Central European University Press
Sugarland
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In collaboration with:
Artan R. Hoxha
About this book
In this historical monograph on non-urban communist Albania, Artan Hoxha discusses the ambitious development project that turned a swampland into a site of sugar production after 1945. The author seeks to free the history of Albanian communism from the stereotypes that still circulate about it with stigmas of an aberration, paranoia, extreme nationalism, and xenophobia.
This micro-history of the agricultural and industrial transformation of a zone in southeastern Albania, explores a wide range of issues including modernization, development, and social, cultural, and economic policies. In addition to analyzing the collectivization of agriculture, Hoxha shows how communism affected the lives of ordinary rural people. As elsewhere in the Communist Bloc, the Albanian regime borrowed developmental projects from the past and implemented them using social mobilization and a command economy. The abundant archival resources along with interviews in the field attest to the authorities’ efforts to increase consumption and to radically transform people’s tastes. But the book argues that despite the repressive environment, people involved in the sugar project were not simply passive receivers of models from the nation's capital. The author also describes that—in defiance of Cold War bipolarity—technological requirements and social policy considerations required a degree of engagement with the broader world.
Author / Editor information
Topics
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Frontmatter
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Table of Contents
v -
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List of Illustrations
vii -
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Acknowledgments
xi -
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Introduction
1 -
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Chapter 1 The Making of the Sugar Scheme: Transitioning from Empire to Nation
23 -
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Chapter 2 The Making of Maliq’s Landscape: Modern and Stalinist
67 -
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Chapter 3 Sugar and the Communist Construction of Spatial Inequalities in Maliq
113 -
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Chapter 4 Maliq and the World
151 -
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Chapter 5 Communism and After: From Sugar to Ruins
195 -
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Epilogue
237 -
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Bibliography
247 -
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Index
287
