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Accepted Paper:
Creating and reinterpreting countryside capital: competing locals and foreigners in a Transylvanian rural region
Árpád Töhötöm Szabó
(Babeș-Bolyai University)
Based on the results of fieldwork in Southern Transylvania, the presentation investigates the complex relations between locals and foreigners in the competition for the local resources, and links the successes of strangers with the innovative (re)interpretations of what can be considered capital.
Paper long abstract:
Transylvanian villages witnessed a massive depopulation starting from the beginning of socialist modernization. From the late 1990s, early 2000s however, the depopulation stopped, and even more, urbanites and foreigners discovered the idylls of Transylvanian countryside; or they sought opportunities for investments benefiting from low prices of houses and agricultural lands. Nowadays it is quite often that strangers buy houses or start businesses even in remote villages. The presentation investigates one such case in a Southern Transylvanian region and focuses on the stories of two businessmen – a former manager from music industry and a CEO of a sports equipment factory – who invested in local tourism and agriculture. They are among the most successful investors in the region. The presentation gives an overview of their enterprises and examines their relation to locality (in Appaduraian sense of the term), to locals, to local administration and argues that besides the general fact that local success requires external links to (international) markets (which holds true for local entrepreneurs, too), their innovative approach regarding local resources and their social and cultural capital is also a key element in the successful reinterpretation of countryside capital. In order to build the argumentation, concepts of what can be considered local, notions and reinterpretations of traditions and authenticity, local and non-local grounds of competition are brought into discussion.