U IME KĆERKE – ANTROPOLOGIJA RODA U CRNOJ GORI

Abstract

This paper presents an edited version of an introduction to a special issue of the journal “Comparative Southeast European Studies”, which asks how we can understand gendered practices in Montenegro beyond the balkanist discourse. The key argument is that we can understand gendered practices in Montenegro such as sex-selective abortions only if we consider the complicated ways in which material and economic processes become intertwined with social and cultural logics, simultaneously reinforcing old stereotypes while creating new spaces for action and change. The practice of gender in Montenegro is predicated on specific kinship and property relationships, which it also perpetuates and women in the country are neither as oppressed nor as free as they might seem from a liberal feminist perspective. Anyone pondering how to articulate criticism and how to encourage change to gendered practices in Montenegro should take into account how possibilities for individual as well as collective action are shaped by kinship relationality, inheritance expectations and state and public policy on gender.