Formalizing commons, registering rights: the making of the forest and pasture commons in the Romanian Carpathians from the 19th century to post-socialism

Abstract

Abstract:The formal recognition of rights to the commons that occurred in the Carpathian Mountains since the 19th century has proved to be vital to their continued existence and recent post-socialist revival. However, in the course of history, the processes of formalization produced negative consequences: shrank the peasant entitlements to their land commons, fueled conflicts, cemented existing inequalities and favored opportunistic behavior. This essay examines two waves of formalization: (1) the modern delineation and recognition of commons, and the division of shares in the commons -first in the region of Transylvania, under the Austro-Hungarian rule after 1848 and second in the region of Wallachia, under the Romanian Principalities; and (2) in 2000s, the post-socialist restitution of the commons to groups of former owners. It shows how in Transylvania, the division of shares was based on former feudal class relations and in Wallachia on segmentary lineage techniques. The focus is on past and present politics of quantification embedded in property formalization, as enacted by social actors and material devices, such as official and unofficial registers and lists. The findings are based on primary and secondary historical sources, ethnographic fieldwork and surveys conducted over the past two years.

Commons as Traditional Means of Sustainably Managing Forests and Pastures in Olt Land (Romania)

“…They are located in Wallachia and Moldova. The compossessorates are similar to non-equalitarian communes and are located in Transylvania [9,[12][13][14].…”

“…The Romanian commons are considered non-profit organizations from a legal standpoint. However, this classification is also partially inadequate, since a part of the profit made by the commons is distributed to their members [12,19].…”

Institutional Entrepreneurship in a Contested Commons: Insights from Struggles Over the Oasis of Jemna in Tunisia

“…By illustrating this ideological confrontation through the Jemna case, our study extends research that conceptualizes commoning as a process that is eminently political (Fournier 2013; Kostakis 2018), even more so for contested commons. Literature has acknowledged the need for the recognition of commons by formal institutions (Vasile 2018), and institutional theory often considers formal authority as a resource that IEs harness to support change (Hardy and Maguire 2017). Interestingly, however, the case of Jemna raises questions about the actual role of formal institutions in contested commons.…”

“…From a theoretical point of view, Jemna's situation as a de facto commons can be framed as one of "institutional incongruence," a concept we recast from institutional theory (Webb et al 2009) and which is particularly relevant to contested commons. When a community's definition of what is legitimate differs from what is specified in laws and regulations, institutional incongruence occurs (Vasile 2018;Webb et al 2009).…”

Elements of the institutionalization process of the forest and pasture commons in Romania as particular forms of social economy

“…The works mentioned here focused on the description of momentous aspects of the commons’ re‐formation after the fall of communism—the weighty restitution process after more than 50 years of state ownership, the preservation of their main inherited characteristics (e.g., distribution of shares and rights), the functional processes that they implement—using case studies of particular regions. Recently, the papers related to the Romanian commons focused on more detailed analysis and accounts of the process of rights formalization (Vasile, 2018), the integration of the commons’ activity in the cash economy (Vasile, 2017) or the emotional work inherent in building and re‐building such institutions (Vasile, 2019). In the last 10 years, sociologists also started to research the Romanian commons in the larger framework of social economy, considering them among the entities for which comprehensive statistical socio‐economic data was collected and analyzed (Barna, 2014; Cotoi & Mateescu, 2013; Petrescu, 2013).…”