university of nova gorica graduate school contested spaces and ...

differences and sameness. The meaning of locality does not relate to similarities as much as it
relates to various forms of exclusion and construction of otherness (Gupta and Ferguson 2001:
13). In Dhërmi/Drimades the constructions of the “other” relate also to the differences within
the group of those who declare themselves as being local and not only between those who are
local and who are not. For example, a local man Luka, who lives in the village all his life
beside the “newcomers” (such as Ana and Behar) and seasonal workers (cook from Fier),
perceives Urania and Janis, who actually originate from Dhërmi/Drimades, as kseni. In
contrast to Luka, Urania and Spiros moved out of the village in the period of communism and
returned only couple of years ago.
Moreover, in the Gupta and Ferguson’s view “construction of difference is neither a matter of
recognizing an already present commonality nor of inventing an ‘identity’ out of whole cloth
but an effect of structural relations of power and inequality” (2001: 14). Power, place and
identity are intertwined. Rather than homogeneous and based on equality, place and identity
are continually contested domains (ibid.). In congruence with their words, Luka’s
construction of differences between him, Urania and Janis reflect the configuration of his
power. According to Luka’s definition, the inequality between him and Urania and Janis is
based on the knowledge of the village’s past. Following Luka’s conceptualization, being “of
the place” or. horianos means to have power which is ascribed to those who lived in the
village for all of their lifetime.
1.6. Languages
Language is one of the important characteristics upon which the local people of
Dhërmi/Drimades claim their distinct locality. In their day-to-day conversations locals of
Dhërmi/Drimades, Palasa and Himarë/Himara mainly use a local Greek dialect 31 and partly a
southern Albanian (Tosk) dialect, while the locals of Ilias, Vuno, Qeparo, Kudhes and Pilur
mainly speak the southern Albanian (Tosk) dialect. In spite of a short distance between the
villages which are the subjects of language diglossia 32 , the accents of the dialects are
31 The local people of Dhërmi/Drimades refer to their local dialect or idiom as dialect or sometimes language.
The scholars (Sotiri 2001, Hatzhiantoniou 2002) who studied the dialect of Himarë/Himara area refer to it as
being a dialect. I will follow the same categorisation throughout my thesis.
32 According to linguistic theories different dialects and modes of speaking co-exist in many societies, often
named as language “registers”, “styles” or “codes”. Contemporary linguistic scholars argue that differences
between particular dialects should be understood in terms of the social differences at large. Ferguson (1959)
introduces the term diglossia, which is defined as situation when two varieties of a language are spoken by the
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