Dreaming of fecundity in rural society

Albert Doja (1)

1 Université de Lille

In Albanian rural society, the child was first and foremost a son, who will succeed his father, inherit from him, guarantee the everlastingness of his lineage and honour his ancestors. If the daughter is a future wife and a potential mother, polyvalent images made of the boy child the symbol of the radical transformation, of renewal and of regeneration. The beliefs, rites, practices, the multiple symbolic forms and collective representations surrounding birth and socialization, in addition to their magic, divinatory or propitiatory roles, were also used to confer a symbolic value of recognition on the process of construction of the person and socialization of the individual born.

Mots clés: ritual; life crisis; social network; gender; birth

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Albert Doja. Dreaming of fecundity in rural society. Rural History: Economy, Society, Culture, 2005, 16 (2), pp.209-233. ⟨10.1017/S0956793305001482⟩. ⟨halshs-00406280⟩