Definition of "zadruga" []

• A social unit of rural community among the South Slavs, associated with family links and set customs. (noun)

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• "And, although the family community, the "zadruga," was giving way to a more modern way of life -- much to the misgiving of those persons who believed that strength lay rather in the union of thirty or forty people, under the authority of the head of the house, than in a more dispersed society which would encourage individual initiative -- yet Serbia was still a semi-Turkish and a quite despotic country, with all the civil service largely filled by Serbs from Hungary and many of the higher offices in the possession of the relatives of the Princess, for Alexander's wife,"
• "The zadruga kept rituals and customs that dated back to medieval times, such as covering all the mirrors in the house when someone died or working collectively on the annual harvest."
• "The families in question, however, were unlikely to be the small nuclear clusters common in western societies today; rather, Mira suggested, they were probably much more similar to the extended zadruga that she herself had grown up in."