In this book, I used rent as an analytical lens to examine patterns and causes of land use change in southeastern Albania. I have argued that the fundamental political and economic changes that occurred in Albania since the collapse of socialism profoundly affected the mechanisms through which rent from land and other productive resources was created and distributed among differently positioned social actors. The shifts in rent creation and distribution changed rural people's incentives and decisions about land use and caused land use change. Thus, I demonstrated both that rent is an aggregate force shaping society and environment, and that using rent as a lens to examine environmental change is a powerful analytical strategy for understanding human-nature interaction in postsocialist countries such as Albania and beyond.

Shifting Rent Dynamics and Land Use Change

Throughout this book I used rent dynamics to explain how broader political and economic processes affected social and environmental change in Albania. I identified four distinct patterns of land use change in Albania. The patterns must be understood as reflections of the country's broader political and economic transformation. The first pattern, the fragmentation of land use, is characterized by the dissolution of large physical structures – terraces, irrigation and drainage systems, the collective plot structure, etc. – which had been in place under socialism. The dissolution of these structures resulted from shifts in the creation and distribution of rent available to collective action.