Abstract
This chapter presents the contradictions between the ideas of new rurality and the responses of rural people. The anthropological fieldwork carried out by the author in an agrarian village in Central Transylvania suggests a relatively wide gap between these new ideas and the actual rural conditions. The general expectations concerning rurality (expectations of rural tourism and of nonconventional agriculture) and inappropriate agrarian policies (national and European directives) fail to recognise the complexity of rural processes. Small-scale farming in domestic units is marginalised, but the people of this village still perceive it as the main component of rural life. Rural people have to answer these new challenges, whilst they lack resources both in terms of knowledge and economic capital. Consequently, they await help from outside and rely on external interventions in many regards that lead to the preservation of the ‘subaltern state’ of rurality.
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Notes
- 1.
In order to protect my informants, I use a pseudonym.
- 2.
The famous Romanian poet Lucian Blaga (1972: 2) affirmed that the ‘eternity was born in the village’.
- 3.
The idea that the ‘true Romania can be found best in the villages’ is quite widespread in the discourse of tourism operators. See: http://think.hotnews.ro/turism-nemtesc-in-transilvania-%E2%80%9Cadevarata-romanie-poate-fi-descoperita-numai-la-sat%E2%80%9D.html. Accessed 15 June 2012.
- 4.
Considering data from the 2011 Agricultural Census and my own interviews.
- 5.
Specialists estimate that the rate of imported foods is between 70 and 90 %. See: http://www.business24.ro/macroeconomie/inflatie/criza-alimentara-ameninta-romania-scaderea-tva-ului-singura-solutie-1510815. Accessed September 11, 2012.
- 6.
The data in this section are from the website (and the subpages) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (www.madr.ro).
- 7.
But from the number of the economic units (one million on average) that applied for funds and from the property relations (concentration of land, presence of large estates), one may formulate the hypothesis that the percentage of people involved is lower than the percentage of land involved.
- 8.
The equal of 17,000 Euros in old Romanian lei.
- 9.
People met only the Romanian associate.
- 10.
Old measurement unit for dry agricultural products, equivalent to 20 L.
- 11.
The official commercial of Romanian tourism called ‘Romania. The Land of Choice’ comprises images from the shores of the Black Sea, an urban discotheque, but the rest of the images present the natural and built values of Romania, in one world: the ‘rural’.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzeKCMNYBew. Accessed 15 June 2012.
- 12.
There are no expensive museums, theme parks or programmes offered to tourists and, except few cases, the services are also in medium category or below.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for the Bolyai János Research Grant.
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Szabó, Á.T. (2013). Does the Countryside Still Feed the Country? Producing and Reproducing the Rural in Transylvania. In: Silva, L., Figueiredo, E. (eds) Shaping Rural Areas in Europe. GeoJournal Library, vol 107. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6796-6_11
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