Property reforms in rural and community­based forests

«Property reforms in rural Romania and community­based forests»

by Liviu Mantescu; Monica Vasile

Source: Romanian Sociology (Sociologie Românească), issue: 02 / 2009, pages: 95­113, on www.ceeol.com. Property reforms in rural Romania and community-based forests

Monica Vasile Liviu Mãntescu University of Bucharest Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Köln

Abstract: The article provides an overview of property reforms in Romania with a focus on collective/community forests. We start by a macro analysis of the laws and their results in the distribution of community forests and a longue-durée description of the principal legal forms of collective forests, such as pãdure comunalã, obºte and composesorat. Furthermore, we concentrate on two case studies form region to reveal the conflicts around the restitution process from an actor-oriented perspective. The conclusions point to the problems of the property laws and stress the fact that, in the context of indeterminate laws, restitution is a perpetual negotiation, influenced by mechanisms such as networking or power relations.

Keywords: property laws, forests, common property, obºte, conflicts, power relations, networking Cuvinte-cheie: legile proprietãþii, pãduri, proprietate comun\, obºte, conflict, relaþii de putere, reþele sociale Motto: „Before the property reforms in Romania, the forest represented a technical issue, because we had planned forestry (silvicultura planificatã). At present, after the property reform, the forest became a social issue.” (Interview with Conf. Dr. Marian Drãgoi, Forestry Faculty of ) Introduction ing conflicts might constitute a fruitful The undertaking of empirical research re- ground for the elaboration of new theoreti- garding forest restitution and management cal and empirical insights. On the other side, in Romania enjoys many arguments, on both concerning applicative advantages, social the academic and the applicative sides. Con- analysis too needs to be applied in the field cerning academic advantages, we would like of property laws, nature reservation, or in- to point out that Romanian specialists do not stitutional arrangements and local develop- pay enough attention to environment or natu- ment based on local resources. As this ar- ral resources as a field of investigation for ticle shows, the Romanian laws and decen- the social sciences. Reversely, worldwide tralization policies lack sufficient grounding social scientists in the field of natural re- in empirical interdisciplinary investigations sources studies do not pay much attention to around the process of property restitution in Romania, with a few exceptions. Specific Romania, which ultimately leads to disbelief post socialism issues related to resources and and incertitude regarding both legal and po- development, to property reform and ongo- litical matters. Access via CEEOL NL Germany

96 M. Vasile, L. Mãntescu, Property reforms in rural Romania and community-based forests

The present study combines macro and nomic topic, but as embedded in social rela- micro investigation on property reform in tions (Hann, 1998). The property concept Romania, by concentrating on forest does not refer to a thing, as we often hear property and moreover, on collective prop- „this is my property”, but it refers to a so- erty over forests. The macro approach will cial relation between people regarding an give an overview of the restitution process, object. trying to grasp the spread, location and na- Property, in other words, is not a thing, ture of common-pooled forests in Romania, but a network of social relations that gov- the differences between what people ex- erns the conduct of people with respect to pected and what they actually have gotten the use and disposition of things (Hoebel, and the differences of conception between 1966: 424, apud Hann, 1998: 4). the two latest property laws, as they reflect The study of collective forests engenders in the actual restitution. The investigation is social issues twofold: first, it includes the based on data available from recent statistics dimension of property seen as social rela- of National Service of Forestry (RNP)1. Fur- tion, and second, because it deals with „col- thermore, we try to reveal the characteris- lective” rights and duties, which imply a wide tics of the legal collective forms of property range of relationships among shareholders. over forests, which are very diverse all After the property reform in Romania, across Romania. The description will intro- many communities or families transformed duce a discussion on the history of such into homo homini lupus. Since 2003; when forms, based on bibliographical sources. It our study began with timid inquiries in will proceed to describe also the present Vrancea region, we have heard many people forms and their characteristics for a better saying that property restitution destroyed the understanding of variability and richness of social relations not only at the community details. This description is based on zealous level, but also at the family level. Many successive fieldwork done by the authors people have property-based conflicts with from 2003 to 2008 with the help of teams of neighbours, fellow villagers or relatives. students in the counties (judeþe) of Vrancea Moreover, the restitution of associational or (10 villages), Suceava (3 villages), Vâlcea communal forests brought into arena sharper (3 villages), Gorj (1 village), Braºov (2 vil- conflicts than ever between community fac- lages) and Argeº (1 village). More detailed tions (interest groups). results of those empirical inquiries were pre- sented with other occasions in articles (Vasile, 2006, 2007, 2008 a & b; Mãntescu, The context of forest coverage 2006, 2007). The micro approach will show and forestry in Romania: through the analysis of two ethnographic ex- amples how property restitution was actually history and present done and how it determined further property relations. It is based on a fieldwork in the sum- We try in this section to give a glimpse of mer of 2007 and 2006 in Bukovina region2 . the forests in Romania from a historical point Property has been conceived in the so- of view. The general picture is extremely cial sciences, not only as a juridical or eco- particular from region to region, even from

1. Data from RNP (Regia Naþionalã a Pãdurilor), semester reports from 30.06.2007, for which we wish to thank wholeheartedly to conf.dr. Marian Drãgoi. 2. In 2006, together with a team of students we have spent 3 weeks in and then we came back for another two weeks in 2007 to improve on our missing links. In both villages taken as example we applied 40 questionnaires randomly sampled and 45 interviews. We would like to thank our student colleagues for their help. Sociologie Româneascã, volumul VII, Nr. 2, 2009, pp. 95-113 97 village to village, and this makes our inten- First, in legal property titles tion to resume extremely difficult. were issued much earlier than in the Romanian Romania is four percentage points under Principalities (Wallachia and ). the European mean of forested areas. Con- Here, most of the forested areas in the moun- sidering its natural diversity, Romania tains were recognized as collective property should have 40% of its territory forested. of the borderline communes (comunele On the basis of cartographic documents grãnicereºti). In the region of , all the it could be observed that in the last 300 years, borderline villages, in all 94, had one joint the forested surface of the Romania has sig- property title, named Comunitatea de Avere, nificantly reduced in size, concomitantly with the Community of Fortune (according to the expansion of grasslands (Osaci-Costache, {i[eºtean-Popa, 2009). In other regions there 2007). Before 1829, 80% of Romanian ter- were issued collective village or commune ritory was covered by forests. Large scale titles in the form of composesorat or in the woodcutting dates back to era of Turkish form of communal forests subordinated to suzerainty over the Romanian principalities the municipality. Other villages, which did when tribute included wood purposes, car- not have the statute of borderline communi- ried to Istanbul from the ports of Brãila and ties, could redeem collective property titles Galaþi (Turnock, 1990: 409). from the domains of the state, also in the After 1829, commercial pressures spread form of communal forests or composesorat. from northwest to southeast as the rail net- In the regions of Wallachia and Moldavia, work widened access to Central European the free peasantry from the mountain area markets (Muica and Turnock, 2003: 9). had access to the forests in a customary re- Scattered water-powered sawmills ( joag\re gime of joint property. In 1910 the Forestry de apã) worked by communities from the 17th code (Codul silvic) enables the communities century were being joined by the steam- to gain legal titles on their forests. These -powered installations of the capitalists pro- forests were merely named in the property ducing sawn timber (cherestea) for export law, but they covered very different reali- (ibidem). Foreign companies of timber ex- ties. For example, some of them were traction and processing from Italy, Austria equalitarian and based on residency, such as and Hungary came in Romania and accessed the ones in Vrancea region, while others private, most of them commonly owned for- were unequalitarian and based upon inher- ests. Thus, between 1829 and 1922, approxi- ited rights (a difference to be detailed be- mately three millions hectares were cut low). The Romanian state tried to regulate down, reducing the forested areas with 30%. this form of private property, and imposed a Another 1.3 million hectares were cut down fixed institutional framework, through a rul- between 1922 and 1945. After Second World ing statute voted in the Parliament. It was War, Romania was considered a defeated intended that the statute include the custom- nation, and paid war compensations to the ary regulations, but ended up by totally ig- . Most of these compensations noring the real diversity of customary laws. were fuel wood for the soviet heavy indus- In 1945, 48% of the forests were held in try. In 1948, Romania had 28% of its terri- common property systems (Catwright, 2001). tory forested (statistical data provided in Ecomagazine 2008). Forest restitution The situation of property rights until 1948 is difficult to trace in a paragraph. Most of the literature on post socialist prop- Much local variability, struggles, different erty relations in Romania has focused on the laws and interested social actors assert for a economy of land issues (Verdery, 2003; constant shift in the nature of use and prop- Kideckel. 1993; Cartwright, 2001); all over erty rights. the post socialist block, forest were rarely 98 M. Vasile, L. Mãntescu, Property reforms in rural Romania and community-based forests addressed; several exceptions are Cellarius on the same parcels and the difficulties in (2003, 2004) who focuses on forests in Bul- re-establishing former boundaries (Verdery, garia, and Dorondel (2005) who dedicated 1996, 2004; Giordano and Kostova, 2002) one chapter of his doctoral dissertation to and because of the resulting extreme frag- Romanian forests. The scarcity of forest- mentation. Moreover, it was thought to be -related studies seems curious, since this relying on false premises, ‘implying that the resource is vital for many rural communities postsocialist future can begin by returning to and it is at the core of many types of social a status quo ante’ and that the conditions conflicts, representing thus an interesting should be recreated ‘as if socialism had and fruitful ground for scholarly creation. never existed – or as if it existed only out- One explanation might be the concentration side the „correct flow of history”’ (Giordano of forests into mountainous, isolated areas, and Kostova, 2002: 78). The ideological where mainstream processes related to speci- promise of reinstalling the traditional peas- ficities of postsocialism would not be so vis- ant society ‘envisioned as the depository of ible; hence these areas remained largely the nation’s most genuine values and virtues’ uninteresting. (idem: 79) was also proven to be impossible Regardless of the type of land, the prop- to achieve. Assuming the reversibility of erty reform had several common features. events and treating the socialist era as a black hole without carefully considering processes Property laws and the forests of social change was probably wrong (Giordano, 1998: 25), because rural house- First, each restitution process had to undergo holds that were viable fifty years ago have two phases – validation (validare) and en- now members who have died, emigrated, titlement or putting into possession (punere married and otherwise substantially changed în posesie). In many cases, people stopped their relationship to land (Verdery, 1996: 134). the process at the validation phase and did After communism, the first property law, not apply further for entitlement. Hence, 18/1991 allocated forest only to individuals they used the land/forest and treated it as and in surfaces up to 1 hectare. Usually, proprietors, but without having final legal these pieces of forest were not reconstituted papers. Second, responsibility for deliberat- on the old (former) property locations ing restitution cases was devolved to local (vechile amplasamente), as prior to 1948. commissions (comisia de retrocedare). This They were allocated in more convenient meant that certain locals had the power and boundaries, such as in the margins of the legitimacy to decide who gets where and State forest. Thus, this law did not relief the how much. Third, property laws emphasized thirst for social justice and it did not create restitution of land within historical bound- aries and not allocation/distribution of land an affective bond, as people were not pro- (as in Albania, Hungary or Czechoslovakia, vided with the whole amount and symbolic cf. Swain, 2000). This meant that where value of their former land. In addition, at possible and convenient, people were sup- that time, legislators did not impose high posed to receive land in the amount and fines for deforestation (the ratio between the boundaries of former plots (this was not the fines and the market price of 1 cleared hect- case with forests in law 18/1991, as we will are was 1/10, thus a proprietor would obtain see below). Moreover, it meant that the law a profit of up to 15.000 euros for clearing was supposed to make historical justice for 1 hectare of forest). These factors contrib- people who were abusively dispossessed. uted to massive deforestation in the period Direct restitution was thought to be the after law 18. 300.000 hectares were thus most chaotic way of privatizing (Verdery, privatized and almost everything was cleared 2003: 143) because of the multiple claims by the new proprietors (Cenuºã, 1994: 80). Sociologie Româneascã, volumul VII, Nr. 2, 2009, pp. 95-113 99

The second law, 1/2000, restituted a larger law 18, went very slowly (Cartwright, 2000) amount of forest and included restitution to and in 2000 there were plots validated but not juridical bodies, among which churches, as- given into possession with titles, people re- sociations (obºti, composesorate), municipali- ceived forest with the law 2000 on the plots ties (primãrii), as it is visible in the graph that were already validated for another per- below. It emphasized the allocation within son with the law 18. Thus, conflicts have historical boundaries, but it stipulated that begun. We heard very often the story in plots that were entitled with law 18 should which people were restituted in 2000 plots not be removed or replaced. Because the of forest that were already cut down by process of property title emission, within the people who received it in 1991 without titles.

Graph 1. Surface of restituted forest (ha), distributed across categories of owners – RNP 2007

The third law, 247/2005, went for resti- The promulgation of this law produced a tutio in integrum. This law was supposed to lot of expectations that were soon to crash. do ‘complete justice’ to former owners, by The sum of deposed requests for forests in giving back everything that was exempted associations exceeded by far the total amount from restitution within former laws, public of associations’ forest plots restituted with buildings, roads, watershed and protected all laws (including 1/2000 and 247/2005), areas. as it is visible in the graph below.

Graph 2. Comparison between requests with 247 and total actual restitution, for forest associations – RNP 2007

There are a few interesting features of tive forests, treating all of them without the laws regarding the collective forests. specificity, while they are very different on First, as a negative feature, the law fails the ground, as it will become visible further to acknowledge the different types of collec- in the paper. 100 M. Vasile, L. Mãntescu, Property reforms in rural Romania and community-based forests

Second, from the collective forests one three major forms of collective forests could cannot sell its parts to outsiders. In other be found in Romania and were restored with words, the land on which those forests stand the law 1/2000: 1) the forest owned by the is not alienable individually and also not on territorial administrative unit, the commune, the whole. The law says: ‘the terrains of these or municipality, named the communal for- associative forms cannot be alienated, nei- est; 2) the forest owned in an associative ther as a whole, nor partially’ (law 1/2000, private form and administered by the totality art. 28, alin. 7). Thus, very interesting the of members, in the former Romanian Prin- law acts counter to the ‘capitalist’ ideology cipalities – named obºte and 3) the same form where everything must be for sale, regu- in Transylvania named composesorat. There lated in the market economy in order to func- is not only one form of obºte or composesorat, tion properly. This ideology initially informs and differences may be substantive in sur- the privatisation process, but as we see, the face, number of members, form of gover- specificities of the law prevent the com- nance or distribution of shares or revenues, moditization of those forests, practically as we will describe further in the paper. putting them out of the market system. Pãdure comunalã. A large percent from From what we found on the ground, it seems the privatized Romanian forests is owned by that in some of the forms, it is possible that the rural communes, managed by municipalities. members of the association sell the rights be- These forests can be very large, as for ex- tween themselves (an example encountered ample in the case of the Telciu commune in Voineasa, a small genealogical obºte, named from Bistriþa County, which counts up to Obºtea Fraþilor Mirioneºti), but in the encoun- 12.000 hectares. This type of common prop- tered example people inside the association erty is quite different from obºte and did not have enough money to buy what one composesorat. The property belongs to the of their fellow associates had to offer. commune, so, theoretically, any inhabitant has equal right to access and equal shares. The administration and management are done Communal and associative forests. by the commune council (primãrie) together Pãdure comunalã, obºte, with the appropriate forestry district, which composesorat can be private or public. In some cases, the inhabitants do not perceive that they have a It is commonplace thinking nowadays to con- right at all, they see the wood coming from ceive the land and forest commons as be- the municipality as an aid (un ajutor din partea longing to the past, to a sort of precapitalist primãriei) and people who actually have ac- order, or, where they still exist, as survivals, cess to the forests are the timber entrepreneurs as markers of underdevelopment and ‘primi- that grow rich (Chiburþe, 2008; {iºeºtean- tivism’. This is happening merely because of -Popa, 2009). Although the common prop- the prevailing neoliberal ideas, bounded to erty is managed by the mayor and the individual-based conceptions. However, municipality’s councilors, municipality for- scholarly works all around the world, from est is a private forest which belongs to the different disciplines, have already dismantled commune and is not state property. In this the stereotypes regarding the commons. These case, there is a participatory management, works show the commons have not yet dis- the citizens of the commune do not effec- appeared and common property regimes can tively participate in the decision-making be very functional and rewarding (Ostrom, process, but people still put pressure on the 1990; McCay and Acheson, 1987). councilors and mayor to manage the re- The commons are a very often found source according to their will. Many of these form of property in nowadays Romania, as communal forms resulted in Transylvania the graphs above have already suggested. and Bukovina from the dismantling of the As we have seen in the historical section, borderline institution of the Austrian-Hungarian Sociologie Româneascã, volumul VII, Nr. 2, 2009, pp. 95-113 101

Empire (Instituþia Grãnicereasc㠖 Pãdurile centrated in the former borderline depart- Grãnicereºti) in 1872, as already specified in ments (Bistriþa Nãsãud, Sibiu and Braºov – the historical section. Most of them are con- the regiment of Orlat, visible in graph 3 below).

Graph 3. Communal forests restituted with law 1/2000 and 247/2005. Distribution across departments – RNP 2007

One major problem with the restitution prietors, because the shares that one has are of communal forests was the lack of concor- not delineated plots of forest that were put dance between former and current adminis- together, but a quantity of products that can trative units which had as a result the fact be withdrawn from the forest and a number that present villages, which used to be po- of votes in the general assembly. In Roma- litical communes, did not get back their land. nian sociological and anthropological litera- The land was incorporated in the present ture, these forms were excellently docu- communes, together with other villages (be- mented by Henri H. Stahl (1939, 1958) and low we will describe a case from Suceava Vasile V. Caramelea (1944, 2006). with this kind of situation). As it is visible in the graph below, Other collective forms are the obºte and composesorate are present in Harghita, composesorat, or what we called in the graphs Covasna, Hunedoara, Arad, Braºov, the associative forests, according to their Mare and other judeþe from Transylvania, official denomination. Although they are while obºti are also covering a large surface named associations in the laws and in formal in Wallachia and Moldavia, mostly in the documents, these types of property can judeþe of Vâlcea, Vrancea, Argeº, Gorj, hardly be described as associations of pro- Bacãu and others. 102 M. Vasile, L. Mãntescu, Property reforms in rural Romania and community-based forests

Graph 4. Associations’ forests restituted with law 1/2000, law 247/2005 and in course of restitution – RNP 2007

Obºte

According to the rights of access to the com- participate to auctions in order to exploit the mon property, one may find two types of surplus of wood from forest plots. With the obºte: equalitarian and non-equalitarian. resulting money, obºtea improves village The equalitarian type means that every- utilities such as: roads, repairing schools or one in the village has the right to equal churches, TV cable, water systems, gas sys- shares of wood, and every man or woman tem etc. The board of obºtea may divide the over 18 has the right to elect the president of profit to the villagers in equal amounts of obºte and the councilors in the village as- money, if people vote as such, but this hap- sembly. In other words: one man, one share, pens quite rarely. The equalitarian type is to one vote. As I mentioned above, obºtea is be found mostly in Vrancea. managed in a participatory manner, and it The non-equalitarian type might also be has an institutional framework with one called the genealogical type: only some vil- president, councilors and book-keeper. lagers have the rights to access, if, and only People receive annually one to three cubic if, the parents had shares in obºtea. The meters of fuel-wood per person, and the shares are inherited, in both male/female same quantity of wood for construction, with lines, and the votes in the village assembly the right to sell it. Local private companies are sometimes according to the shares – if Sociologie Româneascã, volumul VII, Nr. 2, 2009, pp. 95-113 103 one has one share, he/she has one vote, if came divided in four funii or moºii with he/she has 100 shares, than he/she will have shares inherited by their children and so on. 100 votes. In most cases of non-equalitarian The associative forests, as we already obºtea, the resulting money from the surplus mentioned, cannot be divided among mem- of wood extraction is divided between the bers, and cannot be sold as terrain either owners of shares, as shares from a company. partially or totally. If the association is bank- In both types, there is only one property rupt or decides to dissolve, the forests be- title, the obºtea owns the forest. The differ- come communal forests, enter the public ence is that in the first type obºtea means the domain. Thus the associative forests are whole village, while in the second one, only designed by law to remain ‘fixed’, attached a part of it. However, in both cases the prop- to the communities and not blown by the erty is indivisible – one cannot fence his wind of the market into foreign hands. shares from the common property because The main difference between communal one doesn’t even know where these shares and associative forests is that the latter give are located, and the surface of land cannot more power and rights to the members, who be sold outside obºtea, according to the law. are aware that they hold actually property More clearly, obºtea is not an associa- rights and that they have to vote and to de- tive form of few individual forest owners, is cide. In the case of the communal forests, a collective form of owning forest. Obºtea is in the members of the communities are not the same time an institution in the durkheimian aware of their rights and perceive the quotas sense, of formal and informal rules and regu- of wood more as an aid, a favour from the lations to access the common property, but mayor. Many people actually perceive that it is also an institution in a managerial sense the communal forests are still the domain of (Mãntescu, 2007), with headquarters, a the State, while the associations are certainly proper building in the village, most of the perceived as private. times new, well equipped with office tools, internet, equipment for exploiting wood, Claims and expectations: trucks and off-roads for its members. law 247/2005 Composesorat From the graph above, showing the distribu- tion of restituted associative forests across Usually, composesorat is the name for the departments (judeþe), we can see that law inner circle of the Carpathians, in former 247/2005 had a significant contribution, in Austria-Hungary and obºte for the outer some cases it doubled the surfaces of forest circle. As the obºti do, composesorat can already allocated (the cases of Hunedoara, take various forms as well. Gorj, Alba) with law 1/2000. It is also vis- This type of joint ownership is similar to ible from the graph above that the forests the non-equalitarian obºtea. One village might are almost equally distributed among areas have one, two, three or more composesorate. with composesorate (e.g. Harghita, Covasna, This depends, like in the case of non- Hunedoara, Arad, Braºov, Maramureº, -equalitarian obºtea, on the genealogical Oradea, Sãlaj) and areas with obºti (e.g. Vâlcea, heritage. For example, four families bought Vrancea, Argeº, Gorj, Bacãu, Buzãu)3. three mountains for their herds in the late From the department of Caraº Severin, 19th century. Later on, their heirs decided it is observable that the former ‘huge’ domain to separate and the common property be- of Fortune Community did not yet reconsti-

3. Unfortunately, this is the most specific data that is available. A comparative statistic between obºti and composesorate does not yet exist. 104 M. Vasile, L. Mãntescu, Property reforms in rural Romania and community-based forests tuted its forests. Nevertheless, in this case, very small and stumbled one and the result as in others as well, claims are very high. was that only 7.8% of forest surface got Of all departments, Vrancea is the one privatized4 and almost all of this deforested; with the lowest level of claims. From the (2) the second step was a brave one, although findings of my research, indeed restitution it was a little hindered by the previous one, in the case of obºti vrâncene went very 34% of the total forest surface went into the smoothly. Documents were available, the hand of private owners (including individu- collective memory functioned very well and als, associations, communes); (3) for the witnesses helped the boundaries-tracing pro- third phase, everybody took a deep breath cess. By 2005, when the law was published, for a huge step, but could not get much these property forms were already well es- further, many of the claims encountered hin- tablished. drances from the State that was seeing its As explanations for the big differences domain diminishing. After this law, the esti- between requests and actual restitution, as it mation is that 45.6% of the total forest re- is visible in graph 2 above, one may find: source will be privatized. (1) the multiple claims made for the same We have seen the importance of associa- plots, sources of conflicts and court cases; tive forests, their richness in ethnographic (2) the lack of evidence produced to sustain details and emerged social relationships and the claims; (3) the malevolence of State also their curious feature conferred by the structures (Ocoale silvice de stat, Direcþii law: their complete inalienability. Transac- silvice) to give up forest possession in favour tions concerning the land on which these of particular claimants. Causes (1) and (2) are produced by the fact that before 1948 forests are placed are not allowed, thus the only in Transylvania property entitlements law somehow keeps those forests outside the existed in municipality registers (Carte fermenting market. This is very interesting Funciarã); in the other historical regions anti-neoliberal stipulation which tends to (represented by Dâmboviþa, Buzãu, Prahova preserve the forests for the communities to departments), that were not incorporated in which they are attached, instead of throwing the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the claims them to ready-to-buy international compa- are higher due to the lack of evidence and nies. Moreover, this is a particularity of the fuzzy situation before 1948. Romanian law. If we go back to the motto at the begin- ning of the chapter, we can better under- Laws and forests – intermediary stand why property relations mean social conclusion relations. The conflict dimension, the orga- nizational and symbolic one (concerning his- First, from this brief macro description we torical justice) – all contribute to identifying see the importance of common property sys- property as a social issue. Expectations tems in Romania nowadays. Forest privatization which crashed, associations which were meant devolvement into the hands of juridi- formed – all of these acknowledge for a re- cal bodies, such as associations and com- construction of social relationships in rural munes, in proportion of 60% of the total areas and reconstruction of personhood, be- restitution. Thus, at a theoretical level, com- cause having and owning is an important munities were empowered for development. component of the self, contributing to We showed that forest restitution was self-esteem and the placement of persons in made in three steps: (1) the first step was a the social environment.

4. At the end of 2000, information from the RNP internet site, consulted in September 2007. Sociologie Româneascã, volumul VII, Nr. 2, 2009, pp. 95-113 105

Restitution of common forests ics. For the case of Vrancea, in some vil- from a micro perspective: conflict lages smaller and isolated conflicts occur, and actor-oriented perspective most often concerning the distribution of wood and profit. In other villages, sharper We want to show in the following pages the conflicts concern abuses and corruption deeper mechanisms that underlie the pro- (Vasile, 2006: 119). For other cases, like cesses of restitution. in the communities from southern Carpathians, We begin our analysis with the case of the major conflict is between obºtea and the the village of Slãtioara, Suceava County5. State structures, such as forestry districts or Here, before communism there was a com- national parks (Vasile, 2008b). There are no munal forest (820 ha), because the village was local arenas and mechanisms for a ‘low-cost’ formerly a commune itself. The forest passed resolution of conflicts. Customary law and on to the nowadays commune, Stulpicani, local norms seem to have no effective power that includes the village of Slãtioara and four in regulating them and controlling their es- other villages that benefit from it (appar- calation. ently much more than does Slãtioara). The The wider concept of conflict has been 6 neighbouring village, Gemenea succeeded discussed in relation to issues such as 1) re- to escape this trap of the primãrie and to sources. Here, conflict is explained in terms transform the former communal forest into of interests of the groups and persons in- an obºte. The obºtea of Gemenea (783 ha) is volved, especially their competition for re- genealogical, based on the principle of in- sources or gains (Schlee, 2004: 135). An- heritance7. It does not have any history; it other issue under which we can understand is not a restored form, but an ‘invented’ or conflict is 2) identification. Here, attention ‘borrowed’ one, in order to keep the prop- is drawn from the object to the subject and erty from slipping into the hands of the com- the question is ‘who fights whom?’ The re- mune (as we will describe below). searcher becomes interested in the identity The case of the twin-villages, Slãtioara and Gemenea, which had the same situation of the conflict actors and in their alliances before communism and now differ very much, and subjective appreciation of their attach- speaks for the way in which the law func- ments, which patterns of identification they tions differently according to the agency of follow (ibidem). Third, conflict is about the actors who make the claims. The success 3) power. In this approach, power is the cen- or the failure of restitution depends upon tral concept of the research and conflict is their ability and their social network or cli- one possible point of entry, a methodologi- entele relations. The situations are best de- cal setting in which power relations are scribed as conflicts. revealed (Nuijten, 2005: 9). The researcher In the cases that we encountered all over focuses on power relations, manipulation, the country, conflicts concern various top- networking, statuses and hierarchies.

5. The village is located on the Suha Bucovineanã Valley and it does not comprise more than 200 households. 6. This village is bigger than Slãtioara, it comprises around 300 households. 7. In the past, both Gemenea and Slãtioara did not belong to the confederation of free villages from Câmpulung (ocolul Câmpulungului Moldovenesc), but were submitted to the Voroneþ monastery. 106 M. Vasile, L. Mãntescu, Property reforms in rural Romania and community-based forests

Slãtioara (Suceava) inappropriate tant reason is that the village of Slãtioara laws and divergent identifications does not act as a corporate body, and a con- flict exists among villagers. On one side, As we briefly described above, Slãtioara is a there are two old men who made the claim low developed village, although it is surrounded and continue the case in courts. On the other by forests and it is placed right next to a side, a group from the state forestry struc- beautiful natural site, the Centenary Forest ture, also residents in Slãtioara, works to- of Slãtioara (Codrul Secular Slãtioara), with gether with the primãrie (commune officials) a high potential for tourism. This paradoxi- of Stulpicani. One of the most powerful cal situation is partly due to the very bad members of these groups, a ranger, has his condition of the road that leads to the village brother councillor at the primãrie. Other lay (by car, driving carefully to avoid holes, it people from the village fairly know about takes 8 km in half an hour) and impedes the claim that has been made. And although tourism activities. People from the village some of them know about it and would rather consider that for this bad shape of infra- support it, they owe submission to the rang- structure in Slãtioara are guilty the com- ers and forestry people, either because they mune (Stulpicani) officials, who often cut are their clients for wood, or simply because down the village from investments. Of inter- they do not want to get into trouble with est for the present study is the misappropria- ‘important’ people. The two old claimants tion from the commune of the collective for- do not have enough financial and relational est of the slãtioreni. power to win the case alone. Slãtioara was a commune itself before 1948 and had a communal forest of 820 ha (as we already mentioned above). Unlike other villages in the area at that time, it did not follow the trend of forest individualisation or privatisation (namely, transformation of communal forest into individual private for- est or into an obºte), because the former mayor had business interest in keeping it that way. Therefore, they didn’t have any list of individuals claiming the forest from the pre-socialist period, or any other list of ‘proprietors’ upon which to reconstitute nowadays the property rights only for the Picture 1. The two claimants from Slãtioara villagers from Slãtioara (and we will come back to this issue to explain the role of law If we consider that conflicts start from later in this paper). Thus, the property of interests in the same resource, there might the former commune of Slãtioara passed on be identified several interest groups: 1) the to the present commune of Stulpicani, which two claimants – who might have the interest includes four other villages as beneficiaries to benefit from a restrictive use of the for- of the forest. est; 2) the primãrie group – which holds the A few people from the village consider de jure interest of exploiting the forest for that the forest should be used only by the investments in the commune and the de facto slãtioreni and thus sued the commune and interest to subtract illicit advantages; 3) the still try to regain the forest. This restitution primãrie supporters, a group that partially claim does not have many chances of suc- overlaps with the primãrie, but also with cess for several reasons. The most impor- the villagers of Slãtioara, part of them are Sociologie Româneascã, volumul VII, Nr. 2, 2009, pp. 95-113 107 rangers in the state forestry structure (ocol have the forest in administration and the oth- silvic) that administrates the respective for- ers are supposed to have some illicit mate- est; the latest category holds the interest to rial advantages out of this situation.

Figure 1. Illustration of the multi-sided conflict around the forest in Slãtioara, Suceava

The resource-related interests presented The two have limited power for winning above might work only up to a certain point. the case, because they have limited knowl- We especially cannot understand how the edge about legal means, limited financial two old claimants are so keen in pursuing possibilities to carry on the case into justice the case, because their economic advantages and also no support from the community would not even cover their trial expenses. members. Meanwhile, the ‘supporters of the The identification and power approach to primãrie’ group inside the community (coun- conflict shed more light on this type of con- cillors, rangers) has more power; they have flict. The claimants legitimate their action the institutional power that gives access for through the idea of land as heritage (this is their clients to resources. Their rhetoric tries the land of our ancestors) and by associating to emphasise belonging to the village and themselves with the people. It is necessary taking its side, but they admit that they have to understand the importance of their collec- never raised a finger to solve this conflict. tive identity, as villagers and as descendants For them, identification with the institution for their own motivation. of primãrie is more important. The category However, it seems that this type of moti- of forestry rangers identify themselves more vation is not shared by the other villagers, with the forestry structure that they repre- or that other dimensions prevail in their choices. sent, than with the village and they try to The two old claimants are rather outstanding justify the situation as normal: characters, as one of my key informants puts it: ‘They are exterior to the community, S. ‘ without any doubt the forest belongs to (n.a. the most important from the two the village, but the primãrie holds the title, claimants) through his nature, he is not inte- because it is the only legal way and, more- grated, and this is why he cannot convince over, it is not a hindrance for develop- people to participate’. (I.U., age 40, priest) ment...’ (V.T., age 54, councillor) 108 M. Vasile, L. Mãntescu, Property reforms in rural Romania and community-based forests

We gave above a few ways to understand Nevertheless, our analysis above demon- the conflict from within, from a perspective strates that important explanations are to be in which the actors and their interaction con- found on the ground level, within the dy- struct the situation. However, the presented namics of the community that is unable to problem might be understood also in a more act as a political entity. Groups and indi- structural light. As structural causes for the viduals with divergent interests and identifi- conflict we might point out to: 1) the prob- cations act in different directions. Why? lem of administrative units in Romania – Because they have different economic inter- communes are not organic and stable ways ests, different incentives (also familial and 8 of territorial organisation , thus successive personal ones) and social identities; further- restructurings bring diverse problems; 2) the more, because they hold different powers weakness of property laws concerning the with respect to persuading villagers and to restitution of communal forms – there is a conducting a court case. constant lack of specificity; in this particular Moreover, the presented situation indi- case, to whom should the forest be restituted cates that even if the property had been in the and into what transforms the former commune, hands of the village, internal conflicts would into the new commune or into the political en- have prejudiced the management of the for- tity of the village in the form of an association? est, as it happens in other cases as well. We will introduce here an essential mis- take of law 1/2000, concerning restitution for associative forms. The Romanian laws perpetu- Gemenea (Suceava), networking ated for decades a misunderstanding of col- and legitimacy lective types of property. Being inspired from the very beginning from the Roman Civil Gemenea is a village from the above men- Code (Stahl, 1958), they have the tendency to tioned commune of Stulpicani, neighbouring constantly reduce the collective to the indi- Slãtioara, which succeeded to transform its vidual. In the light of these rules, a collective former communal forest into an obºte. De- body means a sum of individuals. Thus, an spite this initial success, what followed was entitlement for a community must take into disappointing for many villagers. account a list of individuals that form the re- We have chosen to speak about this case spective community. This stipulation is essen- for two reasons: because we want to show how tially wrong because collective bodies, such the same law that did not permit Slãtioara to as a village, are constantly changing, persons reconstitute its forest can become favourable leave or join the village, people die or are born. in other circumstances. Second, because we However, the law, or, more precisely, the want to describe a case where abuse and lawmakers are not aware of such realities generalized internal conflict are striking. and require tables of members, regardless of the particular property form (annex 54 from The restitution of obºtea Gemenea is the the law 1/2000), in order to reconstitute the work of a woman who succeeded, with the property rights. Slãtioara did not have such support of the community, to sustain in court a table, because the political commune was that the former communal forest of Gemenea an entity beyond its members, and for that was about to transform (or it really did) into 9 specific reason it loses out today. an obºte before 1948 . Thus, she argued that

8. We documented this idea through another example on property rights, in the village of Hãuliºca, Vrancea; see the forthcoming Sociologie Româneascã; 4, 2007, and the introductory study in Romanian of Monica Vasile’s doctoral dissertation. 9. Although what follows resembles the tonality of an investigation, it is only the presentation of ethnographic data upon which our analysis relies; we admit that it is a reconstruction of a case based on interviews; we admit that we provide our version after interviewing many persons and we assume responsibility for it; many of these issues were subject to newspapers’ articles. Sociologie Româneascã, volumul VII, Nr. 2, 2009, pp. 95-113 109 the forest should not have been restituted to established, the table became the apple of the commune of Stulpicani, but to the vil- discord. Obºtea was reconstituted only with the lage, as obºte, based on the multiple senses heirs of persons inscribed on it, which rep- of the word obºte (obºte as a village, as the resent approximate half of all inhabitants. totality of members of a village or as a prop- People from the village sued the woman erty institution). She brought as proof a docu- president for faking the table and adding her ment extract in German regarding the forest, ‘clients’ on it. In addition, people from other naming Gemenea ‘Gemeinde Dzemine’. She villages who worked in the Restitution Com- showed in a dictionary that Gemeinde means mission at the municipality sustain that the community, so, she said, community is nec- table was modified. Her father12 also recog- essarily obºte. Gemeinde in German may also nized that the table was modified indeed, but mean village or commune, and from my bib- only for removing people who left the vil- liographical investigation it means rather lage (mostly Germans and Jews) and adding commune than obºte10. Another proof was poor people. The father argues that at the an incomplete table from 1940 with several time the table was made, there were people inhabitants contributing for trial expenses. in the village that had more power and The expected result of the trial from 1940 wealth and this is why they appear on the would have been the division of shares (it is table twice or more (they contributed twice not specified what kind of shares – pasture, to the respective expenses). He believes it is forest, land) into individual hands (of the not fair that poor people did not have a respective contributors). This was indexed chance to become entitled with forest and as a proof for the fact that before 1948 people this social differentiation has to be undone transformed the communal forest into an obºte. in present days. In addition, they legitimize We can notice that the proofs were rather weak their action by consulting the elders of the and the legal recognition of obºtea Gemenea village, who are members in the official was based more on the good will of the judge. committee of the obºte. They see their act The key element of the entire successful not as a false, but as a way of establishing enterprise was the woman’s efficient net- social justice. working. By means such as political affilia- In the newly formed obºte, the local de- tion and gifts for ‘important people’, she mocracy does not function very well. Al- smoothed the path towards legal recognition though, de jure, there exists the largest obºte of obºtea Gemenea. In addition, she set up a committee that we have ever seen since we campaign for convincing people in the vil- investigate the subject, formed of nineteen lage that they should support the initiative of members, and the village assembly has im- obºte restoration and thus, contribute with portant powers, de facto, the president has money, a lamb, a car ride in exchange of a the ability to impose her will in almost every position on the table11. After the obºte was circumstance13.

10. Dictionaries translate Gemeinde as community, congregation, parish, municipality, corporate town; in books (Diacon, 1989: 86) about the region we found the description of old village seals, all with the inscription ‘Gemeinde Dzemine’, ‘Gemeinde Slatioara’ (description of seals from 1863), meaning that this is a generic denomination for a political entity, such as village or commune; it results that the presence of Gemeinde does not demonstrate that there was a legally constituted obºte. 11. Several people declared to us this kind of barter – a contribution for 1 ha on the table. 12. 80 years old, he was presented as one of the pylons of collective memory. 13. We assisted a committee meeting, held in the living room of the president (in picture 2), and it went like the following – the president made her point, asked for an approval of the committee, the committee discussed different issues, everybody chaotically expressed opinions regarding diverse topics, without reaching any conclusions, and at some point, the president intervened, and concluded ‘I believe things are clear, you approve, so you have to sign here’. 110 M. Vasile, L. Mãntescu, Property reforms in rural Romania and community-based forests

Picture 2. Council meeting at Gemenea (the president, in the middle, and eight members)

The committee is legitimated mostly as the following points: 1) the president falsi- an elders court, nine of the members being fied the tables and put her relatives and her over 70. The president frequently legitimates allies on it; she removed entitled people her decisions and opinions by saying ‘the that she had quarrels with; 2) she manipu- elders said...’. Moreover, usually the gen- lates the obºtea committee and takes abusive eral assembly, which is supposed to gather advantages from the obºte revenues. In re- all the members of the obºte, doesn’t func- sponse, the obºte officials proclaimed them- tion, because people do not participate (from selves the establishers of social justice and our 40 questionnaires survey, 85.7% par- the knowledgeable elders’ court. They ac- ticipated rarely or not at all). In this case, cuse their opponents of greediness and ma- for legalizing decisions, she collects signa- levolence. Moreover, they say that the obºte tures in the village. Because of her anteced- revenues are merely prejudiced by the exist- ents with false papers, this procedure is con- ing trials and the continuous reclamations. tested. In addition, the democratic proce- This case shows that access to property dure is highly vitiated by the fact that the rights has to be negotiated. The law does not president and the committee are elected for grant entitlement automatically to sound a period of 10 years. documents providers, as in the case of The conflict at Gemenea escalated very Slãtioara, and it does not exclude people high. During our fieldwork, people kept in- who are very able to ‘produce’ their docu- viting us to talk to some people, while for- ments in a speculative way. Networking ap- bidding us to talk to others; each time we pears to be the most important skill for ne- entered a house, people started searching gotiation. It is more valuable that somebody for documents, attesting their ancestors and important supports the claim, than the fact their property. In a metaphorical way, our that the documents are not accurate. fieldwork resembled a court case, where Another necessary skill is manipulation everyday new proofs were brought to the through covering action in the cloth of le- file and new witnesses were audited. gitimacy. In our case, legitimacy is obtained Since the obºte was established, the vil- through ideas of social justice, wisdom of lage divided among supporters and oppo- elders; moreover, legitimacy is conferred nents, very outraged ones against the others. by work. People who are not directly in- The accusations of the opponents were about volved in the conflict often approve for the Sociologie Româneascã, volumul VII, Nr. 2, 2009, pp. 95-113 111 obºte officials and above all, the president, property, together with the weakness of because ‘she worked immensely to gain this law-enforcing institutions, draw the image property back’ (from the survey 62.5% ap- of a savage arena where actors fell free to preciate that the obºte officials are doing a play their roles according to ‘natural regula- good job). Finally, courage plays an impor- tions’. The micro data is once again impor- tant role; or, in the way that some of my tant in our analysis because it reveals ex- informants put it – shamelessness. The claim- actly this arena and its rules. In other words, ants from Slãtioara told me that they were we have the possibility to follow the trophic counselled by the president of Gemenea to chain of property restitution and to better do ‘this and that’, ‘to open certain doors’, understand the property relations around this but they did not want to ‘have nightmares’. process. We saw in this article how some particular social actors might deliberately keep confusing the rules of forest restitution Conclusion: indeterminate laws, in order to manipulate. By this, and by ig- ‘savage arena’ of personal skills noring basic knowledge of local social his- tory, altogether compiled the image of a and social relationships genealogical obºte ruled by the elders who know the things, but who are easily manipu- The micro analysis reveals processes that lated. In this ‘savage arena’ the justice sys- accompanied the restitution of the forest tem plays an important role, keeping the property, which could only be guessed from arena in this way, by playing the same game the macro level. Following Slãtioara and and granting favourable decisions to socially Gemenea examples, we notice how rights can skilled people, sometimes despite legal evi- be obtained despite lack of evidence to sup- dence, as we have shown. port them, but only by certain skillful social In the same time Slãtioara stays as a good actors and through certain mechanisms, in- example for how the system of territorial- cluding manipulation and networking. These -administrative units influences the restitu- mechanisms are enacted in a vast process of tion process. The basic Romanian adminis- negotiation, horizontally, between local ac- trative unit, commune – comuna, is no longer tors, and vertically, between the local actors valid in this context. We have to keep in and State institutions. mind that the current administrative system From the macro data detailed in the first recalls the communist time of concentration/ part of the article we could easily indentify decreasing (sistematizare) rural areas. Thus, the relation between the inconsistence of for- most of current communes are not organic est property restitution process and the so- administrative units of a territory and they cial history of certain regions in Romania. block the process of local development. The law fails not only to acknowledge diver- We recall the problems which arise to- sity, but also fails to acknowledge a chang- day, partly because of bad legislation: de- ing collective body such as a village and forestation; local abuses of power, unjust mistakenly insists on defining concrete mem- restitution; acute conflicts inside villages bers on paper, such as the problem from and families; crashed expectations. How- Slãtioara (the problems that this particular ever, there is one interesting paragraph in mistake of the law caused back in the ’20s the law, the one that makes the forests tied and ’30s in Vrancea are treated in Stahl, to the communities no matter how high the 1939 and Vasile, 2008a). Whoever under- pressure of the market can get. The associa- stands that those members have to be ‘pro- tive forests cannot be divided or alienated, duced’ has a chance to win. the worst that can happen is to transform Today, the conceptual gaps from the law into communal (municipality) forests if they system concerning communal/collective turn insolvable. 112 M. Vasile, L. Mãntescu, Property reforms in rural Romania and community-based forests

This shows that the ideology encompass- plex, and exploits every niche of the laws in ing the whole process, the neoliberal ideol- such ways that we encounter a huge diver- ogy of private property did not fully resonate sity of forms and outcomes. with the ideology of Romanian legislators To return to our motto, administrating who favoured collective forms and, more- forest is no longer a technical forestry issue, over, made sure that those collective prop- but first of all a social one. We have seen erties do not get commoditized on the land how property over forests is not only about market. Furthermore, the two ideologies are economic motivations, but issues such as just rules and ideas which do not get enacted ancestry or social status are brought up in on the ground. The ‘reality’ is more com- this process as motivations and outcomes.

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