Paper short abstract:

The paper addresses the issue of local knowledge in the arena of rural community participation. How is local knowledge used in making decisions concerning communal property and community development? What is the role of past experience and of present power relations in shaping this knowledge?

Paper long abstract:

The paper addresses the issue of local knowledge in the arena of community participation for rural development tasks. How is local knowledge performed for making decisions concerning communal property and community development? What is the role of past experience and of present power relations in the shaping of this knowledge? In my approach, I assume that local knowledge is not fixed in time or uniform for a social unit (the community). I find it more appropriate to speak about knowledge coming from different actors inside the social unit, about the making of this knowledge in practise, about competing contents of what we call local knowledge.

The development arena that enables me to study performance of knowledge is a legal institution that locally rules the common property of mountain villages (mainly forests) in several regions of Romania.

The institution of obstea (as it is locally named) has a history that can be traced back to the Middle Ages. In 1950 the Communist State seized all forms of private property, having as a consequence the dissolution of the obstea institution. After the fall of communism, this legal form is re-established late in the post socialist context (year 2000).

In brief, this institution has as operational task the management of the common property (mainly forests and pastures), aiming to raise funds for the local development (through investments in infrastructure, factories or tourism activities) In fact, obstea is the most powerful instance of rural development in mountain areas in Romania. Decisions are made at local level, on the operational scheme of executive committee - village assembly.

Rather than seeing commons management and development only in terms of institutional arenas of action, the project offers an insight over the way in which the community, as shaped by its actors (ordinary villagers, local informal and formal leaders, interest groups, etc.) deals with the commons, in terms of practices and representations that form a battlefield of local knowledges.