The fall of the Soviet Union was a transformative event for the national political economies of Eastern Europe, leading not only to new regimes of ownership and development but to dramatic changes in the natural world itself. This painstakingly researched volume Disrupted Landscapes focuses on the emblematic case of postsocialist Romania, in which the transition from collectivization to privatization profoundly reshaped the nation's forests, farmlands, and rivers. From bureaucrats abetting illegal deforestation to peasants opposing government agricultural policies, it reveals the social and political mechanisms by which neoliberalism was introduced into the Romanian landscape.
List of Illustrations
List of Tables/Figures/Maps
Preface
Introduction: Privatizing the State and the Transformation of the Agrarian Landscape
Chapter 1. Dragomiresti and Dragova: Two Centuries of Ecological and Socio-economic Transformations
Chapter 2. Postsocialism as Neoliberalism: Reorganizing Society and Nature
Chapter 3. Bureaucrats, Patronage, Illegal Logging
Chapter 4. Contested Forest
Chapter 5. Waning Pastures
Chapter 6. Fragmented Lands
Chapter 7. Wasted Rivers
Conclusion: A Disrupted Landscape
Glossary
References
Stefan Dorondel is a Senior Researcher at the Francisc Rainer Institute of Anthropology Bucharest. He holds doctorates in History and Ethnology from Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania, and in Agricultural Economics from Humboldt University Berlin. His publications include the co-edited volume At the Margins of History: The Agrarian Question in Southeast Europe (2014).
"This is clearly the best study on the environmental history of Romania published to date. It is a paragon of vivid, illustrative, and intimate local history combined with an international outlook."
– Joachim Radkau, Universität Bielefeld
"Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Disrupted Landscapes takes a broad view of the transformations taking place in rural Romania in the second part of the 2000s. It presents one of the most finely granulated pictures of the workings of power in rural settings."
– Diana Mincyte, The City University of New York-New York City College of Technology