Zeitschriftenartikel

Household composition and marriage patterns in Albania around 1900

Abstract

Family structures in the Balkans have attracted much interest among scholars from the region and also from abroad because of its patterns being different from Western Europe. On the one hand national traditions have been postulated and on the other hand others have rejected this alleged otherness as inventions of Western scholars. The database of the Albanian population census of 1918 is the only database covering a whole country in the Balkans and allows therefore investigating the Balkan family in a thorough way. This contribution deals with household composition, age at marriage, and polygamy. It compares urban and rural people and different regions within the country to show the wide range of variation within such a small country.