The other frontier: forest rush and small-scale timbermen of postsocialist Transylvania

ABSTRACT

This article examines the postsocialist timber rush of the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania, from the perspective of the frontier. Drawing on long-term anthropological fieldwork, it follows life-trajectories of timbermen and politicians to reveal the grassroots dynamics of timber production, trade relationships and political control of resources emerged in the last three decades. The paper unpicks the conjuncture of an area in the Apuseni Mountains, which diverged from the trajectories of other Romanian mountain communities. Here small-scale forestry thrived and large enterprises did not take hold, preventing dispossession and proletarization. A politics of patronage protected small-scale operators.

KEYWORDS:

• Resource frontier
• forests
• political ecology
• anthropology
• Eastern Europe
• postsocialism
• patronage

Acknowledgements

Wholehearted thanks to the two reviewers at JPS, whose advice greatly improved the quality of this article. The research for this article has been generously supported by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle - Saale, and developed within the research group Economy and Ritual, led by Stephen Gudeman and Chris Hann. During the writing I was a fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich and benefited from invaluable suggestions from colleagues and friends Anita Carrasco, Daniel Münster, Judith Carney, Christof Mauch, Ursula Münster, Marin Coudreau, Branwyn Poleykett, Meredith McKittrick, Floor Halbloom, Werner Krauß, and Jared Farmer, whom I thank greatly. Deepest thanks to my comrade Ștefan Voicu for thoughtful comments and for helping me clarify the arguments, and to my partner Arryn Snowball for patient edits and caring encouragements. I feel grateful to the people of Urși for receiving me into their homes and their lives, and especially to my landlady Jena.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to National Forest Inventory, 2018.

2 This unfolded alongside concerns for formalizing forest property rights (class struggles between large landowners, peasants and communities), the growth of scientific conceptions of forestry and concerns for sustainable yields, mostly applied in state forests.

3 The Romanian national state was born in 1918, by the unification between Transylvania, previously part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the independent Romanian Principalities.

4 Forest area increased in Romania by roughly 308,000 ha since 1924, and the proportion of tree species has changed since then, shifting towards a higher proportion of coniferous trees, e.g. Norway spruce increased since 1924 by 6.75% (Munteanu et al. 2016, 183–184), as a consequence of the socialist policy of planting productive coniferous species, which was halted in 1986.

5 The name moți is apparently derived from a similar sounding appellative, țopi, from the German ‘die Zopfen’, zopf meaning a braid of hair, a derogatory name used by German speaking bureaucrats of the Austro-Hungarian empire calling the locals Zopfiger Walach (Frâncu and Candrea 1888).

6 The law of the inhabitants of the Apuseni Mountains no. 33/ 1996, granted economic rights, allowed the harvesting and commercialization of a quantity of wood per year, facilities for railway transport of products, as well as timber allowances for young families.

7 The lowest forest cover on Romanian territories occurred between 1920s, when disturbance was particularly high (93,000 ha) and 1955 when the measured forested area was at its minimum (5,735,000 ha) (Munteanu et al. 2016).

8 The municipality, comuna, is composed of fifteen villages, 2300 persons; Urși is the largest and the most prosperous village of the comuna.

9 Private forestry districts were formed to manage and guard restituted forests, which amount to more than half of the forested areas of Romania. Management guidelines for forest stands are elaborated by specialists, validated by experts of the Ministry of Forests (Abrudan 2012).

10 According to the TV media outlet transcripts.

11 Report exists under the following link http://www.curteadeconturi.ro/Publicatii/Sinteza_FF.pdf

12 Windthrows happened in July 2011 (Furtuna, Haidu, and Maier 2018). Remote sensing studies signaled forest disturbances occurred also prior to the windthrow, and forest loss disturbances peaked in 2007 (Furtună 2017).

13 Two local newspapers.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Monica Vasile

Monica Vasile has conducted research on the social and ecological life-worlds of the Carpathian Mountains. Her previous projects explored forest practices, illegal logging, timber trade, and the revival of forest and pasture commons in the postsocialist Romanian Carpathians. Currently, she works on the history of reintroduction of endangered species, as part of the research group ‘Moving Animals: A history of Science, Media and Policy in the twentieth century’ at Maastricht University since March 2020. She holds a doctorate from University of Bucharest (awarded 2008), and held research positions and visiting fellowships at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, at the Romanian Academy, Institute of Sociology, as well as at IRITHESys – Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems at Humboldt University in Berlin, and the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology in Halle, among others.