Zrnosko: cultural landscapes and social economy of a village in Mala Prespa

Abstract

This article shows results of a pilot ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Zrnosko, a Macedonian-speaking village sited on the Albanian side of the trilateral border region of Prespa lakes. It offers insight into the history of the village, connecting histories of life to the social economic configuration of the local environment. These show the longue durée role of the forest and the lake, the legacy of the collectivistic organization under the Hoxha regime, and the contemporary marginalization of the village, signaled by widespread narratives about abandonment and lack of job. A participatory mapping activity, carried out in dialogue with locals, tracked the role of toponyms in the villagers’ spatial practices, and in the formation of ethnic and linguistic boundaries. The local toponymy offers a further understanding of the village as a cultural landscape, reflecting its historical transformations and the interaction between place and productive activities. Finally, a synchronic-diachronic approach to Zrnorsko’s social economy suggests a problematic and ongoing process of transition to a new productive model, which alternates subsistence economy with peripheral market-oriented efforts. These elements converge in the exploration of the two-way relation between local productive activities and the spatial organization of the village. Jointly shaped and reproduced, they reveal cultural forms of socialization of the land, as well as the current perception of its increasing desertion.