Family contexts: The Balkans in European comparison

No satisfactory conclusions can be drawn with respect to joint families and nuclear families from an analysis of their frequency distributions. Joint families that practice ancestor worship and blood vengeance, for example, are to be classified differently for purposes of generalization than joint families in which these practices are absent. In the entire Balkan area penetration by institutions—the Church, the state or the feudal lord—remained extremely weak over the course of centuries. Correspondingly, the emergence here of familial social forms such as joint family households and kinship groups was stronger. The Balkan area is not a region characterized by a single form of family composition. Of the highly diverse patterns to be found here, particular significance can be attributed to the pattern in the western mountainous regions—producing the well-known zadruga—because of its very long history, the extent to which it was transmitted to other regions and, above all, because of its uniqueness on the European continent. When the Balkans are viewed in a European comparison, it is impossible to maintain a division of the continent into two or four discrete regions each displaying different forms of family composition.