Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the evolution of a rural area in Southern Transylvania (Romania) which has become the site for a revival of the ethnic Saxon heritage in food and land management practices, with a focus on how eco-anxieties play into the revivalist processes.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the evolution of the Transylvanian food-scape, focusing on a rural area in Southern Transylvania (Romania) which has become the site for a revival of the ethnic Saxon heritage in food and land management practices.

A heavily depopulated back-country in the ‘90s and early ‘00, due to the massive exodus of the local German (Saxon) population, rural Southern Transylvania has become a major attraction for international tourists in search of bucolic, ‘slow’ (yet upscale) touristic experiences, as well as a destination for local and international neo-rurals mobilised by ideologies of de-growth, downshifting and voluntary simplicity. The range of material and immaterial heritage that represent the focus of revival is broad, from produce and products (types of crops, animals, foraging resources and culinary recipes) to traditional ecological knowledge (local types of small-scale farming, crop rotation, husbandry) and its impact on local ecology and the shaping and management of cultural landscapes (wooded pastures, mosaic landscapes, biodiversity conservation).

I investigate how a complex network of entrepreneurs and NGOs shapes Saxon-ostalgia by producing discourse and practices rooted in an idealised ethnicised medieval past. Saxonness becomes a resource for authentication and added-value in a touristic, farming and conservationist context. Throughout the paper I explore the means and effects of the imaginative colonisation of the area, with a focus on how eco-anxieties play into the revivalist processes.