Everyday Practices of Gender in the Serbian Community of Post-War South-East Kosovo

Abstract

This article aims to explore the everyday practices of gender in the Serbian community of south-east Kosovo, in a post-war context marked by sudden and radical political and social changes that deeply altered everyday life after 1999 and the establishment of the UN administration. As family and kinship ties are strongly expressed in the researched community, gender practices have been considered within that framework. This article is based on extensive multi-sited fieldwork conducted with members of the Serbian community in south-east Kosovo, and with displaced people from this region in several towns in Serbia. The field research focuses on everyday interactions and perspectives ‘from below’. The sudden and complex social and political changes that occurred after 1999 resulted in the transformation of the family structure and family roles, and thus to changes in gender practices. With the establishment of the international administration, influences linked to globalisation intensified. The migration of part of the community to Serbia, and the life of many of its members as ‘both here and there’, played an important role. Influences from Serbia, community guidance from the Serbian Orthodox Church, and changes in the ethnic and social landscape because of the war all combined to create opposing processes within the family. In family and gender relations, intensive, oppositional processes unfolded. These generated tensions within the community: the nuclearisation of the family and, for certain aspects, the liberalisation of relations in it and, at the same time, repatriarchalisation.