Paper short abstract:

This presentation is about the history of an industrial factory in a Szekler Community, Transylvania. It will examine the transforming local economy, the working class identities and the social, national political significance of a local manufacturing revitalisation.

Paper long abstract:

My topic is based on field research, on communication with the members of society and on private photo documentation in Transylvanian village, in Csíkszentismon. A brand new beer brewery had been built in year 2014 in middle of Romania, in Hargita county in the village of Csíkszentsimon. It is very important that the Csíki Sör Manufactory is located on the site of the former alcohol-gluten-beer factory of Csíkszentsimon which was built by the Hungarian Government in 1942 primarily with the aim to selling the potatoes (as starch and glucose) cultivated in the Csíki Region. It is significant that both the production and the characteristic and communication of the product made in the local manufacture is adjusted to the Szekler ethnical group, it stresses certain characteristics in the name of the local tradition, which in the same way as a symbol system from the past, draws on the remembrance of the cultural heritage. Sithence the collapse of the communist system left behind a general insecurity (factory collapse, unemployment, hopelessness) and in this anxiety the tool expressing a personal cultural identity and persistency, and the national idea associated with it, as a collective integration creates a new hope. From the interview conversations that conclusion can be drawn, that the Csíki Beer is an economic and cultural element/possibility of the search for security mentally and economically and of the strengthening identity-wise.