Culture and the Reinvention of Myths in a Border Area

Gilles de Rapper (1)

1 IDEMEC - Institut d'ethnologie méditerranéenne, européenne et comparative

Long-term ethnographic fieldwork allows the ethnographer to become familiar with what is called 'presentation of the self', i.e., with what people say and do when they meet other people and have to create an image of themselves. A part of the presentation of the self has to do with collective identity, that is, with the presentation of the self as a member of a community, either national, local or religious, whose existence is justified on historical grounds. It is thus possible to have an idea of the impact of the myths, created and used in the nation's claim for existence, on society, especially on local communities which are not directly involved in the process of myth-making. Here we shall examine what happens to those myths in the southern Albanian district of Devoll, on the border with Greece. The argument is that although national myths are widely spread in this peripheral area, through school and media, they are shaped to a specific form by the international border and the way it influences social organisation and local perceptions of the self and the other.

Mots clés: Albanie; frontière; identité

Mots clés: Albania; border; culture; identity

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Gilles de Rapper. Culture and the Reinvention of Myths in a Border Area. Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers; Bernd J. Fischer. Albanian Identities. Myth and History, Hurst, pp.190-200, 2002. ⟨halshs-00169783⟩