Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 3
Violence Following
Violence
Anton K. Berishaj*
Systematic state violence
and the changing attitudes towards it
Having long been oppressed and deprived of institutional organization,
the Kosovar Albanian community has responded to every
regime of the past by reinforcing its boundaries, perceiving each successive
government as foreign and imposed. The community’s opposition to
these “foreign” regimes contributed to the strengthening and enlargement
of its families, following two contrary and simultaneous currents: on one
hand, the family had to strengthen and enlarge in order to be self-sufficient
(and therefore “closed”), while at the same time, the family has remained,
by necessity, open and dependent upon strong bonds of kinship (within the
community). These trends of amassment, economic strengthening and
exclusivity, paradoxically paired with the widening of branches based on
kinship, were thus the result of an ambivalent attitude towards the State
social apparatus. In the Kosovar Albanian community, the State is perceived
and experienced as a source of violence and brutality, an entity that
generates problems and tribulations. At no time was the State experienced
as a provider of protection and security to its subjects; at no time were rep-
* Anton Berishaj is a Sociologist and teaches at the University of Pristina.
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