Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0413/04132.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 26KB | 418 lines

$Unique_ID{COW04132}
$Pretitle{299}
$Title{Yugoslavia
Chapter 2D.   Family Organization}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Patricia A. Kluck}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{urban
percent
1970s
cities
family
kin
workers
extended
housing
population}
$Date{1982}
$Log{Open Market, Belgrade*0413202.scf
}
Country:     Yugoslavia
Book:        Yugoslavia, A Country Study
Author:      Patricia A. Kluck
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1982

Chapter 2D.   Family Organization

     Society, despite the massive changes of the socialist era, remained
oriented to family and kin. The rights and duties kin bore toward one another
were defined with a rigor that a North American observer would find unusual.
The Basic Law on Relations Between Parents and Children in 1962, for example,
defined the material support legally due one's parents, children, siblings,
grandparents, and so forth. Kin were obliged to support their needy or
incapacitated relatives; the law specified the order in which one was
entitled to aid and assistance from both lineal and collateral relatives.
Family and relatives were a central focus of an individual's solidarity and
loyalty.

     The zadruga, a kin-based corporate group holding property in common,
was the basis of rural social organization throughout the Balkans. The rights
and obligations of zadruga members were enshrined in customary and formal law
from the feudal era onwards. Throughout rural Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro,
Hercegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, and much of Bosnia, the zadruga, as a
formally constituted kin group, persisted until well after World War II.
Its most common form was a group of patrilineally related males, their
spouses, and children who owned and farmed land in common.

     Zadruga persisted amidst "the cultural flux of Balkan history" because
membership in a corporate group conferred clear advantages on the individual
peasant family. The zadruga was essential to the success with which the
Balkan peasantry endured wars and foreign rule, exploited pioneer lands,
switched from pastoralism to agriculture, and took advantage of seasonal
off-farm employment. Its precise configuration varied throughout the
past five centuries in response to the highly uncertain
political-economic-ecological conditions of the Balkans. The zadruga permitted
the peasantry to maintain a sense of cultural identity during the centuries
of foreign domination; it was a bulwark against the predations of state and
bandit alike. The hearth was the focus of family loyalties, a meeting place
for all major family decisions and the locus of religious ceremony.
Religion-so influential in preserving Slav culture under Ottoman rule-centered
on the individual zadruga rather than the parish church (see Religion, this
ch.). Each zadruga had a patron saint (the practice extended to ethnic
Muslims) and the saint's day celebration (slava) was the high point of the
ritual calendar.

     Large multifamily households had significant advantages-particularly
in rural areas-well into the twentieth century. A substantial adult labor
force permitted the extended family to specialize and engage in a variety
of subsidiary operations to supplement agricultural income. It limited the
burden of agricultural labor at peak seasons, permitted men to engage in
politics, and gave women time for handicrafts. An extended family's wealth
virtually always outstripped that of two to three nuclear households of
comparable size. Beyond the advantages of a ready pool of labor, the
extended family was, in a sense, a self-contained social security system for
the peasant household. It was a haven for the orphaned, the widowed, the
infirm, and the elderly. It smoothed the curves in the individual farming
family's labor supply-young couples could rely on the assistance of teenagers
and grandparents with the necessary agricultural and domestic tasks a single
nuclear family would be hard pressed to accomplish.

     The extended family's composition changed in response to increasing life
expectancy in the twentieth century. The number of generations in a given
household increased from two to three or even four, while the number of
collateral relatives-brothers, cousins, second cousins-decreased. Patriarchal
authority-often onerous within the traditional zadruga-was more so when a
parent might expect to live significantly longer. Increased longevity
lengthened the period of time an adult might be subject to parental authority.
The wars of the twentieth century along with expanding urbanization and
nonagricultural employment following World War II contributed to a decline
in the extended family's joint ownership of property.

     The extended family became a cooperative rather than a formally
corporate kin group. Family loyalty and general feeling of responsibility
toward kin persisted. Individuals relied on relatives for mutual aid and
support in a wide variety of social and economic contexts. Families underwrote
much of the cost of urbanization and industrialization throughout the 1960s
and 1970s, with relatives providing urban housing for students from the
countryside and employment advice and assistance for the recent rural-urban
migrant (see Migration and Urbanization, this ch.). Migrants maintained
reciprocal ties with their kin in the country, periodically offering
assistance with agricultural tasks; for example, a mid-1970s study found that
roughly 40 percent of the factory workers surveyed spent their vacations
helping out on the family farm. Even among the country's technical and
managerial elite, kinship figured in the relationship between commune and
enterprise and reinforced local and familial loyalties.

     Fictive kinship in the form of godparenthood crosscut the strongly
familial focus of Slav social relations. With marriage it was the means
zadruga had at their disposal to establish alliances with other kin groups.
The institution took on the corporate character typical of traditional
Slav kinship. Although Orthodox canon law does not specify that godparenthood
can be heritable, traditionally the godparent-godchild relationship formed a
permanent link between the two zadruga, one that was inherited patrilineally.
The relationship implied feelings of deep mutual respect between the two
groups; a godfather normally presided not only over the infant's christening,
but also his or her first birthday and his wedding.

     Even Muslim Slavs adopted the practice; although fictive kinship was less
elaborate among ethnic Muslims, godparents sponsored the cutting of the dried
umbilical cord (five to seven days after the child's birth) and his first
hair cutting. There were few specific obligations attached to the relationship
beyond a generalized expectation of friendship and assistance. Often
godparenthood formed a link between Muslim and non-Muslim or reinforced that
between Muslim kin. In all cases the tie was between individuals implying
no relationship or obligation between the larger kin groups.

     In socialist Yugoslavia fictive kinship persisted as a tie between
individuals rather than kin groups. In the urban setting, parents' coworkers
were increasingly chosen as godparents. Alternatively a city dweller may
have chosen someone in the countryside as a child's godparent, and the
peasant, a friend or relative who had migrated to the city.

     As urban growth increased, large and extended families declined. From
the 1948 through the 1981 censuses average family size dropped from 4.37
to 3.67. The decline was steepest in the developed regions. In Kosovo
approximately three-quarters of all households had five or more members in
the early 1970s, and over a quarter had ten or more members. Focusing on
household comparison rather than simple size, as late as 1953 roughly
one-third of all households were extended families. The percentage of extended
families dropped precipitously by the early 1970s, a measure of the
advantages of smaller domestic groups in the urban setting. Approximately
three-fourths