Current Project
Social Security and Local State in Postsocialist Village in Southern Romania
This research is part of the larger research project ‘Local State and Social Security in Rural Hungary, Romania and Serbia’. My individual project will look at the intersection between social security and local state in a village in Southern Romania. The village called Dragomiresti1 is lying 26 km away from Pitesti, the county city center. This is a hilly commune of about 2700 people comprising three villages: Valceni, Dragomiresti, and Costesti and three ethnic groups: Romanians, which are the majority, Roma people (tigani) and Rudari2. The last census in 2002 shows the following figures:
| Villages | Total | Romanians | Roma (including Rudari) | Other ethnic groups |
| Dragomireşti | 656 | 645 | 11 | |
| Vâlceni | 571 | 571 | 54 | |
| Costeşti | 1625 | 933 | 593 | 99 |
Source: The County Department of Statistics Piteşti
Economic bases / Access to natural resources
After 1989, pre-socialist landed property and forests were restituted. Today the main economic activities in the village are linked to subsistence agriculture. The villagers cultivate different crops (mainly corn) and fruits but also engage in animal husbandry (mainly cows). Besides agriculture, industrial work constitutes a central form of income generation. During socialism, most men in the commune used to work at Dacia, the national car factory. Since 1968, when the Dacia factory was opened, villagers have become so-called peasant workers who commuted on a daily basis. In 1998 Dacia was bought by Renault, the French car factory. However, most male villagers still work within the factory. Women on the other hand are engaged in garden cultivation, and small animals (poultry) and pig husbandry.
The Rudari represent an interesting ethnic element in this village. Although they historically lived in the wood or very close to the woods, they never had property rights over land or forest. Thus, they lack legal access to natural resources. Also they were among the first to loose their regular industrial jobs (at Dacia). Today most of them are engaged in illegal logging which is facilitated through patron-client relationship with the Romanian local state representatives such as the mayor’s office employees, the policemen, and the forest guards (Dorondel 2008). This rural elite can bee seen as what Lipsky (1980) has called street-level bureaucrats. They use their positions within local state agencies in order to benefit from differentiated access to natural resources. They use poor and marginalized Rudari for their maneuvers concerning forest exploitation. The patrons use them as a ‘scapegoat’ in order to buy cheap forest from the Romanian villagers but also as a cheap labor force for forest labor.
The research project looks at these patron-client relationships as a possible “alternative” social security. As a patron-client relationship requires an exchange of goods and services between patrons and their (subordinated, powerless) clients, I point out that the marginalized Rudari population uses the relationship with Romanian patrons in order to survive in a rough time. The Rudari population benefits from this relationship through the fact that they are allowed to log illegally as this is their main survival economic activity. Of course, the street-level bureaucrats reap most of the economic benefit. This relationship unfolds due to the lack of any formal state social security for Rudari population.
The project goes beyond the described relations between the Rudari minority and local state officials in order to include other villagers as well. The main research questions are how in face of large parts of unemployed population social security arrangements shift. How do people perceive of their situation? What do they expect from the state, the family, the future? Do they invest more in kinship relations or do they want to escape for work abroad?
Access to social assistance
There are very few state services in the village. However, there is a mayor’s office, four schools, and two medical clinics. There exists an interesting link between access to social assistance and natural resources with regard to the above described patron-client network. The mayor threatens the Rudari not to get their monthly social aid payments when they do not comply to the mayors wishes.
Methodology
During the planned 6 months of fieldwork I will employ a mix of methods. As anthropologist, a large part will consist of participant observation within the commune. Key sites of participant observation are the practices of illegal wood cutting, agricultural activities and deliverance of social services. I also plan to follow at least two social workers to see their relationship with the assisted families. One of the social workers will be an employer of the mayor’s office who is in charge with yearly means-testing. The second social worker will be one of the professors from the village in charge with the social assistance of Rudari children in the special school build up for Rudari next to their settlement.
Different forms of qualitative interviewing are planned as well. Among them will be interviews with key informants, those who receive and those who provide social security. I will also make a survey within the commune looking at the social security providers (state or off -state) and receivers. Local and regional archives constitute sources to research the history of local social security services and bureaucracy. Finally participatory mapping can be used in order to see how who has access to natural resources (such as forest and land) has changed over the last years/decades.
Footnotes
1This is not the real name of the village.
2I am not going to explore the debate if Rudari are or are not a part of Roma people. Very often, the bleak scientific debate over their ethnic group, leaving aside the fact that these scientific debates took place in the interwar period, in a moment when Romania was very close to the Nazi ideology and politics, ended up with racial considerations (see for instance Chelcea 1940; 1944). I should only say that Rudari do not consider themselves as a Roma minority group. However, the Romanian state registered them within the 2002 census, as Roma people (593 people in Costesti). The Romanian population also makes a distinction between Roma, ‘gypsy singers’ (ţigani lăutari) and Rudari. An expert in Roma ethnic groups in Southeastern Europe like M. Stewart (2002) considers them as a part of Roma people, even if they do not speak Romani language and they do not consider themselves as such. He points out that the Roma people do not share an uniform culture. Then he adds: ‘And yet it would be equally wrong to deny the “family resemblances” that sociological, historical and ethnographic studies indicate…’ (ibidem: 149, note 1). At the political level Rudari are represented by the Partida Romilor (The Roma Party) but just in a formal way since they do not recognize themselves as Roma.
References cited:
Chelcea Ion 1940. Originea rudarilor [The Origins of Rudari]. Pagini de etnografie şi folclor. Bucureşti: Atelierele „Imprimeria“ S. A.
Chelcea Ion 1944. Ţiganii din România. Monografie etnografică [The Gypsies from Romania. Ethnographical Monographs]. Bucureşti: Editura Institutului Central de Statistică.
Dorondel Ştefan 2008. ‘They Should Be Killed’: Forest Restitution, Ethnic Groups and Patronage in Postsocialist Romania, in: Fay, Derrick and Deborah James (eds.), The Rights and Wrongs of Land Restitution, New York, Routledge-Cavandish, pp. 43-65.
Lipsky Michael 1980. Street Level Bureaucrats. Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, New York.
Stewart Michael 2002. Deprivation, the Roma and “the Underclass”, in Hann, C. M. (ed.) Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia. London and New York, Routledge, pp. 133-155.