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Accepted Paper:
Death and resurrection: peasants between academia, agricultural policies and radical changes. Contexts from Transylvania
Árpád Töhötöm Szabó
(Babeș-Bolyai University)
The presentation focuses on the case of Transylvanian peasantry. The first part offers an overview of the most important works in the field; the second part is based on fieldwork highlighting the transformations of peasantry; the third part presents the (hidden) agendas of academia on these issues.
Paper Abstract:
The reorganization of the Romanian (and in a certain sense: the Eastern European) peasantry has been going on for about 250 years. The central regulation of landlord–peasant relationships in Transylvania (beginning of 19th century), the emancipation of serfs in Transylvania and in the two principalities (the middle of 19th century), the communist system and collectivization (just to name the most important processes) – they all shook the peasant world to its foundations. But even with this, the question of what happened to peasantry still arises in the social sciences. Postpeasants, depeasantisation, repeasantisation – and many other terms reflect the uncertainties around these issues. Meantime policy papers are in sharp contrast with this, and constantly refer to these people as farmers. The presentation starts from this uncertainty of social sciences and contradiction between academia and agricultural policies and tries to find out what processes took place that led to this situation. In the first part it offers an overview of the works of local and international scholars (mainly: cultural anthropologists) in Romania (and also in Hungary and other postsocialist countries); and in the second part, based on fieldwork carried out in Transylvanian villages, it shows – with a special focus on the last 30 years - how the peasant society and economy was transformed; and finally, in the third part presents the (hidden) agendas of academia in the understanding of the peasant problems, highlighting the endeavors for revitalizing peasant practices in the context of recent social, economic and climate challenges.