Feldioara: The city comes to the peasant

Abstract

During the last several years, numerous studies of social change have focused on village communities around the world. Typically, these studies of "social change in village X" describe the process whereby an isolated, "traditional" agrarian community based on crosscutting (multiplex) social ties becomes a "modern" heterogenous, semi-industrial com? munity "integrated" within an international political and economic system. The upshot of this "rural revolution" (Halpern,1967) is the "inevitable" decrease of differences between life in the village and the cosmopolitan milieu of the town. Although a few scholars have ex? plained the "traditional" poverty of communi? ties in Asia, in Latin-America or the Mediter? ranean as being due not to their "isolation" from the world system (presumably being "progressively" rectified) but to their long contact with it ? thus Frank's "development of underdevelopment" ? the majority of anthropological studies have ignored this view [ 1 ]. Behind the social changes in "village X" are said to be the worldwide processes of "industrialization," "urbanization," and "modernization," the latter being ambiguously defined to include a complex of postwar changes as village and nation become increasing? ly "integrated." (See Tipps for a critique of "modernization" theory) [2]. Lately, anthro? pologists have extended their research scope to include not only people in the villages, but those who have left for the cities as well [3]. For most anthropologists, urbanization is equated with the migration of peasants to cities and the adaptations that take place among urban migrants [4]. Such studies make passing mention of how that complex of life ways called "urbanism" is "penetrating" the village in the spheres of communication (radios), transportation (bus routes), or educa? tion (literacy). Anthropologists interested in Europe have also begun studying a new class of "peasant-workers," along with the "urban values" that the commuter or migrant brings from the city. Some work has also been done on the phenomenon of rural industrialization in Latin America and in Europe [5], and articles have begun to appear concerning a specific form of rural development known as tourism [6]. Against this background, I will describe the "urbanization" of a Romanian village called Feldioara, located in'southern Transylvania in Romania. Urban development of Feldioara, however, differs in two significant ways from that in the studies I have mentioned. First, the Steven Sampson studies anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.