Sunday, August 9th 2026
The protests we see today in Albania include something more than the anger of the moment. They reflect a fundamental question: to whom does the territory belong and who decides its future?
If we see this political moment through the lens of Carl Schmitt and his book Land and Sea, these protests are not simply related to a certain investment project or a resort. They represent a wider conflict between two different ways of understanding and organizing the world: land and sea.
According to Schmitt, human history has often been shaped by the clash between land and sea. Earth symbolizes order, boundaries, identity, community and memory. The sea involves movement, trade, capital, global networks and constant change. The land requires stability, while the sea requires circulation.
In today’s Albania, this conflict is clearly visible along the coastline.
On the one hand, there is the incentive for economic development, according to which Albania should use its coastal potential to attract investment, tourism and capital. From this point of view, the coast is not just a beautiful landscape; it is an economic engine with untapped potential. The sea becomes a way to connect with the world.
On the other hand, there is the perspective of the land: the territory is not just an economic asset, but part of collective memory, local identity and public interest. Many protesters are concerned about more than a single construction project. Their deepest concern is whether decisions about public spaces are being taken away from communities and into the hands of political power and big investors.
Perhaps this is where the crux of the protests lies.
Schmitt introduces a key concept: nomos, the order that arises when a society decides how land is divided and used. He argues that in every era the most important conflicts arise when this order changes. When people feel that the way they understand their territory is being transformed without their consent, resistance arises.
Perhaps this explains why today’s protests seem more intense than mere technical debates. The discussion is not only related to investments or environmental protection. It is related to the way a small country like Albania imagines its future: as a space that carefully balances the development and preservation of the territory, or as a territory that opens up completely to the global logic of capital and tourism.
This does not mean that the development and protection of the territory must necessarily be in conflict. On the contrary, the main question is whether there is a model that can balance both: develop without losing the sense of belonging and progress without turning the territory into a commodity stripped of its history and memory.
After all, the protests in Albania are related to more than a single project. They touch on a larger idea: what it means to own and govern your own territory in a globalized world.
Here, Land and Sea becomes more than a work of political history. It serves as a tool to understand the challenges of today’s Albania.
The conflict that Schmitt describes takes place on several levels. While he helps us understand why territory becomes the cause of political disputes, Pierre Bourdieu allows us to see another dimension of the same battle: the struggle to define the meaning of territory. Schmitt talks about territory as a political order; Bourdieu focuses on territory as an object of symbolic power.
Not all political conflicts take place over the control of land or resources. Some develop at a deeper level: on the right to define the meanings that shape a society’s identity. Who defines what development is? Who decides what constitutes public interest? Who has the power to present a vision of the future as rational and desirable?
These questions go beyond concrete projects or conflicts of the moment and help to understand some of the most intense debates taking place today in Albania.
To understand this tension, the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu, especially those developed in his work On the State, are particularly illuminating. For him, the greatest historical achievement of the state lies not in the use of force, but in the control over meaning. The state becomes truly powerful when it succeeds in imposing the frameworks through which society understands and interprets reality. It defines what is considered public interest, what is called development, what is understood as progress and which visions of the future gain legitimacy.
From this perspective, the protests in Albania about territory, investments and public spaces are not just disputes over concrete projects. They represent a deeper conflict over the authority to shape social reality itself. At their center lies a fundamental question: who has the legitimate right to determine the public interest and development?
According to Bourdieu, the state does not rule only through physical force, as Max Weber argued. It also rules through symbolic power: the ability to impose ways of thinking that are accepted as natural and universal. It is precisely this that gives the state its great influence. He not only compels; he convinces. He does not govern alone; it produces meaning.
Through this lens, debates on territory go beyond issues of ownership, investment or development plans. They are related to the way the territory itself is understood and defined.
When public institutions talk about strategic investments, economic growth, modernization, jobs and tourism development, they are not simply describing an existing reality. They are building a certain perception of reality. In Bourdieu’s view, the state is exercising its symbolic power by defining legitimate categories of interpretation.
Terms such as “development”, “public interest”, “private property”, “modernization” or “strategic assets” are never completely neutral. They are political categories that appear as technical categories. Their power lies in the ability to hide their political nature and to present themselves as objective interpretations of reality.
Bourdieu also notes that one of the main functions of the state is the universalization of particular interests. The state can present a certain political choice as a general interest. This does not necessarily imply dishonesty; it shows the way state power works, producing definitions that claim universal validity.
On the one hand, there is the official narrative, which presents the transformations of the territory as necessary for development and national interest. On the other hand, there are citizens, activists and local communities, who question not only the concrete project, but also the way the problem itself is defined.
In this way, protests are not just reactions to a decision. They represent an attempt to challenge the state’s control over the production of meaning. The conflict is not limited to land; it also includes the categories through which land is spoken. Before the physical landscape changes, the symbolic landscape has already changed.
A beach is no longer presented as a public space, ecosystem or part of the collective heritage, but as an economic potential. A natural area becomes an “asset”. A political project is presented as a technical necessity. A public debate is reduced to a matter of expertise.
This is where Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence comes into play: not direct imposition by force, but the imposition of ways of thinking that make existing power relations seem normal, natural and unquestionable.
Therefore, when citizens protest, they are not only opposing a construction project, a contract or an administrative decision. They oppose a certain way of organizing reality. They challenge the claim that there is only one legitimate way to talk about the future.
Therefore, the main question these protests raise is not whether a project is economically viable. The question is more fundamental: who has the authority to determine the public interest?
Bourdieu’s perspective invites us to rethink democracy itself. Democracy is not just competition between political ideas. It is also competition between different ways of naming and interpreting the world. It represents a struggle for the right to determine the meaning of the words that organize collective life.
What we are seeing today is a clash between the symbolic control of the state and the effort of citizens to reclaim the right to define reality for themselves. It is not just a dispute over land; it is a debate over who has the right to tell the story of that land, to define its function, and to decide what kind of future is considered desirable.
In the end, Schmitt and Bourdieu do not offer contradictory but complementary explanations. Schmitt helps us understand the conflict over territory and the order that organizes it. Bourdieu helps us understand the battle over the meanings that legitimize that order. In today’s protests, these two dimensions are intertwined. Citizens oppose not only the transformation of the territory, but also the way in which this transformation is named as development, public interest or national necessity.
Therefore, the real battle is not only related to what will be built. It is related to the question of who has the right to decide what is considered development, who defines the public interest and which voices have the authority to shape our common future.
Source: prizrenpost
