«Property reforms in rural Romania and communitybased ... · 98 M. Vasile, L. Mªntescu, Property...

Property reforms in rural Romania and communitybased forests

«Property reforms in rural Romania and communitybased forests»

by Liviu Mantescu; Monica Vasile

Source:Romanian Sociology (Sociologie Românească), issue: 02 / 2009, pages: 95113, on www.ceeol.com.

http://www.ceeol.com

http://www.ceeol.com

Introduction

The undertaking of empirical research re-garding forest restitution and managementin Romania enjoys many arguments, on boththe academic and the applicative sides. Con-cerning academic advantages, we would liketo point out that Romanian specialists do notpay enough attention to environment or natu-ral resources as a field of investigation forthe social sciences. Reversely, worldwidesocial scientists in the field of natural re-sources studies do not pay much attention toRomania, with a few exceptions. Specificpost socialism issues related to resources anddevelopment, to property reform and ongo-

ing conflicts might constitute a fruitfulground for the elaboration of new theoreti-cal and empirical insights. On the other side,concerning applicative advantages, socialanalysis too needs to be applied in the fieldof property laws, nature reservation, or in-stitutional arrangements and local develop-ment based on local resources. As this ar-ticle shows, the Romanian laws and decen-tralization policies lack sufficient groundingin empirical interdisciplinary investigationsaround the process of property restitution inRomania, which ultimately leads to disbeliefand incertitude regarding both legal and po-litical matters.

Property reforms in rural Romaniaand community-based forests

Monica Vasile Liviu MãntescuUniversity of Bucharest Max Planck Institute

for the Study of Societies, Köln

Abstract: The article provides an overview of property reforms in Romania with afocus on collective/community forests. We start by a macro analysis of the laws andtheir results in the distribution of community forests and a longue-durée description ofthe principal legal forms of collective forests, such as pãdure comunalã, obºte andcomposesorat. Furthermore, we concentrate on two case studies form Bukovina regionto reveal the conflicts around the restitution process from an actor-oriented perspective.The conclusions point to the problems of the property laws and stress the fact that, inthe context of indeterminate laws, restitution is a perpetual negotiation, influenced bymechanisms such as networking or power relations.

Keywords: property laws, forests, common property, obºte, conflicts, power relations,networkingCuvinte-cheie: legile proprietãþii, pãduri, proprietate comun\, obºte, conflict, relaþiide putere, reþele sociale

Motto: Before the property reforms in Romania, the forestrepresented a technical issue, because we had planned forestry(silvicultura planificatã). At present, after the property reform,the forest became a social issue.

(Interview with Conf. Dr. Marian Drãgoi,Forestry Faculty of Suceava)

km

New Stamp

96 M. Vasile, L. Mãntescu, Property reforms in rural Romania and community-based forests

The present study combines macro andmicro investigation on property reform inRomania, by concentrating on forestproperty and moreover, on collective prop-erty over forests. The macro approach willgive an overview of the restitution process,trying to grasp the spread, location and na-ture of common-pooled forests in Romania,the differences between what people ex-pected and what they actually have gottenand the differences of conception betweenthe two latest property laws, as they reflectin the actual restitution. The investigation isbased on data available from recent statisticsof National Service of Forestry (RNP)1. Fur-thermore, we try to reveal the characteris-tics of the legal collective forms of propertyover forests, which are very diverse allacross Romania. The description will intro-duce a discussion on the history of suchforms, based on bibliographical sources. Itwill proceed to describe also the presentforms and their characteristics for a betterunderstanding of variability and richness ofdetails. This description is based on zealoussuccessive fieldwork done by the authorsfrom 2003 to 2008 with the help of teams ofstudents in the counties (judeþe) of Vrancea(10 villages), Suceava (3 villages), Vâlcea(3 villages), Gorj (1 village), Braºov (2 vil-lages) and Argeº (1 village). More detailedresults of those empirical inquiries were pre-sented with other occasions in articles(Vasile, 2006, 2007, 2008 a & b; Mãntescu,2006, 2007). The micro approach will showthrough the analysis of two ethnographic ex-amples how property restitution was actuallydone and how it determined further propertyrelations. It is based on a fieldwork in the sum-mer of 2007 and 2006 in Bukovina region2 .

Property has been conceived in the so-cial sciences, not only as a juridical or eco-

nomic topic, but as embedded in social rela-tions (Hann, 1998). The property conceptdoes not refer to a thing, as we often hearthis is my property, but it refers to a so-cial relation between people regarding anobject.

Property, in other words, is not a thing,but a network of social relations that gov-erns the conduct of people with respect tothe use and disposition of things (Hoebel,1966: 424, apud Hann, 1998: 4).

The study of collective forests engenderssocial issues twofold: first, it includes thedimension of property seen as social rela-tion, and second, because it deals with col-lective rights and duties, which imply a widerange of relationships among shareholders.

After the property reform in Romania,many communities or families transformedinto homo homini lupus. Since 2003; whenour study began with timid inquiries inVrancea region, we have heard many peoplesaying that property restitution destroyed thesocial relations not only at the communitylevel, but also at the family level. Manypeople have property-based conflicts withneighbours, fellow villagers or relatives.Moreover, the restitution of associational orcommunal forests brought into arena sharperconflicts than ever between community fac-tions (interest groups).

The context of forest coverageand forestry in Romania:history and present

We try in this section to give a glimpse ofthe forests in Romania from a historical pointof view. The general picture is extremelyparticular from region to region, even from

1. Data from RNP (Regia Naþionalã a Pãdurilor), semester reports from 30.06.2007, for whichwe wish to thank wholeheartedly to conf.dr. Marian Drãgoi.

2. In 2006, together with a team of students we have spent 3 weeks in Suceava county and thenwe came back for another two weeks in 2007 to improve on our missing links. In both villagestaken as example we applied 40 questionnaires randomly sampled and 45 interviews. Wewould like to thank our student colleagues for their help.

Access via CEEOL NL Germany

97Sociologie Româneascã, volumul VII, Nr. 2, 2009, pp. 95-113

village to village, and this makes our inten-tion to resume extremely difficult.

Romania is four percentage points underthe European mean of forested areas. Con-sidering its natural diversity, Romaniashould have 40% of its territory forested.

On the basis of cartographic documentsit could be observed that in the last 300 years,the forested surface of the Romania has sig-nificantly reduced in size, concomitantly withthe expansion of grasslands (Osaci-Costache,2007). Before 1829, 80% of Romanian ter-ritory was covered by forests. Large scalewoodcutting dates back to era of Turkishsuzerainty over the Romanian principalitieswhen tribute included wood purposes, car-ried to Istanbul from the ports of Brãila andGalaþi (Turnock, 1990: 409).

After 1829, commercial pressures spreadfrom northwest to southeast as the rail net-work widened access to Central Europeanmarkets (Muica and Turnock, 2003: 9).Scattered water-powered sawmills ( joag\rede apã) worked by communities from the 17th

century were being joined by the steam--powered installations of the capitalists pro-ducing sawn timber (cherestea) for export(ibidem). Foreign companies of timber ex-traction and processing from Italy, Austriaand Hungary came in Romania and accessedprivate, most of them commonly owned for-ests. Thus, between 1829 and 1922, approxi-mately three millions hectares were cutdown, reducing the forested areas with 30%.Another 1.3 million hectares were cut downbetween 1922 and 1945. After Second WorldWar, Romania was considered a defeatednation, and paid war compensations to theSoviet Union. Most of these compensationswere fuel wood for the soviet heavy indus-try. In 1948, Romania had 28% of its terri-tory forested (statistical data provided inEcomagazine 2008).

The situation of property rights until1948 is difficult to trace in a paragraph.Much local variability, struggles, differentlaws and interested social actors assert for aconstant shift in the nature of use and prop-erty rights.

First, in Transylvania legal property titleswere issued much earlier than in the RomanianPrincipalities (Wallachia and Moldavia).Here, most of the forested areas in the moun-tains were recognized as collective propertyof the borderline communes (comunelegrãnicereºti). In the region of Banat, all theborderline villages, in all 94, had one jointproperty title, named Comunitatea de Avere,the Community of Fortune (according toi[eºtean-Popa, 2009). In other regions therewere issued collective village or communetitles in the form of composesorat or in theform of communal forests subordinated tothe municipality. Other villages, which didnot have the statute of borderline communi-ties, could redeem collective property titlesfrom the domains of the state, also in theform of communal forests or composesorat.

In the regions of Wallachia and Moldavia,the free peasantry from the mountain areahad access to the forests in a customary re-gime of joint property. In 1910 the Forestrycode (Codul silvic) enables the communitiesto gain legal titles on their forests. Theseforests were merely named in the propertylaw, but they covered very different reali-ties. For example, some of them wereequalitarian and based on residency, such asthe ones in Vrancea region, while otherswere unequalitarian and based upon inher-ited rights (a difference to be detailed be-low). The Romanian state tried to regulatethis form of private property, and imposed afixed institutional framework, through a rul-ing statute voted in the Parliament. It wasintended that the statute include the custom-ary regulations, but ended up by totally ig-noring the real diversity of customary laws.

In 1945, 48% of the forests were held incommon property systems (Catwright, 2001).

Forest restitution

Most of the literature on post socialist prop-erty relations in Romania has focused on theeconomy of land issues (Verdery, 2003;Kideckel. 1993; Cartwright, 2001); all overthe post socialist block, forest were rarely


addressed; several exceptions are Cellarius(2003, 2004) who focuses on forests in Bul-garia, and Dorondel (2005) who dedicatedone chapter of his doctoral dissertation toRomanian forests. The scarcity of forest--related studies seems curious, since thisresource is vital for many rural communitiesand it is at the core of many types of socialconflicts, representing thus an interestingand fruitful ground for scholarly creation.One explanation might be the concentrationof forests into mountainous, isolated areas,where mainstream processes related to speci-ficities of postsocialism would not be so vis-ible; hence these areas remained largelyuninteresting.

Regardless of the type of land, the prop-erty reform had several common features.

Property laws and the forests

First, each restitution process had to undergotwo phases validation (validare) and en-titlement or putting into possession (punereîn posesie). In many cases, people stoppedthe process at the validation phase and didnot apply further for entitlement. Hence,they used the land/forest and treated it asproprietors, but without having final legalpapers. Second, responsibility for deliberat-ing restitution cases was devolved to localcommissions (comisia de retrocedare). Thismeant that certain locals had the power andlegitimacy to decide who gets where andhow much. Third, property laws emphasizedrestitution of land within historical bound-aries and not allocation/distribution of land(as in Albania, Hungary or Czechoslovakia,cf. Swain, 2000). This meant that wherepossible and convenient, people were sup-posed to receive land in the amount andboundaries of former plots (this was not thecase with forests in law 18/1991, as we willsee below). Moreover, it meant that the lawwas supposed to make historical justice forpeople who were abusively dispossessed.

Direct restitution was thought to be themost chaotic way of privatizing (Verdery,2003: 143) because of the multiple claims

on the same parcels and the difficulties inre-establishing former boundaries (Verdery,1996, 2004; Giordano and Kostova, 2002)and because of the resulting extreme frag-mentation. Moreover, it was thought to berelying on false premises, implying that thepostsocialist future can begin by returning toa status quo ante and that the conditionsshould be recreated as if socialism hadnever existed or as if it existed only out-side the correct flow of history (Giordanoand Kostova, 2002: 78). The ideologicalpromise of reinstalling the traditional peas-ant society envisioned as the depository ofthe nations most genuine values and virtues(idem: 79) was also proven to be impossibleto achieve. Assuming the reversibility ofevents and treating the socialist era as a blackhole without carefully considering processesof social change was probably wrong(Giordano, 1998: 25), because rural house-holds that were viable fifty years ago havenow members who have died, emigrated,married and otherwise substantially changedtheir relationship to land (Verdery, 1996: 134).

After communism, the first property law,18/1991 allocated forest only to individualsand in surfaces up to 1 hectare. Usually,these pieces of forest were not reconstitutedon the old (former) property locations(vechile amplasamente), as prior to 1948.They were allocated in more convenientboundaries, such as in the margins of theState forest. Thus, this law did not relief thethirst for social justice and it did not createan affective bond, as people were not pro-vided with the whole amount and symbolicvalue of their former land. In addition, atthat time, legislators did not impose highfines for deforestation (the ratio between thefines and the market price of 1 cleared hect-are was 1/10, thus a proprietor would obtaina profit of up to 15.000 euros for clearing1 hectare of forest). These factors contrib-uted to massive deforestation in the periodafter law 18. 300.000 hectares were thusprivatized and almost everything was clearedby the new proprietors (Cenuºã, 1994: 80).


The second law, 1/2000, restituted a largeramount of forest and included restitution tojuridical bodies, among which churches, as-sociations (obºti, composesorate), municipali-ties (primãrii), as it is visible in the graphbelow. It emphasized the allocation withinhistorical boundaries, but it stipulated thatplots that were entitled with law 18 shouldnot be removed or replaced. Because theprocess of property title emission, within the

law 18, went very slowly (Cartwright, 2000)and in 2000 there were plots validated but notgiven into possession with titles, people re-ceived forest with the law 2000 on the plotsthat were already validated for another per-son with the law 18. Thus, conflicts havebegun. We heard very often the story inwhich people were restituted in 2000 plotsof forest that were already cut down bypeople who received it in 1991 without titles.

The third law, 247/2005, went for resti-tutio in integrum. This law was supposed todo complete justice to former owners, bygiving back everything that was exemptedfrom restitution within former laws, publicbuildings, roads, watershed and protectedareas.

The promulgation of this law produced alot of expectations that were soon to crash.The sum of deposed requests for forests inassociations exceeded by far the total amountof associations forest plots restituted withall laws (including 1/2000 and 247/2005),as it is visible in the graph below.

There are a few interesting features ofthe laws regarding the collective forests.

First, as a negative feature, the law failsto acknowledge the different types of collec-

tive forests, treating all of them withoutspecificity, while they are very different onthe ground, as it will become visible furtherin the paper.

Graph 1. Surface of restituted forest (ha),distributed across categories of owners RNP 2007

Graph 2. Comparison between requests with 247 and total actual restitution,for forest associations RNP 2007


Second, from the collective forests onecannot sell its parts to outsiders. In otherwords, the land on which those forests standis not alienable individually and also not onthe whole. The law says: the terrains of theseassociative forms cannot be alienated, nei-ther as a whole, nor partially (law 1/2000,art. 28, alin. 7). Thus, very interesting thelaw acts counter to the capitalist ideologywhere everything must be for sale, regu-lated in the market economy in order to func-tion properly. This ideology initially informsthe privatisation process, but as we see, thespecificities of the law prevent the com-moditization of those forests, practicallyputting them out of the market system.

From what we found on the ground, it seemsthat in some of the forms, it is possible that themembers of the association sell the rights be-tween themselves (an example encounteredin Voineasa, a small genealogical obºte, namedObºtea Fraþilor Mirioneºti), but in the encoun-tered example people inside the associationdid not have enough money to buy what oneof their fellow associates had to offer.

Communal and associative forests.Pãdure comunalã, obºte,composesorat

It is commonplace thinking nowadays to con-ceive the land and forest commons as be-longing to the past, to a sort of precapitalistorder, or, where they still exist, as survivals,as markers of underdevelopment and primi-tivism. This is happening merely because ofthe prevailing neoliberal ideas, bounded toindividual-based conceptions. However,scholarly works all around the world, fromdifferent disciplines, have already dismantledthe stereotypes regarding the commons. Theseworks show the commons have not yet dis-appeared and common property regimes canbe very functional and rewarding (Ostrom,1990; McCay and Acheson, 1987).

The commons are a very often foundform of property in nowadays Romania, asthe graphs above have already suggested.As we have seen in the historical section,

three major forms of collective forests couldbe found in Romania and were restored withthe law 1/2000: 1) the forest owned by theterritorial administrative unit, the commune,or municipality, named the communal for-est; 2) the forest owned in an associativeprivate form and administered by the totalityof members, in the former Romanian Prin-cipalities named obºte and 3) the same formin Transylvania named composesorat. Thereis not only one form of obºte or composesorat,and differences may be substantive in sur-face, number of members, form of gover-nance or distribution of shares or revenues,as we will describe further in the paper.

Pãdure comunalã. A large percent fromthe privatized Romanian forests is owned byrural communes, managed by municipalities.These forests can be very large, as for ex-ample in the case of the Telciu communefrom Bistriþa County, which counts up to12.000 hectares. This type of common prop-erty is quite different from obºte andcomposesorat. The property belongs to thecommune, so, theoretically, any inhabitanthas equal right to access and equal shares.The administration and management are doneby the commune council (primãrie) togetherwith the appropriate forestry district, whichcan be private or public. In some cases, theinhabitants do not perceive that they have aright at all, they see the wood coming fromthe municipality as an aid (un ajutor din parteaprimãriei) and people who actually have ac-cess to the forests are the timber entrepreneursthat grow rich (Chiburþe, 2008; iºeºtean--Popa, 2009). Although the common prop-erty is managed by the mayor and themunicipalitys councilors, municipality for-est is a private forest which belongs to thecommune and is not state property. In thiscase, there is a participatory management,the citizens of the commune do not effec-tively participate in the decision-makingprocess, but people still put pressure on thecouncilors and mayor to manage the re-source according to their will. Many of thesecommunal forms resulted in Transylvaniaand Bukovina from the dismantling of theborderline institution of the Austrian-Hungarian


Empire (Instituþia Grãnicereascã PãdurileGrãnicereºti) in 1872, as already specified inthe historical section. Most of them are con-

centrated in the former borderline depart-ments (Bistriþa Nãsãud, Sibiu and Braºov the regiment of Orlat, visible in graph 3 below).

One major problem with the restitutionof communal forests was the lack of concor-dance between former and current adminis-trative units which had as a result the factthat present villages, which used to be po-litical communes, did not get back their land.The land was incorporated in the presentcommunes, together with other villages (be-low we will describe a case from Suceavawith this kind of situation).

Other collective forms are the obºte andcomposesorat, or what we called in the graphsthe associative forests, according to theirofficial denomination. Although they arenamed associations in the laws and in formaldocuments, these types of property canhardly be described as associations of pro-

prietors, because the shares that one has arenot delineated plots of forest that were puttogether, but a quantity of products that canbe withdrawn from the forest and a numberof votes in the general assembly. In Roma-nian sociological and anthropological litera-ture, these forms were excellently docu-mented by Henri H. Stahl (1939, 1958) andVasile V. Caramelea (1944, 2006).

As it is visible in the graph below,composesorate are present in Harghita,Covasna, Hunedoara, Arad, Braºov, BaiaMare and other judeþe from Transylvania,while obºti are also covering a large surfacein Wallachia and Moldavia, mostly in thejudeþe of Vâlcea, Vrancea, Argeº, Gorj,Bacãu and others.

Graph 3. Communal forests restituted with law 1/2000 and 247/2005.Distribution across departments RNP 2007


Obºte

According to the rights of access to the com-mon property, one may find two types ofobºte: equalitarian and non-equalitarian.

The equalitarian type means that every-one in the village has the right to equalshares of wood, and every man or womanover 18 has the right to elect the president ofobºte and the councilors in the village as-sembly. In other words: one man, one share,one vote. As I mentioned above, obºtea ismanaged in a participatory manner, and ithas an institutional framework with onepresident, councilors and book-keeper.People receive annually one to three cubicmeters of fuel-wood per person, and thesame quantity of wood for construction, withthe right to sell it. Local private companies

participate to auctions in order to exploit thesurplus of wood from forest plots. With theresulting money, obºtea improves villageutilities such as: roads, repairing schools orchurches, TV cable, water systems, gas sys-tem etc. The board of obºtea may divide theprofit to the villagers in equal amounts ofmoney, if people vote as such, but this hap-pens quite rarely. The equalitarian type is tobe found mostly in Vrancea.

The non-equalitarian type might also becalled the genealogical type: only some vil-lagers have the rights to access, if, and onlyif, the parents had shares in obºtea. Theshares are inherited, in both male/femalelines, and the votes in the village assemblyare sometimes according to the shares if

Graph 4. Associations forests restituted with law 1/2000,law 247/2005 and in course of restitution RNP 2007


one has one share, he/she has one vote, ifhe/she has 100 shares, than he/she will have100 votes. In most cases of non-equalitarianobºtea, the resulting money from the surplusof wood extraction is divided between theowners of shares, as shares from a company.

In both types, there is only one propertytitle, the obºtea owns the forest. The differ-ence is that in the first type obºtea means thewhole village, while in the second one, onlya part of it. However, in both cases the prop-erty is indivisible one cannot fence hisshares from the common property becauseone doesnt even know where these sharesare located, and the surface of land cannotbe sold outside obºtea, according to the law.

More clearly, obºtea is not an associa-tive form of few individual forest owners, isa collective form of owning forest. Obºtea is inthe same time an institution in the durkheimiansense, of formal and informal rules and regu-lations to access the common property, butit is also an institution in a managerial sense(Mãntescu, 2007), with headquarters, aproper building in the village, most of thetimes new, well equipped with office tools,internet, equipment for exploiting wood,trucks and off-roads for its members.

Composesorat

Usually, composesorat is the name for theinner circle of the Carpathians, in formerAustria-Hungary and obºte for the outercircle. As the obºti do, composesorat cantake various forms as well.

This type of joint ownership is similar tothe non-equalitarian obºtea. One village mighthave one, two, three or more composesorate.This depends, like in the case of non--equalitarian obºtea, on the genealogicalheritage. For example, four families boughtthree mountains for their herds in the late19th century. Later on, their heirs decidedto separate and the common property be-

came divided in four funii or moºii withshares inherited by their children and so on.

The associative forests, as we alreadymentioned, cannot be divided among mem-bers, and cannot be sold as terrain eitherpartially or totally. If the association is bank-rupt or decides to dissolve, the forests be-come communal forests, enter the publicdomain. Thus the associative forests aredesigned by law to remain fixed, attachedto the communities and not blown by thewind of the market into foreign hands.

The main difference between communaland associative forests is that the latter givemore power and rights to the members, whoare aware that they hold actually propertyrights and that they have to vote and to de-cide. In the case of the communal forests,the members of the communities are notaware of their rights and perceive the quotasof wood more as an aid, a favour from themayor. Many people actually perceive thatthe communal forests are still the domain ofthe State, while the associations are certainlyperceived as private.

Claims and expectations:law 247/2005

From the graph above, showing the distribu-tion of restituted associative forests acrossdepartments (judeþe), we can see that law247/2005 had a significant contribution, insome cases it doubled the surfaces of forestalready allocated (the cases of Hunedoara,Gorj, Alba) with law 1/2000. It is also vis-ible from the graph above that the forestsare almost equally distributed among areaswith composesorate (e.g. Harghita, Covasna,Hunedoara, Arad, Braºov, Maramureº,Oradea, Sãlaj) and areas with obºti (e.g. Vâlcea,Vrancea, Argeº, Gorj, Bacãu, Buzãu)3.

From the department of Caraº Severin,it is observable that the former huge domainof Fortune Community did not yet reconsti-

3. Unfortunately, this is the most specific data that is available. A comparative statistic betweenobºti and composesorate does not yet exist.


tuted its forests. Nevertheless, in this case,as in others as well, claims are very high.

Of all departments, Vrancea is the onewith the lowest level of claims. From thefindings of my research, indeed restitutionin the case of obºti vrâncene went verysmoothly. Documents were available, thecollective memory functioned very well andwitnesses helped the boundaries-tracing pro-cess. By 2005, when the law was published,these property forms were already well es-tablished.

As explanations for the big differencesbetween requests and actual restitution, as itis visible in graph 2 above, one may find:(1) the multiple claims made for the sameplots, sources of conflicts and court cases;(2) the lack of evidence produced to sustainthe claims; (3) the malevolence of Statestructures (Ocoale silvice de stat, Direcþiisilvice) to give up forest possession in favourof particular claimants. Causes (1) and (2)are produced by the fact that before 1948only in Transylvania property entitlementsexisted in municipality registers (CarteFunciarã); in the other historical regions(represented by Dâmboviþa, Buzãu, Prahovadepartments), that were not incorporated inthe Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the claimsare higher due to the lack of evidence andfuzzy situation before 1948.

Laws and forests intermediaryconclusion

First, from this brief macro description wesee the importance of common property sys-tems in Romania nowadays. Forest privatizationmeant devolvement into the hands of juridi-cal bodies, such as associations and com-munes, in proportion of 60% of the totalrestitution. Thus, at a theoretical level, com-munities were empowered for development.

We showed that forest restitution wasmade in three steps: (1) the first step was a

very small and stumbled one and the resultwas that only 7.8% of forest surface gotprivatized4 and almost all of this deforested;(2) the second step was a brave one, althoughit was a little hindered by the previous one,34% of the total forest surface went into thehand of private owners (including individu-als, associations, communes); (3) for thethird phase, everybody took a deep breathfor a huge step, but could not get muchfurther, many of the claims encountered hin-drances from the State that was seeing itsdomain diminishing. After this law, the esti-mation is that 45.6% of the total forest re-source will be privatized.

We have seen the importance of associa-tive forests, their richness in ethnographicdetails and emerged social relationships andalso their curious feature conferred by thelaw: their complete inalienability. Transac-tions concerning the land on which theseforests are placed are not allowed, thus thelaw somehow keeps those forests outside thefermenting market. This is very interestinganti-neoliberal stipulation which tends topreserve the forests for the communities towhich they are attached, instead of throwingthem to ready-to-buy international compa-nies. Moreover, this is a particularity of theRomanian law.

If we go back to the motto at the begin-ning of the chapter, we can better under-stand why property relations mean socialrelations. The conflict dimension, the orga-nizational and symbolic one (concerning his-torical justice) all contribute to identifyingproperty as a social issue. Expectationswhich crashed, associations which wereformed all of these acknowledge for a re-construction of social relationships in ruralareas and reconstruction of personhood, be-cause having and owning is an importantcomponent of the self, contributing toself-esteem and the placement of persons inthe social environment.

4. At the end of 2000, information from the RNP internet site, consulted in September 2007.


Restitution of common forestsfrom a micro perspective: conflictand actor-oriented perspective

We want to show in the following pages thedeeper mechanisms that underlie the pro-cesses of restitution.

We begin our analysis with the case ofthe village of Slãtioara, Suceava County5.Here, before communism there was a com-munal forest (820 ha), because the village wasformerly a commune itself. The forest passedon to the nowadays commune, Stulpicani,that includes the village of Slãtioara and fourother villages that benefit from it (appar-ently much more than does Slãtioara). Theneighbouring village, Gemenea6 succeededto escape this trap of the primãrie and totransform the former communal forest intoan obºte. The obºtea of Gemenea (783 ha) isgenealogical, based on the principle of in-heritance7. It does not have any history; itis not a restored form, but an invented orborrowed one, in order to keep the prop-erty from slipping into the hands of the com-mune (as we will describe below).

The case of the twin-villages, Slãtioaraand Gemenea, which had the same situationbefore communism and now differ very much,speaks for the way in which the law func-tions differently according to the agency ofthe actors who make the claims. The successor the failure of restitution depends upontheir ability and their social network or cli-entele relations. The situations are best de-scribed as conflicts.

In the cases that we encountered all overthe country, conflicts concern various top-

ics. For the case of Vrancea, in some vil-lages smaller and isolated conflicts occur,most often concerning the distribution ofwood and profit. In other villages, sharperconflicts concern abuses and corruption(Vasile, 2006: 119). For other cases, likein the communities from southern Carpathians,the major conflict is between obºtea and theState structures, such as forestry districts ornational parks (Vasile, 2008b). There are nolocal arenas and mechanisms for a low-costresolution of conflicts. Customary law andlocal norms seem to have no effective powerin regulating them and controlling their es-calation.

The wider concept of conflict has beendiscussed in relation to issues such as 1) re-sources. Here, conflict is explained in termsof interests of the groups and persons in-volved, especially their competition for re-sources or gains (Schlee, 2004: 135). An-other issue under which we can understandconflict is 2) identification. Here, attentionis drawn from the object to the subject andthe question is who fights whom? The re-searcher becomes interested in the identityof the conflict actors and in their alliancesand subjective appreciation of their attach-ments, which patterns of identification theyfollow (ibidem). Third, conflict is about3) power. In this approach, power is the cen-tral concept of the research and conflict isone possible point of entry, a methodologi-cal setting in which power relations arerevealed (Nuijten, 2005: 9). The researcherfocuses on power relations, manipulation,networking, statuses and hierarchies.

5. The village is located on the Suha Bucovineanã Valley and it does not comprise more than 200households.

6. This village is bigger than Slãtioara, it comprises around 300 households.7. In the past, both Gemenea and Slãtioara did not belong to the confederation of free villages

from Câmpulung (ocolul Câmpulungului Moldovenesc), but were submitted to the Voroneþmonastery.


Slãtioara (Suceava) inappropriatelaws and divergent identifications

As we briefly described above, Slãtioara is alow developed village, although it is surroundedby forests and it is placed right next to abeautiful natural site, the Centenary Forestof Slãtioara (Codrul Secular Slãtioara), witha high potential for tourism. This paradoxi-cal situation is partly due to the very badcondition of the road that leads to the village(by car, driving carefully to avoid holes, ittakes 8 km in half an hour) and impedestourism activities. People from the villageconsider that for this bad shape of infra-structure in Slãtioara are guilty the com-mune (Stulpicani) officials, who often cutdown the village from investments. Of inter-est for the present study is the misappropria-tion from the commune of the collective for-est of the slãtioreni.

Slãtioara was a commune itself before1948 and had a communal forest of 820 ha(as we already mentioned above). Unlike othervillages in the area at that time, it did notfollow the trend of forest individualisationor privatisation (namely, transformation ofcommunal forest into individual private for-est or into an obºte), because the formermayor had business interest in keeping itthat way. Therefore, they didnt have anylist of individuals claiming the forest fromthe pre-socialist period, or any other list ofproprietors upon which to reconstitutenowadays the property rights only for thevillagers from Slãtioara (and we will comeback to this issue to explain the role of lawlater in this paper). Thus, the property ofthe former commune of Slãtioara passed onto the present commune of Stulpicani, whichincludes four other villages as beneficiariesof the forest.

A few people from the village considerthat the forest should be used only by theslãtioreni and thus sued the commune andstill try to regain the forest. This restitutionclaim does not have many chances of suc-cess for several reasons. The most impor-

tant reason is that the village of Slãtioaradoes not act as a corporate body, and a con-flict exists among villagers. On one side,there are two old men who made the claimand continue the case in courts. On the otherside, a group from the state forestry struc-ture, also residents in Slãtioara, works to-gether with the primãrie (commune officials)of Stulpicani. One of the most powerfulmembers of these groups, a ranger, has hisbrother councillor at the primãrie. Other laypeople from the village fairly know aboutthe claim that has been made. And althoughsome of them know about it and would rathersupport it, they owe submission to the rang-ers and forestry people, either because theyare their clients for wood, or simply becausethey do not want to get into trouble withimportant people. The two old claimantsdo not have enough financial and relationalpower to win the case alone.

Picture 1. The two claimants from Slãtioara

If we consider that conflicts start frominterests in the same resource, there mightbe identified several interest groups: 1) thetwo claimants who might have the interestto benefit from a restrictive use of the for-est; 2) the primãrie group which holds thede jure interest of exploiting the forest forinvestments in the commune and the de factointerest to subtract illicit advantages; 3) theprimãrie supporters, a group that partiallyoverlaps with the primãrie, but also withthe villagers of Slãtioara, part of them are


rangers in the state forestry structure (ocolsilvic) that administrates the respective for-est; the latest category holds the interest to

have the forest in administration and the oth-ers are supposed to have some illicit mate-rial advantages out of this situation.

Figure 1. Illustration of the multi-sided conflictaround the forest in Slãtioara, Suceava

The resource-related interests presentedabove might work only up to a certain point.We especially cannot understand how thetwo old claimants are so keen in pursuingthe case, because their economic advantageswould not even cover their trial expenses.The identification and power approach toconflict shed more light on this type of con-flict. The claimants legitimate their actionthrough the idea of land as heritage (this isthe land of our ancestors) and by associatingthemselves with the people. It is necessaryto understand the importance of their collec-tive identity, as villagers and as descendantsfor their own motivation.

However, it seems that this type of moti-vation is not shared by the other villagers,or that other dimensions prevail in their choices.The two old claimants are rather outstandingcharacters, as one of my key informants puts it:

They are exterior to the community, S.(n.a. the most important from the twoclaimants) through his nature, he is not inte-grated, and this is why he cannot convincepeople to participate. (I.U., age 40, priest)

The two have limited power for winningthe case, because they have limited knowl-edge about legal means, limited financialpossibilities to carry on the case into justiceand also no support from the communitymembers. Meanwhile, the supporters of theprimãrie group inside the community (coun-cillors, rangers) has more power; they havethe institutional power that gives access fortheir clients to resources. Their rhetoric triesto emphasise belonging to the village andtaking its side, but they admit that they havenever raised a finger to solve this conflict.For them, identification with the institutionof primãrie is more important. The categoryof forestry rangers identify themselves morewith the forestry structure that they repre-sent, than with the village and they try tojustify the situation as normal:

without any doubt the forest belongs tothe village, but the primãrie holds the title,because it is the only legal way and, more-over, it is not a hindrance for develop-ment... (V.T., age 54, councillor)


We gave above a few ways to understandthe conflict from within, from a perspectivein which the actors and their interaction con-struct the situation. However, the presentedproblem might be understood also in a morestructural light. As structural causes for theconflict we might point out to: 1) the prob-lem of administrative units in Romania communes are not organic and stable waysof territorial organisation8, thus successiverestructurings bring diverse problems; 2) theweakness of property laws concerning therestitution of communal forms there is aconstant lack of specificity; in this particularcase, to whom should the forest be restitutedand into what transforms the former commune,into the new commune or into the political en-tity of the village in the form of an association?

We will introduce here an essential mis-take of law 1/2000, concerning restitution forassociative forms. The Romanian laws perpetu-ated for decades a misunderstanding of col-lective types of property. Being inspired fromthe very beginning from the Roman CivilCode (Stahl, 1958), they have the tendency toconstantly reduce the collective to the indi-vidual. In the light of these rules, a collectivebody means a sum of individuals. Thus, anentitlement for a community must take intoaccount a list of individuals that form the re-spective community. This stipulation is essen-tially wrong because collective bodies, suchas a village, are constantly changing, personsleave or join the village, people die or are born.However, the law, or, more precisely, thelawmakers are not aware of such realitiesand require tables of members, regardlessof the particular property form (annex 54 fromthe law 1/2000), in order to reconstitute theproperty rights. Slãtioara did not have sucha table, because the political commune wasan entity beyond its members, and for thatspecific reason it loses out today.

Nevertheless, our analysis above demon-strates that important explanations are to befound on the ground level, within the dy-namics of the community that is unable toact as a political entity. Groups and indi-viduals with divergent interests and identifi-cations act in different directions. Why?Because they have different economic inter-ests, different incentives (also familial andpersonal ones) and social identities; further-more, because they hold different powerswith respect to persuading villagers and toconducting a court case.

Moreover, the presented situation indi-cates that even if the property had been in thehands of the village, internal conflicts wouldhave prejudiced the management of the for-est, as it happens in other cases as well.

Gemenea (Suceava), networkingand legitimacy

Gemenea is a village from the above men-tioned commune of Stulpicani, neighbouringSlãtioara, which succeeded to transform itsformer communal forest into an obºte. De-spite this initial success, what followed wasdisappointing for many villagers.

We have chosen to speak about this casefor two reasons: because we want to show howthe same law that did not permit Slãtioara toreconstitute its forest can become favourablein other circumstances. Second, because wewant to describe a case where abuse andgeneralized internal conflict are striking.

The restitution of obºtea Gemenea is thework of a woman who succeeded, with thesupport of the community, to sustain in courtthat the former communal forest of Gemeneawas about to transform (or it really did) intoan obºte before 19489. Thus, she argued that

8. We documented this idea through another example on property rights, in the village ofHãuliºca, Vrancea; see the forthcoming Sociologie Româneascã; 4, 2007, and theintroductory study in Romanian of Monica Vasiles doctoral dissertation.

9. Although what follows resembles the tonality of an investigation, it is only the presentation ofethnographic data upon which our analysis relies; we admit that it is a reconstruction of a casebased on interviews; we admit that we provide our version after interviewing many persons andwe assume responsibility for it; many of these issues were subject to newspapers articles.


the forest should not have been restituted tothe commune of Stulpicani, but to the vil-lage, as obºte, based on the multiple sensesof the word obºte (obºte as a village, as thetotality of members of a village or as a prop-erty institution). She brought as proof a docu-ment extract in German regarding the forest,naming Gemenea Gemeinde Dzemine. Sheshowed in a dictionary that Gemeinde meanscommunity, so, she said, community is nec-essarily obºte. Gemeinde in German may alsomean village or commune, and from my bib-liographical investigation it means rathercommune than obºte10. Another proof wasan incomplete table from 1940 with severalinhabitants contributing for trial expenses.The expected result of the trial from 1940would have been the division of shares (it isnot specified what kind of shares pasture,forest, land) into individual hands (of therespective contributors). This was indexedas a proof for the fact that before 1948 peopletransformed the communal forest into an obºte.We can notice that the proofs were rather weakand the legal recognition of obºtea Gemeneawas based more on the good will of the judge.

The key element of the entire successfulenterprise was the womans efficient net-working. By means such as political affilia-tion and gifts for important people, shesmoothed the path towards legal recognitionof obºtea Gemenea. In addition, she set up acampaign for convincing people in the vil-lage that they should support the initiative ofobºte restoration and thus, contribute withmoney, a lamb, a car ride in exchange of aposition on the table11. After the obºte was

established, the table became the apple ofdiscord. Obºtea was reconstituted only with theheirs of persons inscribed on it, which rep-resent approximate half of all inhabitants.

People from the village sued the womanpresident for faking the table and adding herclients on it. In addition, people from othervillages who worked in the Restitution Com-mission at the municipality sustain that thetable was modified. Her father12 also recog-nized that the table was modified indeed, butonly for removing people who left the vil-lage (mostly Germans and Jews) and addingpoor people. The father argues that at thetime the table was made, there were peoplein the village that had more power andwealth and this is why they appear on thetable twice or more (they contributed twiceto the respective expenses). He believes it isnot fair that poor people did not have achance to become entitled with forest andthis social differentiation has to be undonein present days. In addition, they legitimizetheir action by consulting the elders of thevillage, who are members in the officialcommittee of the obºte. They see their actnot as a false, but as a way of establishingsocial justice.

In the newly formed obºte, the local de-mocracy does not function very well. Al-though, de jure, there exists the largest obºtecommittee that we have ever seen since weinvestigate the subject, formed of nineteenmembers, and the village assembly has im-portant powers, de facto, the president hasthe ability to impose her will in almost everycircumstance13.

10. Dictionaries translate Gemeinde as community, congregation, parish, municipality, corporatetown; in books (Diacon, 1989: 86) about the region we found the description of old villageseals, all with the inscription Gemeinde Dzemine, Gemeinde Slatioara (description of sealsfrom 1863), meaning that this is a generic denomination for a political entity, such as villageor commune; it results that the presence of Gemeinde does not demonstrate that there was alegally constituted obºte.

11. Several people declared to us this kind of barter a contribution for 1 ha on the table.12. 80 years old, he was presented as one of the pylons of collective memory.13. We assisted a committee meeting, held in the living room of the president (in picture 2), and

it went like the following the president made her point, asked for an approval of thecommittee, the committee discussed different issues, everybody chaotically expressed opinionsregarding diverse topics, without reaching any conclusions, and at some point, the presidentintervened, and concluded I believe things are clear, you approve, so you have to sign here.


The committee is legitimated mostly asan elders court, nine of the members beingover 70. The president frequently legitimatesher decisions and opinions by saying theelders said.... Moreover, usually the gen-eral assembly, which is supposed to gatherall the members of the obºte, doesnt func-tion, because people do not participate (fromour 40 questionnaires survey, 85.7% par-ticipated rarely or not at all). In this case,for legalizing decisions, she collects signa-tures in the village. Because of her anteced-ents with false papers, this procedure is con-tested. In addition, the democratic proce-dure is highly vitiated by the fact that thepresident and the committee are elected fora period of 10 years.

The conflict at Gemenea escalated veryhigh. During our fieldwork, people kept in-viting us to talk to some people, while for-bidding us to talk to others; each time weentered a house, people started searchingfor documents, attesting their ancestors andtheir property. In a metaphorical way, ourfieldwork resembled a court case, whereeveryday new proofs were brought to thefile and new witnesses were audited.

Since the obºte was established, the vil-lage divided among supporters and oppo-nents, very outraged ones against the others.The accusations of the opponents were about

the following points: 1) the president falsi-fied the tables and put her relatives and herallies on it; she removed entitled peoplethat she had quarrels with; 2) she manipu-lates the obºtea committee and takes abusiveadvantages from the obºte revenues. In re-sponse, the obºte officials proclaimed them-selves the establishers of social justice andthe knowledgeable elders court. They ac-cuse their opponents of greediness and ma-levolence. Moreover, they say that the obºterevenues are merely prejudiced by the exist-ing trials and the continuous reclamations.

This case shows that access to propertyrights has to be negotiated. The law does notgrant entitlement automatically to sounddocuments providers, as in the case ofSlãtioara, and it does not exclude peoplewho are very able to produce their docu-ments in a speculative way. Networking ap-pears to be the most important skill for ne-gotiation. It is more valuable that somebodyimportant supports the claim, than the factthat the documents are not accurate.

Another necessary skill is manipulationthrough covering action in the cloth of le-gitimacy. In our case, legitimacy is obtainedthrough ideas of social justice, wisdom ofelders; moreover, legitimacy is conferredby work. People who are not directly in-volved in the conflict often approve for the

Picture 2. Council meeting at Gemenea(the president, in the middle, and eight members)


obºte officials and above all, the president,because she worked immensely to gain thisproperty back (from the survey 62.5% ap-preciate that the obºte officials are doing agood job). Finally, courage plays an impor-tant role; or, in the way that some of myinformants put it shamelessness. The claim-ants from Slãtioara told me that they werecounselled by the president of Gemenea todo this and that, to open certain doors,but they did not want to have nightmares.

Conclusion: indeterminate laws,savage arena of personal skillsand social relationships

The micro analysis reveals processes thataccompanied the restitution of the forestproperty, which could only be guessed fromthe macro level. Following Slãtioara andGemenea examples, we notice how rights canbe obtained despite lack of evidence to sup-port them, but only by certain skillful socialactors and through certain mechanisms, in-cluding manipulation and networking. Thesemechanisms are enacted in a vast process ofnegotiation, horizontally, between local ac-tors, and vertically, between the local actorsand State institutions.

From the macro data detailed in the firstpart of the article we could easily indentifythe relation between the inconsistence of for-est property restitution process and the so-cial history of certain regions in Romania.The law fails not only to acknowledge diver-sity, but also fails to acknowledge a chang-ing collective body such as a village andmistakenly insists on defining concrete mem-bers on paper, such as the problem fromSlãtioara (the problems that this particularmistake of the law caused back in the 20sand 30s in Vrancea are treated in Stahl,1939 and Vasile, 2008a). Whoever under-stands that those members have to be pro-duced has a chance to win.

Today, the conceptual gaps from the lawsystem concerning communal/collective

property, together with the weakness oflaw-enforcing institutions, draw the imageof a savage arena where actors fell free toplay their roles according to natural regula-tions. The micro data is once again impor-tant in our analysis because it reveals ex-actly this arena and its rules. In other words,we have the possibility to follow the trophicchain of property restitution and to betterunderstand the property relations around thisprocess. We saw in this article how someparticular social actors might deliberatelykeep confusing the rules of forest restitutionin order to manipulate. By this, and by ig-noring basic knowledge of local social his-tory, altogether compiled the image of agenealogical obºte ruled by the elders whoknow the things, but who are easily manipu-lated. In this savage arena the justice sys-tem plays an important role, keeping thearena in this way, by playing the same gameand granting favourable decisions to sociallyskilled people, sometimes despite legal evi-dence, as we have shown.

In the same time Slãtioara stays as a goodexample for how the system of territorial--administrative units influences the restitu-tion process. The basic Romanian adminis-trative unit, commune comuna, is no longervalid in this context. We have to keep inmind that the current administrative systemrecalls the communist time of concentration/decreasing (sistematizare) rural areas. Thus,most of current communes are not organicadministrative units of a territory and theyblock the process of local development.

We recall the problems which arise to-day, partly because of bad legislation: de-forestation; local abuses of power, unjustrestitution; acute conflicts inside villagesand families; crashed expectations. How-ever, there is one interesting paragraph inthe law, the one that makes the forests tiedto the communities no matter how high thepressure of the market can get. The associa-tive forests cannot be divided or alienated,the worst that can happen is to transforminto communal (municipality) forests if theyturn insolvable.


This shows that the ideology encompass-ing the whole process, the neoliberal ideol-ogy of private property did not fully resonatewith the ideology of Romanian legislatorswho favoured collective forms and, more-over, made sure that those collective prop-erties do not get commoditized on the landmarket. Furthermore, the two ideologies arejust rules and ideas which do not get enactedon the ground. The reality is more com-

plex, and exploits every niche of the laws insuch ways that we encounter a huge diver-sity of forms and outcomes.

To return to our motto, administratingforest is no longer a technical forestry issue,but first of all a social one. We have seenhow property over forests is not only abouteconomic motivations, but issues such asancestry or social status are brought up inthis process as motivations and outcomes.

Bibliography

Caramelea, V. (1944) Composesoratele de foºti iobagi din þara Oltului. Sistemul juridicconsuetudinar negenealogic. Craiova: Editura Ramuri.

Caramelea, V. (2006) Satul Berevoieºti, Muscel. Obºtea Moºnenilor. Piteºti: Editura Universitãþiidin Piteºti.

Cartwright, A. (2000) Against decollectivisation: land reform in Romania, 1990-1992. Halle/Saale: Max Planck Inst. for Social Anthropology.

Cartwright, A. (2001) The Return of the Peasant. Land reform in post-communist Romania.Aldershot: Ashgate.

Cellarius, B. (2003) Property restitution and natural resource use in the Rhodope mountains,Bulgaria. In C., Hann (ed.). The Postsocialist Agrarian Question: Property Relations and theRural Condition, Münster, LIT, 189-218.

Cellarius, B.A. (2004) In the land of Orpheus: rural livelihoods and nature conservation inpostsocialist Bulgaria. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Cenuºã, R. (1994) Probleme actuale privind pãdurile private din þãrile Europei Occidentale.[Problems concerning private forests in western Europe], Bucovina Forestierã, Anul III, 2, 87-95.

Chiburþe, L. (2008) Teoria accesului la resursele naturale ºi practicile sociale de exploatare apãdurilor [Theories of access to natural resources and social practices of forest exploitation]Romanian Sociology (Sociologie Româneascã), 3-4, 116-126.

Diacon, V. (1989) Vechi aºezãri pe Suha Bucovineanã. Suceava: Editura Moldova Nouã.Dorondel, S. (2005) Land, Property, and Access in a Village from Postsocialist Romania. In

Between East and West. Studies in Anthropology and Social History. edited by S. Dorondel,ªerban, ª., (ed.) 268-307. Bucharest: The Romanian Cultural Institute Publishing House.

Giordano, C. (1998) Actualizing History in Eastern and Western Europe. The History of theHistorian and that of the Anthropologist. Ethnologia Balkanica, vol. 2, 19-29.

Giordano, C. and Kostova, D. (2002) The social production of mistrust. 74-91 in C.M. Hann(ed), Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia. London and New York:Routledge.

Hann, C. (ed.). (1998) Property Relations. Renewing the anthropological tradition. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Kideckel, D. (1993) The solitude of collectivism: Romanian villagers to the revolution andbeyond. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Mãntescu, L. (2006) Obºtea vrânceanã actualã. Definiþia unei structuri. (Obºtea Vrânceanã today.Definition of a structure). Sociologie Româneascã (Romanian Sociology), vol. 4, 3, 130-144.

Mãntescu, L. (2007) Negotiating access to natural resources, building an institution withinvillages. In J.U., Nagel et al. (ed.), Managing Economic, Social and BiologicalTransformations. Proceedings. Weikershaim: Margraf Publishers.


McCay, B., Acheson, J. (ed.). (1987) The Question of the Commons. The Culture and Ecologyof Communal Resources. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Muica, N., Turnock, D. (2003) The railway age in the Carpathian forests: A study of Romania.Geographica Pannonica, 7, 9-20.

Nuijten, M. (2005) Power in Practice: A Force Field Approach to Natural Resource Management.The Journal of Transdisciplinary Environmental Studies, vol. 4, 2.

Osaci-Costache, G. (2007) Utilizarea terenurilor în bazinul subcarpatic al Vâlsanului; contribuþiicartografice. Analele Universitãþii ªtefan cel Mare, Suceava, secþiunea Geografie, anul XVI.

Ostrom, E. (1990) Governing the commons. The evolution of institutions for collective action.Cambridge: University Press.

Schlee, G. (2004) Taking Sides and Constructing Identities: Reflections on Conflict Theory.Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, Blackwell, 10, 135-156.

Stahl, H.H. (1939) Nerej un village dune région archaïque: monographie sociologique.Bucarest: Institut des Sciences Sociales de Roumanie.

Stahl, H.H. (1958) Contribuþii la studiul satelor devãlmaºe româneºti (Contributions in studyingRomanian joint property villages). Bucureºti: Editura Academiei.

Swain, N. (2000) The rural transition in post-socialist Central Europe and the Balkans. WorkingPapers Series. Halle/Saale: Max Planck Inst. for Social Anthropology.

iºeºtean-Popa, M. (2009) Repere socio-istorice în studiul proprietãþii colective din douã comunefoste grãnicereºti [Socio-historical aspects in the study of collective property of two formerborderline communes]. Romanian Sociology, vol. 7, 1, 91-106.

Turnock, D. (1990) Transport for Romanias Carpathian forests: Improved accessibility throughtechnological change. Geo Journal, 22, 409-428.

Vasile, M. (2006) Obºtea today in the Vrancea Mountains, Romania. Self-governing institutionsof Forest Commons. Sociologie Româneascã (Romanian Sociology), vol. 4, 3, 111-130.

Vasile, M. (2007) The sense of property, deprivation and memory in the case of Obºtea Vrânceanã.Sociologie Româneascã (Romanian Sociology), vol. 5, 2, 114-129.

Vasile, M. (2008a) Nature conservation, conflict and discourses on forest management:communities and protected areas from Meridional Carpathians. Romanian Sociology(Sociologie Româneascã), 3-4, 87-100.

Vasile, M. (2008b) Un fond fãrã formã: obºtea vrânceanã. Statutar ºi cutumiar în dinamicadefinirii unui sistem de proprietate colectivã. Romanian Sociology (Sociologie Româneascã),1, 56-73.

Verdery, K. (1996) What was socialism, and what comes next? Princeton, NJ [u.a.]: PrincetonUniversity Press.

Verdery, K. (2003) The vanishing hectare: property and value in postsocialist Transylvania.Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

http://www.ecomagazin.ro/romania-%E2%80%93-locul-13-in-europa-la-paduri/. Accessed on14.06.2008.

Primit la redac]ie: decembrie 2008

«Property reforms in rural Romania and communitybased ... · 98 M. Vasile, L. Mªntescu, Property...

Documents

Transcript of «Property reforms in rural Romania and communitybased ... · 98 M. Vasile, L. Mªntescu, Property...