Paper short abstract:

The paper has three foci: while the main focus is on the actual economic conditions and economic policies as special images about the rural, I would also like to present the images created in media and tourism that interact with the former, and finally I outline some rural responses.

Paper long abstract:

As ethnographers and economic historians state many times, Transylvania has always been a region that underwent special ways of development with week net of towns, thus with an emphasis on the rural and agrarian production. Consequently Transylvania is often identified with rural conditions and its components not only in scientific discourses, but in public opinion as well. On this background I would like to analyze on one hand the images and perceptions of rural created mainly by outsiders, on the other hand the economic factors and economic (agrarian) policies issued also by outsiders that fix and reproduce the rural conditions. In my view these current images and policies as par excellence urban ideologies about rural have their starting point in wrong perceptions of the rural that mirror rather the desires and demands of the urbanites than the actual conditions of rural areas. In this context on the basis of my fieldwork carried out in rural settlements and partly on written sources, in the first part of my paper I shortly present the main features of these images and their structure, in the second, larger part I look over the economic conditions and economic policies (lack of agrarian market, disadvantageous property relations, traditionalism, controversial directives, spatial planning) that shape the ruralities. And in the final part of the paper I present some rural responses that on this rural-urban field of battle and bargain have to struggle with both the disadvantages and wrong images.