Wine as a “Cultural Product”? Ethnographic Notes on Work and Nationhood in the Republic of Moldova

Abstract

The Republic of Moldova is one of the largest wine producers in Europe, and winemaking, both domestic and commercial, is deeply embedded in its society. State officials, wine marketing specialists, and subsistence winemakers in their discourses often tie wine and winemaking to a national framework, conceptualizing it as a “cultural product” that is typically Moldovan. The author makes use of ethnographic fieldwork to analyse how national identification becomes something salient among workers in the wine industry—if it does so at all—and what role nationhood plays in winemaking workers’ self-image. That wage work in winemaking means different things to manual workers and managers, and to subsistence winemakers. For the workers, their dependence on low remuneration and the division of the production process makes their work less a matter of national identification and “cultural production” than a purely instrumental activity.