems or structures are similar in that they often did not consider individuals as agents. 23. Critiques of kinship theorising are extensive; most influential perhaps are Schneider (1984) and Kuper (1980, 1982). Feminist anthropologists have also extensively critiqued the lack of attention to gender. Brettell argues for the ‘inherent genderedness of kinship’ (1991b: 340). See also, Herzfeld for a critique of ‘statism’ in anthropology (1987: 20–25). 24. In contrast to the ‘retreat’ of political anthropology as of the 1980s (see Thomassen 2008), in other disciplines, such as political science, terms such as ‘tribe’ and ‘clan’ have become increasingly prominent in relation to state failure and ongoing conflict in some ‘non-Western’ societies. Some interesting works include Collins (2002) who conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Central Asia; Schatz (2004) on Kazakhstan; Ronfeldt (2005) on ‘tribal’ politics and ‘segmental warfare’ in Afghanistan. Although they draw on anthropological concepts (Marsden 2012), political science contributions are differently directed. Nonetheless, there is a need for similar scrutiny as in

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anthropology for what such terms mean, as it can often present as reminiscent of evolutionist schema relating to forms of social organisation and progress in which state failure or authoritarianism in non-Western contexts stands in opposition, or in sharp contrast, to Western, modern statecraft. There is a continuing need, in other words, to scrutinise the underlying assumptions and distinctions between ‘modern’ and ‘non-modern’ subjectivities.

CHAPTE R 3

MARRIAGE AND THE ‘ORDER’ OF LIFE



M

arriage is the exemplar of productivity, of personal and collective achievement and progress within the ‘order’ of life. Where poverty, economic depravity or political chaos might rein in society, marriage is the essence of enduring hope, a supposed ‘natural’ position available to each and every individual irrespective of status, competencies or attributes. Although, for some, it might require assistance through a strojnik (go-between), or exertion of a little familial pressure to become resolved (rešen), ‘someone’ could always be found. For someone not to find a woman is inconceivable. Marriage is a source of rejuvenation and a righting of the wrongs of both an individual and their familija that was, until the 1990s, available to all, irrespective of their circumstances in life. With the rising number of aging bachelors, however, the familija is suspended in a non-meaning state of life. The non-meaning state of life is not simply that ‘time is passing’ (‘Vremeto si vrvi’), or even that it has passed (‘Vremeto si pomina’). Rather, time is suspended and with this comes a sense of resignation and an inability to live in the present or to believe in the future. The issue of time is fundamental to the construct of the meaning of marriage.

TIME ANGST The social nature of ‘time’ is of course common to all societies. EvansPritchard’s classic account of the Nuer, for instance, drew attention to the social or structural nature of time and space. He wrote of the Nuer, ‘time is

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to them a relation between activities’ (1940: 100) and, in particular, it refers to a ‘distance between events’, which ‘is entirely relative to the social structure’, such as initiation periods of age-sets or lineage (kinship) distance between groups of persons (ibid: 105–106). For the Nuer, time situates people and provides perspective on the relations between them but, according to Evans-Pritchard, time itself is not conceptualised as an actual or abstract entity by which activities can be measured (1940: 103). Likewise, Ardener describes a similar exposition of ‘Gaelic’ time being measured according to social events such as religious feasts (1989: 136). He later states that ‘determinants (of time) lay in “ecological” and “social factors” which are local or specific’ and, therefore, there is a lack of fit in the attempts to impose ‘standard’ time reckoning to Gaelic time (ibid: 139, original emphasis). Whether or not time is perceived in abstract terms for these societies, in the case of Macedonians it is usually perceived as a matter of an idealisation of the ‘right time’ to do things because it is assumed that everybody else also executes or plans their events in the same way. Relativity to the collective is all encompassing, and the timing of events is justified in such phrases as ‘All others do it then’. The safest social and moral course of action is to copy how others do things: ‘Everyone does it like that’ or ‘As others, we also’. In short, timing around others is everything. So too, the pressure to marry is simultaneously a need to accord with social and ‘natural’ time and, for men in particular, to fulfil the imperative of perpetuating the agnatic house. The most readily given response to the question ‘Why do you want your son to marry?’ is ‘Vreme mu je da se ženi’ (‘It is his time to marry’). This ‘time’ is taken for granted, as ‘Dur da se mladi’ (‘While they are young’). The fatalism inherent in folk discourses of time makes it objectionable to listen to stari bekjari or the moderni hyperbolise that they will marry or have children when it is their time to do so, and not when others tell them to. Nonetheless, stari bekjari, as with their society, draw on notions of time and order. The difference, however, is that individuals are engaged in a pursuit to rein in modernity and the rapid pace of societal change by mastering time, where their families might have time angst or a consciousness of time as a depleting resource that is running out. Reining in modernity, or fast-moving time that is not marked by individual significance, is particularly problematic if you lack the power to affect self and others. In the ‘race against time’ (i.e. death), capturing a few moments of significance to claim for one’s self is a continually changing prospect. In the imaginary of finding the ‘eternal’ (timeless) love match, individuals clash with the construct of marriage as a socially defined stage/time of being human. Even in the political domain, the struggle to constitute time as irrelevant, to capture an eternal time free of oppression, free of meaninglessness, to avoid wasted and finite time, is the stuff of nationalist ideologies. In individual and col-

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lective lives, as well as how society as a whole is conceptualised, existential angst is simply anxiety over time passing. For the Macedonians, ‘growing up’ is a sign that it is time for marriage. They often praise youth by saying, ‘You’ve grown, mašala.1 You’ve become ready for marriage’. As an important step in the natural sequence of life, marriage occurs ‘in order’ or, ‘po red’; you are born, christened, grow up, get married and, once married, have children, and they will one day make you a grandparent.2 The Makedonci presume that people cannot be ‘human’ if they miss out on these stages of social and natural development. The naturalness of marriage is given in the fact that ‘You are a person’ and, thus, ‘You have to get married’. By contrast, lagging behind the collectivity is ‘Like not being a person at all’. Just as one is only late for a dinner appointment if everybody else has already arrived and is eating, following the red of life is a matter of whether you are in accord or out of step with others, not with a specified or deliberately allocated time. The right ‘time’ to marry is considered to be in the prime of ‘youth’ (mladi) because ‘All that is young is beautiful’. Concomitantly, anything described as ‘old’ is presumed to lack physical appeal. The ‘prime’ of youth is generally between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five years, calculated as such because ‘Everyone gets married around that time’. The perceived cut-off time by which marriage should occur is used to pressure individuals by implying that there will be a greater degree of difficulty in finding brides afterward: ‘After the age of 25, not even God could find them a wife’.3 Moreover, the cut-off age is used as the basis for comparison of individuals relative to the collective, labelling them ‘old’ simply because they have not achieved what others have already done. The perception that, as modern individuals, stari bekjari can suspend, capture or render time irrelevant is particularly problematic when they must exist within a social world where they lack power to affect their positionality simply because they are not married. That individuals can manipulate time, delay when they do or not do something, is inconceivably naive according to older generations who, with wisdom afforded through the ‘borba za život’ (struggle for life), know that life, and life events, are linear. Like a river running downstream, so too, they say, ‘Životta si teči’ (‘Life runs’). Paradoxically, life as a race against infinite time (death) is also a mode of mastering time for the collective, but it is achieved through marriage and having children. Mothers would often shout out to their defiant aging sons, ‘But if you have no family of your own, who will mourn you?’ Time as social or relational clashes with time as a depleting life source. What you remember as you die, who surrounds you at death, and ‘who will mourn you’ is a conundrum between eternal movement and lack of movement when you have not ‘formed a family’ that is undoubtedly disconcerting. Most mothers of stari bekjari invariably frame their arguments for the imperative to marry

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in this manner. The need to feel you have ‘made your mark’ on the world as an individual, and ensured that you will be worshipped as an ancestor upon death, that someone will attend your grave on Duovden (Day of the Dead) or at other rituals, is primarily viewed from a familial and socially constituted positionality. To be present in the memory of the living after your death, in other words, is crucial. Priests presiding at funeral rites chant ‘from dust to dust’ to indicate the separation of the body from the soul, with the former simply ‘returning’ to the ground from whence it came. Marking one’s presence, one’s existence in life as in death, through marriage and progeny is still a small comfort for the moderni. Following the ‘natural’ course of life is critical for survival through the perpetuation and reproduction of the familija and, thus, the imperative is to do things when it is time to do so. Regulating passing time is a matter of capturing the few moments allowed for human achievement; ‘forming’ a family (’rastvori familija’) and the milestones associated with it are preeminent in this. For stari bekjari, to say that they have ‘done’ things with their lives, that they have achieved some outstanding feats as individuals, is incompatible with marriage as a socially-defined stage/time of being human and, thus, is dismissive of personal desires, such as the prolonged pursuit of love. Finding a love match is the indulgence of the young and stari bekjari are assumed to be past that stage. If they could not find a love match whilst they were young, it is assumed they should find someone, anyone, in order not to miss out on marriage and having a family. Nonetheless, stari bekjari seek to master time, to make it beholden to their will and decisions, indeed, to constitute time as irrelevant. In the eyes of others, however, they are simply wasting time.

BEING OLD The concept of ‘old’ is relative to life events. In one sense, it refers to people’s lack of succession to an expected life stage relative to others. In another sense, people’s success in achieving certain life stages, such as marriage or the birth of children, automatically carries with it the label of ‘old’. Kligman similarly notes for Romania that ‘marriage begins the process of aging’ (1988: 76). The notion of ‘adulthood’ is also synonymous with marriage or, as one mother said to her daughter upon the birth of her first child, ‘You are not a girl [child] any more’, even though the new mother was only eighteen years of age. By the time of raising children, people often claim ‘Ostarev’ (‘I have aged’). Further, the kin term ‘grandmother’ (baba) brands a woman automatically stara, irrespective of her real age. A woman who had spent most of her adult life in Western Europe emphatically rejected the assumption that the baby of her brother’s daughter should call her baba

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(grandmother).4 The reply came swiftly by the woman’s brother who became agitated and insisted that the six-week-old was her fnuka (niece) and, thus, she, as his sister, was automatically a baba!5 His sister slumped her shoulders and said ‘But they [people] will think I am old’. She was fighting a losing battle because wherever she went, she was heartily congratulated for becoming a baba. For Makedonci, you are as old as you are perceived to be, being stara relates to a social category more so than a physiological state and thus there is no acceptable or equivalent notion to ‘You are only as young as you feel’. Most Makedonci are, however, generally nonchalant about accepting aging, and some even welcome it. Being old usually implies a degree of status and respect and a degree of freedom from responsibility within the household, sometimes even from good social manners! For one twenty-six-year old unmarried woman, however, it was difficult to retain a nonchalant manner. She claimed she had ‘become old’ (‘Ostarev’) and my platitude, ‘You still have plenty of time to find someone’, was met with a typical outcry: ‘Maybe, maybe not. But, your (children) have grown. I still don’t have any. And, in a little while, it won’t be possible. I’m not going to give birth in old age’. The greater tragedy for this woman was that her social time for having children was passing more than biological capacity. To give birth ‘in old age’ was perceived as a matter of stram and as the equivalent to forwardness or standing apart from the crowd. By contrast, unmarried men are not obsessed with social or biological impediments to procreation. The issue for men is that being unmarried is a barrier to their full participation in society because they are locked into a social category akin to ‘children’, or those without full responsibility. An unmarried forty-year-old man is, thus, in an awkward position of being neither ‘child’ nor ‘man’ and is, instead, contemptuously referred to as a star bekjar. The socialising between stari bekjari and much younger unmarried women is especially problematic. Marriage should, in the ideal, be between individuals who start on the journey of life together, ‘as children’. The reverberations of the stigma attached to couples with a large age gap continue to be of particular concern to unmarried women, most of whom avoid interaction with stari bekjari. The seven unmarried women in a village who were in the eighteen to twenty-five year age group, for example, were not overly concerned about when they would marry, but they considered themselves constrained in their participation in the usual activities of the mladi (i.e. unmarried individuals) because there were so many stari bekjari. The younger unmarried women often claimed that there were ‘no men in the village’, saying ‘Half are dumb, and the others are old’. For women of twenty years of age, for instance, men of thirty years or more are ‘old’ and of different age-sets. As one of two women (sixteen and eighteen years of age re-

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spectively) elaborated: ‘Well, look at “X” [a forty-two-year old man who had just become ‘gotten’ to a woman from outside the village]. How could I have gone out with him? He used to “mix” with my father. And, I’m supposed to bring him home. . . It isn’t right’. The other interjected, ‘It is inconceivable’ because ‘It’s the same as going out with your own father!’ For women, to mix with men who are of the same generation or esnaf as their father’s, or to consider marrying such men, is inconceivable because it is equivalent to having shared sexual knowledge with their father and, thus, feels incestuous. Thus, as the eighteen-year-old added, ‘To bring him home, your father would be embarrassed, not only yourself ’. Interestingly, the stari bekjari who marry much younger women find them outside their own village, where there is little likelihood of the men having had contact with their wife’s father or other of her male relatives within a gathering of bachelors. Irrespective, it feels unnatural to mix with a star pes (old dog) that jumps the queue or order in life and seduces a fresh youth who has yet to experience life!

THE ‘ORDER’ OF LIFE Timing of events is relative to order, or red. The multiple meanings attached to red and their reflection of the importance attached to the accordance between social and natural time is only briefly discussed in ethnographies of Macedonia. Balikci makes mention of red in describing the authority structure within large Macedonian households (or the zadruga family system), about which he says: ‘The large household functioned as an economic organisation, largely self-sufficient and exploiting a common establishment under the leadership of a leader and his wife in accordance with precise rules (the rules are categorised as red, meaning order)’ (1965: 1458, original emphasis). Balikci’s predominant interest was in describing the vanishing form of the large household and, presumably, his attention to red was related, not only to the past, but also to the form of kinship and the way of doing things in ‘order of seniority’. This is merely one aspect, however, of the meaning and usage of red. Red is associated with both an accord with ‘time’ (vreme) and the sequence of events in which certain life events are viewed as part of the ‘order’ or ‘turn’ available to every human being. The Macedonian dictionary, for example, defines red as ‘order’, ‘row’, ‘turn’, ‘custom’, ‘line’ and ‘queue’ (Crvenkovski and Gruik 1993: 905). Further, as an adjective (reden), it clearly points to a cognitive or perceptual connection to norms and customs, ‘as it should be’ and ‘as it is arranged, properly’ (ibid). That is, red is related to customs or norms, which are assumed as proper and executed in (lineal) order.

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Executing activities and rituals in a specified and socially acceptable manner to fulfil kin and other obligations is crucial. After a zemvanje (‘getting of the bride ceremony’), for example, a few close relatives stayed behind to assist with the clean-up, and whilst doing so began to evaluate the event. The mistress of the house, the groom’s mother, interrupted by saying, ‘However it was, at least we have completed our turn’ (‘Bilo kako bilo, borem redot si go pominavne’). The household had met their obligations and their longawaited turn had arrived. Moreover, they had performed their red, hopefully in a competent and socially acceptable manner so that custom was satisfied and there would be no negative social repercussions for the household, such as rumours of not paying homage to senior kin, or a lack of hospitality. In this instance, red is equivalent to ‘duty’, as in ‘I have done my duty’. The manner in which people execute red, or satisfy custom, is by following others and not deviating from the patterns and standards set by the collectivity. In every sense, therefore, people’s behaviour pivots around that of others. The cultural aversion to standing apart from others because it may bring undue attention is simply described as stram, as if someone were deliberately seeking praise rather than recognition that it was their ‘turn’ in the order of things. Indeed, the reward is in the turn itself, rather than praise for innovation that may be viewed as ‘showing off ’. Even if an individual’s unique ideas are taken on board on occasion, there is no reward for individualism and they are unlikely to receive kudos for originality or authorship. Once out there, ideas are for copying and copying has no negative social or individual connotation. Ritualised individualism is enabled, however, through a moral right attached to one’s turn as a ‘given’, or as the older villagers say, ‘that’s [how] it’s written’. Every individual and household has their points in time and place that are socially recognised and morally supported as part of the natural cycle of life; recognised as being their turn in the spotlight under which there is no social censure for standing apart because it is their ‘15 minutes of fame’, so to speak! Further, the marriage of siblings is also expected to occur ‘in order’ (po red). In this case, the term has the specific meaning of ‘order of seniority’, from oldest to youngest and, importantly, irrespective of gender. A patriaunt, for instance, chastised an unmarried nephew (father’s brother’s son) by accusing him of ‘blocking’ his younger brother from becoming married. The older nephew gallantly claimed that if his brother wished to marry, he had his blessing and permission, saying, ‘I won’t get upset. If he wants to, he can get married. I am not stopping him’. The aunt was not convinced, however, and replied, ‘Oh, and after you will not even get married. Do you want to be seen as even old?’ A disturbance in the order of sibling marriage is presumed to create irretrievable damage to relationships. In the evening of one zemvanje (getting of

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a bride ceremony), for example, most guests paid close attention to how the older unmarried brother of the groom behaved. One woman voiced what everyone at the ceremony seemed concerned with, asking of a fellow guest, ‘Isn’t the older brother upset with him?’ It was automatically assumed that the bypassed brother would experience lingering resentment. Although an older sibling is required to give his/her permission before a younger one can marry ahead of him or her according to red etiquette, in reality they are expected to fear being bypassed for marriage and made less appealing because they were not only ‘older’, but somehow out of turn with others. Indeed, there is often an even stricter adherence to the red of sisters. The title stara čupa (old maid) generally carries with it greater social stigma and the diminution of opportunities for marriage than the equivalent designation would for a man. An older sister would therefore be more reluctant to have her younger brother or sister marry ahead of her. As one informant said, however, ‘In this time/age they don’t even ask you’. Gallantly, she added that if her younger sister found someone who wanted to marry her, then she herself would give her permission, ‘Anyway, if she finds someone who asks her, let her marry. What, both of us not married, is that better?’ Even the noblest older siblings, however, would hope to find a partner first because the label of ‘old’ (stara or star, f./m. respectively) is not open to negotiation by individuals. When an older sister has been bypassed for marriage and is described as po stara, the reference to her age is secondary to the implied meaning of having been overlooked due to some innate flaw in character: ‘She is older, but, she is not married’. To avoid being cheated out of their full participation in each major sequence in life, like searches for like, and things are not only done ‘in order’ but also within categories: bachelors search for never-married women, not widows or divorcees. Nor does an ‘old dog’ (a star pes) act like a ‘youth’, stealing the latter’s spotlight. You have but one chance or ‘turn’ at each life event, and when you have passed it, you should allow the next in line to proceed, there can be no jumping the queue or sequence mixing. As they say, for instance, ‘A svadba [wedding] is made only once’, and when the period in which the appropriate life event runs out, it can never be retrieved. Postdivorce marriages are rarely described as a svadba-worthy event.

‘A SVADBA IS BUT ONCE’: MARRIAGE AND IRRETRIEVABLE TIME As Macedonians say, ‘A wedding is made once’ (‘Ednaš se prae svadba’) and is reserved only for those of the category of never-married (see Rheubottom 1971: 137). Typically, a wedding follows several months of cohabitation to

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allow the household to prepare for the event. A civil or church ceremony (venčanje) signifies the formal marriage. For the Macedonians, it is the svadba as a whole, however, and not the actual venčanje, which is critical. While the separation of the bride from her natal home is emphasised at the zemvanje and the svadba is a rite of incorporation for the woman into her husband’s household, these aspects are secondary to what the svadba signifies for the groom and his household. For the groom, the svadba is the pinnacle event of his life and highlights his now adult status and full recognition as a member of his agnatic group. The svadba is also the most significant event that mobilises the full agnatic kindred and social network of the groom’s household. As such, it serves as the primary point for returning invitations, as well as an opportunity for the display of the social (and material) wealth of the household. Although there are expenses for the bride’s family, the groom’s household assumes the greater share and receives the exclusive social prestige associated with a svadba. A svadba is one of the greatest expenses incurred by a household and generally the financing and organisation is the primary concern of the groom’s household. Throughout the day of the svadba meticulous care is taken in following red. Given the enormous importance attached to marriage, careful ritual attention is critical throughout the long period between the ‘getting of a bride’ (zemvanje) and the actual svadba. At a zemvanje ceremony, for example, there is a symbolic mimicking of the appropriation of the daughter, with the stealing of insignificant items from her natal house, such as a whisky glass or ashtray from the table at which the guests sit. Just before the departure from the bride’s natal house, a yard animal (usually a chicken) is also stolen to ‘fool’ evil spirits into assuming that was their main purpose in being there.6 On the day of the svadba, the vulnerability inherent in the transitional status of the couple and the groom’s household means that there is an even greater obsession with ritual detail and accordance with red. The morning of a svadba commences with rituals highlighting two integrally linked notions relating to the coming of age of the groom and the perpetuation of the house (i.e. fertility rites). The nevesta (bride) is insignificant in these proceedings and remains in seclusion until it is time to leave for the church. Meanwhile, the groom’s agnatic (and some maternal) kinfolk arrive with daroi (gifts) and will assist the household in their performance of certain rituals; the bride’s kin are typically absent. Macedonians believe that such liminal states encourage evil spirits and, therefore, award the greatest ritual attention to such significant events. Alongside gifts and ritual processes, every utterance and bodily gesture is carefully scrutinised. The day of the svadba begins with the baking of two special loaves by women of the patriline, excluding the groom’s mother. The loaves are symbolic of fertility. In particular, they reflect the perceived role

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of men in procreation, and the desire for the men to have their essence influence the production of male children. Rituals evoking procreative capacities, albeit expressed in different ways, are common to many societies; see, for instance, Rheubottom (1980: 244) for Skopska Crna Gora; or Delaney (1987: 38) for Turkey. Symbolic participation focuses on the participation of men. A young (unmarried) man ritualistically participates in the svadba preparations through the women in the baking of the pogača (a special kind of loaf of bread). The first pogača (which is also prepared for various slavas) is ‘broken’ by the priest during the church venčanje. Before this, the groom’s father carries the pogača above his head and leads a dance around the courtyard just before the wedding procession leaves for the church in a ritual referred to as ‘Taking out the pogača’ (‘pogačata ja vadat’). The onus was on the father’s head, so to speak, to produce a son and to ensure the perpetuation of his kukja. As he had evidently succeeded in this task, he absorbs the admiration of his close kinsmen and proudly leads the dance with the pogača. The second loaf, too, is symbolic of the fertility of the agnatic line. This loaf is referred to as the svaikja (literally, ‘female affine’), and will not be used until the dever dances with it after the venčanje when the main celebrations begin.7 In the making of the svaikja, an unmarried man is required to dip his finger in the dough with his right hand index finger (i.e. the finger upon which a wedding ring is usually placed). The naming of this loaf is interesting. Affines represent women with whom it is possible for a man to have ‘productive’ relations (i.e. sexual or marital), as implied in the wellworn phrase ‘svaikja se faikja’ (‘a female affine can be caught’). The central event is the ritual of the ‘shaving of the groom’, which heralds his coming of age and his acceptance of responsibility as a member of his own kukja and, indeed, his agnatic familija. The groom is symbolically shaved with a large axe, first by the two fictive agnates (numko and dever) and, then, by other men of his agnatic familija. It is emotionally intense for the groom and for members of his familija. As the shaving is completed there are many who cry with joy while the musicians perform ‘Dafino vino crveno’ (Crimson Red Wine). Upon the groom being ‘shaved’, everyone lines up to kiss him and place money on a towel spread across his lap. At one such ceremony, the groom’s patri-aunt began to cry despondently. When I asked her why, she replied, ‘My cousin [groom’s father] is alone’. Her cousin had not made amends with his delen (divided) brother who continued to query the fairness of the division of land and was, thus, absent at a time when his presence was critical. The groom’s father was symbolically ‘alone’ on a day when the full extent of his agnatic support was needed the most, despite the house bursting with gosti. As the new couple and the household are in the spotlight, it is also an occasion that can arouse the envy of individuals who employ magija (magic) or

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place a curse. Gifts are, thus, inspected carefully and anything that does not appear absolutely new is automatically thrown away for fear of it being contaminated with magija. Many stories abound concerning women of treachery and use of magija. One story often recounted is of a bride who suddenly became ill, unable to breathe. Her svekrva (husband’s mother) insisted on the removal of her wedding dress for closer inspection. Three drops of blood and a black thread were noted on the inside seam near her right underarm, the removal of which, along with a purifying chant familiar to older women, enabled the bride to breathe again. In the retelling of this incident, particular attention is often paid to the finding of the culprit. As the dress had been bought and the dressmaker was unfamiliar, the women telling the story concluded that the culprit had to be someone close to the groom’s household, someone who had access and did not appear ‘happy’ for the couple or the household, evidenced in her ‘look’ of envy on the day of the zemvanje. A svadba can also attract mischievous or malevolent spirits. Although bursting with pride and happiness, women are particularly careful not to arouse the attention of malevolent spirits that are assumed to be wandering around and looking to make mischief. Upon stepping inside the kukja after the completion of the church ceremony, for example, the bride and groom lead with their right foot and knock three times to herald their entry and banish evil spirits. The couple are then given an unrelated male baby to kiss to bring forth luck in producing male heirs. The potential success in the perpetuation of the house cannot, in other words, be taken for granted and even svadba brings about significant fear and anxiety of the potential for ‘ruin’ or disruption of the hosts. Rituals performed according to red are aimed at bringing luck as well as avoiding potential disruption to the proceedings on this auspicious occasion. Rheubottom notes that for the Skopska Crna Gora region, for example, ‘it is particularly important to the groom’s household that they have enough gifts for each category of guest’ (1980: 241). Everyone must be acknowledged no matter how small a part they played in the rituals and ceremonies, including the male baby used in the entrance ceremony who receives a pair of knitted woollen socks filled with sweets and coins. The only other significant event that requires greater care and diplomacy at the svadba is the order of dancing. A svadba is vesela, filled with music and dancing. It is also an opportunity to affirm what may be referred to as kin propinquity, or what Rheubottom calls ‘kinship distance’ (1980: 225). In the relationships between the guests and the hosts, kin propinquity is most notable during the dancing. Macedonians do not dance individually; instead one man leads an oro (open circle dance) as a representative of his house. If the man is considered bliski (a close relative) by the hosts, he will have musicians and a cheer squad from the hosts, mostly men, joining him on the dance floor. The cheering party do not join the oro but follow the leader

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of the dance, waving beads and hankies and, in the case of men, a bottle or glass of alcohol. Yet again, it is the dance leader’s kinship positionality and the perceived closeness with his hosts that generates such a display. In the spotlight, a leader is careful to avoid mannerisms that suggest the dance is about him as an individual and focuses on the display of his social wealth, i.e. his familija.8 Typically, after a few rounds of the dance floor, a leader brings forth another member of his household, usually an unmarried child or grandchild. He rewards the musicians with a payment and returns to the dance a little behind the new lead. Kin propinquity is critical in the order of dancers within a single oro as well as in the prepared list of those who are awarded or ‘given a dance’ by the groom’s household. The first dance, referred to as the numko or ‘leading out the bride’, is crucial. This oro symbolises the completion of the appropriation of the nevesta by the groom’s patriline, and this great honour is awarded to the inherited fictive kinsmen: the numko or kum (equivalent to both ‘Best Man’ and Godfather). Several dances following that of the kum pay homage to agnates, before the more senior affines receive a turn. Even within one dance, there is etiquette concerning where, and between which dancers, it is acceptable to join in, thus proclaiming the importance of your kin link to the host kukja. Only once the household’s main obligations of paying homage to agnates and other close kin are completed does the dancing order relax and whoever ‘pays’ leads (cf. Cowan 1990: 102). Even then, agnatic links are favoured. The dances stand out in people’s minds, particularly should one become ‘ruined’ or ‘incomplete’ (‘da mu go skini oroto’). To ruin a dance is to publicly declare the dance leader, and his household, as socially insignificant to the groom’s household. At one wedding, for instance, there was an incident involving a patrilateral cousin of the groom who felt that he had been publicly humiliated. Though an offspring of an offspring of delenici (divided) brothers, the man shared the same surname as his patrilateral cousin, lived in an adjacent block, and was a member of the same agnatic clan, the same familija. When it was his turn to lead a dance, the mother of the groom grabbed two ‘seven-year old’ girls from ‘her side’ (i.e. affines) and placed them in the dance line immediately after him. Since another purpose of the dance is to offer unmarried youths the opportunity to attract each other’s attention, it was particularly humiliating for the thirty-two-year old bachelor to be seen ‘playing’ with little girls. Further, since the girls belonged to affines, svatoj, and were not connected to him by blood (krvna vrska), the message conveyed to the other guests was that the groom’s family did not respect this agnate. The dancer’s mother was no less offended, having always described herself as supportive and loyal to the familija that included both households. On the other hand, the arrogance of the groom’s mother

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was not hard to understand since it was her comparatively ‘younger’ son’s wedding. Contempt for her son’s agnate could have been a form of payback for unresolved relations between her and the man or his household. Even if the groom and his agnate were personally close, on the day of the svadba the groom’s parents were in charge and he was powerless to affect their behaviour, especially his mother’s. Regardless, the disruption to the agnates dance was clearly a disruption to his place in the spotlight. The dancer had the right to his moment, which the mother of the groom should have acknowledged and refrained from using it as an opportunity for retaliation. Despite the stream of ceremonies to mark their newly married status, the zet (groom) and nevesta continue to be referred to, and often treated as, deca (children) or simply the ‘young ones’ (mladi). In the first year after the svadba, the couple are continuously paraded as well-dressed and wellbehaved children who modestly receive congratulations while the mother of the now-married man, in particular, settles various scores with women in the village who have not been as fortunate. They represent the ultimate triumph of her household over others, especially those whose sons remain aging bachelors. There is even a slava that has become co-opted primarily for the purposes of parading the new couple. During Pročka (Day of Pardon), new couples married in the period since the last annual slava are formally invited to visit by many village households as a form of congratulations.9 The tradition is also symbolic of good luck as a new couple represents the rejuvenation of a house. Often the mother of the groom is the timekeeper on such occasions, forcing the couple to get up from the table and visit the next place! The groom’s father does not make an appearance on such occasions. Moreover, at any annual village festivity, newly married couples are highlighted and ‘given’ a dance to lead.

MARRIAGE AS REJUVENATING THE ‘ORDER’ OF LIFE Reinforcing sociocentric norms by enabling moments of socially sanctioned individualism is fundamentally connected to the ‘order’ of life in which marriage is central to the construction of self as a social and familial subject. In a sociocentric society where there are few opportunities that enable socially sanctioned egocentrism, the trait is nowhere more apparent than in the intricate ceremonial and ritual attention in the two phases of marriage: the ‘getting of the bride’, referred to as zemvanje, and the subsequent svadba. The ‘getting’ of a bride is the prerogative of men. The ‘appropriation’ of a woman by a prospective groom and his close agnates is a fundamental life-changing event.10 As such, a man does not go alone like an unattended orphan to ‘get the bride’; he does so as a well-supported individual of social

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consequence.11 The ritual ‘bargaining’ for the bride and her belongings by the groom’s representative, the dever, is a prolonged event, during which a sum of money is paid to the woman’s family, albeit nominally.12 In contrast to societies where women are endowed, and with the possible exception of the dowry noted by Rheubottom (1980), the more common practice is the complete appropriation of women, which, in some cases, included the payment of a bride price or men paying a sum of money for the bride to her natal familija (Balikci 1965: 1458).13 In the village of Živojno, which forms part of the band of villages of Balikci’s Veliko Selo, an older informant confirmed this practice by reflecting on his own story, saying that ‘If you couldn’t pay a girl’s father, you didn’t marry’. Nonetheless, on the day following the zemvanje ceremony, there are many women who scurry to view the daroi (gifts) and to congratulate the new couple. Although gifts from the bride’s natal familija and what she brings as part of her trousseau are of interest, the focus is on evaluating the ‘worth’ of the gifts made to the nevesta by the groom’s household. The ‘value’ of these gifts signifies the level of support for the zemvanje and whether the groom’s parents approve of the nevesta, not that a suggestion of disapproval affects relations, but it does provide ready fodder for local gossip. Further, male peers often view in a derogative way men for whom a wife has been ‘found’, considering them as lacking in the strength and independent thought characteristic of a maš (man) and casting doubt on their masculinity. The implication is that because ‘They found him a wife’, a man is not sexually potent or experienced, and this is proof of his malleability by others.14 A more socially ridiculous situation is for a ‘social incompetent’ to actually reject a woman once she has been ‘found’ for him. For example, one mother, desperate to marry off her aged son, found an Albanian woman (albeit of an ethnically ‘Macedonian’ village just outside the border) only to have him reject her. An even more humiliating scenario then unfolded as his slightly younger brother jumped in and married the woman himself. If it wasn’t demeaning enough that a woman had to be found for him, the older brother, according to his peers, had the false arrogance to reject her. Further, he had symbolically ‘shared’ a woman with his brother; even though there had been no intimacy between the two, she had been thought of as his. As the men in the village pointed out, the hapless man remained single while his younger brother was married with children. Regardless, the new bride had ‘dragged in’ another and, in the end, there were two fewer aging bachelors in the village. The ‘false arrogance’ of the bachelor was based on his refusal to be categorised as a nesposoben (incompetent). The equivalence in qualities between a man and a woman used in the pairing of a couple by strojnici (go-betweens/matchmakers) is an artificial attempt to recreate the ideal of the natural emotional and physical con-

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nections in an ordinary match. A couple that have been helped to marry are not considered naturally complementary. The couple are not viewed as lovebirds or ‘children’ in the throes of passion, but sedate and aging failures that have succumbed to family pressure and agreed to marry in order to enter the next social stage of life. Consenting to marry with the aid of strojnici suggests that the man and the woman have overridden personal desires and tastes and, indeed, accepted the assessments of others concerning their own individual worth. The need for individuals to accept mechanical matching was emphasised by one guest at a zemvanje: ‘Look, he (K) has a fault; he can’t search for a model or a beauty. Do you know (X)? Her brother limps and his wife used to call him kucalko [one who limps]! It is not good like that. He (K) should search for someone “according to him” [“sprema nego”].’ The man referred to as ‘K’ had a physical handicap. Further, he was past the age of thirty and, therefore, an old bachelor (star bekjar). In searching for a prospective bride, K’s handicap and age were clearly stated so that there could be no charge of trickery later by the bride’s familija. Initially, K hesitated at the choice of woman found for him because she too had a mana (flaw). His familija, however, pointed to his own handicap and in the end he conceded. The zemvanje was kept very low key by the household; most were unaware of the upcoming nuptials until the groom himself announced it to fellow drinkers in one of the village cafés. The match was automatically assumed to be undesirable and to hold an element of ‘shame’ for the groom and his familija because the zemvanje was not announced more openly, only by the groom on the day of the event. The procession to the bride’s natal house was considered ‘stingy’ as only the immediate household of K’s father’s brother (to which K’s father also belonged) were involved. Coupled with the secrecy, this ‘stingy’ display on the part of his agnates became a point of dispute and resentment for K’s maternal kinfolk who were also from the village. The match seemed wrong to K’s maternal kinsmen and, at the main celebrations that evening, the groom seemed to mirror that sentiment as he sat quietly, shy of proceedings. By contrast, the bride was, according to some of the stari bekjari who were guests, ‘brash’, ‘loud’ and continuously out of her seat, moving confidently around, i.e. the opposite in demeanour from the ideal shy and modest bride. Many of K’s agnates were unimpressed with her lack of decorum, except the members of his father’s brother’s house who had instigated the marriage by finding the woman. The members of the family could not appear to regret their decision for fear of being accused later of doing ‘wrong’ by him. Nonetheless, one patrilateral third cousin (i.e. an agnate of the groom who ‘belonged’ to the same familija), described the bride in the following way: ‘You should have seen her, gives commands, talks in that X-dialect, as if she had been there for 20 years. Okay, let her feel lucky, be happy! But, she just kept

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talking and talking. And he just stares aimlessly, lost in his own thoughts’. K’s maternal kinfolk were particularly upset because his parents were not present and may not have agreed to the match. A maternal aunt asked despondently, ‘Why did they hurry him? They have to agree (balance), she is not his last chance’. In another case, the prerequisite ‘balance’ was achieved. A married brother assumed the role of strojnik for a twice-married younger brother who came from Western Europe in search of a wife. Eventually, a bride was found for him from the village of his birth. The groom’s kinfolk, particularly his mother’s sisters, however, were not satisfied with the match because the bride was renowned locally for promiscuity. Nevertheless, the older brother of the groom-to-be defended the arrangement, pointing to the balance that had been achieved between the twice-married man and the never married woman. The older brother further pointed out that a divorced man was more likely to ‘get a woman’ with a child, and yet he had found one who was unmarried.15 The attempts by many mothers of stari bekjari to either act as strojnici themselves or draw on the assistance of their extended social network are of great annoyance to men precisely because of cases such as K’s above. Most men expressed disgust at the way their mothers, and other kinfolk, would try to convince them of a potential bride by listing her qualities as well as drawing attention to their own, both positive and negative. The objectification of their qualities often falls short of how they view themselves. A star bekjar may revolt against what his family perceives to be his qualities, however, his own idea of his ‘worth’ is generally out of accord with the views of the rest of the community, including his familija. Irrespective of whether a man receives kin assistance in marrying or not, the fact is that for the rest of the society a married man is never the ‘social inferior’ of an unmarried star bekjar. A star bekjar is called upon to compromise, to accept that he cannot be too ‘choosy’ about the qualities of a woman. A mother lashed out in frustration at her unmarried son, for example, after she had been offended by a drunk man who taunted her by claiming that, while he was ‘doing his job’, her house was empty (of grandchildren). The son became furious with his mother, rhetorically shouting the question, ‘How can you compare me with that “dumbo”?’ Of course, the mother was well aware that, in the eyes of the community, there was no comparison. The drunkard was poor and of lowly status, a man whose wife also happened to be ‘the ugliest woman to ever come to the village’, but he was, nevertheless, a married man. Her own son, by comparison, was of equivalent age, far more attractive, educated and of a ‘good family’, but remained unmarried. What the mother was trying to convey unsuccessfully to her son was that it was necessary for him to be rešen (resolved [to marry]). With this resolve,

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and with her and their family’s assistance, it would be possible for him to find a bride, in the same manner as the so-called ‘dumbo’. Regardless, the significance of a man bringing a woman to his house before marriage is such that, even today, it can easily be misinterpreted as a zemvanje, if not by his parents then by ‘nosey’ neighbours who see her enter. Although both male and female friends may visit a man’s house as a group, for example, an individual woman coming to her boyfriend’s house is symbolic of a declaration of intent of marriage. One man recounted the embarrassing story of bringing his city girlfriend to his house before an outing only to have his mother fuss over the girl, stating emphatically, ‘I am not letting her go [home]’. Indeed, the strategy of mothers to insist on ‘keeping’ a woman if she visits a man’s house is common. For example, a man tried to sneak his girlfriend into his bedroom because it was too late to return her home after the village slava. His mother, despondent that her star bekjar son would never marry, forced his hand by insisting, ‘I’m not letting her go home’. In another case, an aunt confronted her brother’s daughter for not marrying her boyfriend of seven years, offering her the advice, ‘When you go to his house tonight. That’s it. Stay there. Say you are not going home’. To which the despondent niece replied, ‘It is not up to me’. Such strategies of a mother or an aunt reflect an awareness of the fundamental meaning attached to zemvanje as co-habitation at the man’s house. Where a man may be reluctant to ‘get’ a woman, others are apt to force appropriation. Until recently, a significant complement to the system of familial or individual consent was the practice of a man forcibly imposing co-habitation by getting a woman as a begalka (runaway bride).16 Sometimes, it is merely a symbolic abduction as a means of ‘forcing’ the parents of either the bride or the groom to accept the (love) match. In a typical scenario, the groom’s household is aware of the intent of their son, and it is the bride’s parents who are forced to accept the situation. In the case of one begalka, however, it was clearly a forced rather than symbolic abduction. This woman, the ‘most beautiful woman to enter the village’, was sixteen years old and her husband, a star bekjar, was thirty years of age. His older, unmarried sister proudly recounted the story of her and her mother refusing to let the ‘bride’ go after he forcibly put her in a car and took her to his house and where she remained locked in the bedroom overnight. The ‘bride’ and her family were forced to accept the situation, given that in the 1970s the stigma attached to a woman who had ‘slept’ at a man’s house reflected her loss of virtue and, thus, affected her chances for marriage to another man. Nowadays, sexual intimacy and the associated skewering of gendered sexual mores have changed. Yet, the prerogative of men to initiate a zemvanje remains. Moreover, a svadba is a once in a lifetime event and the label of a žena irrevocable. In one case, a new bride from a distant village was wit-

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nessed having an argument with the wife of the best friend of the groom at the wedding. Although the best friend’s wife had remained silent throughout the zemvanje, the bride showed disrespect to her at the wedding and thus the former felt compelled to publicly denounce the latter’s right to the claim of a nevesta, insisting before all that she had danced at her previous svadba. Although the new marriage did not break down, the friendship between the two men was severed. The lingering reminder of the apparent lack of virtuosity of the nevesta was publicly humiliating to the groom and his family. To the regret of mothers, aging bachelor sons who resist assistance or insist that it is their prerogative as men to choose a woman suffer the consequences of missing out on the vital ‘turn’ of life. As Rheubottom also noted, in the perception of the universality of marriage, only the insane or disabled are exempt from blame if they do not wed, their lives described as ‘of pity’ (za greota) or ‘luckless’ (nestrekjni) because of the hand dealt by nature (1971: 134). All others should marry. For most people it is inconceivable that one could ‘choose’ to remain unmarried, a ‘dry tree’ (suvo drvo). Not even the scarcity of women in the village is defence against the stigma of an unmarried status for the families of older bachelors. If there are not enough women in the village, families expect men to search further afield, or to let them do so on their behalf. The men have to ‘be determined’ (‘Treba da se rešeni’) and only then do their families believe women can be ‘found’, with their assistance of course. Conceding to marry is indeed a bitter pill to swallow for a ‘modern’ man who is resolved to remain unmarried until he finds the ‘right one’. Social pressure to marry, and condemnation for not being resolved to do so, is incessant. Meanwhile, the ‘unfortunate’ mothers of stari bekjari are compelled to endure feelings of envy and resentment at being ‘forced’ to attend the zemvanje of other, more successful, households. On these occasions, searching for potential weaknesses in opponents is all that is available to mothers to ameliorate the inevitable sense of loss in the ongoing quest for status equivalence. The women often evaluate the performance of rituals and other processions, including gifts made by the groom’s household to the new bride, and any much sought-after instances of poor execution of red or stingy hospitality.

INCOMING ‘PLAIN’ WOMEN AND THE DOWNFALL OF VILLAGE PRIDE The changing nature of marriage has left but a mere sentiment of shared community and affinity among many village communities. Although it invigorates precariously held together households facing depopulation, marriage with perceived outsider women also brings challenges to familiar local cus-

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tom and practices. The increasing number of brides from outside neighbourhood bands of villages contributes greatly to the changing nature of relations and identities of communities. Extended kin and social networks generated through marriage are becoming delocalised. Contact or a globalisation of sorts between previously unknown or cut-off regions has compelled a weakening of kinship ties between villages. In many other villages similar patterns of displacement and reconfiguring relations are notable with regard to in-coming women. With fewer local marriages within bands of villages, relations between people are no longer framed with the intensity of communitas or the deep sentiments and mutual obligations involved in kinship links. Concurrently, there is an increased personalisation of networks that have expanded to a greater extent beyond any particular village or village bands. To give an example, prior to the 1960s Caparsko Pole villages formed a well-defined endogamous band or group of villages with relatively clear forms of exchange, quite in keeping with features elsewhere in Macedonia.17 In previous generations most brides coming into Capari were from the neighbourhood band of villages but now local networks based on matrilateral kin are either aging or have disappeared. In a sample of marriages I gathered in Capari that took place prior to the 1960s, sixty-three per cent of brides were from the village itself, and Caparsko Pole provided twenty-seven per cent of all others. Endogamy was of a specific type, a relation of interdependence between Capari and the other neighbourhood villages. As a relatively high-status village, Capari took pride in being a bride-taker. Complementarily, Capari women marrying men from a city or a foreign country suggested an acceptable form of hypergamy. Since the 1960s, there has been a dramatic increase of brides entering the village from outside the region, both in proportional and absolute terms. There is also a greater variety of sources from which brides originate: seventeen sources, compared to seven in the 1950s. In both high- and low-status villages, there are a high proportion of aging bachelors and a concomitant absence of women. The difference, however, is that men from ‘upper’ villages continue to view themselves as wife-takers whose status is worthy of seeking out similarly high-status women. Marriage with a woman from either lower or higher status villages still reaffirms men as wife-takers. For many stari bekjari, however, there is no pride in marrying a woman you can ‘get at any time’ or, as it was crudely phrased by one, ‘a village pumpkin’. Marriage to village women is considered an admission of failure in asserting modernness, or an inherent weakness in men who are seen to have conceded to family pressure to be found a wife. Many stari bekjari from higher status villages felt they could ‘get’ village women at any time, that their desirability is self-explanatory. Reflecting on the bygone era of the 1970s and 1980s during which travel to other villages for dances was common, one bachelor said, ‘When we arrived at a [plains] village, the women

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“threw” themselves at us’. No village today holds dances for the socialisation of the mladi. Moreover, most men continue to avoid seeking out village women and, instead, focus on ‘convincing’ city girls. Contrary to the ideologue of the ‘type’ of woman that is worthy of them, increasingly marriages of stari bekjari are with much younger women of low status, such as woman from the ‘plains’ (poljanki) or from outside Macedonia, including the Albanki (i.e. ethnic Macedonians from Albanian). Returning to the case of Capari, in the decades preceding the 1970s, the average age of marriage was twenty-two years for men and nineteen years for women. Men who were not married by twenty-five years of age thus stood out and the community judged that ‘their time is passing’ or even that it has passed.18 Nonetheless, since the 1970s, there has been a sharp increase in the age of marriage for men and, more significantly, an increasing age gap between spouses. The rise in the age of men at marriage superficially reflects Hajnal’s (1965) ‘European marriage pattern’.19 Albeit changing, the marriage age of Macedonian women has not increased in proportion to that of men. In light of the relatively early age of marriage, it is understandable perhaps that a newly married couple is often referred to as decata (the children). As if they were siblings with no significant differences between them in status or power, the couple are thought to take the journey of life on a relatively equal footing. Differences between individuals in such things as age or physique are assumed to upset the desired balance between a husband and a wife. Of equal import, the implications of changing marriage patterns extend to changing patterns of sociality and interactions. The pre-1970s pattern coincides with the Macedonian ideal of marriage within ‘age-sets’, referred to as esnaf (the same term as used to denote a craft guild). Marriage within agesets is said to ensure equal time in the red or order of life. The phrase ‘of our esnaf ’ is often used retrospectively to refer to people who went through the stages of life together such as getting married and having children of relatively similar ages, irrespective of the real age of individuals. Many people consider the lack of ‘balance’ between status and age to have far reaching implications. Some claim that a significant age gap between a husband and wife leads to men being even more ‘traditional’, acting like jealous husbands to keep their much younger wives indoors. In the case of one couple with an eighteen-year age gap, many of the local women described the marriage as a tragedy for the much younger bride, an undue punishment for coming from a poor background and having to settle for a star bekjar as a husband. As some commented, ‘He will age ahead of her. She would want to “play”, whilst he wants to sleep!’ For a couple to be at such different stages of sexuality is potentially dangerous. If the husband is unable to ‘satisfy her’ sexually, one man said, she is going to be forced to ‘search’ elsewhere to satisfy her ‘natural need’.

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Still, in talking to many recently married couples, it was clear that the majority had became acquainted with their spouses via a recent village bride. In one case, a man going to Albania to find a woman led to three further Albanki settling as brides in the village, and one Bulgarian bride led to another. In another case, a woman from a relatively distant plains village married a man who had temporarily returned from Australia to find a wife. Before departing for Australia, a second marriage resulted when one of the cousins of the turist groom was introduced to a friend of the bride at their zemvanje ceremony. Two years later, the second bride, still living in the village, was seen visiting the houses of another two brides from her natal village. The incoming women have, in other words, changed the nature of relations and identities of village societies in two fundamental ways. The nature of exchange is limited and individualistic, especially the exchanges between the natal villages of the brides. Visiting maternal kin or affines usually requires travelling farther away than would once have been the case. The make-up of visitors to a village has also changed. The main body of guests (gosti) to a household is not familiar to the rest of the village community, especially during the annual village slava. These new guests are known by a very small number of village households, often by only one household. Similarly, when men travel to the natal villages of their wives or mothers, they are bound to the households of kin who are the only familiar people in otherwise ‘foreign’ places. Such interactions point to inter-village relations as narrow and individualistic. Aside from visits or cooperation with maternal kin or affines, contact is rare. Secondly, the attraction of other brides from the natal villages of recent brides means that similarly ranked women are increasing in proportion to form a sort of status sub-set within the village. The increasing numbers of ‘foreign’ brides across villages in Macedonia are often presumed to be of lower status, or escaping poverty or a lack of men willing to marry them at home. The Albanki from Macedonian ethnic communities surrounding the border villages in Albania and the women from neighbouring ex-socialist states such as Bulgaria are, likewise, judged. In the case of one star bekjar from a village in the Ohrid region, Internet dating provided an opportunity to fall in love with a woman from the Philippines, a divorcee with a small child. Being a modern man – engaged in online dating for more than a year – led to him taking on the arrangements for a visa and the payment for her flight to Macedonia. The couple subsequently married and had a child together. From one Filipina bride, there was soon a small enclave of marriages between Macedonian men and Filipina women. But, in all these changing marriage patterns, very few ‘modern’ (i.e. ‘city’) women are entering into marriages with village men to live locally. Marriage to village men is decidedly undesirable for city women, including ex-villagers.

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As will be discussed in the following chapters, however, the issue of individuals and the choices they make regarding marriage have fundamentally unsettled cultural norms and sentiments in many ways over the past few decades. How individuals are positioned within their familija, community and civic polity is frequently in tension with shifting ideals of selfhood and identity. The role that women have played in these shifts is fundamental and yet often invisible, at least as a social discourse. Marriage, in whatever form it takes, continues to be romanticised as eternal, as a singular goal of every individual seeking the ultimate expression of both familial and social achievement, and the realisation of personal ‘happiness’. But, for a ‘modern’ woman that necessitates withdrawal from village men.

NOTES 1. The term mašala is voiced to ensure that the recipient of praise does not catch attention from the evil eye, ‘Za da ne se počudi’. It stems from the phrase, ‘Insh Allah’ (with the will of God), and is reflective of the influence of the Ottoman period of occupation. 2. See Campbell on the ‘three stages of life’ among the Sarakatsani (1964: 278–91). 3. A similar idea seems to exist among the Basques. Ott states that ‘it is now generally felt that a man who has not married by the time he reaches his early thirties is unlikely to do so’ (1981: 50) unless he migrates. 4. The term ‘baba’ refers to all lineal and collateral female kin two generations above ego, but it also a form of addressing unrelated older woman who could be of the grandmother class. 5. This term is applied for DD, BDD, ZDD, DDD, BDDD etc., i.e. it refers to female kin two generational degrees or more below ego. 6. There was an incident concerning a slightly over enthusiastic kinsman, however, during which the basic manners associated with the ‘stealing’ of farmyard animals at a zemvanje was forgotten. A prized baby goat was stolen. The bride’s father pleaded that it should not be taken, which embarrassed the mother, who was then forced to insist that the svatoj (in-laws) take it! Equally embarrassing was the situation at the groom’s household when, after several weeks had passed, the goat was not prepared for a communal feast. The kinsmen who stole it were most upset because the uncle (groom’s father) had decided to add it to his pen! His actions denied the bride’s father the natural reward for showing clan solidarity at the zemvanje. 7. The dever dances the svaikja at the reception. The loaf is then torn apart by unmarried and eligible youths of both sexes. The role of the dever is also to display the karta (decorated bottle appropriated on the night of the zemvanje at the bride’s house, which the dever bargains for with money). Filled with rakija (Macedonian spirit), the karta is used to invite the main guests to the wedding and is, in essence, the household’s proof of the appropriation of a nevesta. Thus, it is displayed with much pride and spectacular decorations. 8. For contrasting perspectives on dance as an opportunity for performative expression of individuality or masculinity, see Campbell (1964: 302); Cowan (1990: 103– 104); and Herzfeld (1985: 146–47).

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9. The original slava is a time of healing rifts and asking for forgiveness, with juniors seeking tolerance and forgiveness from senior members of their familija. See Balikci on what he refers to as proštavačka as signifying the act of forgiving (1965: 1467). 10. The nevesta leaves her natal home with the groom and his entourage. Her complete appropriation becomes poignantly clear to her own kinfolk as they bid farewell to her with the song, ‘Čerešna se od koren korneše, kerka se od majka deleše’ (‘A cherry [tree] is being uprooted from its roots, a daughter from her mother separated’). 11. The groom’s parents and several of the patri-aunts remain at his house preparing for the celebration that is to follow when the couple return. Many neighbours (unrelated people) are also involved in setting up the house because most close kinfolk of the kukja are at the zemvanje ceremony at the bride’s natal home. See also Rheubottom (1980: 224–25). 12. The dever is normally a fictive kinsman who presides at wedding alongside the main agnatic fictive kinsman, the numko (also referred to as the kum). Unlike the numko, the dever does not preside at the christening of children as a godfather. The role of the dever is usually more pronounced at the zemvanje ceremony. The term dever is also used as a kin term to refer to the ‘husband’s brother’ (Hammel 1968: 33, 96). 13. Although a daughter is given a substantial dar (gift) at marriage, there is no dowry in the sense defined by Goody as a ‘transfer of familial property’ (1973: 17). The bridal gift from her natal family is ‘new’, albeit bought with family funds. Significantly, the bridal gift is used by the conjugal couple and is not transmitted to their offspring. Further, symbolic payment to the natal family is made (i.e. in the ‘bargaining’ ritual) for her belongings during the zemvanje ceremony rather than there being an expectation of payment from the bride’s natal family. In fact, the word for dowry, miraz, noted for the joint fraternal household or the zadruga (Hammel 1968), is not common and is considered to apply only to ‘foreign customs’. 14. Although much has been written on the ‘sexual potency’ of Mediterranean men (see, for example, Gilmore 1987b: 16), there does not appear to be a denigration of masculinity if a wife is ‘found’ for a man by his family. This is perhaps due to the fact that families are expected to seek out the best possible marriage partner for their children (Loizos 1975a: 65), especially in societies where marriages are ‘arranged’ by parents as a norm (Hirschon 1983: 303). 15. Children are identified with the house of their father so that no threat is perceived for a man’s kukja by the bringing in of ‘foreign children’, i.e. offspring who automatically belong to their own father’s kukja. One of the main reasons provided for the taboo of unions between a previously married woman with children and a bachelor, irrespective of his age or possible social or physical handicaps, is because the wife’s offspring would be assumed to pose a threat to the husband’s household. 16. Campbell (1964: 124) describes similar acts of abducting women for marriage among the Sarakatsani, as does Du Boulay, who refers to it as ‘stolen marriage’ (1974: 92). Similarly, in Skopska Crna Gora, Rheubottom reports that the groom and his kinsmen gain ‘enormous prestige’ in such circumstances (1980: 237). 17. Marriage within bands of villages is also noted by Balikci in Veliko Selo (1965: 1457). Likewise, Pina-Cabral argues that local endogamy in Southern Europe has not disappeared despite massive emigration, and, in many cases, it has remained strong, indeed, it has even ‘intensified’ (1992: 34). 18. This pre-1970s pattern is strikingly similar to the ‘non-European’ (i.e. Slavic) marriage pattern described by Hajnal (1965: 129).

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19. In the case of Macedonians, while the average age at marriage for men in the 1970s had increased to twenty-eight, that of women was relatively unchanged at twentyone. By the 1990s, the trend seemed to have stabilised and the average age of marriage for men was twenty-nine, while the average age for women changed only slightly to twenty-two. According to my own data, there was an average age gap of seven years between spouses in the 1990s (in contrast to three years in the pre1970s). The gap is mainly due to the age at marriage for men increasing, while that of women remained relatively unchanged. By contrast, Hajnal argues that the ‘uniqueness’ of the European pattern ‘lies primarily in the high age at marriage for women’ (1965: 134). The European marriage pattern as outlined by Hajnal (1965) has, in many respects, influenced the perception of the divide between the ‘European’ and the seemingly Slavic other of Europe. Nonetheless, this marriage pattern is evident (see, for instance, Burguiere 1976: 244).

CHAPTE R 4

THE INVISIBLE SIGNIFICANTS Women and the Androcentric Social Imaginary



T

he cultural typologies of Macedonian woman explored in this chapter point to their power or inherently non-passive nature. Nonetheless, folk discourse of womanhood is simply the opposite. In the familiar trope of many folk histories, women are presumed to react, while men act. Questioning the meaning of life and the pursuit of happiness is the privilege of men, the stuff of wilful, thoughtful actors. Selfhood and the construct of ‘woman’ (žena) defy cultural sense making. With few exceptions, women are missing from the story of modernity; they are presumed to be the products of its opportunities, rather than its instigators. Women are symbolically drawn as mothers, birthing the familija as well as the nation; they may even be the focus of folk legends of resistance but, nonetheless, they are viewed as bit players, as the supporting cast in a theatre of men. Women are not typically public in their existential questioning. More often than not, they simply vote with their feet. The pattern is nowhere more apparent than in relation to marriage and the rural exodus. Rural women in Macedonia have created the very ‘chaos’ that aging bachelors find themselves in. Yet, neither the men nor society as a whole took note of their exodus until a few decades later when their glaring absence became publicly visible. In the 1990s, there was a marked contrast between attitudes to stari bekjari and those of unmarried women. At the village level, unmarried women were neither generally accused nor harassed for being unmarried; they were simply pitied for not being ‘found’. Even in this, they were not afforded agency: to be blamed as the cause of the rural exodus or

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marriage deficit would suggest an acknowledgement of their role in what is happening. Women, by and large, work within the cultural subtext of a subordinate positionality without obvious or direct confrontation to the taken-for granted androcentric power. In Skopje, for example, four ‘cosmopolitan’ young people entered a restaurant. One of the men pronounced to his friends, ‘This is the one. The one that serves a Švedska masa [‘Swedish table’, i.e. smorgasbord]’. The group were seated while they waited for someone to take their order. After an uncomfortably long wait during which they noted that many patrons (a number of whom were wearing ‘UN’ logos and speaking in American English) had gone to the ‘table’ to serve themselves, the man who spoke as they entered the restaurant turned to a female companion, obviously his girlfriend, and instructed her to, ‘get up and get food’. The other man, likewise, instructed his female companion. The women resisted, one asking, ‘why can’t you? We’re embarrassed [ashamed] to’. Nonetheless, both men insisted, and the women shyly got up. While standing before the Švedska masa, one of the women asked loudly, ‘what should I get you?’ The man, embarrassed at the attention, dismissed her by saying, ‘Ay begaj, što bilo’ (‘Oh come on, whatever’). Again, for dessert, the women got up to ‘get whatever’ for the men; this time they walked with ease, no longer feeling ‘shame’ about standing out. It was, after all, their second time. Men often rely on women to take the lead in circumstances where there is a fear of social ridicule. Given the presumed social cost of not appearing in control, men often leave such risk taking to women. For a man to make himself vulnerable to ridicule is akin to emasculation. Women are presumed to be unconcerned about social ridicule because they are, after all, ‘just women’. It is socially acceptable for women to be humble, indecisive and, when things do not work out, to retreat into this stereotypical view, to hide behind their menfolk. They are, thus, able to navigate and acclimatise to change, to learn and to build on their mistakes. The presumed deference to men, including boyfriends who instruct them to ‘get up and get food’, may appear as if women are simply compliant and passive. Complicity in maintaining, at least on the surface, the androcentric imaginary makes sense where there is a real or perceived threat of some form of punishment for indiscretion or insult. Only in so far as women continue to uphold gendered codes of deference to men in public is there any avenue to influence in private; at least, that is what many older women advise younger ones. The objectification of men by women typically reflects a resignation with the power structures and a lack of ability to affect their behaviour, especially in public. A woman should, ideally, avoid embarrassing or belittling a man in public but, likewise, men, too, are expected to refrain from doing so. In public, at least, a man should appear to be in

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charge of his familija and wife and, thus, to be shown deference, respect and loyalty. Women often commiserate over what men might do in public, but the wise amongst them keep quiet until they are away from public scrutiny. Their commiserations tend to simply objectify men: ‘He’s a man, what can you do?’ Or, they reinforce and mimic gendered norms; many of the older women in particular say, ‘It’s rude [shameful] for a woman to interfere in men’s business’. Indeed, women valorise endurance: ‘you’re a woman, you endure’. Even in the face of incessant physical abuse by a husband, many women praise the endurance of the victim: ‘He nearly broke her with beatings, oh how much she endured’. Navigating a suffocating social context where women are often objectified merely as a žena has meant that much of the machinations, strategies and decision-making are conducted under a cloak of humility and complicity, or by upholding the female subordinate positionality. Complicity is living with the assumption that the order of hierarchy is a given; it is not about changing how men see women but, rather, knowing how to take advantage of what is available to influence. The complicity of women in perpetuating the androcentric imaginary, in other words, might be shallow but it is, nonetheless, a well-worn strategy. Indeed, complicity is a well-understood strategy of older women whose imaginary of life is framed around the inevitability of marriage that leaves them undisturbed to carry out goals of their own. They have honed the craft of being the ‘movers and shakers’ (Schubert 2005a), reorientating their husband’s relationships with their house ( familija). The stereotypical strategy of furthering the wellbeing and social positionality of the familija can be a tool to garner favours and influence the decisions of husbands and sons behind the scenes in the domestic sphere of relations. Daughters and sons often appeal to their mothers to interject in the dictates of a father in a similar manner. One son, frustrated by his father not listening to him, turned to his mother and said, ‘Talk to the “old man”’. Although the role of ‘mother’ is complex, in the Macedonian folk imaginary it epitomises the ideal of love and unquestioning loyalty (see Beissinger 1999: 72). The ideal of love is captured in folksongs. In the song, ‘Se Navali Šar Planina’, three shepherds plead to Šar Planina (mountain) as it threatens to topple, a wife mourns for six weeks (the minimum mandatory mourning period), a sister for one year, and a mother for eternity. Indeed, every folk song that seeks an emotive connection to the plight of the hero invariably ‘speaks’ to a mother: ‘Majko mila’ (‘dear mother’) or, simply, ‘stara Majko’ (‘old mother’). Women’s deployment of complicity and subterfuge within the paradigm of kinship, among their circle of intimates, and in the web of relations with other women, or as members of a village community, stands in stark contrast

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to the generation of ‘modern’ and ‘empowered’ younger women. Unmarried women in urban Macedonia engaged in ‘radical ways’ to transform their body imagery by rejecting the ‘unrefined “peasant” bodies of their mothers and grandmothers’ (Karakasidou 2002: 585). Ultimately, this rejection of their mothers’ ways makes it particularly difficult to play power games via the complicity route. Younger women do not see their mother’s endeavours as anything to be proud of as they are not seeking to be negotiators or diplomats. Predictably, open contestation of the ‘order’ of things by younger women is just as confronting to older women as it is to men. Faced with the transgressive nature of younger women, for instance, mothers of aging bachelors find it difficult to understand why many local women are not eager to marry. As one older woman said, ‘But don’t they want to get married, have a family?’ For older women, who were only able to achieve some measure of status via marriage and children, deploying strategies of complicity that accommodated men’s social ascendance allowed for some measure of personal comfort or prosperity. That young women would reject the opportunity to marry when it is being presented to them is perceived as inconceivable. The alternatives for status upgrade are all but unimaginable, such as becoming a successful professional or asserting choice. Women can easily be downgraded by pointing out that ‘She is not married, she is an old girl’. Marriage is fundamental to the construct of womanhood and having a ‘life’. The assumption that there is no alternative to marriage foregrounds a fatalistic view of women in which they are expected to accept the order of life as it is symbolically and socially constructed.

COMPLICITY, DUPLICITY AND THE STRATEGIES OF A ‘WIFE’ In anthropological accounts, some measure of authority is afforded to South Slav women in the positionalities they assume through marriage and in their roles as wife and/or mother.1 The symbolic invisibility in agnatic kinship reckoning (Denich 1974), and how this is presumed to also mirror the nature of social relations and identities, has also been framed in terms of a ‘patriarchy’ (see Halpern, Kaser and Wagner 1996). Most stereotypical portrayals of women within society are grounded in the post-marriage paradigm. The key loci of distinction between men and women revolves around the notion of žena. The same term for ‘woman’ is also used for ‘wife’ and provides a vital clue to the cultural text of womanhood. Although the term ženska is used on occasion to refer to unmarried women, žena is overwhelmingly synonymous with married women. The term sopruga (fm. spouse) is occasionally used, especially for more official purposes, but not in everyday contexts.

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The process of becoming a žena after marriage, however, points to a process of incorporation. An incoming bride is presumed to be humble and complicit to the senior women of the household. In the early days of a bride being brought home, the svekrva (husband’s mother) is in charge of the movements of the nevesta and delegates work for her to perform. A nevesta is initially incorporated into her husband’s household and treated as if she is an adopted kin member, somewhat akin to a ‘daughter’ (see Rheubottom 1980: 245), or affectionately referred to as čedo (child). Lest there be gossip of indiscriminate sexual behaviour and, thus, suspicion of the legitimacy of any offspring, the new bride walks arm-in-arm with her svekrva, who closely ‘guards’ her movements and behaviour. A nevesta is cautious to act in front of her husband’s household as if she is neither a sexual being, nor one that possesses bad habits such as laziness or a temper. She is complicit with the existing authority structures, but she is not referred to as snaa (daughter-inlaw) until she gives birth to a child, usually within the first year of marriage. The growing strength of the conjugal tie is the critical factor in the diminishing control of the husband’s parents over the couple’s affairs.2 Such contestation within the household is assumed to be almost entirely a result of the strategic deployment of a woman’s sexuality. The often-heard expression that ‘a woman is a whisperer [under the bedcovers]’ (‘žena je šeptilok’) refers to the only private time for a couple to share confidences in an extended household or, as assumed by other members, for the wife to complain about the others.3 A man is also expected to be hesitant about frequent visits to his wife’s natal house, which may be taken as proof of his malleability, of being ‘pulled’ towards her side and away from his own ‘natural’ place of loyalty. The stereotypical quip, ‘From where the wife is, so is the husband’, is a form of backhanded acknowledgement of a woman’s influence over her husband to compel a shift in the authority base of the household (cf. Buric 1976: 131). Any ambitions of a woman to take charge of the household or to demand that they start their own (i.e. to become divided or deleni) greatly depends on becoming a mother and, furthermore, on the support of her husband. A woman’s place is not secure until she bears children from that union.4 If a man continually sides with his parents, not only does his wife remain in a junior position, but he, too, is viewed as immature or weak. One man, watching his married friend side with his mother rather than his wife, commented, ‘Look at him, he still listens to the “oldies” like a child!’ On the other hand, there are just as likely to be derogative comments for a man who displays intimacy or a willingness to work in unity with his wife, as a ‘donkey tied to a plum tree!’ Moreover, women’s developing authority within the household is typically perceived in terms of the shift in roles and relations with other women of the household, including the svekrva (i.e. husband’s mother) and jatrvi

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(pl. husband’s brothers’ wives). In the classic account of ‘South Slav’ women within the agnatic kinship system, married women generally pass through three successive roles: domakinka (mistress of the house), svekrva (motherin-law to son’s wife) and baba (grandmother). As a domakinka, a woman needs to have borne children, at which time she takes charge of a household and its finances. A woman’s status rises once a son brings in a wife and, as a svekrva, there is pride in taking charge of the bride. In colloquial terms, many would say that becoming a baba brings the ultimate reward, i.e. taking care of grandchildren. Where a woman has a star bekjar for a son, such status upgrading is foreclosed. The roles of svekrva and baba are dependent on the marriage of sons. Until their sons marry, mothers of stari bekjari are caught in a state of role stagnation. The objectification of ‘mother’ is particularly cemented in relationships with children and how much attention they should award them. In most villages, the daily care of children is delegated to grandmothers. A woman who is over attentive to her children is likely to be scorned: ‘Look at her, as if she is the only one with children!’ The time for such emotional displays is when a woman becomes a grandmother, and it is often said that ‘Grandchildren are dearer’. Shifts in gender-specific roles within the household, however, are not necessarily conflictual. Ideally, a svekrva takes pride in accepting a more humble role, and the care of yard animals, the making of cheese, and caring for grandchildren become her primary household tasks. Many women cooperate and strategise collegially in terms of household tasks, but also, and especially, when it concerns the behaviour of men. One man, continually pressured by his mother and wife to stop smoking and to curb his outings to the local bife (café), retorted angrily, ‘Leave me in peace, you two will eat (destroy) me’. As co-conspirators whose main task is to curb wanderings and extravagances, the wife and mother took the dual responsibility of taming the man’s habits and of making him more homebound and sedate, the ideals of a familijaren čovek. Change occurs through usurpation of authority, and the usurper (i.e. the wife) is always perceived to be ‘at fault’. Indeed, there were no cases described of the mother-in-law as the instigator of change. The community would not consider a woman as worthy of respect if she allowed herself to be ‘dictated to’ for a prolonged period of time, especially after becoming a mother (i.e. a fully mature woman). Where a nevesta endeavours to be complicit, a mature woman with children of her own is better able to express her strength and opinions or withdraw her complicity.5 She may be temporarily scorned for separating the meals for her husband and children from other members of the household, but she would be ridiculed even more if she did not go through with it at some point. A snaa can declare ‘becoming divided’

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(deleni) by preparing a separate meal to be eaten at a different time to that of her husband’s parents and their offspring. In this way, the process of shifting relations is not gradual but, instead, comes at a moment in time that is recognised by all as the household ‘dividing’. Sporadic instances of separate dining occur often, however, and are not necessarily proof of the dissolution of a household. Separate dining may or may not be a permanent division, depending on how the participants respond. Often it is a short-term strategy on the part of a daughter-in-law to gain a measure of independence and control in the house and to assert her presence as a woman of substance. Finally, although tensions between brothers are not infrequent in joint fraternal households, the stereotypical view is that division occurs as a result of competition and poor relations between their wives. Friction and disharmony are invariably blamed on souring relations between women, either between a svekrva and snaa or the jatrvi.6 Macedonians even have a saying, ‘They argue like jatrvi’, to describe persons in a conflictual relationship. A familiar portrayal of women by men, also echoed by most women in the village, is of the craftiness of a žena in pulling a man to ‘her’ side. Women are said to be untrustworthy, duplicitous, and apt to interfere in ‘man’s business’. Women are presumed to be ‘naturally’ more jealous, petty and competitive with each other.

‘WHERE IS SHE GOING TO GO? ISSUE OF PATRIMONY AND WOMEN’S ‘PLACE’ In an argument over his gambling and drinking, one man told his wife to ‘keep quiet or leave’. Afterward, in a show of bravado, he said, ‘Where is she going to go? Go back to her mother?’ The idea of a wife returning to her mother as an unrealistic option is, perhaps, rooted in the concept that the woman’s mother, too, is in a ‘foreign’ house. Accepting the return of a daughter following the collapse of her marriage is not considered as the prerogative of a mother to decide. She may ‘work’ on making the father accept his daughter’s return, but the decision is his, and he is more likely to be concerned with the trouble it might cause with other households. Moreover, grandchildren ‘belong’ to the husband’s house and, thus, the ramifications of divorce often include severe breaks with grandchildren that the wife’s household may be denied access to. In many cases, divorced women leave their children behind, especially if there are sons. In one case of marriage dissolution, the man proudly conveyed the ultimatum to his wife, ‘You can go, but you’re not taking my son’. The man conceded that she could take their daughter but, in seeking to remarry, the woman was compelled to negotiate with her new husband about taking her child too. In the end, the new

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husband was not agreeable and the daughter was left in the care of the wife’s parents. The woman ‘visits’ her parents and daughter and on occasion brings the children she has borne to her second husband. Although society is changing somewhat in this regard, married women continue to face dilemmas. Marriage, in one way or another, is a point of no return for women. In the case of divorce, it is unimaginable for a woman to claim a share of her husband’s patrimonial resources; the house and the lands that his father and grandfather gave him do not belong to her. The contribution of mothers, daughters and wives in building or maintaining such estates is systematically ignored by both society and the legal system. The rigid patrilineal kinship system does not accommodate a cogent strategy for including daughters in inheritance, either at the point of marriage in the form of a dowry or upon a father’s death. The issue of dowries is perhaps one of the most defining aspects of the anthropology of Mediterranean and South European family and kinship.7 For South Slavs, there has been some debate as to the existence of dowries (see Davis 1977), but it has been presented as a feature of the zadruga (predominantly based on the work of Mosely [1940] 1976a: 25, 41–45). I suspect that, on occasion, there is confusion between the practice of inheritance by a daughter in the absence of sons and the custom of daughters receiving a share of patrimony at marriage. See Hammel, for example, who states that ‘in-marrying sons-in-law were said to “come on miraz” [dowry], and were called “domazet”’ (1968: 18, original emphasis). Only if there are no sons and a daughter ‘brings’ a husband home (a domazet) does she inherit. However, there too, it is typically her children who inherit after the death of their grandfather, who remains the head of the household until then. The inheritance practice simply reinforces the ideal of the complete transfer of a woman to her husband’s household.8 With some exceptions, such as the case of domazet marriage, most women are incorporated into their husband’s household completely. They are presumed to go ‘empty’, and if the relationship breaks down, expected to leave as they came. Folk practice is still encoded in law. The Law on Family (1992/80), Article 204, states that ‘The property that one of the spouses had at the time of the stipulation of the marriage is his/her individual property’. The law distinguishes between ‘individual property’ obtained through ‘inheritance, legacy and gift’ prior to the marriage from that of ‘common property’ accrued during marriage in which ‘each spouse independently manages and disposes of the individual property, unless the spouses agree otherwise’. Although this may not automatically appear discriminatory, women rarely bring ‘individual property’ to a marriage, and their greatest value-add is to maintaining and building the equity of their husband’s patrimony. Likewise, although this is changing (see Gajtanoska 2017: 609), women refrain from demanding a share of their brothers’ ‘rightful’ patrimony, either at marriage

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or upon their father’s death. As one sister said, ‘I don’t get involved. How they want to do it, the brothers can. I am here now [i.e. in husband’s household]’. A woman is a ‘daughter is for another house’, and living with the natal family is of a short duration. Men can readily draw on the privileged positionality of being of the familija and thus being in their ‘own house’. Widow dispossession is also extensive. Widows are fundamentally displaced, powerless and at the mercy of others. In many cases where sons have moved out of the village, they continue to depend on resources accrued by their parents through shepherding and ‘village work’, not only to build houses in the outskirts of the city, but also to supplement their income in times of financial difficulties. An ever-increasing number of aging parents are stranded in the village, tending to work and discouraged by their offspring from moving in with them. When one parent passes away, the remaining parent is more likely to continue living alone in the village than be taken in by a son in the city or a foreign country. Sons who live in nearby cities may visit but for those whose children reside in foreign countries, there is no prospect of being ‘taken’, all they can hope for is an occasional ‘gift’ of money. Given that women tend to outlive men, most often it is widows that remain. The lonely old widow visiting neighbourhood houses to fill the time as she lives alone is a typical image across many villages. Structural focus on male progeny affects a widow’s relationships with her children, especially with her sons.9 In villages, widowed mothers are often relegated to the letna kujna (summer kitchen), to feed the pigs, look after the children and contribute in the bavči (vegetable garden plots), and, when it comes to money, it is assumed that their pension is communal wealth, typically contributing to household expenses. In cities too, although a widow might be living in the apartment or house, children are likely to decide her future, to plan with whom she could live. One man dismissed his mother’s insistence that she should receive a ‘share’ of the proceeds of a city apartment being sold after her husband’s death. The man and his wife were in debt but still wanted to build a house on the outskirts of the town. The patrimonial resources from the sale of the apartment were a welcome pool of untapped wealth and leaving the mother living alone in the apartment was deemed wasteful: ‘What does an old woman need with money anyway? She has a place to live, she has a pension’. Thus, the mother went to live with her son and his wife in the new house. Sleeping on a pull-out couch in the kitchen, with a ‘crazy’ daughter-in-law who ‘turns’ her son against her, the mother had no influence in decisions. In another case, a widow with no sons faced the dilemma of her three married daughters arguing over who should take her in. Two of the daughters insisted that she sell the house in the city built by their ‘father’ who had always said the house would be equally divided among his children. Thus

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began a vicious round of pressure on the mother to sell so that the daughters could claim their ‘rightful’ share. Although eventually the widow settled with one of her children, the other two continued to scrutinise what she gave the daughter with whom she lived, accusing the woman of being selfish and spending money on the resident grandchildren. The non-resident daughters visited their mother infrequently, and often sent their children to seek money. Indeed, the relationship between mother and daughter is particularly complex and is generally framed in terms of those who ‘protect’ the daughter and those who ‘tell’ on her (i.e. to the father). The indiscriminate behaviour of a daughter, especially in relation to men, is considered damaging to the reputation of the family and a concern for the father who navigates through the social world of men. Typically, mothers play a vital role in covering up their daughter’s promiscuity. The mother’s primary role is often to act as a buffer zone between the children and their father, including excluding him from delicate issues, particularly when it concerns a daughter. Women have a vested interest in covering their daughters’ indiscretions because they are considered responsible for teaching them chastity or modesty. Perhaps similar to the Sevillano father described by Murphy as ‘especially vulnerable to criticism if any family member should go astray’ (1983: 379), the Macedonian father will feel the ultimate scorn or shame of society as the head of the household and the protector of his family if his children’s indiscretions are discovered. For instance, it is generally left to mothers to enculture or train their daughters to be compliant and complicit, to teach them the rules of the game, and the order of ascendance of men. As one angry father, upset by gossip about his daughter’s indiscriminate behaviour, yelled at his wife, ‘Teach your daughter’. What is involved in being a ‘good’ daughter, wife or mother follows a set script. Mothers impose their experience of complicity, as well as their strategies for negotiation or defiance. Like an inmate learning the rules of prison guards as well as other prisoners, self-regulation is self-governance. It is a process of rule-making and enforcing those rules compels objectification, not only of the opposite sex, but also one’s own. With a mother’s help, a promiscuous or unfortunate woman’s mistakes can be covered up and the appearance of modesty and normality assured in public for the whole family. As expected, where there is such a code, an unwed woman who decides to raise a child on her own is rare. She is in an extremely vulnerable social position, as is the child who is derogatively referred to as a kopile (bastard). Women are often compelled to have an abortion, referred to as ‘cleansing’.10 Successive abortions are generally considered, even for married women who do not want any more than the socially accepted number of children. In the case of unwed girls, however, the process is much

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more complex. For a man to organise and pay for an abortion speaks to his good character, of him being an honourable or ‘responsible’ person. Where a man eschews his responsibility to organise an abortion or refuses to marry the woman, the only avenue for most girls is to draw on the support of their mother. A mother who protects a daughter’s confidences, however, can sometimes become extreme. In one case, an unmarried daughter fell pregnant and hid the pregnancy until she gave birth. The birth did not involve the usual case of the ‘old woman’ who served as a midwife coming to assist. Rather, the mother ‘helped’ by smothering the newborn and burying it in the backyard. The daughter fell pregnant again, and again she gave birth; this time, however, the gossip took a particularly nasty turn. A neighbour supposedly heard the screaming of a newborn. The extreme act of infanticide as a cover-up for indiscretion did not result in criminal charges nor did it impact on the eventual success of the daughter getting married to a turist who was unaware of her circumstances. From a different perspective, a woman with a physical deformity or disability of some kind is often not permitted (or encouraged) by the family to marry. Usually, a physical handicap or being divorced is not a deterrent to marriage with individuals of a similar category. A common attitude of the parents of physically handicapped women, however, is to reject suitors and to expect them to remain at home to care for them in their old age, while other siblings are free to choose their own paths in life. Moreover, these stari čupi (‘old girls’, i.e. unmarried women) remain in the natal house but do not inherit father’s property, in comparison to women who bring a domazet husband to the house and, even, non-resident brothers who assume the position of household master and are heirs of all property and land.11 A dressmaker in one village was described as a very good ‘soul’, tirelessly sewing for others to bring money into the family. She had been asked by a ‘normal’ man to marry, but her parents refused. Likewise, in another case, a man with a physical limp asked for the hand of a woman who had curvature of the spine. The mother of the woman vehemently refused on the grounds that they would both become laughing stocks in the village and pointed out as deformed. As a consequence, the stara čupa was left behind in the household, and the responsibility for her assumed by one of her three brothers following their parents’ deaths. Recounting a dream in which she predicted the death of her brothers, the wronged daughter also drew on the memory of her deceased mother: Mother visited, called out for me to come outside in the yard. She was dressed beautifully – pedantna [lit. pedantically]. She wanted to see how I was. Then she asked me to call [brother’s sons]. I called them out, but mother said not to come to her [sign she is calling them to join the dead]. Instead, she saw them, kept marvelling at how beautiful

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they are. I asked her to come inside but she said she can’t because ‘the bigger man’ will be looking for me and said, ‘I have to go back’.

Prior to her death, the mother was described by her daughter as ‘preparing for death’; madly putting her house in order with frenetic cleaning. Yet, as the stara čupa emphasised, ‘Before that, she [mother] was bedridden’. She continued, ‘As if she knew she was dying, she apologised, because she wronged me’. That is, by denying her daughter marriage and relegating her to the role of an ‘old girl’, the mother condemned her to a life with nothing to look forward to but the care of her brother’s children.

WOMEN’S SEXUALITY AND THE ‘RUINATION’ OF MEN Scrutiny of women’s sexuality is acute and cuts across the parallel fields of gendered relations. Both men and women can denigrate a woman’s sexuality. Where women may engage in gossip about another woman’s sexuality to reduce her social standing, men focus on her ‘worthiness’ for marriage or the nature of any relationship that might be possible with an indiscriminate woman. Men, especially stari bekjari, dogmatically insist that women have the power to destroy them. If a man ‘gives’ a woman power over him, she will take advantage and, thus, many argue, ‘It’s not good to spoil a woman, otherwise she’ll climb on your head’. Men assume it is their role to keep women in their place, to check their behaviour by not ‘spoiling them too much’ or and not agreeing to their constant whims or demands, lest they become ‘smug and demanding’. Checking the behaviour of women is especially needed, many would say, since women are ‘weak’ to their emotions and sexuality and can be easily ‘lied’ [lured] into cheating or promiscuity. Sexuality presents binary values in many societies.12 Highly objectified, stylised talk of sex, however, heightens the rigid sex codes that are clearly in men’s favour. Women’s supposed lack of control in relation to sex foregrounds highly stylised interactions between men and women. The imperative of men is to ‘try’ (da probat), or to ‘ask’ (da prašat), otherwise they are not ‘worthy’ of being men. Men are accustomed to their advances occasionally being accepted but, more often than not, being rejected; the game of men ‘seeking’ sex is a hit and miss one. Sexual rejection by a steady girlfriend, nonetheless, is considered humiliating and more degrading than rejection by a casual acquaintance. A man may wait for a short time before his new girlfriend agrees to consummate the relationship, in deference to her ‘modesty’, but as one man said, ‘If she teases me, lies to me, I’ll leave her straight away’. A woman who goes out with a man and says ‘no’ to sex is invariably seen as ‘lying’ (‘samo me laže’), behaviour that is akin to sexual teasing.

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Not only are sex and intimacy matters in the struggle for ascendance, they are also sites of potential downfall for a man. Scrutiny of an unmarried woman’s sexuality is a mode of ensuring that she is ‘fit’ for the job of marriage (i.e. to be a mother to her husband’s offspring). It is also a key factor in a man’s social positionality (see Dimova 2006a). The potential risk of reputational loss due to another man’s sexual knowledge of a wife or girlfriend is detrimental in a relatively equal status arena where men must relate to each other on a daily basis.13 One male informant emotively pointed out the significance of women’s sexuality in saying: How can you take one [woman] out when you know each one with whom she has been fucking? If she becomes your wife, you have to have words (communication) with all of them, you are in a village after all. You have a fight with one of them and straight away he is going to let you have it, about how much he ‘knows’ your wife. If it were one or two [men], it would be different, but these girls change men every night.

Even though men reject the idea of marrying such women, they do not often prejudice or destroy ‘promiscuous’ women’s chances for marriage with outside men. For instance, there are many marriages between turisti and reputedly promiscuous village women. The turisti men are not considered competitors for the limited number of unmarried women in the village and are often viewed derogatively because of their out-dated ideas around the existence of more virtuous women in their country of origin. Turisti are viewed with contempt because they do not have the skills to recognise the dvoličnost (two-facedness) of women who act modestly in public but behave indiscriminately in private. Furthermore, many of the visiting men have close male relatives in the village, but they are still rarely warned to avoid promiscuous women. Where youths do not gossip to ‘oldies’, insiders do not gossip to outsiders. Also, as one aging bachelor said, ‘Who are we to say that she is not good enough for him? She could turn out to be the greatest homemaker! And, what if we say something and he gets angry with us, accuses us of trying to destroy his chances because we are jealous? That could happen’. In one exceptional case, a man warned his ‘tourist’ first patrilateral cousin of the promiscuity of his intended. The man received a most philosophical response from the tourist: ‘I have been married before and have a child. Anyway, everyone knows I drink too much and am getting old’. The tourist viewed the match as balanced because his own shortcomings would not have been acceptable to ordinary or modest girls. The well-meaning man commented later, ‘I felt ashamed of myself. I should have known better than to say something’. The ‘problem’ for local women is that they cannot hide or appear ‘modest’. Unmarried individuals associate in what they refer to as a mal krug (small circle, group) and, as such, promiscuity is easily discovered. Equally,

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village men cannot hide. They, too, must socialise within the village and, for this reason, they cannot dismiss any allegations regarding the promiscuity of their womenfolk. At the village level, women’s movements are far more scrutinised and restricted than those of men. Although pre-marital sex by women is common nowadays, it is, nonetheless, assumed to require control. In a heated debate in a city café among a group of youths, one stari bekjar proclaimed that he couldn’t marry because all women today are ‘loose’ (raspušteni). Both the men and women present contemptuously retorted, ‘What, are you expecting to find? A virgin?’ One of the woman added, ‘That shows how old you are’. Youths are generally of the opinion that no ‘modern’ man expects his girlfriend or bride’ to be a virgin (devici). A certain level of sexual experience is normal, even in the most ‘modest girl’ (skromno čupe). According to the unmarrieds, sex is prirodno (natural): ‘It is natural to have sex, everyone has needs’. Stemming, perhaps, from the overall search for balance, men, in particular, view good sexual relations as an important component of emotional commitment: ‘You have to have balance in “that” [sex] as well’. Even after marriage, there is a belief that a husband has a duty to satisfy his wife sexually otherwise she may justifiably seek it elsewhere. In the same context of the café, another man boasted, ‘Yeah, mine was whining, “No, no”, but when I put it in, she stopped’. Although crass, the idea that the sexual act will suddenly transform resistance speaks to the fine line between a man’s role in ‘convincing’ a reticent woman who is then enlightened about the joys of sex, and rape.14 If a woman changes her mind midway, a man is in danger of being ‘cut’ or me skina (she ‘cut’ me). Women ‘make a face’ (lice ti praat), men say, meaning that they merely appear modest. When it comes to sex, the dvoličnost (two-faced) that is assumed to be characteristic of all of them means that ‘in woman there is no trust’. For women, the fear of being labelled a meraklivka, or someone having a ‘fondness for sex’, often means that there is anxiety about enjoying sex too much, even with a boyfriend. Women would often say they are caught in a bind, navigating between withholding sex from their boyfriends and ‘giving it’ too early. As one woman said, ‘They think that you are a meraklivka if you look like you enjoy it too much and if you don’t you are cold [ladna]’. Unmarried women are expected to behave with ‘modesty’ and are trained from an early age to appear diligent and naturally ‘shy’, often praised for being so: ‘The girl is shy, embarrassed’. Women are expected to regulate the extent of their ‘fondness’ for sex. A woman’s value rests not only on the worthiness of her sexual partners, but also on her capacity to be sexually discriminating by limiting her sexual experience to a few partners, one at a time. If there is no gossip about sexual promiscuity, men judge them to have maintained their relative chastity or modesty and are thus ‘worthy to get [marry]’. Moreover, most youths do

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not regard it as their ‘job’ to curb a woman’s sexual excesses, unless it is their sister or another female kinswoman. One man proudly said, ‘I saw my cousin hanging around some bad men in a bar once and I told her to piss off or I will tell her brother. She looked scared and left straight away’. A friend replied, ‘Get away with you. They don’t listen. You should see how my sister yelled at me that it was none of my business who she hung around with. She wouldn’t listen to anyone’. Much to the man’s annoyance and embarrassment his friend replied to this with the taunt, ‘Yeah and look where your sister is heading’. Generally, there is a code of behaviour that should ideally protect the women from gossip among the mladi (youths). Yet, there is tremendous scrutiny of women’s sexuality and sexual activism, even by youths. The demarcation of time in terms of ‘during the day’ and ‘at night’ provides ‘zones’ and spaces for sociality. In the daytime, public mannerisms are generally aimed at presenting a uniform type of acceptable behaviour that does not attract comment or arouse gossip. According to the mladi, it is only ‘oldies’ and married women who gossip and, as they are inside their houses in the evenings, the ‘night’ is presumed to be free of prying eyes. Most mladi in villages insist there is an unwritten code among them to keep ‘their business’ away from the ‘oldies’. Typically, men insist that gossip is a ‘woman’s occupation’ but, in reality, they readily discuss and scrutinise people. Nonetheless, gossip among youths is supposed to be strictly kept between them. Youths are expected to keep the veil of separation between themselves and the oldies by not revealing ‘things’ about their friends, especially to their mothers. Gossip among unmarried men is particularly concerned with the reputation of women as sexually indiscriminate or promiscuous. According to men, women ‘reveal’ themselves; they cannot help showing their ‘true nature’. Just as it is ‘natural’ to ‘need’ sex, women are naturally weak with regard to their sexuality, i.e. they cannot control their urges. Once an ‘indiscriminate’ woman has ‘fallen’, men say, ‘no one will respect her’. In a relatively closed community such as a village, it is not difficult to have knowledge of ‘fallen’ women. One woman described as a stara čupa, for example, frequently changed sex partners. When one of the men reportedly discussed the issue with the woman, she described her behaviour to him thus: ‘the only thing that hasn’t gone through me is a milling stone!’ However, some men, including the one to whom the woman had confessed her exploits, respected her for her sexual directness and for ‘not caring what they [other unmarried individuals] say’. Still, the man concluded, she was izgorena (sexually burnt out), meaning that she had destroyed any chance of being considered worthy for marriage with local men. Although such talk and judgement was discussed among youths, they still respected the woman’s right to participate in normal village life during the day, without her sex-

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ual promiscuity being revealed ‘to the oldies’. In fact, she was often praised for being ‘a very quiet and modest girl’ by her family, who admonished the local men for not choosing her as a wife: ‘She is such a good girl, hardworking, quiet, stays at home. What is wrong with these bekjari, why hasn’t one of them “gotten” [married] her?’ Sex is the ultimate site of contestation for women caught in rigid androcentric codes. Women unable to withstand the codes do so at their own peril. As with the woman described as ‘sexually burnt out’, being openly defiant of sexual codes and nonchalant of the reputational damage was framed in terms of marriage being unimportant to her: ‘As if I’d marry one of them anyway’. The reformed personhood of modern young women compels them to stand defiant of the mores and codes of conduct. Most unmarried women, however, are not as brave in confronting the stifling selski mentalitet, especially of the village men. As one eighteen-year old woman said, ‘They are all the same. Even the younger men who claim to be like “city” men can’t be trusted. They are just like the stari bekjari’. The continual reaffirmation of the hegemonic discourse of women’s sexual ‘nature’ means that many unmarried women in the village are reticent about interacting with local men. Reluctance to interact at village level is problematic given that young women are generally not independent or mobile enough to frequent the urbane world of the city. An emergent sense of selfhood by modern educated women challenges the past at the same time as it reinforces the problematic nature of rigid distinctions between gendered sexual codes. The expected code of conduct for women reflects a complex village world in which movement and behaviour are fundamentally scrutinised. Although there is no intent by families to discourage unmarried women from socialising, their mobility requires accountability. As one mother said, ‘They [girls] have to socialise otherwise they won’t find someone who wants to marry them’. Women ‘go out’ (izlegvat) associating with društvo (company) that are comprised of youths. Unlike for men, however, šetanje (excursions or outings outside village) are not likely to be condoned for women and they are more likely to be chastised for excessive roaming and carousing as these are the exclusive domains of men. Reformed notions of selfhood alongside the increased freedom or mobility of women still rarely penetrate the rigid prejudices associated with women’s sexuality.

VILLAGE WOMEN’S BUSINESS: GOSSIP AND COMPETITION The social intimacy that comes with living in the village means that people see you daily and are familiar with the rhythm or pattern of one’s behaviour. Keeping abreast of what others do in order to time one’s own actions is

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necessary. Indeed, village women’s catch phrases abound with inquisition. They unashamedly ask such questions as, ‘What’s new?’, ‘What are you doing?’, ‘Where are you going?’ or ‘What did you make to eat?’ Free from most household duties, the older women visit neighbours, stop for a coffee, or simply walk around until they find someone in their front yard to chat with. A young woman seeing an elderly neighbour on the street scurrying towards her house, and annoyed by the inevitable talk, said, ‘Here comes the old woman, how annoying she is, she wants to know everything’. Although some women attempt to be vague in their answers, too much vagueness leaves a lingering suspicion because it is assumed that if they are not doing anything wrong then they would not hesitate to tell. Most often, therefore, women will simply tell them where they are going. One recent ‘city-bride’ (i.e. an urbanite who married a village man) said that she distinguishes herself from village women by refusing not only to answer such questions but also to ask other women where they are going and what they are making for dinner! These women, she continued, ‘they want to know everything’. Younger generations of women distinguish themselves by insisting that they do not gossip, saying that older women ‘are very backward; don’t have anything else to do, just look. They’re underhanded, want to ruin your luck’. For a woman, the conundrum of living in a village is that gossip and obsessive concern with what people ‘say’ is not only assumed to be ženska rabota (women’s work/ task) but also damaging to their social positionality. When they say ‘people are talking’, it invariably means that women are doing so. Men may ‘talk’, but it is rarely referred to as kodoš (gossip). The kodošici (pl.) are women, and men, when they become embroiled in such gossip, are feminised. To denigrate a man, one simply needs to say, ‘Like a woman, he’s just interested in others’. Unlike men, women cannot find an escape from the gnawing attention of others through such things as indiscriminate sex and drinking or camaraderie in village cafés. With the exception of a relatively small circle of intimates with whom one can share confidences, the majority of women are feared. Women who are resilient or unaffected by ‘talk’ are rare. In fact, most village women are terrified of gossip. Fear of gossip, ridicule or the potential of lagging behind the achievements or timing of others frames modes of interaction as well as the presentation of self. The quest for status equivalence results in gendered fields of competition. Status or class are inherently gendered: men compete with men, women with women. The opposite sex might serve as either an impediment or a tool to enable one’s status, but competition for social status is inherently a same-sex field of interaction. In the world of women, for instance, being a domakinka (‘good housewife’) is crucial. Although it is a source of pride for a husband that his wife is praised as a domakinka, especially when guests are

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received, he is not likely to focus on her domesticity in competition with other men. Such behaviour would be considered bizarre. Likewise, being praised as a domakinka can be a source of tremendous pride for a woman, although there are always some women who are ready to denigrate her social standing by pointing to her transgressions or the substandard quality of her cleanliness or cooking. In a similar vein, a woman would show off about her husband’s status before other women, and not before men. As with being a domakinka, a husband’s achievements or skills are instruments drawn upon in competition with other women. Women change the relationship between men and their houses and, likewise, between men and broader society. Upon becoming mothers, women begin to increasingly represent non-change, reinforcing ‘order’. They still often keep abreast of trends and endeavour to ensure that their familija remains in the social status field. They are ever mindful of maintaining status equivalence and of ensuring that their menfolk, and his familija, do not lag behind others. They are often accused of caring too much about externalities or the appearance of things, or of how things ‘look’ and ‘what people say’. Women’s obsession with how things ‘look’ often frustrates their families, especially when they say, ‘How would it look to others?’ For married women in particular, how the children or husband are dressed in public, whether they are clean and presentable, is not simply a matter of demonstrating their competence in being a domakinka. It is also part of their duty to avoid gossip and maintain the social status equivalence of their families. In one case, a woman saw her grown son enter a wedding reception with his friends and was mortally embarrassed because he was not dressed in ‘new’ things. She justified herself by saying, ‘You don’t know how embarrassed I was when I saw him. I bought him a new shirt for the wedding, and he comes like this’. For her, it was a reflection of her own failure in her duty to ensure the good appearance of her family in public. The bodily and mental containment of women requires self-regulation in which the notion of stram is more readily evoked between, and in relation to, women. The scrutiny of behaviour, dress, mannerisms or anything that stands out of the ordinary is prolific. The social imperative for an individual is to regulate one’s actions to avoid drawing attention to oneself and, thus, to potential gossip or ridicule. The intolerance of difference stands in juxtaposition to the imperative to keep abreast with change, which is, of course, essentially about difference. Women are especially geared towards noting things that stand out or appear ‘suspicious’. An assignation with a lover is automatically presumed, for instance, if a woman is dressed up and goes out alone or if a man visits the house whilst the husband is away, then they must be having sex! Standing out in any form arouses suspicion. One day, an old woman in her seventies

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stood in the front yard refusing her deceased husband’s best friend entry through the gate. She shouted loudly so neighbours could hear, ‘Get away from here, people are laughing at me’. Accustomed to daily visits, the old man felt hurt and humiliated but, nonetheless, remained silent and never returned to the house. In another case, a widow, whose husband had been a pečalbar but had died in the host-country, had been under constant scrutiny by her father-inlaw. She described the father-in-law as a tyrant who wouldn’t allow her any freedom lest there was talk of her being indiscriminate. The father-in-law even went as far as one berating his own daughter’s husband who attended to the maintenance of his house because he had heard of ‘talk’ in the village that his son-in law only came because of the still beautiful widow. The widow, too, had to avoid contact with the brother-in-law because, as she said, ‘I don’t want them to give [associate] him to me’. Aware of the gossip, the brother-in-law also avoids entering the house and is even hesitant about accepting a drink in the front yard. Any kind of support of a widow or a lone woman is all but impossible unless it is by other women. Even calling on a majstor (builder) is problematic unless he is accompanied, or the woman remains in the distance, ideally with some of her own entourage of onlookers. The fear of gossip is so pronounced that it can often lead to anxiety and self-imposed ostracism. As one woman said, it feels like walking into your own public execution. No moral boundaries or codes of conduct exist with gossip. Gossip can become a free-fall into bizarre and, on occasion, extremely vindictive behaviour. One particularly vicious rumour in a remote village was that of a widow who was said to be having sex with her son. The widow and her son were often seen together going to the bavči just outside of the village. The rumour became a self-evident truth because the woman ‘looked ashamed’. The accused woman, unable to cope with the rumours, ended up housebound, which made the gossip even more prolific. Women’s usual advice to victims of gossip is to walk with no shame: ‘Hold your head up and walk in front of them’. The targeted widow, however, was seen walking across the village with her head down. Her response led to further speculation, with suggestions that if she had been innocent, she would have done the opposite in walking brazenly with head held high. If there is no truth to it, said one woman, ‘Why is she ashamed, why does she hide?’ The conclusion was that there must be some sense of guilt, she had the ‘fly on the hat’. The phrase, as mentioned in the introduction of this book, is often used to refer to the likelihood of a person feeling self-conscious at being stared at. The woman behaving self-consciously, in other words, was damning of guilt, which, like a fly on the hat, is hard to brush off. During one visit to a neighbour’s house for coffee, the woman claimed that the rumours were part of a long-standing and problematic sibling relationship. Eager to explain

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the gossip to me, she said that many felt the story had been started by the woman’s envious sister. Indeed, gossip is a roundabout way to redress discontent, resentment or envy from those within one’s familial world. Intimates, in other words, can instigate gossip just as much as those that one has only precursory relations with as a member of the village. Gossip is also a means to counter boredom, to add drama to an otherwise mundane existence. Gossip is also a form of aggressiveness between women that is not entirely obvious, except to those with an understanding of the competition with other women. Standing out in any form is likely to irritate someone, but even the most compliant and quiet of women can also be a gossiper. Gossip is, therefore, both a response to power and a tool of power for women. Women’s use of gossip as a form of passive aggression is a manipulative strategy aimed at subverting the positionalities of others. Gossip serves as a form of power for women that resides in the arena of the insignificant: in knowing how to tap into the weaknesses of others, especially women. Gossip is both individualistic (as it starts with a single person) and inherently social in that the source is often difficult to identify. The conundrum faced by women is that without defending themselves, there is danger of giving credence to the ‘talk’. The likelihood of being able to directly confront a gossiper in order to redress presumed wrongs or appease one’s resentments, however, is very low. Confronting gossip through the pursuit of the source can often be fruitless and draw too much attention. Confrontation might call for the singling out of some individuals and arguing with them, which is likely to become public knowledge. One woman grilled a string of villagers about gossip concerning her husband having an affair with her sister-inlaw until she eventually found the source. She confronted the kodoška (fm. gossiper) in front of everyone by posing what was, in essence, a rhetorical question: ‘Why are you making trouble for me and my family?’ The wife was further embarrassed, however, by the lack of contrition in the woman’s reply: ‘Well in the end, everyone knows’. The code of social equivalence compels the policing of others to ensure that people remain in the pack; it is a habitus that resides within the cultural mentality of sociocentricism. The regulation of women’s behaviour by other women is also a mode of collective oppression that furthers the androcentric social imaginary. It is not only men, but also women, who reinforce androcentricism. Women afford men special rights and powers of ascendance: ‘Well, he is a man!’ But in most cases it is women who are likely to ensure that other women do not advance or get ahead of themselves. Competition between women is pronounced. The concern with gossip in most ethnographic accounts is connected with honour and shame codes, the publicprivate distinction, or the marking of sacred and profane.15 Although elabo-

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rate accounts of gossip are present, they often omit the extent to which they relate to a game of power. Women, in mimicry of the subordination by men, use gossip as a tool to subordinate other women. In short, the enforcers of subjugation and status downgrading of women are other women.

WOMAN ‘KNOWLEDGE’: CURSES, WITCHCRAFT AND HEALING The coppice of spiritual practices and folk remedies deployed by women are extensive. Having an intricate knowledge of how to draw on the sacred and holy forces and to pay homage to ancestors, being well-versed in appropriate folk remedies, having the capacity to interpret signs of magija (black magic) and curses, and being able to seek meaning in dreams all form the basis of an innately female social exchange system that typically remains backstage. Moreover, in their roles as healers and midwives, women’s knowledge is transmitted across generations. Although ‘hidden’ from public discourse and typically dismissed by men as ‘women’s business’ (ženska rabota) or babini vetri (‘old woman tales’), mystical or spiritual knowledge, especially in relation to magija, is readily relied upon when things go wrong. Much of this is disappearing, except in the more conventional contexts of women directing mourning rituals, ancestor worship, and following the sacred rituals associated with Orthodox Christianity. Adherence to rituals is a vital component of everyday life in both Orthodox Christianity as well as in the various practices preceding it that speak to old-Slavic pagan elements. Women take the adherence to ritual practices related to the Orthodox religious calendar and the avoidance of the potential harms of magija seriously. Following Orthodox rituals is a selective practice for many, especially men and youths. Women, as gatekeepers of the family’s souls and wellbeing, however, cannot afford to be selective. They must protect their family from the potential harms of malevolent spirits or the vindictiveness and jealousy of others in their community. The role of women in death and mourning rituals is extensive. The process of complete death highlights the importance of social and familial ties. The ‘person’ travels or takes a journey through their life, wanders through their house, makes visits to their relatives in dreams and, eventually, as ancestors, and continues to be ‘present’ before the living.16 The Church sets aside the third, ninth and fortieth days after death, and families mark the anniversaries as special ‘days of remembrance’ for the deceased. In addition, there are a number of holy days set aside by the Church for the commemoration of the Christian dead in general. Of these, Duovden (Day of the Dead) and Mrtva Sabota (lit. ‘Dead Saturday’), or the Saturday before Pentecost (Trinity Sun-

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day [Troitsal]), are most significant. Women prepare parcels for distribution and special foods to be consumed at the cemetery, and have on hand the ‘list’ of ancestors of the household that is read out by the priest. Extensive and reliable networks of women are especially critical with regard to a new death. The dependence on women during death and the ceremonies that follow reaffirms the notion that ‘You need people’. No one dies alone, and no woman can do all that is required on her own. One of the main tasks of a woman of the household is to appoint another woman as mesarka, a ritually significant role requiring baking of the sacramental loaves and providing support on the day of the burial that is typically assigned to someone from an unrelated household (usually a neighbour). It is the role of the mesarka to orchestrate preparations of the ritual food basket, attend to people as they come to pay their respects during the guarding of the body, remain in the house so it is not empty on the day of the burial, and attend to the priest at the burial and the ‘giving’ ceremonies on the ninth-day, three-week and six-week ceremonies. Following this, a woman attends to the rituals on her own. Mourning rituals reaffirm that a person has a kin and social identity, with enough ‘close relatives’ to pay homage to them after death. Progressively, not as many people attend mourning rituals and only the old women or mistresses of the house are left to maintain the ancestor rituals of their husbands’ agnatic houses. A sorry sight in the village is that of an old man attending the grave of his wife because there is no daughter or snaa to do so. Without women to assume such duties, there is a threat to the perpetuation of the agnatic house in perpetuity. Women are preoccupied with commenting on how things are done and what is given. Women’s role in adhering to red is assumed to mitigate vulnerability to some extent but is insufficient to protect both the dead and the living. Nonetheless, if red is not followed properly, the deceased might become a malevolent spirit. Enormous pressure is placed on women about what is proper and how to avoid such danger. Women comment on everything, pointing out that ‘It’s no good to do it like this’. Younger women charged with preparations are beholden to more experienced older women: ‘I’ll ask [her], she knows more about these things’. Women’s attention to ritual performance stems in no small part from the fear that if everything is not done according to red, something will occur that turns the dead into malevolent spirits that can potentially harm members of their familija. The fear of the liminally or recently dead who have not yet transformed into ancestors necessitates careful and vigilant attention. There is, thus, an intricate web of ongoing relations with the dead that culminates in ancestor worship. If neglected, unfed and unattended, the dead can become spiteful, but if well looked after, they become protectors and guiders. As many older village women would say, if the journey is broken because

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something is not done properly, they become restless and unsatisfied, and displaced spirits and souls are a cause of mischief for the living. For example, where there is spilling of blood at death and the ritual to sanctify or cleanse the body is not performed the deceased is deemed to have become a vampir (vampire). Women are also attuned to signs of vulnerability and thus pay close attention to any signals, such as those communicated through dreams. One woman explained how she ‘knew’ of an upcoming death. She said, ‘‘Before the brother of my mother-in-law died, I had a dream. They were building a house, builders were there but it was not in our yard (dvor), but nearby’. ‘Building a house’ in a dream is a sign of a grave being prepared, but not being in their dvor meant it was intended for someone adjacent to the household. As mentioned previously, the house as both physical and spiritual entity encompasses the body and soul of the family. Notwithstanding the ritual attention to a house when built, a bottle of holy water is always kept ready by a domakinka just in case someone requires healing or cleansing in her household. Ritual cleansing is manifest in a complex of ideas relating to the body (which encompasses mind, body and soul) as inherently susceptible and vulnerable. When there has been a death, a priest is called to say prayers, burn incense and sprinkle holy water in each room and on the head of each member of the household. Even the case of someone in the house having ‘bad dreams’ or appearing unexplainably listless and lacking appetite is proof that some spiritual cleansing is required. In the full range of beliefs and ritual practices mobilised in the vigilant guarding of the body, Orthodox belief and its associated ritual practices offer only limited protection through such acts as cleansing, fasting, accepting communion and blessings from the priest. In fact, Christian ritual remedies are most often sought after pollution has already occurred and are typically drawn upon by women in conjunction with various folk remedies. Religious practices are insufficient to safeguard the body in its entirety, especially from magija. Kerewsky-Halpern argues that women of the Balkans, namely those of Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria who are the focus of her research, serve as ‘mediators’ between ‘the past, the future and the unknown’ (1985: 320). She adds further that relationships of trust are vital in folk healing (ibid: 321). In the villages of my research, magija was part of everyday discourse among women. Magija is a form of contagious magic where items belonging to the victim, such as hair or a thread from their clothes, are ritually transformed with the power to affect behaviour. The general aim of magija is to affect the decision-making powers of the intended victim. People often describe any unwelcome course of action they have taken ‘as if something compelled me’, which is considered proof in itself of ill deeds.

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The fear of curses, especially as a result of magija, i.e. by an ‘enemy’ within the community, means that people pay particular attention to guarding the ‘entry’ of evil into their bodies. Magija is something done by a malevolent other within one’s everyday social world who is within physical contact or in some kind of communication with you. As a Macedonian, I too have been raised with these ideas. My mother continually reinforced the fact that I must be conscientious about discarding hair left on a brush or a piece of clothing, nail clippings and all sorts of things that had been in contact with my body as they might fall into the hands of someone wishing to do me harm. Moreover, instructions abounded about how to praise beauty appropriately, especially in children, by not staring, by avoiding superlative phrases and by being careful to avoid showing astonishment, surprise or amazement inadvertently. To fail in these decorous codes has the potential to be misunderstood, the potential to be considered envious and wishing ill to others irrespective of one’s intentions. Knowing all this, I still found myself in a most uncomfortable situation one day in the village where I conducted fieldwork. I lived with a widow who received a friend for coffee. The friend, a widow herself, was carrying her eleven-month-old grandson. As she walked past me, I excitedly smiled and opened my hands to pick up the baby. The woman looked almost frightened. Feeling that I had transgressed somehow, I returned the baby immediately before we sat down around the kitchen stove. My landlady took ash from the stove and put it into a cup of cold water. She added salt or sugar (I wasn’t sure from my vantage point) with the opposite hand to the cup. A minute later, the cup was passed to the concerned looking grandmother who dipped her fingers in and ‘washed’ the baby’s face with it three times. Embarrassed, I asked the grandmother if I had done something wrong and she replied, ‘Some people even without knowing it may have zavid [envy]’, i.e. rendering the ‘victim’ to be počudeni (pl. equiv. to ‘evil eye’ being upon them). If praise of children, or of beautiful people, is genuine then there is no harm. To avoid these negative consequences, it is advisable to wear a necklace with a blessed cross (received during christening) and to ritually cleanse. Yet, as a naive stranger (an ex-patriot living for many years in Australia was, indeed, proof enough of my naivety for them), I had placed the child in potential danger. Voicing the mandatory phrase Mašala because ‘you never know who is listening’, and you might inadvertently draw the attention of some mischievous or evil spirit, was meaningless in the eyes of both the grandmother and my landlady without also attending to the child with special cleansing and protection.17 Moreover, if their precautionary measures proved to be ineffective and there were signs of the child becoming listless, ill or disturbed, then I am quite sure the incident would have been considered the cause and, thus, would have required the aid of a soothsayer, a bajač

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(m.) or bajačka (f.). Soothsayers are frequently consulted for all manners of ailments and are called upon to explain, extrapolate, exorcise or reverse magija. When there is a particularly high level of doubt or uncertainty as to why something happened at that time and to ‘me’, an appeal to God alone is insufficient, if not fruitless. As one old woman said, ‘You need a vampirin sin [vampire’s son] to catch a vampire!’ Likewise, you need to know your enemies, to be able to speculate on the source of the wrongdoing to you or a loved one, perhaps even be able to pinpoint the exact individual who has been unable to hide their envy, resentment or hatred. For the most part, such folk beliefs are the domain of women, including the decision of when to call in a soothsayer. The perpetuation of folk traditions and beliefs among women continues to influence the younger generations. Even among those who proclaim themselves to be ‘modern’ (European, or cosmopolitan), the need to guard the body and be mindful of subtle shifts in the body and mind remains. Indeed, one day I greeted a fifteen-year-old girl only to have her explain that she was not well. Upon asking what was wrong since yesterday when she looked happy and fine, she replied: I don’t know. I was happy, my boyfriend left last night, and I went home, but when I got up this morning, I had this headache, out of nowhere. I couldn’t move and the whole side of my face was, like, stiff. My body ached, but only on one side. I told my mother, she gave me headache tablets, they are really good, but it didn’t work. Then she said, it is magija, someone has put a magija on me. I know some are jealous, you know [gives name], her mother is capable of bursting [ke pukne] because my boyfriend isn’t with her daughter. She really wants her daughter to marry into that family.

I asked if it could be something else, whether she should go to a doctor; she dismissed this and, instead, became reflexive: I am good, I do my fasting every Easter and Christmas, I go to church, help my mother [‘give’ to the ancestors] on Duovden. I am good to people, I haven’t done anything wrong to anyone. I can’t be punished for something. No, this is all because ‘someone’ is dying with jealousy because my boyfriend loves me, chose me, when he could have had anyone he wanted.

Signs of potential magija are thought to reside in body stiffness, temporary paralysis on one side of the body, unexplained tightness in the head, listlessness, forgetfulness that compels you to waylay your journey or take the wrong route, and making unnecessary mistakes with things you would otherwise do without thought or problem. For the fifteen-year-old girl and her mother, being attuned to subtle shifts (or, perhaps not so subtle, in their case) in feelings and sensations is significant. Thus, both decided to visit a trusted soothsayer on the same day or, as

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they said, ‘A wise old man who knows about things’. This soothsayer was a favourite of many village women who would travel to the city at very short notice because they found him not only accurate but also quite reasonable in the amount of money expected to be left discretely behind as a ‘gift’. Indeed, I received a report from the above-mentioned girl in the following week that the soothsayer had provided the remedy: a strict and regimented diet for three days, along with secret chants and sequential acts of purification, which she would not reveal to me because ‘You never know who can hear’. Other women had already worked out that something was afoot as the two were seen attending church and receiving blessings from the priest – who remained ignorant of the situation and assumed that they had a sudden attack of piety! In any of the remedies adopted the overall intent is to avoid attracting any undue public attention. Gossip is rampant in the village and a young, unmarried person being sickly can do irreparable damage to their opportunities for marriage. Relationships of intimacy and trust between women are critical for such things as providing advice about the real causes of illness or thoughtless acts, and for identifying and locating the best ‘professional’ to confirm that a spell or curse has indeed been put in place. They are also important for providing assistance in the follow-up purification or eradication rituals, which require locating and preparing materials for potions, collecting wild seeds, plants, grasses and mushrooms from just outside the village, and helping to transform them into ‘medicine’ of the exact specifications. Each individual ‘victim’ of magija needs a trusted co-conspirator, one who not only believes in such things but also has enough knowledge of how to identify a problem and whether it is serious enough for ‘professional’ advice to be sought. Co-conspirators are close kinswomen, mostly mothers and sisters, and, on rare occasions, intimate friends that you ‘trust with your life’. In other words, it requires that women are able to share their knowledge and experience in a relatively ‘hidden’ frame of performance, a frame of performance that is dependent on built knowledge of how to do and maintain relative secrecy, that is, ‘shared’ through an intimate web of relations. During my fieldwork, I heard a story of three women performing a ritual of some sort in the dead of night, the stroke of midnight being the most potent moment in betwixt and between time. A woman, her mother-in-law and her sister were making a maznik (traditional pastry) with secret chants, taking it into in the middle of the field. When I asked what they were doing it for, all that was said was that another in the village had wronged one of the women who participated in the ritual. This woman had refused for her son to marry one of the women who had participated in the ritual. In another incident, an elderly woman was referred to as a witch (vešterica) and she was greatly feared by younger women. This woman, too, refused

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to give her blessing to her son to marry the girl. Loath to have the bride’s family in the house, she refused to serve drinks, only resentfully giving one to a kinsman of the bride who subsequently became violently ill soon after leaving. She was accused of adding ash (pepel) to the man’s drink. In another story, a mother-in-law saved a bride who all but died of asphyxiation on her wedding day. The mother-in-law diligently went over the wedding gown, eventually finding three black threads stitched on the inside. In recounting such tales, women occasionally need to convince sceptical others of the truth of what they say. They would often preclude such tales with the phrase, ‘May I burst [be damned] if I lie’. Placing their personal eternal salvation on the line, however, is not as powerful as ‘I swear on my children’, using the phrase, ‘I swear by all’, or on their mother (‘Žimi majka’). To swear (‘da se kolni’) is equivalent to an oath (kletva), but it is also the flip side of making a curse intended to do harm to others. Drawing on one’s salvation by risking ill-fortune befalling their most loved ones (children, or the well-worn evocation of the intense love of a mother) can only be understood within the socio-cultural context of shared beliefs in the power of curses. Nonetheless, such swearing is obviously called for when there is doubt or suspicion in the truth of what one says.

BREAKING THE CODE: WOMAN AS FIGHTER, WORKER AND DISOBEDIENT CITIZEN The typical trope involving the heroic feats of women is framed around sacrifice, endurance and loyalty. The Ottoman penchant for stealing women, for instance, often presented mythic tales of resistance. A play by Vojdan Černodrinski written in 1900, for example, Krvava Svadba (‘Blood Wedding’), depicts a girl, Cveta, who was kidnapped on her wedding day with the intention of being taken to a harem. The feature film of the same name, adapted by Traijce Popov and released in 1967, became hugely popular, screened across villages and occasionally presented on state television. In the village of Živojno, an elderly woman spoke of how women disguised themselves as ‘ugly’ and covered their faces with scarves to avoid the attention of co-resident Turkish settlers. During the Ilinden Uprising in the same village, much depended on women keeping talk and activities secret. For instance, a woman told the story of her father who, as a ten-year-old boy, was playing in the village square when Ottoman troops came riding by and asked, ‘Who is in your house?’ They offered a bag of marbles if the boy would tell them who was at his house. The boy replied, ‘Some men with beards’. When the troops came to the house, his mother hid the komitat (member of the freedom fighters) in the upturned korito (tin washing trough) in the

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yard. Asked by the commander if any komitati had been at their house, she cried as she explained, ‘Yes, they stole all our food, we were afraid for our lives now have nothing to eat’. The officer took pity on the woman and gave her two bags of flour. In most village sites, women are invisible in the nation-making, political and other forms of resistance. As women were typically left to attend to the house and fields as men absconded to the mountains and forests to escape authorities or prepare for agitation, their experiences are rarely noted. A woman in Capari, for instance, recounted the struggle of her mother-inlaw who was left to face troops alone with her three children as the menfolk hid in the forests preparing for the Uprising. That ‘ordinary’ village women were compelled to exhibit fortitude, resourcefulness and heroism in circumstances of conflict is undoubted. More interesting, however, are the extraordinary women who joined resistance movements or who contributed to conflicts as fighters. In keeping with the broadly enlightened socialist discourses of gender equity, a number of exceptional women emerged as activists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but they were predominantly located in urban sites.18 One of the standouts of this period, however, is the engagement of village or ‘peasant’ women. Generally, the front stage discourse is of men building the nation. The contributions of women who fought alongside men during the Ilinden Uprising is captured in national history only in part. Female fighters are often described in terms of crossing gender norms, including fighting with the bravery of a man, being as smart as a man, and disguising themselves as men in order to take part in the conflict. Ironically, the long tradition or ‘customary practices’ of symbolic gender crossing are celebrated at various times during religious or ‘pagan’ festivals, such as Barbari, where men dress as women and play the role of a nevesta. Likewise, during Lazara, parades of women sing and perform blessings on village households, which encompasses several male symbols, including the carrying of a ‘sword’ and awarding the leader of the parade the title of the ‘male Lazar’ (Petkovski 2014). The Barbari festivals are especially prominent and, some, such as in Vevčani and Capari, have become significant annual attractions, including for tourists. Gender crossing, however, is disambiguated from the ‘real’ world. Ritualistic transgressions of gender norms and dichotomies are a powerful force for reaffirming them. Beyond such ritually appropriated contexts of gender crossing as public spectacle, there are some identities and roles that cut across the male-female dichotomy, such as the so-called ‘sworn virgins’ who assume male identity (Horvath 2011). As yet, no comparable attention has been paid to Macedonian women assuming male identities. The closest references are to some individuals described as ‘maška Petra’ (‘manly

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Petra’), or women characterised as being ‘like a man’. Such gender crossing is more likely to be of legend and myth. The Ilinden Uprising song by folk singer Vaska Ilieva, ‘Kruševo Aber Pristigna’ (‘News Came From Kruševo’), for instance, depicts the bravery of an only daughter, Todorka, who dresses as a man and is given a sabja (sabre). She fights for three years without anyone discovering her identity. This coincides with factual, as well as legendary, accounts of women fighters (see Agoston-Nikolova 2002). Tales such as that of Todorka also emphasise the context within which it seemed appropriate for women to step in (i.e. the absence of brothers). Women’s activism during the Yugoslavian period, as with activists in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, focused particularly on the education of women and girls (see Pantelić 2013; Dugandžić 2015). Nonetheless, as Batinić suggests (2015: 29), the scale of women’s involvement was impressive, both through women’s organisations such as the Anti-Fascist Front of Women and in their contributions ‘in the rear’ and on the battlefront. Women openly fought alongside men as partizanki in the period preceding the Yugoslav Federation, known as the ‘anti-fascist liberation war’ (1941– 1944). Initially, there was a continuation of women’s supportive role. Where men were drafted into the military or ‘took to the hills’, as Batinić notes, ‘it was women’s work that was vital for the maintenance of the rear’ (2015: 28). The engagement by women changed dramatically with the unprecedented scale of the mobilisation of women as fighters. The motives of such women have yet to be explored deeply. Whether their interests lay in nationalism, in a broader concern with women’s rights, or simply in a desire for adventure or thrill is still unclear. What is clear is that, in contrast to urban women who had been instrumental in suffragette activism, setting up schools for girls and so forth, the overwhelming majority of partizanki were young and illiterate peasant women who were not necessarily conscious of either socialist or gender equity ideals. In the early stages of the post-war reconstruction of Yugoslavia, there was a mass call for women to contribute to building society. The policy to incorporate women into the labour force (see Bonfiglioli 2014; First-Dilic 1974), alongside the realisation of rights, seemed to herald the existence of a ‘new woman’ in Yugoslavia. A number of scholars, however, point to the discrepancies between formal rights achieved during the Yugoslavian era and ongoing discrimination. In ‘opposition to official values’ and the increasing authority of urban women, Denich argues, there was ‘a tendency toward the reassertion of male exclusivity over the realm of public authority’ (1976: 14). Within the guise of the accommodation of women’s rights, the state enacted a powerful mode of domesticating dissent. According to Papić (2012), essential rights that women enjoyed under socialism worked to silence and disempower them, including such privileges as gender equality as cemented

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in the constitution, voting, the legalisation of abortion, access to health, education and work, and the right to claim a share of patrimony. Feminists were, in other words, reluctant to speak against the state (see Ramet 1995: 226) and, indeed, had played the role of what Zahajirević refers to as ‘benevolent dissidents’ (2015: 95). The primacy of women’s role as mother is extensively discussed in terms of kinship and family and the intersections of ethno-national identity politics (see First-Dilic 1974; Denich 1974, 1976; Karakasidou 1996; Angelova 1994). Front stage discourse in Yugoslav socialism, however, was that it would eradicate the traditional framing of women. The relatively shallow recognition of women’s rights, in other words, soon gave way to a call for women to return to their more traditional roles, to build the nation as mothers, which only intensified during the post-independence period. As Batinić aptly states of post-war Yugoslavia, ‘women’s organizations were soon reined in’ (2001: 4). Nonetheless, in contrast to even the ‘shallow’ gains within socialism, many scholars have highlighted the significant erosion of gender equity across the ex-Yugoslav states in the post-independence period.19 Hyper ethno-nationalist and hyper-masculine framing of nation-states included numerous attempts to reframe and co-opt traditional gender roles and identities, as had occurred in the past. Likewise, following privatisation, the post-Yugoslav conditions of work for women were severely worsened. At the local level, the Capari textile factory, an industry commonly comprised of female labour, was riddled with problems as of independence. Low paid and working under increasingly poor conditions, the majority of women sat at machines sewing for often long hours to fill external market orders. Textile workers in Ohrid also faced similar fates, as did others (see Bonfiglioli 2014). The menfolk fared no better. In fact, the number of male employers was relatively small. The men typically occupied more technical roles but were also employed as factory floor cleaners and maintenance workers. Many men lost their jobs, leaving them dependent on the meagre income of their wives, which made quitting even more impossible for women. The dangerous nature of men’s work led to the death of one worker, leaving his wife, who also worked in the factory, with two children and an insecure income. Understandably, perhaps, there were an increasing number of strikes and protests by workers. On 27 May 1997 the plight of the factory workers drew international attention. Workers had blocked the entrance to the factory, objecting to the stripping of assets and intending to stop the transfer of factory property. According to Helsinki Human Rights in Macedonia, thirty to forty police officers from Bitola arrived at noon and, without saying anything, physically attacked some of the workers. Five women sustained physical injuries. Similarly, in the village of Kosel in the Ohrid region, the gazda (boss, owner) threatened women workers until they completed

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an order destined for Western Europe, saying that they were not allowed to go home until the order was done. Several women said that all of the workers stayed, exhausted and without complaint or extra pay. Reactions to female politicians perceived to have behaved badly evoke machoistic discourses of problems in giving women too much of a ‘lead’, as illustrated by the case of a corrupt female minister who absconded with funds. During the 2017 political crisis, this became apparent when a man pulled the hair of a female politician at a storming of parliament by sympathisers of the outgoing ‘nationalist’ government in protest of the election of an Albanian Speaker of Parliament (Bliznakovski 2017). Local audiences were not necessarily sympathetic towards the woman, despite her representation in the global media as a victim of anachronistic or misogynist nationalist actors. One of the stari bekjari said with contempt, following the incident, ‘She acts important. But she is rotten, she gave us up to the SAD [U.S.A]’. The overall lack of faith in all politicians (‘They’re all rotten’) notwithstanding, female politicians are expected to be better, rather than the same, as men.20 Something grander or finer in sentiment was expected of women politicians to uphold the ideal of womanliness into the public arena, i.e. humanity, social consciousness and generosity, rather than selfishness and egoism. Following news of a minister accused of corruption, one local woman asked rhetorically, ‘Is she a mother or not?’ The disjuncture between how society was perceived and shifts in the presence of women in the public arena also reinforced fears of a ‘Western’ or ‘global’ influence in local affairs. As a consequence of ‘international diffusion’, or due to the deliberative ‘international promotion of democracy’ (Bunce and Wolchik 2011: 17–18), influences from the outside were evident concerning how gender issues were framed and reframed, even by previous generations of feminists and activists. As Irvine notes for Serbia and Croatia, ‘While the shift in domestic political forces during the electoral revolutions provided the opportunity for women’s organizing, international assistance was a key factor shaping it’ (2012: 5). With the entry of development actors came the introduction of electoral quotas and other typical gender and development projects, such as violence against women campaigns. ‘Development speak’ began to predominate in the public arena and numerous ‘reports’, the mainstay of development speak, emerged after independence. Foreign development lexicons such as ‘gender equity’, gender mainstreaming, electoral ‘quotas’, ‘violence against women’ and LGBQTI rights reaffirmed the fact that intervention was needed, not only on behalf of women, but also for ‘sexual’ minorities. In this, the hegemonic hold of the imaginary of Balkan society was of women being victims of patriarchy and continuing to suffer at the hands of men. The view of women as victims also meant that enlightened civic actors, now versed in

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such discourses, were unforgiving of the ignorance or lack of understanding of local women about their plight (see Ghodsee 2006). Nonetheless, there was clearly now a different generation, emboldened to broach culturally and politically sensitive issues that would have been all but impossible during socialism. A different kind of ‘new woman’ was emerging, just as different kinds of ‘gender issues’ were in vogue. The 2008 anti-gay proposals were especially controversial and have had an adverse effect to what proponents sought, in that they have strengthened the more Western style LGBTQI lobby. Younger generations of feminists have also been far more vocal, taking to the streets alongside the more liberally minded, in the recent ‘Colourful Revolution’ ( Jakimovska 2017). The young village women also took up the mantle of championing their natal villages on their brief visits from the city through ‘slow food’ movements, environmentalism and reformed notions of empowerment women. In short, women were triumphantly returning to contribute to the rejuvenation of dying villages, but from a positionality of having cemented their urban centeredness. As discussed in the following chapter, however, the rising rates of aging unmarried women in urban sites and the increasing presence of emancipated women in the public arena posed just as much of a ‘social’ problem as stari bekjari. The call soon came for women, irrespective of whether they were villagers or urbanites, to get married, refrain from abortion and divorce, and concentrate on reproducing progeny.21 That is, the recurring call was for women to resume their primary role as mothers.

NOTES 1. The focus on women in much of the anthropology of ‘South Slavs’ is invariably framed through the prism of kinship roles, in particular being a wife or a mother. See, for example, Halpern (1965); Hammel (1968); Denich (1974); and Simic (1983a) for Serbia. See Balikci (1965); Rheubottom (1976, 1980); Schubert (2005b); Bošković (2002); and Jakimovska (2017) for Macedonians. See Dimova (2006a) for ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. For Bulgaria, see Sanders (1949) and Angelova (1994). 2. Although, as Campbell argues for the Sarakatsani, a man ‘takes great care to avoid any demonstration’, so that he can ‘attempt to maintain his relations with his family of origin unaltered and intact’ (1964: 67), the growing bond between the conjugal pair shifts the dynamics within the household. 3. Balikci refers to ‘pokrov šeptene’ (under the covers they whisper) in recognition of the fact that a woman ‘can confide only to her husband, and then only while in bed together’ (1965: 1461). See also Rheubottom (1980: 244). 4. Quite accurately, Rheubottom argues that ‘the birth of the first son marks the successful transfer of her (bride’s) attachment from her natal to husband’s household’ (1971: 152). See also Bošković on gender relations in Prespa (2002).

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5. Similarly, Dimova notes the tensions that arise when a ‘modern’ wife refuses to follow the Albanian custom of kissing the hand of the mother-in-law to ‘show respect’ (2006a: 314). 6. Hammel argues that the existence of reciprocal terms for wives of co-resident brothers is indicative of the antiquity of the zadruga-type family organisation (1968: 30). The way in which unrelated women are perceived as the weak link in the otherwise natural unity amongst blood-connected men has frequently been noted as a particularly ‘South Slav’, zadruga-type characteristic (Balikci 1965: 1461; Hammel 1968: 15; Simic 1969, 1983b; Denich 1974: 256; and Rheubottom 1976: 222; 1980: 245–46). Similar accounts of rivalry between co-resident women, however, have also been noted in other societies (see Du Boulay 1974: 20; Hirschon 1983: 314; Pitt-Rivers [1956] 1961: 101; Bloch 1987: 325). 7. There is a large volume of literature on dowries in the anthropology of Mediterranean and South European family and kinship. See, for instance, Friedl (1962: 70); Campbell (1964: 82–85); Loizos (1975a, 1975b); Sant Cassia (1982: 650); Hirschon (1983: 198, 308); Brettell (1991a, 1991b: 341, 349–51); Bourdieu (1976: 125); and Milicic (1995, 1998) among many others. 8. In contrast to the case of Caparsko Pole, Rheubottom argues that dowries are present and serve as an acknowledgment of a woman’s contribution in labour to her natal household in Skopska Crna Gora (1980: 230–32; 1996: 7, 224). 9. St Erlich (1966: 307–10, 317–18) distinguished between ‘grass widows’ (those whose husbands are absent for prolonged periods due to pečalba) and those whose husbands are deceased. Karakasidou, in her research among the ‘Slavo-Macedonians’ of northern Greece, similarly refers to widows relative to the zadruga family, and argues that a point of distinction was the fact that widows remarried much sooner than elsewhere in Greece (1996: 101). 10. Abortion across the socialist states was readily available and excessive rates are noted, including in Yugoslavia, where it was used as a form of birth control (Stenvoll 2007; see also Loizos and Papataxiarchis, who also make note of abortion as a form of contraception in Greece, 1991: 224). 11. Women who are well past the social age of marriage are no longer even referred to as stari čupi, except in a postscript description as ‘hadn’t married’ (‘ne se maži’). Du Boulay notes that such women are described in Ambeli as ‘not having a man’ (1974: 121). Such women, however, are rare and in Capari, for example, there were only three out of a total population of 702 inhabitants, of whom one was intellectually disabled and the other physically disabled. 12. Women’s sexuality has been extensively discussed within the context of village societies, particularly in the Mediterranean and southern European region; see further Pitt-Rivers ([1956] 1961); Friedl (1962); Campbell (1964); Peristiany (1965); Du Boulay (1974); Dubisch (1983, 1986); Gilmore (1987a, 1987b); Delaney (1987); Giovannini (1987); Hirschon (1978, 1989); Loizos and Papataxiarchis (1991: 223); and Loizos (1994). In these societies, training women in modesty and ‘shame’ is considered primarily a matter of protecting and preserving the reputation of their families, especially their father’s, brother’s or husband’s honour. Importantly, unmarried women’s sexual behaviour is assumed to affect their marriageability and, thus, there is a compulsion to ‘control’ women’s movements (Loizos and Papataxiarchis 1991: 230).

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13. Competition or conflict between men leading to such attacks as ‘I fuck your mother (or wife or sister)’ is discussed by a number of anthropologists of the Mediterranean and southern European region as equivalent to control and even to humiliation of men. See, for example, Pitt-Rivers ([1956] 1961: 119); Gilmore (1987a: 135); and Loizos (1994: 72). 14. Gender-based violence is a very recent focus of scholarly attention in Macedonia, but had become a significant theme in ex-Yugoslav states, especially following the Bosnian War, where the issue of rape and violence against women received considerable attention (see Brunnbauer 2000; Zarkov 2003; Papić 2002; Nikolic-Ristanovic 2002; and Simonovska and Dimitrievski 2016). 15. For further explorations of gossip, see, for example, Gluckman (1963, 1968); Paine (1967); Du Boulay (1974); Dubisch (1983, 1986); Stewart and Strathern (2004); Besnier (2009); and Kartznow (2009). 16. Warner discusses travel in relation to Russian beliefs as being ‘so persistent in the imagery of the traditional Russian funeral lament and in the provisioning of the body to sustain a journey is clearly alien to the Christian message, although very pertinent to pre-Christian Slavonic concepts of the afterlife and the arduous nature of the road to get to it’ (2000: 268). 17. The term Mašala is a derivative of the phrase Insh Allah (with the grace of God) and continues to be in colloquial use throughout Macedonia since the Ottoman period as a protective chant to avoid počuda. For an interesting historical account of magic, witches and vampires in the Balkans, see Durham (1923) and Siegel (1996). 18. See De Haan, Daskalova and Loutfi (2006) for a biographical dictionary of women’s movements and feminism in which a number of Macedonian women are mentioned, including a profile of Kostadina Bojadjieva Nasteva-Rusinska by Vera Veskovic-Vangeli (2006: 66–69). The activism by women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries focused primarily on education for girls, but also involved creating hospitals and relief activities during and following conflicts. In the villages in which I conducted research, most of the evidence for the recruitment of women in the late nineteenth-century resistance movement were anecdotal oral histories of ‘old women’ passed down to their offspring or grandchildren. 19. On post-Yugoslav gender, see Angelova (1994: 55); Dimova (2006a); Bošković (2002); Brunnbauer (2000); Zahajirević (2015); Thiessen (2010); Gjurovska (2015); Gajtanoska (2017); and Ramet, Hassenstab and Listaug (2017). 20. The entry of women in politics post-independence does not automatically mean that they take up ‘women’s causes’. In a similar vein to women’s organisations during the Yugoslavian period, political leagues were set up alongside those of the two largest parties, VMRO-DPMNE and SDSM. Due to international interventions, and in preparation for succession to the European Union, electoral quotas for female candidates were also introduced. 21. Divorce rates have increased dramatically in Macedonia (Stefanovska 2014: 2). It prompted a nationalist parliamentarian to blame the increase on women’s rights, as had a senior bishop (Marusic 2013). This followed in the wake of attempts to reduce abortions by amending the Law on Abortion ( Jakimovska 2017).

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he socially courageous who have drawn boundaries between what their society can impose on them and what it cannot are rare. They ably wear their well-honed self-efficacy, self-realisation and understanding of their place among critics, doubters and saboteurs. The dignity of these rare individuals might arouse speculation, but not gossip, ridicule or dismissal. With a grace that speaks to an inner peace being outside of the ordinary social presence of men, they invite respect even where they do not confront, conflict or stand their ground in the accustomed manner of the masculine ideal. They personify another cultural ideal: that of humility, lack of social pretention or drive to prove or accrue status through competition with others in order to seek acknowledgment of self. Kosta, well into his eighties, is one of these rare individuals. With the grace of an individual who is self-contained, his carriage of body and mode of interaction with others attracted respect. An ‘old man’, never married, Kosta seemed strange to many in his small village and aroused much curiosity. On occasion, some individuals would muster the courage to ask the old bachelor, who as a sole child had lived in a large house alone after his parents’ death, ‘Kosta, why didn’t you marry?’ To which he would humbly reply, ‘That’s how things worked out’. On another occasion, he would simply reply to the same question, ‘Od Nemukaet’ (‘Lack of forethought’). From a collective imaginary of near universal marriage having existed in the past, it seemed strange to be confronted by the reality of a never-married individual. Some men, watching Kosta walking slowly in the distance and knowing he was unlikely to frequent the only village café, speculated on the reasons for his non-married status. The speculation took the full range. From suspicion of his sexual orientation, that he might have been a teka (‘aunty’,

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i.e. homosexual), to romanticisation about a love lost (he was apparently in love with a woman whose parents married her off to another after which he vowed not to marry). Whatever the reason, the presence of a never-married old man was an enigma. To be an old bachelor at the turn of the twentieth century was indeed considered a rarity and could not be fathomed by onlookers, especially if it was an outcome of his own choice-making. For the speculators, there was no self-realisation that they too might one day become an old man who had never married. In the 1990s, the label of stari bekjari sat as uncomfortably as a new cloak imposed on their bodies by others. Although confronted daily about their status as stari bekjari, they still fell into the category of mladi (youth) and, as such, simply drew attention to the fact that they were ‘as yet unmarried’. Being of the category of stari bekjari compels a particular kind of engagement with the ‘real’ world. Compelled by a need for self-preservation and refraction from the incessant pressure to marry, for many stari bekjari, a different kind of individualism is called for. For the individual, the tension between social accommodation as well as accommodation of the social, however, compels the acceptance of a reformed sense of self. To come to this point for aging bachelors, however, is difficult. As they seek validation of their modernness or acknowledgement of their unique personhood, they are nonetheless tied to family and the ongoing association with a village. Across many rural or village societies, aging bachelors stand apart, both as individuals and as a category.1 Irrespective of the changing social structures that leave certain categories of individuals behind, the inability to marry by a socially appropriate age is viewed almost entirely as a problem of the aging bachelors. As an anchor to berth the rampant change and chaos in society, marriage is viewed as a cure for social and personal ills. Marriage is a singular obsession for the familija of stari bekjari. In Capari, for instance, many in the community thought that the current generation of youth, the stari bekjari, had received a good start in life. The stari bekjari were not faced with the same chronic poverty and lack of opportunities that had been faced by their parents when they were growing up. Men have been left, in other words, to be individual and indulgent and, thus, very few expectations were placed on them, other than to marry. Yet, the men had squandered their opportunities. With increased resources, cars and freedom from much of the laborious work of a villager, they were considered a standout generation. Contrarily, men are condemned for laziness where they fail to participate in work on family estates or community projects. Indeed, most stari bekjari contribute quite extensively to the community, such as in rebuilding the burnt-out monastery, upgrading roads or helping others during major work-intensive tasks like harvesting. Involvement in civic life, however, is considered a sub-

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terfuge for the supposedly singular aim of searching for brides. Time for involvement in the community is for after marriage, not before! The public visibility of stari bekjari was, for most in the village community, inescapable: ‘Look at these old dogs’, ‘these donkeys, look at them, they just sit [around]’. The psychological impact of a performative presence being denied is enormous. The men are chastised or belittled when endeavouring to present an opinion, with ready phrases of dismissal aimed at them, such as, ‘Oh come, on, get away with you. Go and get married, then talk’. The presence of stari bekjari is a constant reminder to the villagers that the community is in peril of disappearing. The future sustainability of the community and their familija rests with the men. In a majestic argument, one senior village man asserted, ‘If all sixty bachelors got married, they would bring sixty women to the village’. Following a similar logic, another man rhetorically asked, ‘If they at least make one child each, think what that means to the village and to our school?’ The full burden of the village’s declining population and the eventual closure of the primary school are problems that are placed on the shoulders of the stari bekjari. Moreover, the stari bekjari are accused of affecting the status of the whole community, i.e. the village could no longer boast of having ‘beautiful, tall boys from good homes’ to attract brides. With physical aging, they simply look more and more old, grey-haired and sedentary. Given the socio-centric emphasis, standing apart automatically brings shame upon the stari bekjari, as both a category and as individuals. Stari bekjari are thrust into the spotlight, so to speak, for all the wrong reasons. Without having progressed to the next stage of life, they have brought stram to their families and to the community. Evoking stram is one of the main weapons used by the Makedonci in re-orienting anti-social or seemingly wayward behaviour. Ideally, stram is a necessary quality of propriety and decency. It is most often used in connection with red, in that shame is induced when there is a lack of accord with ‘order’. The shame of stari bekjari is presumed to be automatic, since they have not followed red or progressed to the next stage of life. Stari bekjari are expected to feel an innate sense of shame that should compel them into action to redress it. Be it a problem of stari bekjari lacking stram, false arrogance or lack of resolve, the men received the full brunt of collective frustration. One mother, for example, accused her son of being shameless after the woman’s son received an invitation to attend a christening party for the child of his friend. The mother did not want her son to refuse the invitation and cause possible gossip that he might resent his friend’s good fortune. Rather, she wanted him to become resolved in his intentions to find a bride. For her, such invitations ‘showed up’ their familija’s failure. The problem of aging bachelorhood

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is fundamentally viewed as one of disorderly individuals who threaten the foundations of social life by refusing to act when it is their place to do so. From the perspective of being moderni, stari bekjari often attempt to reason, stating of their desire for a love match that ‘I will marry when I find the right woman’. Such men are viewed as pretentious, however, and are accused of false pride. The men’s ‘worth’ as stari bekjari was automatically low and did not allow for such self-indulgences as waiting for the ‘right’ woman. They often presented their ‘as yet unmarried’ status as indicative of agency, of being true to self and rejecting the idea of marrying ‘just anyone’ or, in a more derogative reference to rural women, wedding a ‘village pumpkin’! After all, according to the men’s families, ‘All women are the same. If you are searching for the perfect one, you are never going to find her’ and ‘If you choose too much you will remain unmarried’. One of the most irritating responses, especially to kin members, is when stari bekjari say, ‘I will marry when my time comes’, making reference to both the concepts of vreme (time) and red (order). Mothers are most unimpressed with such reasoning and counter it by simply pointing out that ‘Your time has passed’. Any appeals to reason are also to no avail. Following incessant pressure by a female cousin who would not stop asking ‘When are you getting married?’, one man said, ‘How could I get married? I have no job, no money, where are we going to live?’ The cousin became short-tempered and replied impatiently, ‘When is money enough? We are poor, we always were, but we still get married and we still have children’. The bachelor himself became agitated and asked her to stop nagging him, to which she replied, ‘I’m not saying anything’, immediately following it by adding, ‘But you have to get married’. In another case, a son yelled out to his mother in full view of the neighbours, ‘I’m begging you to stop [pressuring me]’. The mother persisted, however, until her son yelled in desperation, ‘Enough, you have “burst” me’ [‘Dosta, me pukna’]. Unperturbed, the mother replied, ‘I will stop when you bring me a bride in the house’. Even the death of a relative can herald a crisis for mothers of a star bekjar. In one case, the death of a man resulted in the woman crying incessantly and loudly in a ‘woe is me’ manner. While the man’s death undoubtedly caused grief for the woman, it also made her despondent. As close kin, she and her sons would have to adhere to the three years mourning and, for the mother, it only added to the hopelessness of having two unmarried sons. Both sons angrily refused the prohibition from marriage for three years, but the mother continued to cry ‘for them’ and for what the deceased had done ‘to them!’ Pressuring a son or cousin to marry is reasonable and responsible behaviour and should take precedence over all other concerns. Beyond any concerted efforts to compel men to marry, many parents are irresolute about

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what to do and how to relate to them. For parents, there is an understanding of what having a ‘youth’ for a son entails and the kind of behaviour it typifies, including never being at home, not eating properly, and spending too much time and money on pleasure. There is no established idea, however, about how to behave towards a son who is unmarried and has stopped roaming and socialising, and looks and acts like an ‘old’ person. Indeed, men complain bitterly about their parents’ lack of satisfaction, and their continued demands, even after marriage. For parents, the push to have their sons married is a mere step towards stimulating the chain of events and status upgrades that go along with it. After all, mothers say, he got married late and time is running out for him to be a father and to make them grandparents. Indeed, what is most humiliating and frustrating to parents of stari bekjari is that they are called baba (f.) and dedo (m.) in the community, and by children of other kin members, ‘without having grandchildren in their house’. Likewise, strains between stari bekjari and married friends are often a cause for avoiding each other’s company. Visiting a married friend at his house can become awkward for a bachelor who may be accused of coveting the wife or criticised by the man’s family of luring him away from his domestic duties. Even without such accusations, however, there is an automatic status difference between the men that is particularly difficult to reconcile because one is married while the other is not. Although pressure by married friends is presumably well intended, relations are often strained. Two friends, for instance, one married and the other not, frequently exchanged heated words. On many occasions, the married friend would say in front of other people, ‘Hey you, go and get married’ in a condescending manner, much to the annoyance of the unmarried man who repeatedly asked him to stop. The married friend replied, ‘Despite it, I will keep saying it until you marry’. The irate star bekjar shouted out, ‘Despite whom? You can see my mother is stressed. Despite her? You can’t make me get married. When it comes (for me) I will marry then’. Stari bekjari often feel compelled to offset the pressure of being compared with a successful (i.e. married) friend by belittling the latter’s competence as a man. For instance, the star bekjar in the above example said, ‘Look, he is “thick”. They found him a wife and now he makes out like he is better than me’. Yet, even the old bachelor’s own family praised the achievements of such esnaf men. Married men have the backing of the whole society, including that of the bachelor’s own family, for their social superiority to the star bekjar. The relentless pressure to marry has made many stari bekjari defensive, if not sneaky and anti-social. In search of even a brief reprieve from the incessant interrogations, for instance, one forty-two-year old man attempted to pacify his mother by claiming that in July (three months into the future) he would bring ‘her’ [his girlfriend] home. July passed and no bride arrived.

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The mother complained bitterly, ‘He keeps lying to me. I keep thinking this time it will happen. My life is my enemy’. If life is a mother’s ‘enemy’, it is torturous for her son who is confronted daily with the same incessant questions, ‘Hey you, aren’t you getting married yet?’ Or, more directly, ‘Why aren’t you married?’

THE SOCIAL PERSON IS A GENDERED PERSON Masculinity cannot be essentialised, nor can its multiple forms of expression be ignored. The social imperative is not simply to be a person, but to be a particular kind of gendered person, either a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’. If a man is confronted with an attack on his manhood, he seeks ways to prove it, often violently. Confrontation is not an option for aging bachelors, nor are displays of sexual prowess or other characteristically male pursuits, such as going out and drinking. Indeed, if gendered identities are performed, they are fundamentally performed to a social audience that is ready to listen. Constant social censure and contempt, being told daily that ‘You’re not a man’, coupled with the physicality of aging, renders the social performance of manhood all but impossible for stari bekjari. For men, conceding to familial and societal pressure to marry would mean forgoing the masculine ideal of choice-making. For the collective, their masculinity is a depleting resource; it dissipates with inaction. Stari bekjari are presumed to have only one task before them (i.e. finding a bride), and the fact they remain unmarried is proof of their incompetence, laziness, ‘choosiness’ or, simply, lack of forethought (nemukaet). Being a man presumes intentionality or purposiveness and a consciousness about meaning-making. To lack forethought, in other words, is to stand outside of normalcy. The insane or mentally and socially incompetent may be excused for not possessing purposefulness or meaning in action, but not ‘competent’ beings from ‘good families’. There is no comfortable medium between personhood and positionality as central emblems of family and kinship. In fact, many stari bekjari have accepted the social judgement that they are ‘not men’ and display self in the social arena as despondent victims of a changing world that has rendered them an annoyance, embarrassment and, indeed, sexless. The ongoing struggle with families only intensifies the need to search for the company of like-minded others. Typically, sociality among men is a form of offsetting familial obligations and pressures by seeking to indulge and console the wounded self, ‘to lose oneself ’ or to ‘get relaxed’. Being accompanied in public is a necessity for Makedonci, and only the very brazen or the very old are seen to roam without purpose and alone. Except during kin events, when people are accompanied by relatives, people say, ‘You

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need company’. Most often ‘company’ or društvo is an ad hoc association for the express purpose of an outing and is typically formed beforehand rather than on arrival at a location. The impediment to socialisation without the company of others is all-encompassing: ‘Where are you going to go without društvo?’ Or, put in another way, ‘You can’t go out alone’. Company is generally sought with people who are in the same age-set or of the same social category. The društvo of married men comprises other married men, and the company of unmarried men follows similar patterns. A mixed društvo is typically viewed as unbalanced and thus ‘not in order’ (‘ne je vo red’), such as those between married and unmarried persons, or mladi and stari (young and old). Of note, unmarried brothers generally do not associate in the same društvo, whereas sisters may go out together. Brothers usually avoid even the appearance of being on an outing together. As one brother said, ‘We respect each other, but we don’t associate together. If we come across each other in a društvo, one of us will pull away straight off. I don’t know, somehow it doesn’t go’. The reason for such avoidance was expressed by one man as necessary in order to reduce the risk of associating with the same women. In a similar vein, an older brother stopped his younger one from having relations with an ex-girlfriend by pointing out, ‘I used to go with her. I went and I told him straight away. He didn’t see her again. Whether it was a serious relationship or not, I went with her and now my brother also. No!’ Furthermore, a younger brother is perceived as socially incompetent if he associates with the same društvo as his older brother: ‘My brother wanted to go out with me, but I didn’t want to. It’s better that he learns on his own, to get by on his own, it was somehow ugly for me to sit at the same table as my brother. But, sisters go out and it’s nothing’. Encroaching on each other’s društvo is also equivalent to cutting across age-sets (esnaf ), and potentially upsetting the ideal of sibling marriage order. Older brothers are usually awarded priority in the courtship arena (presumably because of the sibling marriage order) until they find a bride and remove themselves from it, and only then does a younger sibling have their turn or red. Given that the main aim of šetanje (going on outings or excursions) is to find women, društvo is particularly critical for the unmarried. Men say, ‘Only for a woman do you go out alone’. Only when this end has been achieved is it socially acceptable for men to separate from their društvo of unmarried friends. After becoming a par (couple), they tend to associate with other couples. Even then, obligations to društvo are not easily forgotten because of the pressure on newly formed couples to ‘introduce’ others from their respective društvo. Similar to the ‘dragging-in’ of brides, there is usually pressure to make some effort ‘to introduce others’. Having fulfilled their obligations, new couples can then concentrate on each other and step aside

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from their respective društvo of unmarrieds to create new sets among the marrieds. Older people in the village often quote the phrase, ‘friends until you marry’. Ideally, marriage stops bekjar-type behaviour. After marriage, it becomes the express duty of a wife and a mother to break a man’s socialising habits and to make him more house-bound, to exhibit the behaviours said to befit a responsible familijaren čovek (family man). As a mother said, ‘If only he marries. He will compose himself, he won’t go out, he’ll save his money’. The mother also wanted her son to stop associating with his particular društvo, who she blamed for encouraging his excessive and pointless šetanje, referred to as skitanje. An eighteen-year old unmarried woman summed up the sentiments of other women by saying, ‘When I get married, I’m not letting him go. What does he want there?’ Just as the household expects all extravagances and outings to cease after marriage, they also assume that any association with the društvo will cease, alongside the kind of behaviour associated with šetanje, prolonged absence from home, excessive drinking and wasteful častenje (paying for rounds of drinks). The term častenje has various dimensions of meaning depending on the situation. Častenje follows rules that are generally clear to the participants and speaks to an understanding that assertions of spontaneity or offering a drink to celebrate something ‘new’ or receiving guests are guided by tacit rules of etiquette. As part of gostoprimlivnost (hospitality), for instance, it refers to ‘offering’ guests drinks, as in the standard phrase, ‘What can we offer you?’ In celebration of an upcoming event, the offer is typically made by saying, ‘Come [with me] so I can shout you a drink’, or, ‘Come to our place so that we can shout you a drink’ on such occasions as birthdays, the buying of a new car, or the securing of a job. Aside from standard moments of hospitality or sociality, it can infer the announcement of something significant such as an upcoming nuptial. Thus, an offer of častenje can lead to questions such as, ‘Is there something new?’ Častenje is also an essential component of male sociality. Maintaining exchange relations (Simic 1969: 69) is typically done by men in public sites such as cafés, sometimes referred to as bife or the more traditional kafana. The sociality of men, however, is expected to differ according to whether they are married or unmarried. After marriage, total commitment to their families is expected and socialising with other men is assumed to be in the interests of their families, even when they are in a village bife. I overheard a man retort to his wife, ‘I’ve got business with him, I’m not going to seek him at home’ in response to her insistent questioning as to why he was going out. Married men are not expected to waste their time sitting in a bife; they are not expected to be excessively generous or indiscriminate in their spending of money when it can be better used by the family (see Loizos 1994: 77). In

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many ways, the short journey to a bife represents a halfway point between the independence and unaccountability they felt when unmarried and the responsibility and sedateness expected of them after marriage. Regardless, it is behaviour befitting only men. Women are not expected to have the same need to ‘relax’. Although they may go for a coffee at a neighbouring woman’s house, they are open to accusations of laziness as a domakinka if the visits are too frequent or the stay extends beyond a quick chat and a coffee. For unmarried men in particular, častenje is supposedly a spontaneous gesture that depends on mood or how ‘relaxed’ a man feels because he is in a ‘good društvo’ who ‘go along with his indulgence’ and, thus, act in accordance with his need to follow the ‘mood’ (kef ).2 Men in the mood to časti (vb.) will say, ‘Come on, indulge me’ (‘Ajde, kef da mi napravite’). Likewise, those who follow him do so ‘in order to indulge him/his mood, I drank’ (‘Da mu go napraam kefot, se napiv’). Častenje is thus a way of reinforcing social relationships and alliances. Although many regret being so generous and indiscriminate about who they časti, especially if the excesses are subsequently reported to others, they often quickly dismiss it by saying, ‘I couldn’t drink alone could I?’ Being alone when kef hits you is thought to be tragic. How can you display the self without showing how generous you are to others! Drinking is a social activity and sharing a drink together is an important aspect of the socially constituted man, a form of indulging the standing out of an individual and making the giver happy. In short, excessive častenje can easily become unproductive in gaining the respect of other men who may judge a man egotistic and lacking any understanding of socially appropriate behaviour. Lacking social discrimination, or to be undiscerning in one’s choice of companions, is considered a weakness of character. In a similar vein to the ‘weakness’ of women who are accused of being sexually ‘indiscriminate’, social indiscrimination among men relates to an inability to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate forms of častenje. One’s spontaneity can convey the wrong message about the balance between the necessary hrabrost (courage) to ‘let go’ of engrained behaviours and the mindfulness about it being a social performance. Indiscriminate častenje can be misinterpreted as a wilful show of disregard for social conduct, as evidence that the individual is showing off by ‘shouting’ anyone and everyone a drink till the money runs out, with a genuine lack of concern for the much-needed resources and money worries that plague others! Moreover, in the light of day someone is likely to comment on such excess. No accomplices are to be trusted, or so the family of stari bekjari say to the itinerate individual. Someone in a društvo may ‘talk’ like an ‘old gossiping woman’ and relay stories of excess to others who then spread gossip. In one case, a thirty-year-old bachelor, described by many in the village as ‘a beautiful boy who drinks too much’, won an equivalent of three

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months’ salary in a lottery. With indiscriminate častenje, the man spent the prize within a week. His family pointed out that he would not gain any respect by doing this, saying, ‘Why are you “shouting” everyone a drink? The next day they are going to say, “he is a drunkard, a no hoper”. Buy yourself something nice with the money’. The ‘beautiful boy’ ignored his family’s advice and even the men who enjoyed the mufte (equiv. ‘freebies’) spoke of him afterwards with contempt as a lumpac (a ‘rager’), or an unreasoned kaviler (cavalier). Those who are mindless of social conduct and etiquette or who aspire to be a ‘big shot’ or a ‘show-off ’ may engage in excessive častenje and may even gather a large društvo. Friendship, however, compels equality and taking turns in shouting drinks. Indeed, opportunities to release stress, to be indulgent or ‘relax’ in the company of others, are increasingly problematic for men labelled stari bekjari.

DISCORD AMONG MEN: RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN YOUNG AND OLD BACHELORS It is in the nature of individuals to draw distinctions between themselves and their parents and other ‘oldies’, to assume that life is much more complicated today than what they imagine it must have been like in the past. There is no doubt, however, that stari bekjari today are caught in processes and positionalities that are rendering them asunder. As a ‘new’ phenomenon, having aging bachelors in the category of the unmarrieds who are no longer young presents a structural clash between category and reality. If you are not married, then you are assumed to be young. Moreover, until recently there was little difference in the ages of the unmarrieds; they seemed to go through the different stages of life alongside others in their age-set (esnaf ), generation (generaciji) and school friends (školski). In the 1990s, the differences between young unmarrieds and stari bekjari were noticeable. Nonetheless, both the young and older unmarrieds were generally described within the classificatory mladi (‘youth’, i.e. unmarrieds). A key point of difference among the unmarrieds is the lack of intense scrutiny concerning their ongoing lifestyle of indiscriminate roaming, political interests, and sexual and other relationships. Indeed, the young are not subject to the same societal pressure to marry; however, they too are often told to ‘think’ about marriage before they get too old and become stari bekjari. Excessive šetanje, or aimless skitanje (roaming, gallivanting), is the privilege of indulged youth. The discord between youths and stari bekjari has become increasingly pronounced. In real age, stari bekjari are anything but ‘young’. In many

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ways, they are viewed by the younger mladi as ‘uncles’, no different in their values as their parents, since they are of the same generacija. Some of the stari bekjari are even of the grandfather (dedo) category, the same term of reference for individuals such as the eighty-year-old bachelor Kosta. The difference is most pronounced in relation to the lifestyles of stari bekjari who have stopped being mobile and socialising and, instead, ‘sit with the old men on the bench in front of the bife’. Many of the older bachelors have become sedentary, spending their evenings in a village bife in the exclusive company of other men, or going to a city bar (kafic), only to socialise with similar kinds of men. On the rare occasions when an outing to the city is planned, they generally frequent the comfortable venues of yesteryear. In particular, they are to be found in the kafana or kafic where they might encounter a scantily clad female entertainer singing ‘popular’ music of the Yugoslav era. In short, the stari bekjari socialise with similar kinds of men, whether in the village or in cities. Finding the right društvo is not easy and is often a case of a very few select and trusted friends that enable such performances of self. Some stari bekjari are compelled to adopt unscrupulous means to attach themselves to a new društvo. Rather than actively organising an outing, many stari bekjari wait for an opportunity to impose on a društvo gathered for a city outing. If snubbed, they return to drinking in the bife. One star bekjar complained bitterly after a društvo had left him behind saying, ‘I’m not a “pussy”, I’m a travelled youth’. He added further, ‘I used to take many with me, if I didn’t take them, they’d just sit and daze in the bife doing nothing’. The man’s bravado, however, does not impress younger men who are reluctant to include him in their društvo. Contrarily, younger men also have contempt for the older men who have stopped all forms of šetanje and who ‘just sit and daze’. In one case, a forty-two-year old star bekjar admitted to a friend that he had given up all hope of getting married and refused to go out at all. He was thus reluctant to go on a blind date that his friend had set up for him. Instead, he claimed he wanted to increase the livestock and work extra fields, stay home and watch television. Nonetheless, the date took place, but was most unsuccessful according to the friend who organised the event. As he angrily commented: He says the girl isn’t good enough for him! You know why? Because he is used to seljanki [village women], those who gather tobacco all day. He doesn’t have to talk or be careful with them, just bowl them onto the ground. Did you see how he was sitting there waiting for us desperately? Like a star bekjar – slicked back hair, just sits in a daze, as if he is waiting for us with all his breath. Couldn’t he buy a drink, look relaxed? No, not him. He made it obvious straight away what he was.

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The star bekjar replied that he had accepted the label, ‘Well, I am a star bekjar’, much to the annoyance of his friend. Furthermore, regardless of whatever means a star bekjar finds to join an outing, once he is in a društvo he is expected to be humble and to express his gratitude to the younger men by offering the occasional častenje. From a different perspective, a generation of mladi have emerged postindependence who are too young to have experienced life in Yugoslavia and who thus engage with modernity in a significantly different way to stari bekjari. The post-Yugoslav generation are just as caught up in the process of disassociation from village life and yearn to remain in the city when they finish high school. Unlike stari bekjari, however, they did not participate in the state-making project or the disassociation from Yugoslavia. For the post-independent generation, being ‘modern’ and having that modernness acknowledged is passé. It grates on the young to see the ‘old’ men trying to act ‘like us’. Stari bekjari are most often interlopers and younger unmarried men are reluctant to associate with them. Younger men usually discuss the methods used by stari bekjari to ‘impose themselves onto a društvo’, such as jumping in a car at take-off, requesting a ride to town only to remain with the group for the whole evening, or simply by directly asking to be included and making refusal impolite. According to younger men, the reluctance to associate with stari bekjari is natural. The very label of star bekjar is considered self-explanatory, implying that the men are out-dated in fashion, lack skill in picking up women and, in particular, fail to understand the needs of younger or more ‘modern’ women. Although younger men are caught in a struggle to ‘know’ what is expected of them by cosmopolitan women, stari bekjari were accused of being unrealistic and judgmental about the ‘worthiness’ of women. Some stari bekjari are even accused of searching for devici (virgins) when all modern men know there is no such thing! As such, they are a liability to a društvo. It is better, men say, to ‘pick’ trustworthy men, or a small number of friends to go out with, i.e. to select your društvo. Often this means excluding stari bekjari. Stari bekjari are simply a category that has lost all sense of knowing what is expected in the social arena, especially in their ability to read the modern woman. In one incident, a star bekjar was condemned by two men in his društvo because he became abusive after drinking excessively and brought unwanted attention to all who sat at the table with him. The društvo was already embarrassed because the man was forty-two years old (nearly twice the age of the other men in the group) and certainly appeared old with grey hair, bulging waistline and unbecoming clothes. The star bekjar also had a reputation for stinginess, with his companions commenting afterward, ‘Nobody wants to get him with them because he is stingy’. The greatest criticism, however,

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was that this heavily inebriated star bekjar ruined the chances of those in the društvo from becoming better acquainted with the women sitting at their table. The elder man had insulted them by saying, ‘You women today are not worthy of respect. You all fuck around’. For the men who had the misfortune of accompanying the star bekjar, the attempt to remove him only succeeded just before a general brawl was about to break out. The damage, however, had been done. The two men refused to take the star bekjar out for many months after this incident and felt they could not be seen in the same nightclub again. More importantly, they felt they could not seek out the women with whom they had newly become acquainted. Avenues for social interaction in places of the post-independence, post-Internet and mobile phone generations present tremendous challenges. For stari bekjari, the drastic changes in society are difficult to navigate. Those who attempt to socialise by going to sites of the young – city clubs, bars, and the like – are confronted by a generation of global cosmopolitanism. For the current generation of mladi, social media literacy is expanding their notions of temporary pairing, ‘hook-ups’, one-night stands, virtual sex, recreational drugs and transformed womanhood in which there is an aggressiveness, a lack of apology for wanting fun, and pro-active coupling and de-coupling. Stari bekjari are relegated to the dismissed category of conservative, incompetent sexual partners, who are unable or unwilling to build their capacities or to update to the new sexual standards as well as techniques. The assumption that simply performing sex is adequate is no longer sufficient. Where most women never uttered any discontent about the act given that it was unbecoming for a girl to voice such things, the current generation openly judge and expect men to be up-to-date with a repertoire of sexual performances. Attempts to engage with this new world are not only fruitless for stari bekjari in that they do not lead to finding women, but are also transgressive and intimidating. In the contemporary context of post-independence, sensory overload requires rapid adaptation to new technologies and approaches to socialising alongside the navigation of different kinds of dangers with increasing use of drugs, HIV/AIDS, etc. The younger cohort of unmarrieds simply do not socialise with stari bekjari. Upwardly mobile women are especially keen to avoid venues that may be the ‘hang-outs’ of village men. Finding only seljani in a kafic is equivalent to nobody being there: ‘There’s no one, only villagers go there’.

THE PASSIVE SELF, ASSERTIVE BODY Finding ways to relax as reprieve from living on a nervna baza (strain on nerves) invariably leads to a focus on indulging the body. The disjuncture

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between the need for assertion of individuality and the need to conform is resolved through an emphasis on the distinction between the self and the body. Such a duality frees a person from the onerous position of drawing too much attention and, thus, social censure. To be sure, individuals ‘speak’ with their body and their bodies speak to them. The idea of distinction between the body and the mind is of praxaelogical significance. Rather than seeking unity of body and mind, individuals most often seek a distinction in order to navigate the often strict limits imposed on self-expression. Stari bekjari take societal expectations on board their person and, inversely, challenge or imbue their bodily self with politically charged commentaries about power, identities and problematic positionalities that are a product of governable beings. They personalise and give individual inflections and, in the process, they reshape collective meanings on and through their body. There are few instances where Macedonians fail to mention the body, not only as victim, but also as agent – a potentially wilful agent that compels one to follow its ‘moods’, wants and desires. Even while following kef, being drunk, wasting money indiscriminately on shouting drinks for strangers, it is still rare that individuals transgress the ultimate code associated with not standing apart – that of using the first-person, ‘I’, as an ego. A star bekjar, for example, half intoxicated and upset by yet another argument with his mother, sat at the village café and said: The old one [his mother] just sobs, whining, all she thinks about is others, what others say, what others think. What do I care? Fuck ‘em all. I go my way. I’ve always been like that. Where I go, I go without anyone noticing, knowing. It’s best like that. It’s mayhem here, everyone is on your back. Nervi Violeta. Just nervi. Better to go your own way, not worry about others. I go kontra [contrary] to all of them, just to show them that they can’t control me. It’s best to listen to yourself, no one else. Others can go to hell. All they do is ask things of you all the time.

Saying such things as, ‘It’s my life, I decide when to marry’, contains ideas that appear to be of a familiar semantic repertoire that is culturally available and, yet, the messaging is strange and can be easily misunderstood. Drawing on a cultural framing of being one’s own person is posited on a knife-edged balance between admiration and contempt, of being rendered a fool and ridiculed for self-aggrandisement. One might respect an individual who can fly in the face of convention, a so-called odkačen, a wild, outrageous non-conformist, or a rebellious or politically outspoken agitator (buntovnik) who prides himself in going kontra (opposite) to others. In most cases, such deviant individuals follow the cultural script. The drunkard man who appears to flout conventions, for instance, seeks the appropriate setting for letting go, a setting in which his behaviour is not simply collectively witnessed

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but is done so with co-conspirators who are engaged in his ‘letting go’. The need for social validation is all encompassing. The need to ‘let go’, however, becomes especially problematic after marriage. I first met ‘Krste’ when he was a star bekjar in 1996. He was thirty-five years old at the time. Years later, I met with him again; he was now married with two children and, as expected, living at home with his parents. Together with another mutual friend, we met by accident in the city and automatically asked him to join us for drinks. Besides catching up on gossip, Krste was eager to speak about himself: I didn’t get home till late last night. I was waiting at the (taxi) ramp and some ‘boys’ [unmarried men] saw me. They kept pushing me to join them at a bar. I don’t know. I can’t say no to friends. When I find myself in a društvo, the music is good, the drinks are coming, I don’t know, the mood was good. I was in the mood. We started shouting (each other drinks) one by one; I don’t have the heart to say no. Fuck life, it’s so depressing, but last night was good. There was this waitress, big boobs, short skirt . . . she kept giving me the look. It set my mood even more. I didn’t have the heart to leave. I knew the old ones were going to be on my back, the wife too, but for now I didn’t care. I sat back. I relaxed. I let the music, oh the music, it was beautiful, it touched the heart. We sat, drinking and singing.

But the ‘mood taking over’ was short-lived: In the morning, my little girl woke me up. The old man [father] started abusing me, telling me to stop drinking, stop looking for društvo, you have a family. But fuck him, all my life he is cursing me, well I got married didn’t I? I’ve got kids, I work. What else do they want? What, I’m supposed to stop living? Tonight, I said I’m going to get back earlier. Yeah, I plan to. But, now I saw you. I haven’t seen you for a long time. It’s been a long time, Violeta. Indulge me, let me buy the drinks. Did you write about me? I want to know what you said about me. I’m not a star bekjar anymore. But, shit I’m star [old]. Can’t help it, the body is different. I don’t know . . . so many things bother me. You know, I think something is wrong with me. I feel things in my back a lot. The back of my head sometimes there’s a funny feeling. I’m losing my appetite too.

At this stage the mutual friend interjected: ‘Of course you’re losing your appetite, you drink too much, sleep too little, eat too little. What you expect? You fool! “Rani duša da te sluša” [Feed the body so that it listens to you]’. Drinking, ‘letting go’ as an opportunity to flout conventions is problematic in many ways but especially so when a man is past a certain age or stage of life. The mutual friend, however, was not concerned so much about his inappropriate behaviour as a married man who should have stopped male sociality of the kind that encompasses carousing, following kef and ‘letting go’, but, rather, that Krste had omitted to consider the fundamental relationship between himself and his own body.

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For Krste, adopting a passive voice and putting the onus on kef [mood], or put differently, a wilful body that is not governed by its subject, provides a socially acknowledged and often socially sanctioned excuse for behaviour. Where few socially sanctioned contexts for assertion of self exist, individuals find alternative modes of expression. The dominant discourse of sociocentricism transcends or even negates the individual and through reference to a wilful body there is a socially acceptable means by which to assert personhood. That is, in a sociocentric society that instils a sense of shame about too much focus on oneself as an ‘I’, placing the burden of decision-making and transgressive behaviour on the wilful body enables an individual to deflect or deny agency as a shield from social censure. In everyday interactions revealing self is a matter of concealing one’s deliberations. Well-developed skills in listening to one’s duša (in the sense of soul, spirit, mind or heart) are vital for navigating the strictures imposed by sociocentric ideologues. Listening to the body provides a critical avenue for being true to one’s inner self while feeling socially justified in doing so. The use of the passive form is frequently deployed as a mode of averting responsibility or agency that could potentially bring undue attention to an agentive ego. Passive language is thus typically used as a tool that prevents the shame of standing apart: ‘Somehow it is not well [not sound] for me’, or ‘A thought came to me for something, I don’t know what exactly . . . I don’t know what . . . but something’. Even the seemingly innocuous act of choosing what to cook, for example, becomes a matter of a woman distancing herself from her actions by saying, ‘I was in the mood for graf [traditional bean stew] today so I made some’. When confronted to give an account of one’s actions it also often compels an explanation that does not threaten to bring social censure. Thus, being the asked the question, ‘What compelled you to do that?’ calls for reference to the unknown: ‘I don’t know, it’s like something was compelling me to do it’. Or, as in the case of Krste, ‘the mood befell me’ (‘Mi padna kef ’). Awareness of the demands of the body is not necessarily easy to recognise but can be felt, experienced, and again, is typically described in passive form: ‘Something is troubling me in the body’ (‘Me griži nešto vo dušata’), or ‘I don’t know what’s (wrong) with me, as if something is lacking’. But, indulging the body is not the same as being attentive to its needs, ergo the reference by Krste’s friend, ‘Rani duša da te sluša’ [‘Feed the body so that it listens to you’]. What Krste’s friend was also pointing out is the flip side of following the demands of the body: the expectation that though the wilful body may be powerful, it is also beholden on the individual to rein it in. The unity of body and subject depends on the negotiation between ‘feeding the body’ so that it ‘listens to you’ and resisting its excesses and indulgences. The intuitive knowledge gained in reading, knowing and listening to

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the ‘mood’ of the body marks not only the social competent person but also a particularly valued characteristic of enlightened personhood. Having manners and being civilised is foregrounded not only by bodily containment but also by an individual’s ability to have mastered bodily understanding ( Jackson 1983: 337). Likewise, according to Giddens: Bodily discipline is intrinsic to the competent social agent; it is transcultural rather than specifically connected with modernity; and it is a continuous feature of the flow of conduct in the durée of daily life. Most importantly, routine control of the body is integral to the very nature both of agency and of being accepted (trusted) by others as competent. (1991: 57, original emphasis)

Indeed, social interaction and the presentation of self requires discipline of the body as well as discipline showing on the body in terms of movement, clothing, the ways in which it is sculptured to fit the social, and how one thinks of one’s self. An individual’s understanding of when to follow the body’s mood, or conversely when to resist its demands, is a delicate play on the theme of asserting and subverting personhood as it encounters the social space within oneself. In striving to be a competent individual, however, ‘knowing’ what the body wants is complicated. This is especially the case of aging bachelors who are faced daily with exorbitant stress. The disruptors to internal equilibrium between indulgence, following and resisting the mood of the body are ever present, especially where there is a conceptualisation of mind and body as having distinct spheres of agency. In this, the disambiguation of stari bekjari from the social mirrors the disambiguated body/soul. The lack of symbiosis between the duelling, conflicting pressures to conform and assert self, as with a wilful body that cannot be reined in, makes it nigh impossible to contain or master self. That is, the turmoil within becomes part of the embroiled state of precarious social existence. As a contrary kind of conceptualisation, there is a bounded self, but one that is perpetually suppressed because it is both present and powerful.

DUŠA OUT OF SYNC: THE DISAMBIGUATED CORPOREAL AND SPIRITUAL BODY For Macedonians, duša is a deeply complex notion that may simply be defined as ‘soul’ but it also can mean body, person, mind and heart. The nuance of the term duša in the phrase used by Krste’s friend, ‘Rani duša da te sluša’, is akin to feeding the ‘soul’ or ‘the spirit’ residing within the self. On some occasions, a variant of the phrase is used: ‘Take care of the body so that it listens [to you]’ (‘Pazi duša da te sluša’). There are a number of terms often

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used interchangeably to refer to the physical entity of body, such as telo, as well as snaga (reference to both the physical body, figure, shape as well as vigour, power or force), and even, on occasion, koskite (bones), as in, ‘It was so cold, it entered my bones’ (‘Tolku što stude vo koskite mi vlese’). In contrast, the term duša stems from ‘soul’ (singular duh, pl. duhovi). People would not say, ‘feed the telo so that it listens’, because the physical entity of the body is merely a vassal. Whereas duša is in one sense a congruence of the physical entity and the essence or spirit (i.e. the inner core of self ) of a person as well as a reference to the higher order of spirituality. This body/soul congruence inferred in the term duša is drawn upon in various ways. The term is used, for instance, as an affectionate form of greeting, ‘Kako si dušo?’ [‘How are you dear?’], or as a means of stressing rhetorically that one has been affected to the core, ‘You are eating my soul [peace of mind]’ (‘Dušata mi ja izede’). The duša within compels one to have an emotive engagement, a feeling of compassion or sympathy for others. One woman who was feeding a stray dog with bread said, ‘It is a duša, I feel sorry not to give [it something]’ (‘Dušička je, mi je gref da ne mu dam’). The physical body, whether of a person or a dog, is a container for an essence, a life force. As such, there are yearnings, desires and needs in a duša. For the duša not to have yearnings ( fores), or envy (zavid), one must feed the body, hence, ‘Rani duša da te sluša’ (‘Feed the body so that it listens’). This compulsion to feed the body is not only placed on the person-subject but others are just as beholden to respond. Thus, one cannot eat before others without insisting that they also eat, ‘So that the body isn’t yearning, you give a little’. Following kef or mood and hedonistic indulgence of bodily demands, however, stands in contrast to the need to pursue wholeness, and in a sense, holiness. Macedonians constantly refer to the ‘guarding’ of the body. The inherent susceptibility and vulnerability of the body compels individuals to mobilise the full range of beliefs and ritual practices in vigilantly guarding it from potential harm, such as by malevolent others (dead or alive). The abundant claims of magija (black magic), in which the duša becomes willed by someone else to act in a way that is divorced from one’s intent, is also paramount to the conceptualisation of duality of corporeal and spiritual agency. Most Orthodox beliefs and associated ritual practices reaffirm that the body is both powerful and powerless. There are many rituals to cleansing the body (fasting, accepting communion, blessings from the priest, etc.). Furthermore, the giving of food, ‘Za duša’ (‘For the soul/life’), as part of mourning rituals, carries the same sense of meaning; the essence of life and the soul are not limited to the physical body. The ‘feeding of the dead’ means placing a plate of food on the grave or a sprinkling of rakia for the deceased to drink. Furthermore, the feeding of the dead is about sociality between

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the dead and the living. The phrase ‘For [the] soul’ (‘Za duša’) is chanted in the act of offering food to those that surround the grave and is an imperative that leaves no room for rejection. The souls require nourishing, continue to be nourished well past the time when the physical body – the telo – has ceased to exist. The journey among the dead, and the question of whether they are transformed into ancestors and good spirits that provide protection and guidance, relies on their being fed. The fully matured self is attuned not only to his or her own body as both a physical and spiritual entity, but also the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ vibes emanating and lingering in the environment. Where the indulgence of the body serves as a balm to ‘sooth the soul’, guarding against damage by bad souls is crucial for self-preservation, especially in contexts where male sociality can often lead to agonistic displays of masculinity and even violent confrontations. Thus, being true to one’s duša is synonymous with both being true to one’s inner self and to the cosmic forces and spiritualties that abound. Social survival rests on trusting the body’s ‘reading’ of the environment as well as of the self. Men would often talk of feeling, sensing danger or imminent threats to their bodies. Decisions about flight or fight are based on attunement to the feel of the surroundings, the aura that attaches to the body. In an outing with a small group of friends, for instance, one man entered an unfamiliar kafe and immediately felt it to be not right, saying, ‘I don’t know I felt it somehow. I felt funny in my back, knew it wasn’t good, so I left, told my društvo, we can’t stay here. One idiot, a pussy, couldn’t feel it, didn’t see what the problem was. I just looked at him and said, we’re going, and we went’. The ‘idiot’, who is still ‘a pussy’ (Macedonian colloquialism, pičleme), was thought of as too immature to sense either his own body or that of the surrounding aura of bodies. Heightened intuitive knowing can seep into the body beyond the alertness of a conscious or rational thinking agent. In short, socially competent individuals are encultured in the specific language of the body, socialised into a necessity to learn to read the signs offered, not only by one’s own body, but also by those of others. Where stari bekjari may be said to be duša out of sync is that neither containment nor mastery of body/soul, nor the potential to regain the ‘feel for the game’, so to speak, is possible. It is this sense of void that is often expressed as ‘something lacking’. One man said, ‘All is lacking [for me]’ (‘Sve mi fali’) and he was loath to confront what this might entail. In the Macedonian language, the use of the prefix ‘mi’ connotes the personalised experience that is essentially passive. The prefix ‘mi’ is about what befalls one without one being able to impact, negotiate or assert agency over it. Furthermore, it is typically used to express the sense of distance between that which comes onto us, attaches and yet cannot be fully named or described. For instance, one star bekjar, frustrated with his parents, said, ‘The oldies [i.e. parents]

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are constantly whining and whinging [to me]’. With no perceived avenue for release or end to the incessant nagging, the man added a colloquial phrase akin to a curse, ‘Let them burst [die] so that I am saved [for] once’ (‘Abe, ne ka puknat za da se kurtulam ednaš’). Other than thinking of escape – ‘All I think about is to escape somehow’, said one man – there is nothing that they can do. No matter how much they might indulge the body, it seems to continue to hunger (yearn) for more; it continues to be unsatisfied because all that has come onto the body, all that has been normalised or personalised, comes into question with being stari bekjari.

NOTES 1. For studies of aging bachelors in Europe, see, for example, Scheper-Hughes ([1977] 2001); Arensberg and Kimball (1940) for Ireland; Bourdieu for Béarn (1976, 2008); and McDonald (1989) for Brittany. 2. For a similar notion among Greek men, see Loizos and Papataxiarchis who mention kefi as spontaneous action (1991: 225; see also Cowan 1990: 105). There are differences, however, in the meaning of kef among the Macedonians and kefi among Greeks. The Macedonians most often use the term as a phrase, ‘kefot da mi go napraiš’ (‘To fulfil my indulgence’) and thus sharing a drink is a form of making the giver happy. Unlike the Greek case, it is supposed to go beyond a gesture of generosity or one that makes an individualistic display without including or sharing with others.

CHAPTE R 6

THE DECOUPLING OF TIME AND ORDER Aging Bachelors and the (Un)Productive Ethno-Nation



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thno-nationalism as a symbolic symbiosis between kinship and polity is an especially problematic platform through which individuals such as aging bachelors can seek to redirect their endeavours at remaking themselves. Being out of place within their family and their community, turning toward political engagement to find expressions of selfhood provides at least a promise of compensatory status, that is, of somehow illustrating that they are contributing to the nation, being productive in some way. But the nebulous link between men and the ethno-nation rests primarily with similar ideas of procreativity. That is, the non-proselytising ethno-nation relies for its social reproduction on capturing the procreativity of its subjects as ‘natural’ citizens. Ethno-nationalism is typically thought of as a tool of conservative politics and a mainstay of less evolved political systems. Remnant ethno-nationalist paradigms may be present in all societies in the sense of some kind of discourse of a ‘socio-nation’ (a collectivity coming together as a community) as well as part of a political body or ‘poli-nation’. The convergence of polination and socio-nation are essential to a state in so far as it is able to succeed in co-opting the willingness of people to be governed and to ‘come together’ as required during certain moments. Likewise, individuals need to attach to the political project by personalising it and, in turn, need to feel that the state reflects them. In this sense, the dissonance of arguments relating to

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whether nations are formed ‘in the chrysalis of the state’ (Snyder 2009: 58) or, inversely, whether the state formed in the chrysalis of the nation, is that they bypass the realities of the simultaneity and continuity of both. Furthermore, that individuals give license to be governed as ethno-national subjects on the basis of a shared myth of creation is a presumption that often comes unglued in the political arena. Shared ethnicity, as the symbolic emblem of nationhood, is not automatically indicative of individuals invested in political platforms as espoused by nationalists. And sharing a kinship frame of connectivity does not mean that they act with singularity to the same purposeful end as desired by political actors of either an ethnic majority or minority. Even within familija, much less the nation as a whole, there is dissonance.

CONTINGENT TEMPORALITIES AND OPTING OUT OF KINSHIP As noted by Verdery, the ‘social effects of the demographic transition have seen renewed focus’ (2015: 465) and this is certainly the case in Macedonia. Until recently, Macedonians married relatively young and had a child within the first year of marriage. As with marriage, the conscious deliberations around childrearing reflect a heightened awareness of timing and order. A large gap between the conventional period of child-bearing and a subsequent pregnancy was often viewed as reason enough for termination. The changing attitudes to marriage and childrearing (both whether to have children and, if so, how many) have undoubtedly produced a significant rupture in Macedonian consciousness of the kinship frame of mind in which such issues were assumed to be a given in the order of life. A significant body of work has emerged on the demographic transition (low fertility rates, aging populations, increases in never-marrieds, delays in marriage and childrearing as well as increasing divorce rates).1 Demographic transition is typically associated with industrialisation, rapid urbanisation and modernisation (see Berent 1970; Botev 1990), and leads to low fertility and mortality rates (Caldwell 1976) and changing structures of populations (i.e. aging). The shifting ‘family system’, as Furstenberg argues, ‘owes much to changing economic, demographic, technological, and cultural conditions’ but, he adds, the ‘breakdown of the gender-based division of labor was the prime mover’ (2014: 12). The assumption that women’s empowerment leads to a reconfiguration of decision-making around marriage and childrearing and the ‘modernisation’ of the family, however, is neither limited to Western societal scapes nor to women’s decision-making. In the sociology of the modern family, the decoupling of sex and marriage and the ‘unpackaging’ of forms of family have been extensively discussed.

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Typically, analysis takes a narrow view of it being a feature of the ‘modern’ family, as encountered in the West. The impact of the sexual revolution in terms of premarital sex, contraception, women’s rights movements, and the debunking of the value placed on virginity, etc., has been put forward as a possible explanation for the changes in the way that decisions are made about sexual relations, procreation and marriage. Thus, various strands of sociological analysis have emerged that focus on the ‘deinstitutionalisation’ (Cherlin 2004) or ‘re-institutionalisation’ of family with greater flexibility to accommodate changing life courses and coupling arrangements. The ‘value stretch’ (Rodman 1963) provides quasi-legitimacy to new forms of practice as alternative forms of marriage and family that once existed ‘in the shadows’ gradually emerge into public consciousness. Moreover, growing scepticism over the benefits of marriage has brought about new discourses of what constitutes a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ partner, and has led to what Gerth and Mills refer to as a new ‘vocabulary of motives’ (1993). In the call to perform a new repertoire of roles, both men and women are immersed in navigating shifts in expectations and attitudes. This is also typical of the temporal plains for the course of relationships even of past generations. In accounts of older generations of Macedonian women, for instance, the issue of ‘soft skills’ in marriage are framed in a particular way. In the ideal of womanhood, enormous value is attached to the capacity to endure and wear down the aggressive, abusive or indulgent behaviours of a husband until he ‘settles’ into a calmer state with age. So too, mothers of aging bachelors take for granted that their son’s wayward behaviour and lack of social incorporation will automatically resolve with marriage. Contemporary women, however, find irksome the ideals espoused by their mothers’ generations about fortitude and endurance as a post-marriage strategy. Rather, ‘modern’ women expect men to resolve such issues before marriage and enter into it in a reconstituted state of understanding about the ingredients for a ‘balanced match’ in keeping with modern or progressive men. The changing values and attitudes to marriage and childrearing and the below-replenishment fertility rates are arguably challenges also faced by more advanced ‘Western’ European societies. Yet, the problems are especially noticeable among ex-communist bloc countries (Sobotka 2008). The rate of change noticeable after the socialist collapse is often portrayed as a matter of the choices made by individuals as part of the adjustments required by the ensuing economic and political insecurities (see Hoff 2008). The issue of limited resources is frequently drawn upon by both men and women to justify their unmarried status and, likewise, their choice of reproductive controls, on the grounds that ‘There are no resources’. Indeed, as one woman said, given the political and economic insecurity and the lack of adequate resources for basic survival, ‘this is not a country for children’. The capacity

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to ‘buy’ things for children rather than ‘make’ them, to ‘indulge’ rather than simply ‘feed’, is quintessentially the behaviour of a ‘modern’ family. Unplanned parenthood and excessive number of children also play a significant part in reproductive politics. In the quest for distinction between the modern and non-modern, understanding of modernity rests on familiar tropes concerning the distinction between cosmopolitanism and kinship. Rationales or decision-making around childrearing and number of children are critical markers of the perception of a modern identity that many couples seek to emulate. In the ‘illusion’ or impression of universality (see Allport 1924: 306, 318), all modern people are assumed to share a similar view that one should not have too many children. That is, rather than being an outcome of the empowered woman asserting her capacity to control her fertility through birth control or selective abortion, or even a response to economic and political insecurities, both men and women rationalise parenthood in the pursuit of a social display of modernity. In keeping with the ideal of having two children (Sobotka and Beaujouan 2014), some local women say that ‘[to have] more children, [is to be] poor’. Moreover, the absence of planned parenthood is presumed to be characteristic of the more traditional (village). As the stuff of irresponsible, uninformed or subjugated womanhood, there are also racialised undertones implicit in the notion of an antithesis between the modern (Macedonian) woman and that of the non-modern or more prolifically reproductive ethnic ‘Other’. Fertility differences among women of different ethnicities are often associated with lack of agency or empowerment resulting from persistent cultural norms and practices such as early age of marriage, denial of access to education, or labour force participation. From one perspective, it is perceived as a problem within ethnic ‘culture’. From another, it is clear that the hand of the state, in enacting demographic policies, has a significantly impact on the disadvantages experienced by minority women. Nonetheless, education is presumed to reduce the number of children, alongside other factors, such as locality (rural-urban), participation in the labour force, and changing attitudes, including men’s increased involvement in co-parenting responsibilities (Goldscheider, Bernhardt and Lappegård 2015: 208), and the availability of birth control methods. Dragovic (2011), for instance, argues that the relatively higher fertility rates of ethnic minority women are due to the presence of ‘more patriarchal’ structures, which are the antithesis to women’s empowerment. Dragovic’s argument is supported by data indicating low levels of employment and education (2011: 22). In each stage of demographic transition, women with higher education levels were shown to have relatively low fertility rates (Breznik 1980; Dragovic 2011).

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THE DISAPPEARING ETHNO-NATIONAL SUBJECT In Macedonia, as with most of the Balkan societies, deep-seeded racism about the supposed rampant fertility of the Albanian ‘other’ in the face of infertility of the dominant ethnos became a serious threat to the nebulous links between the individual and the State. The perceived threat of Albanians as of independence was almost entirely centred on their growing numerical significance.2 In an attempt to curb the growing influence of the Albanians, the government unsuccessfully proposed conditionality on who could be counted as ‘citizens’ in the 1994 census, requiring proof of fifteen years of residence in order for people to be legitimately referred to as ‘Albanian Macedonian’.3 The rapidly shifting numbers of those who proclaimed to be Albanians soon became a rationale for enacting draconian policies that attempted to disentangle those considered local from recent refugees or informal migrants (Todorova 1993; Brunnbauer 2004). So too, endeavours to curtail the presumed prolific fertility of Albanian women became a politically charged strategy of ethnic targeting. The presence of political dissonance by local Albanians was taken for granted as reflecting an alternative ethno-national subjectivity whereby they are automatically assumed to be more loyal to ‘their own’. Albanians, argues Dimova, ‘still view women as bearers of their culture, due to women’s reproductive (biological and social) function’ (2006a: 317). As with the Macedonians, the Albanian ethno-national imaginary presumes a fundamental ‘kinship’ frame of connectivity where difference is taken for granted as the absence of shared ‘blood’ and, thus, a lack of emotional attachment with the State and the story of how it came to be. In the case of the Macedonian majority, the ‘demographic’ crisis brought forth by falling birth and marriage rates was a rude awakening to the state. Shifts in fertility decisions, as with marriage, have been lurking in the shadows of public consciousness, so to speak, and located in private practices of everyday life and choices. Out of touch with people and how individual agency is enacted, the newly-independent state gave little thought to the imperatives of individuals to display successful attainment of modernity through control of their reproductive capacities and choices with regards to marriage. Paying attention to the private or mundane domains of the lives of its citizens occurs when it is perceived as a problem. The increasing rates of unmarrieds, couples preferring cohabitation instead of formal marriage, low birth rates, rural depopulation and the exodus of rural women only became a ‘problem’ when it was glaringly obvious that there was a ‘demographic crisis’ or ‘serious demographic deficits’ (Petkovska-Hristova and Cekik 2013: 53). The ‘pluralistic ignorance’, as proposed by Katz and Allport, of ‘what

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other persons actually do, feel and think’ (1931: 347–48), guided a particularly draconic policy orientation by the state in endeavouring to curb the fertility of ethnic Albanians while encouraging increased fertility among the Macedonians. In conflating national, ethnic and civic identities, the demographic crises unravelled the inherent weakness of the ethno-national framing. Drawing almost exclusively on the notion of kinship as the portal of transmitting privileged substance or essence of belonging, the government’s policies rested on the assumption that ethnic identity and thus ethnic reproduction were more important to people than other matters such as economic instability or the desire to emulate ideals of modernity and cosmopolitanism. At the very point of the ‘birth’ of the nation-state, with its low fertility and marriage rates, there was an exodus of its ethno-national subjects. In particular, the predominantly rural population of Macedonia served as the springboard from which loyal subjects of the nation-building project were made and its disappearance heralded an unprecedented shock to the imaginary of the link between kinship, ethnicity and nation (see Todorova 1993: 136; Drezgić 2010: 958). Forced to acknowledge that which had been consciously ignored, the issue of reproduction became a powerful public spectacle. Where the myth of creation of nation and faith is centred on kinship, fertility is not a private but a political issue. Indeed, throughout the first two decades of independence, the ethnic Macedonian majority seemed to just be there, taken for granted, behind the state/political endeavours, able to be mobilised, and compliant despite the harsh economic and political circumstances. The reproductive capacities of individuals became a central concern of both State and Church as a response to, and manufacture of, social and political ruptures. Coinciding with the State’s campaigns in relation to birth rates and marriage, the nonproselytising Church also engaged in attempts to enlist the notion of kinship for its own end. Although the Church and individual priests have engaged in politics, taking a firmer positionality with regards to private life is a new area of focus, including voicing concerns about the lack of sanctity in marriage (i.e. high divorce rates) and high abortion rates. Irrespective, the strategies of the State and Church increasingly focused on the bodies of men and women and how intimate lives should be conducted. The strategy of abortion as a principal method of fertility control (see Miller and Valente 2016: 982), for instance, led to excessive practices during the communist era and was to come under scrutiny. The state, supported by the Church, proposed changes to abortion laws in order to make it more difficult. As to be expected, however, women’s groups, with strong support from various internal and international groups, successfully campaigned for the proposal to be revoked. Despite the backlash, further policy changes

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were proposed. A baby bonus was introduced, for example, to encourage women to have more than two children. The policy was intended to increase the fertility rates of Macedonians. Rather than encouraging Macedonian women to reproduce, however, it came to be considered a dangerous strategy that would reward Albanian fertility and it, too, was abandoned. Reproductive politics is generally oriented toward women. The positionality of men vis-à-vis kinship and the ethno-nation, however, also plays a significant aspect of reproductive politics. Alongside political upheavals such as the name issue and Albanian Macedonian activism, fundamental shifts in kinship that had been brewing over a number of decades erupted into a tension between men’s familial displacement and their centrality in the ethno-national imaginary. The disappearing ethno-subject brings forth the questioning of men’s role in reproducing ‘their own’.

MEN ‘NOT DOING THEIR JOB’: DEMISE OF THE ANDROCENTRIC ETHNO-KINSHIP IMAGINARY The agnatic ideal foregrounds an exclusivist gender paradigm of authority and power that rests on the symbolic ascendance of men transformed into a natural social and political order. As with the symbolic exclusion of women in patrilineal reckoning, the exclusion of other ethnicities in the construct of the ‘nation’ is grounded in notions of genealogical singularity. The precarity of a discourse of ‘natural’ progression and entitlement is that it rests on a knife-edge between the agency and emasculation of men. Nationalism is not simply constructed by men, but it also places men in a more precarious situation. The issue of virility is central to the trope of masculinity and is required to make nations. The essence of virility rests with the valorisation of masculinity. Masculinity is perceived as a matter of holding firm to such values as standing your ground in face of enemies, bravely ‘going your way’, and vigilantly controlling the body. Men speak of not allowing women to get ‘ahead’ of themselves, of the need to set conditionalities of speech and behaviour to ensure that they do not act more powerfully, thus, in turn, disempowering men. They emphasise being free of the potential to become polluted by pressures of others, including other men. A similar kind of imaginary of how power ‘acts’ is ever-present in relation to the political dissonance of ethnic minorities. In most ex-communist bloc countries, for instance, transitioning to a different political order raised tensions in which the ethno-national project presupposed that addressing any challenges could be resolved by digging their heels in on androcentric framing. The reactionary nationalist platforms have endeavoured to mobilise men in an exacting kind of role grounded in kinship. The longue durée of

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many political actors is of a masculine frame of meaning within both private and political domains. Privileged masculinity comes with caveats of duty and responsibility, particularly an overarching sense of productivity in reproducing both the family and the nation-state. Reproductive agency, in other words, is presumed to rest with men. The non-proselytising ethno-nation compels individuals to be in the service of the state and church as exemplar units of reproduction of the political and familial order. In the face of a demographic crisis, the exorbitant number of aging bachelors became a symbolic scapegoat for concerns with ‘ethnic’ extinction. Predominantly targeting stari bekjari, there was even an attempt to introduce a tax on unmarrieds. The proposal by a parliamentarian in 2014 failed but still left a lingering connection between men and their duties. Men as producers of the heirs of the Macedonian familija and the ethnonation were accused of ‘not doing their job’, ‘Ne brkat rabota’ (not chasing work/business), similar to what had been happening within the community and familija. Stari bekjari were not only the root cause of, but also the solution to, the problem of social and political instability. The call was for men to be resolved (rešeni) to marry and produce male heirs, not only for the familija but also for the Church and the State. Similar to the familija, the state and church are reliant on men to ‘get’ women, to produce progeny for the nation and, presumably, to combat the relatively higher fertility of the Albanian minority. That is, the very same men who were ‘youths’ fighting for independence became targets of the state’s visceral attacks. Indeed, expectations placed on the men by the state and church are no different to those of the familija. The severing of the ‘natural’ ascendency of men in relation to the familija became a political platform for both the state and church to call men into action to populate the depleting ‘nation’, especially with reference to increasing levels of social contempt, harsh criticism and accusations of ‘not doing their job’. At the local level, the problem of the excessive numbers of stari bekjari compelled one mayor of the ‘dying village’ of Makedonski Brod to go so far as to organise a ‘tour’ to the Ukraine for stari bekjari because of the higher level of surplus women there – the opposite situation to the exodus of men.4 Unfortunately for the organisers, the outbreak of the Ukraine war stopped the tour from proceeding, but it was still evidence of the rising public consciousness and social politicking that connected stari bekjari with dying villages and ethnic extinction. It was taken for granted that rural bachelors would be able to entice external women to settle for a rural life given the emergent trend of inter-national marriages that initially centred around neighbouring societies but increasingly expanded in global reach through Internet dating. As the archbishop of the dioceses of Australia and New Zea-

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land said, there are women in Albania, Bulgaria and Ukraine, among other societies, that would welcome marrying stari bekjari in Macedonia.

COMPENSATORY STATUS: AGING BACHELORS AND POLITICS Where unmarried men were unable to be reconstituted within the kinship paradigm, many endeavoured to become incorporated into the broader civic polity and focused on political engagement, especially invested in the ethno-national project. An excess of unmarried men with nothing to lose being absorbed into political activism is a phenomenon that is common across many societies.5 For many stari bekjari, the pursuit of recognition and performative presence as an ethno-nation has, to a large extent, served as a panacea for righting personal wrongs. Engaging in the intrigues of politics and political campaigns at the local, regional and national level was often also a reprieve from the stresses encountered by stari bekjari with family and community. Political engagement spoke to an endeavour to translate disillusionment into a ‘hope’ of a reconstructed future within the State. Many stari bekjari, involved in political campaigning in the 1990s, served as key local figures in the lead up to independence. The story of the nation-building project is perceived as the story of these men in that it was seen as a pursuit for performative presence in the face of a constant denial of the right to do so, given that they had not fulfilled the conditionalities of what constitutes legitimacy and authenticity in identity. The stari bekjari of many villages were crucial in the political arena as they scurried between village and city, organised meetings of the Bitola chapters, and travelled in convoys to ‘important’ gatherings at party headquarters in the capital city. The unmarried men were an inexhaustible and mobile resource whose role was to ‘talk’ with people, to sway them to align with political positions during local and national electioneering. They were also the first to go to the streets, leading the marches and carrying the national flag that had been a point of contestation with Greece, with the star of Vergina or the old symbol of the lion emblematic of the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE political party. As it became obvious that the collapse of Yugoslavia was imminent in the late 1980s, most men were actively engaged in the circle of clandestine village organisations that prepared for the eventual break-up. The organisations were busy stockpiling arms, training and strategising in secret camps in the surrounding mountains, and engaging daily in debates and machinations. In an interview, one local VMRO-DPMNE leader spoke of the level of risk and scrutiny they faced from communist authorities that was compounded further by the suspicion of fellow villagers. Although several years had passed since their clandestine preparations and the country had successfully navi-

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gated independence without becoming embroiled in war, as had the other ex-Yugoslav states, the former leader still insisted that I turn off my recording as he instructed his wife to close the curtains and check if anyone was ‘lurking about’ in the yard, before he proceeded to describe the hectic period of anticipation in 1987 and onwards. One star bekjar proudly proclaimed that he had taken his grandfather’s puška (rifle) into the mountains to train with during this pre-independence period. The rifle had lain unused in a ‘secret’ place in their house. Retrieving it was symbolic of continuity and steadfast loyalty to the cause and, further, of the respect he held for what his kinsmen had contributed to it. Conflating stories of the current political struggles with those of the past was part of a proud assertion that they, too, were patrioti (patriots) and fully immersed in the notion that it was their duty to protect the country. Likewise, in a heroic discourse of ethno-national realisation, they perceived themselves to be the guardians of ancestors and of ‘zemjata naša’ [‘our land’, i.e. the country]. Being VMROvci (members of the VMRO-DPMNE political party) seemed ‘natural’ and indicative of the presumably unbroken link with the autonomous Macedonia movement and the establishment in 1893 of the IMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation).6 Often proclaiming they are in league with the nineteenth-century heroes of the autonomous Macedonia struggle, they espoused a worldview which was not only grounded in the ongoing struggle but also in the notion that they were upholding revolutionary or avant-garde political ideologues. The most ‘remembered’ history of Macedonians is generally of the final stretch of time before the collapse of the Ottoman period (1870s–1912), which is recalled as the mythic moment of the ‘birth’ of the nation. The living memory of close agnates who served as a komitat during the 1903 Ilinden Uprising or as a partizan (partisan) in the 1944–1946 national liberation struggle, the ‘Narodna Odbrana Borba’ (more typically referred to by the acronym, ‘NOB’), served to reaffirm that the struggles were personal rather than abstract or distant. In particular, there were many references to past glories and oral histories conveyed by a prededo (great-grandfather), dedo (grandfather) or tatko (father). Rarely were the experiences and contributions of women mentioned. Most men persisted in conventional modes of political engagement, direct confrontation, and the need to defend their familija as well the country. Indeed, well past the realisation of independence, the need to keep the politicians ‘honest’, to be vigilant in protecting the nation both from internal and external threats, was perceived as paramount. Although they vehemently denied any involvement in the burning of Albanian homes and shops in Bitola, there was no expression of regret at the ‘need’ to defend ‘our people’, ‘our families’, physically and with their lives if need be. Many stories also emerged during the 1996 local government elections of skirmishes between

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Albanian and Macedonian youths. Café talk abounded in one case of a Macedonian man who ‘bashed to a pulp’ (‘Go skina od kjotek’) a local Albanian who flippantly commented that the country’s reformation was a ‘finished job’ (‘završena rabota’). As conflict with Albanian separatists was increasing in the late 1990s, the same men involved in pre-independence formed a significant chapter of paramilitary units comprised of recruits over the age of forty who stood ready for deployment, despite the fact that some were, by then, married with children. During the 2001 internal conflict, they had volunteered to go to Tetovo, Gostivar and other villages, returning several weeks later despondent at what they had encountered. Amidst each twist and turn of intense civil and political activism, the ‘chaos’ seemed far removed from village life. Yet, although most of the ‘action’ was undoubtedly in the capital city, there was an enormous scurry of activity across villages. Many loyal to the ruling VMRO-DPMNE party travelled to the capital and elsewhere to give their support in organising counter protests. For many stari bekjari, in particular, the tensions reinforced conspiracy theories of the nation being sold out to foreign interests, mounting accusations concerning duplicity, the lack of patriotism of members of their own ethnicity, and hyper-sensitivity about the ‘advancing’ Greater Albanian agenda. By the second decade of independence, the political turmoils were to create a schism between Macedonians regarding the direction that the country had taken. There were protests against the long reign of the VMRO-DPMNE government, the very same party that most stari bekjari had supported. Moreover, urban youths occupied public spaces in creative protests (the so-called ‘Colourful Revolution’) and expressed their aversion to identities associated with ethnonationalist platforms and the obsessive focus on the past. In October 2014, the government announced legislative reforms to introduce an external (state) examination system. It seemed an opportune time for youths to be visibly present in their society as they shouted the slogan, ‘We are not clients’, and insisted that the autonomy of universities was at stake. On 17 November 2014, the Student Plenum organised mass rallies protesting against the introduction of university entry exams, with a further two protests organised in late December. Then, on 9 February 2015, the leader of the opposition SDSM party dropped what came to be referred to as ‘The Bombs’, with the release of thirty-eight wire-tapped conversations that exposed corruption and the ‘criminal reign’ of the VMRO-DPMNE. Allegations included mass wire-tappings, misappropriation of funds, and even the covering up of a murder. In response, the premier proclaimed the release treasonous, accusing the opposition leader of espionage and violence. The premier instructed police to arrest those who assisted him, which would later be referred to as the ‘Putsch’ case.

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Mass protests were staged between 16 May and 17 July, led by the opposition and ‘Citizens for Macedonia’ who set up ‘Camp Liberty’ in front of the government building demanding the premier’s resignation. In the meantime, throughout early May fighting between special forces and a terrorist group in Divo Naselje, Kumanovo, led to the deaths of many officers as well as approximately ten of the thirty or so terrorists. Furthermore, on 2 June, the EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, the EU Ambassador and the US Ambassador brokered a deal with the four major political parties. The ‘Prižino Agreement’ involved the selection of Katica Janeva to head the newly formed Special Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the wire-tapped conversations. The agreement also afforded SDSM two additional ministers and three deputy ministers in the interim government. Throughout 2015, the government repeatedly delayed the transfer of power, and the premier resigned in mid-January 2016 to make way for the General Secretary of VMRO-DPMNE to become the interim prime minister. The president declared a broad amnesty and pardoned fifty-six individuals mentioned in the wire-tapped conversations, which led to mass protests. The street protests began on 12 April, the same day as the ‘Colourful Revolution’ (‘Šarenata Revolucija’), and continued for months. As a result, another version of the agreement, ‘Prižino 2’, was enacted in July. After an additional two postponements, elections took place on 11 December 2016. The results gave VMRO-DPMNE fifty-one seats, SDSM forty-nine seats, DUI ten seats, Besa Movement five seats, the Albanian Alliance three seats, and DPA two seats. Afterward, objections were made to the State Election Commission concerning irregularities in the village of Tearce, Tetovo. The objections did not change the outcome. In the end, it would take close to a year for the new SDSM government to be formed with the opposition leader during the political strife becoming the new premier. Anticipating the election of the DUI party leader as Speaker of Parliament, the parliament building was stormed, allegedly by the group ‘For a United Macedonia’ on the day of, and immediately following, the election. Throughout early 2017, the group had staged counter-protests against the ‘Tirana platform’, alluding to the ‘Albanisation’ of the nation and calling for the preservation of Macedonian sovereignty. Several Members of Parliament, including the leader of the Albanian Alliance and the new premier, were physically attacked, and it was at this point that the previously mentioned case of Radmila Sekerinska of SDSM, who had her hair pulled by one of the protestors, occurred. The New Speaker of the Parliament did not help matters when he proudly displayed the Albanian flag on his desk at his first official media presentation. The reaction of many Macedonians was indignation and, simultaneously, resignation. One man stated soon afterwards, ‘You

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watch, they’ll sell our country soon’, speculating on the troubles that were awaiting in the near future. A heated debate between a twenty-four-year old and his mother’s brother (vujko), who had remained a star bekjar and loyal VMRO man, meant that espousing such a hard party line brought the relationship to an impasse and eventually to them ‘not talking’. Post-independence youths tend to selfidentify as sceptics. Critics frequently commented on the political upheavals rather than becoming actively engaged with political parties. The cynical, worldly youths scoffed at the romanticisation of the country’s problems that the VMRO-DPMNE espoused. Where they engage with politics, they do so often with a sense of despondency that stems from the felt experience of two decades of failure of successive governments. As with the government’s heavy-handed dealings with the 2014 student protests, many were conscious that it was engaged in deliberate ways of curbing dissent. The disruptions to mobile phone and Internet coverage during the protests, the exertion of pressure on university professors to comply, the cover-ups of wrongful deaths, and the incarcerations all pointed to the inherent wrongs in the very construct of nationhood. Typically, youths reverted to familiar tropes of black humour, often hiding behind anonymity in making smart and flippant commentaries via the Internet. Moreover, there were different kinds of opportunities for both manipulating and subverting the ‘systems’. It was time for change, according to a recent university graduate in Ohrid who found getting a job in his field impossible. He had been rejected by a number of European countries for a work visa and was reduced to driving night shifts in his father’s taxi. He was an intelligent, globally conscious youth who frequently talked to women on the Internet, and whose views on the plight of society were encapsulated in the phrase, ‘All the same, crooked bastards’ (‘Site se isti, rasipani kopilina’). According to him, the problem for his generation was that the country had just enough modernity to enable an inquisitive and enquiring youth to keep up with global trends, but not enough resources to sustain life. Following the long civic crisis, and in light of the increased discourse of willingness to change the name of the state to accommodate Greek protests, the sense of outrage and despondency among stari bekjari was nothing if not personal. Reminiscent of the story of the drunk star bekjar who ruined the sociality of a društvo by shouting that ‘modern’ women were ‘all prostitutes’, a man accused his country of being in moral decay following the ousting of the VMRO-DPMNE government. In a drunk stupor while sitting with his fellow villagers in a café, the man shouted out ‘Macedonia is a prostitute, to all she sells herself ’ (‘Makedonija je kurva, na sekoj se prodava’). Although intense political turmoils were neither new nor likely to be the last, the concern for many stari bekjari was that the country had been abandoned. For

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stari bekjari, the recent crisis heralded a deepening sense of powerlessness; many perceived that they had nowhere to go and no longer had a place in either the community or the nation. The crisis seemed to be, in other words, lamented as the death of an era in which they had been somehow incorporated, at least in part, within society. The bekjari had become part of the old guard of politics. For many stari bekjari an essential element of their ongoing support of the VMRO-DPMNE platform was that it encapsulated their struggle for performative presence. As became clear by the second decade of independence, however, such a discourse compels individuals to automatic judgement as conservative, reactionary and out of step with global realities within which ethnic or national identities are played out. Towards the end of the second decade of independence, the focus on the name resolution with Greece became the crux of a perceived threat to men’s personal and collective rights to performative presence, particularly in light of the increasing discord between generations about how to attain modernity and the stari bekjari’s sense of being locked out. The country, they often argued, was being thrown asunder; but there, too, they seemed to be losing ground. In their attempts to break free from the sense of being structurally locked into positionalities perceived as not of their making, the stari bekjari nonetheless conceded that younger generations and the country as a whole had simply relegated them to the role of old men with an archaic ethno-national imaginary. Stari bekjari were, in other words, the antithesis of vitality and production.

NOTES 1. For studies of demographic change, particularly in Macedonia, see Dragovic (2011); Jakimovski (2010, 2017a, 2017b); Janeska and Lozanoska (2017); Dimitrijoska, Trbojevik and Ilievski (2015); Koteski et al. (2014); Daskalovski (2013); Girone and Grubanov-Boskovic (2012); and Sobotka (2008). 2. See Daskalovski (2013); Bookman (2002); Brunnbauer (2004); and Courbage and Wilkens (2003) on demographic politics in Macedonia since independence. The predominant focus in these studies is the growing numerical significance of ethnic Albanians and the reactionary policy attempts by the government to counter them. 3. The Albanians disputed the 1994 census figures on the grounds of the ineligibility of approximately 120,000 Albanians to be counted as citizens. Some Albanian politicians went so far as to accuse the Macedonian government of deliberately undermining their numerical importance. The main reason for the application of a criterion requiring fifteen years’ residence for eligibility to be counted as a ‘citizen’, for instance, was supposedly to distinguish local Albanians from new migrant Albanians who had entered the country in non-legitimate ways.

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4. The ‘enterprising’ mayor of the village of Makedonski Brod took it upon himself to organise matchmaking bus tours to Albania resulting in seventy-eight brides over four years and planned to take a similar tour to Ukraine, as reported on the BBC news blog (‘Macedonia: Where the Streets Have No Dames’, 2 September 2013, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-23957800) but, a few months later was unsuccessful due to the outbreak of the Ukraine war (see a posting in Vocativ of a story by Jodi Hilton and Mitra Nazar, ‘Ukraine’s War Hits Macedonian Marriage Prospects’, 26 August 2014, https://www.vocativ.com/gallery/culture/ photos/macedonia-bachelors/index.html). 5. Crow argues that poor rural men unable to attract wives, referred to as guanggun (‘bare sticks’), played a central role in rural rebellions and banditry in imperial China (2010: 74). With no marriage prospects, and excluded from mainstream society, they were prone to violence and marginal behaviour. Significantly, here, a ‘lack of stake’ in social order also made them prone to collective violence and social rebellions. Although Crow argues that this was environmentally focused (i.e. concerning competition for resources), the observation of a link between an excess of unmarrieds and political, as well as socially, deviant behaviour is worthy of further research. Men in China became absorbed in activities with political undertones in the politicisation of the peasantry. This has the potential for anti-state activism and the push for reshaping society that may have been born of particular circumstances relating to son preference, a convergence of practices including female infanticide and certain state policies. 6. See Troebst (2001: 60) on the issue of the political framing of the continuity of the Macedonia cause with the VMRO-DPMNE party incorporating IMRO into its name. See also debates surrounding the ‘Macedonia Question’ and the extent of the continuities and discords that it generated in the post-independence period: Pettifer (1992, 2001, 2008); and Glenny (2000, 1995).

CONCLUSION On Being Stuck



T

he ‘contingent character of social interaction’ (Giddens 1981: 28) presupposes that the temporality of actors as well as actions prepares the groundwork for the possibility of a different kind of future. How are individuals able to visualise this future when the symbolic, as it stands, is invested in the perpetuation of kinship as synonymous with the perpetuation of the androcentric ethno-state? In the ‘tragedy’ of aging bachelorhood, the reproductivity of kinship and the State brings into sharp focus the millenarianism inherent in notions of the promise of abundance in the ‘beyond’ in terms of self-realisation to stand in relief from the forgone fruitlessness of current futures. Furthermore, the difference between ‘what life should be’ and the reality of ‘what life is’ is a concern of most individuals and, in the case of Macedonians, it manifests itself in various ways as an existential, philosophical struggle for meaning in life that goes beyond the usual ‘struggle of life’ (in Macedonian, ‘Borba za život’). The struggle compels a level of emotive and intimate engagement with the ‘real’ world as well as with one’s ‘true’ self. It is a struggle of critical self-reflexivity, a struggle for recognition of who they really are, both as individual beings as well as members of family or other collective categories. Individuals in search of personal integrity, of being ‘true’ to one’s feelings and aspirations, typically distinguish themselves from the binds of kinship and family. This may be possible in the context of alternatives or with the presence of a strong State that regulates (through laws and policies) the family and has mechanisms of varying levels related to care of those not attended to by the family. However, the pursuit of personal integrity in the face of weak states and poor resources beyond the family can have dangerous consequences for individuals. Nonetheless, the assertion of modernity on the grounds of not being as tied to kinship and family is an accessible

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marker of distinction. In this, the downsizing of extended kinship, the nuclearisation of family, and the decoupling of sex and marriage are not the exclusive domain of so-called ‘advanced’ or ‘Western’ societies, but they do take different forms and can have very different consequences for individuals depending on the social, economic and political context.

BEING STUCK BETWEEN ATTACHMENT AND INDIVIDUALISATION How do you become attached to certain ideas of self and others, and inversely become saturated or incapable of changing pathways? Is it about the inability to replenish a diminishing supply of natural and social energy and force? Often thought of only in terms of the physical process of aging (loss of natural force that accompanies the inevitable path to death with lack of motion, movement, etc.), there is also a saturation point in individuals’ ability to navigate social pressure and expectations. A diminishing supply of energy and force in navigating social relations and interactions can reach a saturation point where you cannot accept any further ideas or experiences – a closing off from both the physical and social forces that signify ‘life force’. The process of aging is undoubtedly physical but becoming ‘aged’ can take multiple forms that do not necessarily reflect the limits imposed by physicality. So too, there is a predisposition in some individuals to contain or lock in certain experiences and, in so doing, express limits to both internal and external life forces, energies and pressures. From a Freudian perspective (see Woodward 1991: 50), this predisposition may well speak to the materiality of the body as a finite level of energy or a gradually depleting ‘life force’ that becomes bound, fixed to the point where there is a lack of movement, inertia, entropy and rigidity as one marches towards inevitable death. A certain level of fixity, of stillness and not just motion, is necessarily within us, but not necessarily associated with aging alone. We place limits on experiences, construct boundaries to what, how and when we absorb or reject something new. These limits are a regulative valve for navigating pressure, or at least a closing-off of self to some of the more difficult experiences to make sense of. The tendency towards fixity of ideas and attachments stems from the body of social, experiential episodes imprinted on, and unique to, each individual as well as the body collective because of how they engage with both the physical and social worlds. The tendency towards fixity overlaps with the structures and values typically framed as social expectations: a distinction between modernity and tradition, perhaps, that is one of a clash between the limits of physical and social plasticity expressed in temporal, futurist terms. The problem is how to reconcile such a perspective in our observations of

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others when we are normally compelled to automatically associate such tendencies towards fixity as psychic, social or individual pathos.

PERFORMATIVE PRESENCE, THE SOCIALLY CONSTITUTED INDIVIDUAL AND THE POLITICALLY CONSTITUTED BODY The extent to which the psychic, physical make-up of individuals constructs a way of perceiving identity and belonging from their own individual fixed points (a rigidity and inertia perhaps) speaks to, or is a reflection of, social interactions, pressures and forces that lie beyond the individual. Fixity is also of particular relevance in the study of ethnicity, nationalism and religious or other fundamentalisms in anthropology. An exploration of the saliency of emotional attachment to ideas of national identity and nationalism, or marriage, is inherent in the disposition in all of us to impose limits on knowledge and experience. Judging the fixity or rigidity of ‘others’ as a reluctance or vehement opposition to incorporate difference has led many anthropologists to view ethnic/national ideologies and identities from a predominantly negative perspective, often critiquing or dismissing them as dangerous and problematic. This is certainly the case of nationalisms among ex-Yugoslavs, such as the Macedonians. In particular, the contestation over the name ‘Macedonia’ between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia has often been viewed as a matter of rigidity, a regressive and aggressive force of entrenched ideas that stand in opposition to historical or social realities that must then be carefully monitored for cracks, or potential outbreaks of violence. Reference to primordial categories of ethnicity, moreover, is typically superseded by the social construct thesis of national identity. Many aspects of national identity, however, may be socially embedded, reaching deep into the psyche of individuals and groups, whereby fixed points of experience then become a part of the coppice of emotional attachments or ‘lessons learnt’ which regulate their mode of engagement with ideas, people or places. Performative presence is structured and socially sanctioned. Presence shapes how individuals see the world and their place in it, how they see the meaning of life relative to the meanings imposed or adopted by society. At each turn of interaction, the right to performative presence is shaped through the reactions of others. Attempts at performative presence by structurally displaced persons are all but impossible in that it is difficult to be rendered visible and included by groups such as beggars, gypsies or the homeless. Often, such structurally invisible categories of people are removed from place and consciousness because they create collective discomfort or distaste. Aging bachelors are socially constituted, however, and cannot be so easily dismissed. Yet, given the changing nature of society, striving for some kind

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of opportunity for performative presence also compels a shift in the capacities of the social audience to understand the new language and symbols of individuality. Where the ready repertoire of language and symbols serve as the basis of judgement, the refashioned social performance of men simply serves to irritate those around them. Internalisation of collective standards and values is a crucial mode of both individual agency and acquiescence to governance by others that enshrines the right to performative presence in a given, regulated manner, a symbiosis of appropriate content and context. Identity, as a discourse of striving for an amalgam between personal and social integrity, is always in tension of some sort. The presentation of self requires negotiating the ‘true’ and ‘erroneous’ as a matter of personal integrity. Where you think being true to oneself is of higher value than how others see you, outsider accounts may not matter. Social integrity or validation of your presentation of self, however, is an aspect of personal integrity. Relationships of intimacy are sought where at least ‘someone’ can ‘see’ you for what you are, someone who taps into your personal integrity in a sea of insincerity, who can provide support in the actualisation of self. Pressure on individuals to be able to see, read and feel that which is internal compels matching states of being, constructs and imaginaries of self and not just social, external and visible constructs by others. Such tensions of selfhood are relational and collective and, yet, modernity discourses typically suggest that they are primarily individual. Forms of body use are conditioned by our relationships with others. The way bodily dispositions become regarded as masculine or feminine are encouraged and reinforced as mutually exclusive patterns. Moreover, as Desjarlais argues, identities are ‘intensely pragmatic and political in their makings’ and are ‘rooted in relations of differential powers and authorities’ (1999: 466–67). Though Desjarlais is referring to ‘people considered homeless and mentally ill’, his observations of the inherently political nature of identity speak to issues experienced by aging bachelors. For Jackson, too, exclusion of the body from discourse accompanies the exclusion of the masses from political life (2013: 53). Jackson argues that ‘bodies are not passively shaped by or made to fit the world’s purposes’ (2013: 71). Yet, subjugation, discrimination and being rendered socially insignificant have provided an avenue in the case of Macedonian women to enact their own politics. In the struggle to navigate the dominant androcentric framing of the social and political worlds they occupy, for many women there is an ingrained mode of protection of body and mind to avoid confrontation. Rather, in a struggle to counter governance, women typically ensure that their body does not deviate from the norms of presentation. Women do not speak; they simply wait to walk, to leave. The exodus of women from rural sites speaks volumes on the experiences of injustice or gender inequity but what is noticeable is sim-

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ply that they have left and refuse to return (‘I escaped form a village, I’m not going back there’). Playing the game of being an obedient or ‘good girl’, and yet raging within, women wait for the moment to remove themselves from the context of subjugation rather than to express it through body or speech. As in the case of both Western and more obviously socio-centric societies, bodily containment does not necessarily speak of a lack of individuality so much as a compulsion to regulate it in a manner that is socially acceptable. The ethos of individualism, indeed, might provide some ready tools for managing different processes or the manner of responses to the double-edged sword of focus on self and the imperative of social acceptance and embeddedness. So too, Beck’s notion of ‘individualization’ is essentially grounded in the context of ‘Western’ modernity (industrial society) in which there is ‘a compulsion for the manufacture, self-design and self-staging of not just one’s own biography but also its commitments and networks as preferences and life phases change’ (1995: 14). In fact, neither the rural women who leave and remain waiting in the city, nor the rural men left behind in the village can be described as industrial/modern actors, although there are elements that suggest they are undergoing a process of asserting ‘individualization’. Precarity leads to a return to kinship and social networks to navigate or simply to ‘struggl[e] along’, to borrow Desjarlais’ (1994) phrase. The growing imperative for reflexivity, for understanding the personal risks associated with decisions and choices is not necessarily constituted within an institutional backdrop of regulation. Most states endeavour to react to individuals’ decisions in relation to marriage and childrearing and, thus, to the choices individuals make. Even where such conditions are not present, however, as Beck and Beck-Gernsheim add: Of course, lifestyles and attitudes from the town are spreading to the country – but refractedly, with a different gloss. Individualization means, implies, urbanization. But urbanization carries the role models of the world out there into the village living room – through the expansion of education, through tourism, and not least through advertising, the mass media and consumerism. Even here seemingly unaltered lifestyles and traditional certainties are chosen and put on show, they quite often represent decisions against new longings and aroused desires. (2002: 5)

That is, the social consequences of acting alone may reconfigure the social and political but it is not necessarily due to intentional acting out or choice-making by individuals so much as a response to the circumstances they find themselves in. For most stari bekjari, the ‘struggle for life’ is a struggle for ‘being’, for not being rendered invisible and only paid attention to as a ‘problem’ for and by others. They are structurally positioned in a no man’s land of awareness and aspiration toward being modern and, yet, being modern resulted in being

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locked into a state of being not of their choosing. As noted, denial of performative presence is just as significant for rural communities (i.e. the villagers) as it is the experiential domain of individuals. Nonetheless, the struggle for performative presence of individuals also mirrors that of the state and the constant challenge imposed through the ongoing debates relating to legitimacy and authenticity of asserting a distinctly ‘Macedonian’ identity and what might be done in the name of such an identity. In the case of the stari bekjari, striving for an amalgam between personal integrity (where you think that being true to oneself is of higher value than how others see you) and social integrity (validation of the presentation of self by others) requires they continue to search for women. Giving up on marriage is akin to losing hope of salvation.

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INDEX



A abortion, 69, 70, 122–23, 145n10, 172 adoption, 38, 70–71. See also zemeno dete Agelopoulos, Giorgos, 19 age-sets, 93–94, 156 age gap in marriage, 108 agnates, 64–65, 71, 73, 76–77, 85n6, 97–101, 103, 173 close, 101, 176 female, 68 soj, 64 Albanians, 33–34, 57n11, 61–62, 145n5, 171, 172, 180n3 Torbeshes, 33, 57 Tosk Albanians, 33 Allport, Floyd H., 144, 171–2 Appadurai, Arjun, 27 architecture, 75–76, 79. See also house B baba, 92–93, 110n4, 118, 151 Bachelors’ Ball, 10 bajač, (faith healer, soothsayer), 28, 136 Balikci, Asen, 64, 85n3, 144n3, 111n17 Balkans, 18–19, 63, 135, 143 Balkan Wars, 54 bands četas (guerrilla), 33 of villages, 107 baptismal relationship, 86n14

Batinić, Jelena, 141 Béarn, 9, 11, 24n7. See also Bourdieu Beck, Ulrich, 186 Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth, 186 begalka (symbolic abduction of bride), 105 birth birth control, 145n10, 170 birth rates, 171, 172 of child, 70, 87n16, 92–93, 144n4 Bitola, 31, 40 Bitola Municipality, 57n16 body, 134–37, 159–66 body/soul, 162–65 Bourdieu, Pierre, 4–6, 9–12, 24n7 Braislford, N.H., 25n15 bride bride price, 102 getting of, 65, 67–68, 95–97 brothers, 65–68, 71–77, 82, 118, 119, 153 co-resident, 145 non-resident, 123 unmarried, 153 Brown, Keith, 6, 18, 19 Bulgaria, 58n19, 135 Bulgarian bride, 109 Bulgarian peasants, 25n15 Bulgarians, 35 Bulgarian troops, 34 Bunce, Valerie, 143

INDEX

C café, 118, 154 bife, 37, 154–55 Campbell, John, 35, 87n16, 110n2, 111n16, 144n2 Camp Liberty, 178 Capari, 7, 32–34, 36–42, 44, 55, 57n15, n17, 58n18, 58n19, 58n21, 68, 107–8, 140, 148 Caparsko Pole, 7, 32–33, 35–36, 41, 107 častenje (shouting drinks), 154–56, 158 Cepenkov, Marko K., 73 Černodrinski, Vojdan, 139 Cherlin, Andrew J., 169 children, 47, 66–67, 69–71, 136, 139 of brothers, 66, 86n7, 86n9, 87n16 childrearing, 169 of a domazet, 72 of the house, 111n15 received, 71 Chio, Jenny, 20 city, 3, 31, 76, 79 city-dwellers, 6 city folk, 28, 30–31, 57 city markets, 39, 44, 58 city women, 13, 41–42, 105, 109, 129 cleanliness, 44–45, 130 clientelism, 62 Cold War, 19 Cole, John W., 87n22 Colourful Revolution, 144, 177, 178 Connell, R, 15 Cornwall, Andrea, 15–16 corruption, 61–62, 143 exposed, 177 Cowan, Jane K., 19, 25, 59, 100, 110, 166 Crabbe, George, 26 Crow, Britt L., 181n5 Crvenkovski, Dušan, 94 culture, 38, 53, 55, 63, 80–81, 170–71 culture area approach, 17–18, 19 curses, 78, 98–99, 133, 136, 138–39 Cvijić, Jovan, 18, 25n12, 25n13, 25n14 D dance, 107–8, 99–101, 110n8 village, 107–8

217

wedding, 99–101 Davis, John, 69, 87n20 delenici (brothers), 64, 75–77, 85n4, 98, 100 deleni (household), 117 demographic crisis, 171–72, 174 transition, 168–170 Denich, Bette, 12, 69, 141 Desjarlais, Robert, 185, 186 Dimova, Rozita, 145n5, 171 Dimovski-Colev, Gjorgi, 32–33, 58n17 Divo Naselje, 178 divorce, 119–20 divorce rates, 146n21 Doja, Albert, 22 Dolenci, 33, 36, 57n15 domakinka, 44–46, 69, 129–30, 135, 155 domazet, 69, 71–75, 87n18, 120, 123 dowry, 86n9, 102, 129, 111n13, 120, 145n7 Dragovic, Anica, 170 dreams, 123, 135 društvo, 153–55, 157–59, 161, 165, 179 Du Boulay, Juliet, 87nn18 duša, 162–65 E economic conditions, 39, 44, 58n24, 79 zombie, 44 elections, 62, 143, 178 local government, 61–62 émigrés, 38–39, 79–84 endogamy (village), 107 Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, 20 ethnic communities, 109, 173 ethnic consubstantiality, 61–62 ethnic identity, 19, 170–73, 177, 184 (ethno)nationalism, 167, 173–75, 177 reproduction of, 172, 174 ethnologists, 18, 25n14 European societies, 5–6, 17, 24n9, 112n19, 166n1 European village societies, 17 kinship, 63 marriage pattern, 108, 112n19 Evans-Pritchard, Edward, E., 89–90

218 F factory, 40, 142 textile, 39, 40–41, 61 factory workers, 39, 58, 61, 142 familija, 50–51, 64–66, 70–71, 76–85, 89–92, 100, 103–4, 110–11, 148–52 family, 122–23, 168–69 fortress familija, 54 Filipina bride, 109 Friedl, Ernestine, 57n7 G Gallo, Ester, 20 game feel for the, 4, 8, 165 gamesmanship, 54 Geertz, Clifford, 21 gender, 14–16, 21, 87, 95, 129, 140–44 post-Yugoslav, 146 gender identities, 72 gender imbalances, 9, 24 gender crossing, 140–41 Gerth, Hans H, 169 Giddens, Anthony, 163 Gilmore, David E., 17, 18 Gjavato, 32–33, 57 Goffman, Irving, 4 Goody, Jack, 111n13 Gopeš, 33, 35–36, 57 Gorno Orizari, 7, 44, 157 tobacco factory, 7, 44, 157 Gorno Srpci, 33, 57 gossip, 23, 42, 49, 59n28 gossip and competition, 128–33, 149 Grandia, Liza, 20 Greece, 87n18, 145n9, 166n2, 175, 184 northern, 19, 25n16, 59n29, 145n9 Greek-Macedonia border, 58n20 Gruik, Branislav, 94 guests gosti, 50–54, 68–69, 81–3, 109 gostoprimlivnost, 51, 154 H Habermas, Jürgen, 14 habitus, 4, 5, 11, 132

INDEX

Hajnal, John, 108, 111n18, 112n19 Halpern, Joel M, 25n14, 56n1, 58n22 Hammel, Eugene A., 63, 72, 85n4, n6, 111n12-n13, 120, 145n6 Hann, Chris, 5 Heidegger, Martin, 3 heirs designated, 9–11 Herzfeld, Michael, 16, 20, 21, 23, 86n13, 87n23 honour and shame, 17, 48 house, 10, 43–45, 75–81, 111n15, 135 agnatic, 65, 67 building a, 77–8, 135 house slavas, 68 totem animal (snake), 78 households, 43–47, 51–52, 72 extended, joint-fraternal, 63–70, 64, 85, 87, 94, 117–20 I identity agnatic, 63–66, 74 collective, 31, 32, 50, 56 gendered, 142, 152 identity and belonging, 84–85 identity politics, 18–19, 34, 57n12 idiomatic ironism, 53 Ilinden Uprising, 6, 33, 35, 37, 139, 58, 140–41, 176 Imenden, 51, 58n26, 68 individualism, 3–4, 148 individuality, 31, 110, 160, 185–86 ritualised individualism, 95 infanticide, 9, 123 infertility, 78, 171 inheritance, 9–13, 64, 70, 87n19, 120 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO), 34, 176, 181 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity Macedonian (VMRO-DPMNE), 34, 35, 36, 62, 146, 176–80, 181n6 VMRO-DPMNE government, 177, 179 Internet, 14, 20, 109, 174, 179

INDEX

intimacy, 21, 23, 49–50, 52, 54, 60, 81, 102, 129, 138, 185 cultural, 47, 59n29 sexual, 105, 117, 128 Irvine, Jill, 143 J Jackson, Michael, 163 Janeva, Katica, 178 Japanese peasants, stem-family, 24n7 Jenkins, Timothy, 11 K Karakasidou, Anastasia, 19, 116, 145n9 Katerini (Katerino), 38, 58 Katz, Daniel, 171–72 Kaur, Ravinder, 14 Kažani, 33, 57 kef, 155, 161–162, 166n2 kefi (Greek), 166n2 Kerewsky-Halpern, Barbara, 56n1, 135 Kideckel, David A., 6 kinship, 17–18, 24n7, 60–65, 78–87, 168 fictive, 68, 86n14, 100, 111n12 inherent genderedness of, 87n23 kindred, 65–71 kin propinquity, 99–100 kinship and ethnicity, 172–3 satellite kinship, 79–84 south Slavs, 18, 63 terminology, 66, 86n7, n8, n11, n12 Kitaoji, Hironobu, 24n7 kitchen letna kujna, 43, 121 Kligman, Gail, 92 Kruševo, 6, 141 Krvava Svadba, (Blood Wedding) 139 kukja, 8, 12, 64, 66, 69–71, 75–79, 111n15 Kumanovo, 178 L Lake Ohrid, 55 Lazara, 33, 140 Lazarki, 33 Lera, 33, 57 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 14, 87n20 liberalisation, 40

219

Lindisfarne, Nancy, 15–16 lineage, 63, 90 wife’s father’s, 72 local government re-zoning, 36–37, 57n14 Loizos, Peter, 16, 111n14, 145n10, 145n12, 154, 166n2 Lower Prespa, 57 M Macedonia Macedonia Question, 19, 181n6 name dispute, 18–19, 24n1, 25n16, 39, 175, 184 magija (black magic), 28, 98–99, 133, 135–39, 146n17, 164 Makedonski Brod, 174, 181n4 malevolent spirits, 78, 133–34, 136, 164 Malovišta, 33, 36, 57 Mariovo, 31, 38, 41 marriage, 7–14, 89–92, 95–96, 101–106, 116, 120, 150, 169 marriage rates, 171–72 marriage strategies, 9–11, 14 and the order of life, 108–9, 111n16, 112n19 masculinity, 9, 14–17, 102, 110n8, 111n14, 152, 165, 173 agonistic masculinity, 15, 165 hegemonic masculinity, 15 manhood, 14–16, 152 poetics of, 16 Mead, Margaret, 25n14 Mediterranean anthropology, 17–18, 24n9, 48, 63, 111n14 Mediterranean and southern European kinship, 16, 63, 87n20, 120, 145n7, n12, 146n13 Metimir, 33, 36, 57 Milicic, Bojka, 87n18 Mills, C. Wright, 169 modernity, 1–3, 8, 14, 26–28, 31, 84–85, 90, 168–70, 183 Molika pine tree, 28 morality, 9, 47, 73, 214 individualised, 47 Mosely, Philip E., 25n14, 63, 85, 87, 120

220 mountains, 27–29 mountain villages, 29 Mount Pelister, 32 Murphy, Michael D., 122 Muslim populations in Macedonia, 33, 57n11 N naroden lekar (traditional healer), 28 Narodna Odbrana Borba (NOB), 176 anti-fascist liberation, 58n18, 141, 176 naši, 32, 50 Needham, Rodney, 86 nepotism, 61–62 Karev, Nikola, 35 Nuer, 89–90 O Obrebski, Jozef, 25n15 Ohrid, 55, 109, 142, 179 Ohrid Agreement, 57n16 Orthodox Christianity, 68 beliefs, 133, 135, 137, 164 Orthodox church, 46, 133, 172, 174 Orthodox religious calendar, 51, 133 Ottoman Empire, 32–33, 54, 56n2, 146 Ottoman authorities, 58n19, 139 Ottoman Macedonia, 6 P Padwe, Jonathan, 20 Palagonia, 7, 38, 41 Papataxiarchis, Evthymios, 38, 145n10, 145n12, 166n2 Papić, Žarana, 141 partizanki, 141n18 patriarchy, 19, 116 patronage, 60–63 Pavlovski, B., 32–33, 58n17 peasants, 5–6, 11, 24n7, 59n31, 181n5 peasant women, 140, 141 pečalba, 38–39, 41, 58n21, 81, 145n9 pečalbari, 38–39, 81 pensions, 40, 61, 121 Phillips, John, 58n23 Pina-Cabral, Joao de, 63, 66, 111n17 Pitt-Rivers, Julian A., 70

INDEX

Pitu Guli, 35 pluralistic ignorance, 144, 170–71 Popov, Traijce, 139 Poreche, 25 Poulton, Hugh, 35, 57n11 power, 173, 114 androcentric, 114 power games, 116 powerlessness, 180 precarity, 5, 8, 29–30 Prespa, 22, 144 privatisation, 40, 142 Prižino Agreement, 178 Pročka, 58, 101, 111n9 R Ramna, 32, 33, 34 rape, 126, 146n14 Reed-Danahay, Deborah, 5–6 refugees, 54 Resen-Ohrid (dialect), 57n9 Rheubottom, David B., 38, 64, 85n5, 86n10, 99, 102, 106, 111n16, 144n4 rituals, 59n27, 77 death and mourning, 133–34, 164 ritual cleansing, 77, 99, 135, 138 wedding rituals, 96–101 roads roadways, 28–29, 33, 37 Via Ignatia, 32 Rodman, Hyman, 169 Rogers, Susan, 11 Roma, 50, 57n11 Romania, 92 Rotino, 33 rural communities, 8 depopulation, 29–32, 35–37, 55, 56n3 rural reform, 56n4 rural women, 12–14 S Sainte Foye, 11 Šar Planina, 115 Šarenata Revolucija, 178 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 4 Scheffler, Harold W., 86n8

INDEX

Sekerinska, Radmila, 178 Sen, Amartya, 9 Serbia, 135, 143, 144n1 Serbian ethnology, 18, 25n12, n13 Serbian kinship terminology, 86n7 šetanje, 128, 153–54, 157 skitanje, 154, 156 shame, 43, 46–48, 114, 145n12, 149, 162 stram, 43 Shqiptar, 33, 57. See also Albanians Šiptari, 33–34 Simic, Andre, 154 Skočivir, 25n15 Skopje, 114 Skopska Crna Gora, 25, 86, 99, 111, 145 slavas, 33, 51–52, 58n26, 68–69, 101, 111n9 saint days, 33, 51, 101 Smilevo, 33, 57n8 Snyder, Louis, L., 168 Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), 35, 40, 62, 178 SDSM-PDP alliance, 62 socialism, 62, 141–42 soothsayers, 136–38 Sorge, Antonio, 20 Southern Europe, 145n7 South Slavists, 18, 25n12 South Slavs, 25n12, 63–66, 69, 116, 120, 145n6 South Slav women, 116 Spike Peterson, V, 15 spirituality, 163–165 stari bekjar, 7–8, 45–46, 90–92, 93–4, 147–52, 165–66 marriage of a, 103–5, 109 mothers of, 118, 150 political engagement, 176, 179–80 stari bekjari, state and church, 174–175 stari bekjari and društvo, 157 stari čupi, 13, 123–4, 127, 145n11 Stasch, Rupert, 20 status compensatory, 167, 175 domazet status, 74–75 status equivalence, 42–43, 45–47, 49, 53–54, 74, 129, 106

221

household status, 65, 69, 130, 133, 129 status and marriage, 97, 116, 147–49 village status, 7, 24n8, 107–8 stem-family, 10 St Erlich, Vera, 25n13, 145n9 Streževo, 57n8 Streževo Ezero, 36 strojnici, 102–4 strojnik, 89, 104 Student Plenum, 177 student protests, 177, 179 svadba (weddings), 96–101 Svinište, 36, 57n8 T taboo, 59n27 TAT Savings Bank, 39, 58n23 time, 89–96 time angst, 89–92 time and order (red), 94–96, 149–150 timing, 42, 44–45 Tirana platform, 178 Todorova, Maria N., 19, 172 Tomlinson, John, 2 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 32 tourists, 55, 83, 125, 140 turisti, 51, 73, 80–84, 123, 125 trgovci (traders), 38 trade embargoes, 40 U Ukraine, 174, 175, 181n4 urban urbanites, 27, 29, 31–32, 57n7, 144 urbanisation, 30, 6, 168, 186 in Macedonia, 30 V vampires, 135, 137, 146n17 son of, 137 Vasantkumar, Chris, 20 Verdery, Ashton, 168 Vevčani, 55, 140 Republika Vevčani, 55 villages depopulation, 35–36, 37, 55 studies of, 17–21, 24n9, 24n11, 56

222 village mentality, 13, 27, 31, 42 village scape, 23, 26–30 village women, 44, 46, 129, 138, 140, 145n15 village work, 41–42 virgins, 126, 159 sworn, 140 vikendici, 28, 56 Vlachs, 33–36, 57, 58 Vrčkovski, Naum, 58 W Warner, Elizabeth A., 146n16 wedding svadba, 65, 96–101, 105–6 of domazet, 72 widows, 46, 69, 80, 131 dispossession, 121–2 widowed mother, 83, 121 grass widows, 145n9 witchcraft. See magija Wolchik, Sharon, 143 Wolf, Eric R., 5, 24 women activism, 141, 142 complicity, 12, 115, 116, 169 exodus of, 12–14 partizanki, 141 patrimony, 120

INDEX

relations between women in household, 116–19 sexuality, 124–28 women politicians, 143 violence against, 143, 146n14 žena, 116–17 Y Yosmaoğlu, İpek K., 59n30 Yugoslav Yugoslav era, 29–30, 37–38, 39, 54–55, 141 Yugoslav ethnologists, 18, 25n13 Yugoslav Macedonians, 25n15 Z Zadrożna, Anna, 22 zadruga, 18, 25n15, 85n1, 85n3, 85n4, 85n6, 87n17, 111n13, 120 Macedonian family, 63–65, 72, 76, 94 ‘Za duša’, 164–65 Zahajirević, Adriana, 142 zemeno dete, 71 zemvanje (getting of the bride), 101, 103, 105 ceremony, 97, 110n6, 110n7, 111n11, 111n12–13 Živojno, 54, 58n20, 102, 139 Žižek, Slavoj, 4