ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the Greek-Albanian borderline in order to show how a cultural idiom that transcends national borders was partitioned to fit into the respective national cultures. The intense process of border negotiation is an indicator of a very complex ethnographic landscape in the area under examination. The process of cultural integration, a major project of the nation-state, tends to transform any ethnic or local cultures into mere regional variations within a homogeneous-in-space and continuous-in-time national culture. The Albanian groups developed a Greek national consciousness due to religious and cultural proximity with the Greeks and consequent influence exerted on them by Greek national high culture. The kind of ideological "cleansing" of folk culture was only one instance of a more profound transformation pressed upon traditional cultural forms so as to make them fit the Albanian version of modernity. The over-politicization of culture during the turbulent 1990s, left little space for comparative and synthetic approaches.
