Paper short abstract:

Through the conceptual lens of Zygmunt Bauman’s solid and liquid modernity the paper intends to examine how rural and urban relations, local understandings and uses of land, and occupational patterns changed in the lives of the members of different generations in a smaller region in Transylvania.

Paper long abstract:

The region in which I conducted my fieldwork has a long history of rural and urban relations. It's very first ethnographic portrayals from the 19th century make it clear that the villages neighbouring the city of Turda produce vegetables for the market of the city and send some of their youngsters to work in its mines and factories. Surprisingly these relations, these life strategies – at least in peaceful times - have not changed radically in most of the 20th century, even during the years of socialism, the period of nationalisation, forced collectivization and industrialization. Based on my ethnographic findings I wish to prove that the different generations of radically different historic periods followed similar mobility and economic strategies. Only recently, in Bauman’s liquid modernity did these routes of mobility become unviable life strategies, as local traditional practices of land use have been disrupted and jobs in the city became scarce. In my presentation I wish to introduce some members of the different generations, and to map the changes in mobility patterns and the functions of agriculture through documenting their life stories. With the portrayal of some of the locals and newcomers my I intention is to point out the controversial character of space in liquid modernity: to the well-off citizens space becomes transparent, practically non-existent and to them exercising mobility is matter of choice, a liberty, while to others space is burden, and mobility is a must, an unwanted strategy dictated by economic necessity.