On theft and crime: social norms and deviant practices among Albanians in the Balkans

The study presents an anthropological analysis of the violations of legal, social, cultural, and moral norms in Albania at the end of the 20th – beginning of the 21st centuries, as well as the attitudes and sanctions of the society towards such phenomena and their actors. The Western Balkans, characterized by the persistent preservation of patriarchal relations in many spheres of social life, have not yet abandoned many of the norms of customary law that developed during the period of Ottoman rule into a stable system of self-government and self-regulation of various communities – from the regional to the national level. The main focus of the study is the phenomenon of theft, the punishment for which, according to the ancient traditions of the highlanders, was in some cases (theft of herds, unauthorized transfer of land boundaries, etc.) death. In the new conditions, when legal norms are regulated, among other things, by the Criminal Code of a country that has been striving to join the European Union for more than thirty years and therefore has been long trying to bring criminal law in harmony with the legislation of the EU, theft, robbery, and banditry cease to be occupations that pose extreme risk to life. Still, the legislative “indulgence” at the state level does not mean the abolishment of sanctions at the local communal level where the opinion of others, reputational losses, and censure along kin or family lines are perceived as punishment “no better than death” by the majority of Albanians. The research draws on historical sources and author’s own field materials collected during annual work in the region in 1990–2024.