Каракачанската номадска община
The Karakachans’ Nomadic Community

Summary/Abstract: The interest toward nomads and nomadity in historical and modern aspects has been existing for a long period of time among scholars from different fields of science, who have dedicated to them theoretical studies as well as works on practical problems. Research work among the karakachans known all over the Balkan Peninsular as nomadic shepherds of huge sheepflocks and having preserved the same way of life and the same occupation until as far as the middle of the present century, gives opportunity more details to be added to the exclusive picture of nomadity. This study aims to represent the karakachans’ camp (company, “badzhyo”, “odzhak”), which is one of the chief characteristics of karakachans as nomads. The author outsteps the limits of the popular approach to the karakachans’ company as a lineal organization, a stock-breeding association or something sharing both characteristics and defines it as a pastoral nomadic community which existed and played an important role in the economic and social life of the nomadic shepherds under various socio-economic conditions up to their shift to a settled way of life. It is the separate karakachans’ companies which are the material manifestation of the karakachans’ society. Being the only territorial communities they exist a bit independently and isolated from one another and from the settled population. Hence, the karakachans’ company can be regarded as a social suborganism while when surrounded by other ethnic groups – as an ethnosocial suborganism. The nomadic community died out after the karakachans’ shift to a settled way of life, when lost of its functions has been taken up by another social unity – the family.

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