ROMANIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Nos 1–2 • 2008 New Series

C O N T E N T S

THE EASTERN MARGINS

MANUELA BOATCĂ, The Eastern Margins of Empire. Coloniality in 19th Century Romania ...... 3 RADU BALTASIU, Positioning in the Logic of the World System and the Construction of Social Reality ...... 19 GRIGORE CIPRIAN, Firms and Their Growth in the Globalization Era ...... 41 CIPRIAN BĂDESCU, Organizational Strategies in a Global Era ...... 55

COMMUNITIES IN A CHANGING CONTEXT

LUCIAN DUMITRESCU, The Romanian Villages’ Virtualities Through the Lenses of Dimitrie Gusti’s Sociological System ...... 79 VERONICA DUMITRAŞCU, Sociological Monographs and Rural Sociological Atlas ...... 95 MARIN CONSTANTIN, Artisanship and Open-air Trade in Contemporary Romania ...... 111 IOANA PETRE, The Emergence of a New Peri-Urban Pattern in Romania ...... 133

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

SORIN M. RĂDULESCU, CRISTINA DÂMBOEANU, Victim-Offenderer Mediation Programmes in Romania – A Useful Experience, Unexploited in the Legislation ...... 145 MANUELA GHEORGHE, Contrasts and Unbalances within the European and Romanian Religious Context ...... 163

SOCIOLOGICAL PARADIGMS

ILIE BĂDESCU, Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology ...... 173

PUBLIC SPACE

CAMELIA BECIU, Electoral Communication and the European Agenda: New Campaign Practices? ...... 201

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 1–212, Bucureşti, 2008

THE EASTERN MARGINS

THE EASTERN MARGINS OF THE EMPIRE

Coloniality in the 19th century Romania

MANUELA BOATCĂ

CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF EICHSTÄTT-INGOLSTADT

Throughout the history of the modern world-system, its economic and political peripheries have consistently faced the charge of either a lack of modernity or a ‘lag’ in achieving it. The need to rethink modernity and to question its uniqueness has therefore often been the result of being defined along the lines of this deficit as ‘less than’, ‘not yet’, or simply ‘non-’modern. As such, it has recurrently surfaced in peripheral locations, which thus became the privileged loci of enunciation (Mignolo 2000) of theories critical of modernity and the philosophy of history inherent to it. Latin American dependency theory, emerged in response to the developmentalist perspective advocated by U.S. theorists of modernization in the 1950s and 1960s, is in this respect the best-known, but by no means the only example. The metaphors of core and periphery, intially conceptualized in this context, have long informed social scientific thinking and have as such taken a variety of forms (center-periphery, metropolis-satellite, North-South). In most cases, they are however used without reference to a particular theoretical framework or are not even explicitly stated. Yet it is precisely the existence of an economic, social, political, and not least intellectual core-periphery division that we have in mind when critiquing the uniqueness of modernity and examining its current ‘global’ character. Taking as a point of departure an heir of dependency theory, Immanuel Wallerstein’s model of a world-system (Wallerstein 1974), I will therefore argue that what Anı´bal Quijano has termed the ‘European patent on modernity’ (Quijano 2001, p. 543) is the result of a series of subsequent ideological projects mandating the Westernization of peripheral regions as a means of attaining world modernity. An assessment of how this exportation of the modernity paradigm has operated in an historical Eastern European periphery, nineteenth century Romania, as well as of this operation’s present-day relevance, will provide a case study for the larger context in which such processes have been occurring.

PRIMACY AS THE LAST PRIVILEGE OR: HOW MANY MODERNITIES ARE THERE?

Ever since the Enlightenment, modernity as emancipation – i.e., as the attempt to exit mankind’s self-incurred immaturity by appealing to Reason, in Kant’s famous formulation – has been depicted as a critical project having its cultural roots in the Italian Renaissance, the Protestant Reform, and the philosophy

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 3–18, Bucureşti, 2008 4 Manuela Boatcă 2 of Continental Rationalism, as well as finding its first social, political and institutional reflection in the British Parliament and the French Revolution (Dussel 2000, p. 469). Modernity was thus conceptualized as originating in Europe and as necessitating only the study of the inner-European processes of secularization, industrialization, urbanization, nation-state formation, democracy building, and capitalism in order to understand and predict further developments. This perspective has not only informed and accordingly shaped the classical nineteenth century sociological approaches to the emergence of modernity and the rise of capitalism as formulated by Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Sombart, but also the twentieth century US modernization theories and the more recent discourse on globalization. Although the growing empirical evidence has rendered the underlying convergence thesis – gradual Westernization as the non-Western societies’ only path to modernization – increasingly implausible, the modifications that the dominant concept of modernity underwent in order to rise to the challenge of empirical reality proved insubstantial to the core of the matter: Hailed as a theoretical turnaround within Western social science, the merely numerical proliferation of modernity in approaches dealing with the emergence of ‘other’ (Rofel 1999), ‘alternative’ (Beck et al. 2001) or ‘multiple’ (Eisenstadt 2000) modernities in the non-Western world leaves both the chronological primacy and the exemplary character of Western modernity with respect to these divergent developments unaltered (Randeria et al. 2004, p. 15). This enduring view has recently been criticized by Argentinean philosopher Enrique Dussel as being not only Eurocentric, but at the same time provincial and fragmentary (Dussel 2000, p. 470). According to him, the universal claim of European modernity is grounded in the central part that the economy, the states, and consequently the intellectual production of successive European locations played in world history from 1492 on (Dussel 2002). This coincides with Wallerstein’s periodization of the emergence of the modern world-system as a single division of labor encompassing multiple political systems (Wallerstein 2000, p. 75f.), in which the accumulated surplus is unequally redistributed through the market to the benefit of the respective hegemon. The Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the Americas in the ‘long sixteenth century’ had marked the beginning of the displacement of earlier world-systems by a capitalist world-economy having

Western Europe as its core. In economic terms, these conquests represented the ‘comparative advantage’ (Dussel 2002, p. 223)1 that allowed successive European

1 Unlike David Ricardo, with whom the theory of ‘comparative advantage’ originated, Dussel does not apply the term to the sphere of economic production, but, following Wallerstein’s analysis, to the entire complex leading to ‘the rise of the West’ to hegemonic positions within the world- system: ‘[...] the great scientific discoveries, precious metals (silver and gold), the new labor force incorporated into the system (Indians and, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, African slaves in the Americas), the new comestibles (the Inca potato, corn, the Mexican tomato and chocolate, etc.), the millions of kilometers incorporated by the conquest into European colonial agriculture, and the invention of new economic instruments. All of this allowed Europe to triumph in its competition with the Islamic world, Hindustan, Southeast Asia, and China (Dussel 2002, p. 223). 3 Coloniality in the 19th Century Romania 5 hegemons – Spain and Portugal were followed by the Netherlands and then Britain – a temporary monopoly in the world-market at the expense of (1) colonized regions as well as of (2) competitors still outside the world-system. With the incorporation of the Russian and Ottoman empires into the capitalist world-system during the nineteenth century and the subsequent ‘scramble for Africa’ among European powers, modern Europe as the core of world history became the first geopolitical location ever to successfully englobe all other cultures as its periphery or semiperiphery (Wallerstein 2000, p. 140). Eurocentrism, both as a general framework of knowledge and as a particular conception of modernity, was the result of the establishment of Western hegemony as a global model of military, economic, and epistemic power. The ongoing colonization of new areas enforced a classification of the planet with respect to its degree of Occidentalism, whose aim, as Walter Mignolo has put it, was ‘to transform differences into values’ (Mignolo 2000, p. 13), such that, of the various ethnocentrisms making up the vast array of coexisting cultures, European ethnocentrism alone claimed and imposed universal validity for its economic and cultural precepts. Peruvian sociologist Anı´bal Quijano identified the foundational myths behind the propagation of Eurocentrism in evolutionism – the notion that human civilization proceeded in a linear and unidirectional way from an initial state of nature through successive stages leading to Western civilization – and dualism – the view that differences between Europeans and non-Europeans can be accounted for in terms of insuperable natural categories such as primitive-civilized, irrational-rational, traditional-modern (Quijano 2001, p. 543). With their help, the ‘European patent on modernity’ was thus constructed in colonial times as a consequence of the redrawing of geographical borders and their simultaneous transformation into temporal stages of rationality and modernity: ‘The Europeans generated a new temporal perspective of history and relocated the colonized population, along with their respective histories and cultures, in the past of a historical trajectory whose culmination was Europe. From then on, there were inferior races, capable only of producing inferior cultures [...] From then on, they were the past’ (Quijano 2001, pp. 543; 552). Modernization theory, mandating a specific type of economic and social development after the US model, was only the twentieth century embodiment of a long series of ‘global designs’ conceived and enacted from the particular local history of the Euro-American core, that had begun with Christianization in the sixteenth century and had been followed by the civilizing mission in the nineteenth, developmentalism in the twentieth and the neoliberal global market of the present (Mignolo 2000, p. 301). Allegedly universal knowledge therefore is never neutral or unpositioned, but reproduces the particular epistemological perspective of a local history that it subsequently does or does not manage to establish to the detriment of other local histories. Critical theories attacking modernity from within fail to pinpoint this additional dimension 6 Manuela Boatcă 4

pertaining to coloniality2, and thereby become complicitous with the criticized global design, whose premises they unwillingly reproduce. Thus, throughout the history of the modern/colonial world-system, ‘the construction of “pathological” regions in the periphery as opposed to the so-called “normal” development patterns of the “West” justified an even more intense political and economic intervention from imperial powers. By treating the “Other” as “underdeveloped”, as “backward”, metropolitan exploitation and domination were justified in the name of the “civilizing mission” (Grosfoguel 2002, p. 221). In his criticism of Establishment social science as a product of Eurocentric liberalist thought, Wallerstein had emphasized the geopolitical distribution of cultures of scholarship, by noting that from 1850 to 1914, and probably 1945, most of the scholarship had originated in, and was about, five countries: France, Great Britain, the Germany, the Italy, and the United States. ‘This is partly pragmatic, partly social pressure, and partly ideological: these are the important countries, this is what matters, this is what we should study in order to learn how the world operates’ (Wallerstein 1996, p. 3). This, then, was to be the domain of sociologists, political scientists, and economists. In terms of fields of study, the rest of the world was relegated to either anthropology or Oriental studies - the disciplines meant to arrive at an explanation as to why the non-Western countries were not or could not become modern. After 1945, the ‘non-West’ was handed over to the new discipline of area studies, which in turn undermined the traditional disciplinary boundaries. This kind of epistemological North-South divide amounts to establishing a fixed relation between the scientists’ place of origin and the validity of their theories, or, in Mignolo’s words, ‘between knowing about and knowing from’ (Mignolo 2000, p. 309). Consequently, the distribution of scientific and cultural production in First, Second, and Third Worlds mandates that someone originating from an economically and technologically underdeveloped country does not have the necessary frame of mind and culture of scholarship which would allow them to study other civilizations, and therefore cannot produce any kind of significant theoretical thinking because theory is defined according to First World standards. In line with this logic, valid knowledge is produced in First World countries where there are no ideological obstructions to scientific and theoretical thinking. Thus, the global design of the ‘civilizing mission’ is still at work in the distribution of scientific labor between the three worlds and continues to shape our understanding of modernity and the modern.

2 More generous than ‘colonialism’, the term coloniality as proposed by Anı´bal Quijano for Latin America and now widely used in works dealing with all peripheral zones in the world-economy refers to a threefold process of classification gradually established since the beginning of the European colonial expansion in the sixteenth century and collateral to the emergence of modernity in Europe: in relations of exploitation between capital and labor; in relations of domination between metropolitan and peripheral states; and last, but not least, in the production of subjectivities and knowledges (Quijano 2001, p. 553). 5 Coloniality in the 19th Century Romania 7

This is to say that, to the extent that the world-system became modern, it also became increasingly colonial, articulating ‘colonial differences’ such as racial, ethnic and class hierarchies as part of its self-definition. The resulting international division of labor between core and periphery was, then, not only of an economic and political nature, but of a cultural and epistemological one as well: while the core became the location of modernity, from where the world started being classified, described, and studied, the periphery engendered coloniality, where the modern world’s definition power could be wielded. Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia or the Middle East thus did not enter the modern world-system as part of ‘modernity’, but as its obverse (or dark side) - coloniality - as the violently and illegitimately subdued, economically exploited, and culturally silenced ‘Other’. Critical theoretical accounts produced within these local histories that have, at various moments in history, attempted to unveil the global designs behind the project of modernity from Renaissance Christianity to the contemporary global market have tended to remain silent in the world intellectual community both because of the lack of prestige of their epistemological location and for not having been articulated in a ‘modern’ language.

NINETEENTH CENTURY MODERNITY: EXPORT AND TRADE OF A SCARCE GOOD

Placing itself on a scale measuring degrees of rationality, modernity, and civilization as defined by and from the hegemonic location of the Western core was a dare Romania first faced in mid-nineteenth century. Situated at the periphery of the emerging modern world-system in the ‘long sixteenth century’, the three Romanian Principalities, Transylvania, Walachia, and Moldavia had long made the bone of contention between the Habsburg, Ottoman and Tsarist Empires surrounding them. With the end of Ottoman domination in 1821, the Romanian Principalities faced the passage from a protocolonial system, in which their economic surplus was used to finance the luxuries of the politically dominant metropole (Chirot 1976, p. 10), to a neocolonial regime as Western Europe’s agrarian province. Hardly amounting to liberation, this was rather a new form of dependency, closely resembling the one experienced by classical colonies after political independence. In the particular geopolitical context of the region, this reshuffling of powers essentially entailed a shift of Romania’s ‘peripheral axis’ away from the domination of an Eastern Empire and toward that of the Western core (Bădescu 2004, p. 82ff.) Thus, although never formally colonized, nineteenth century Romania had entered European modernity through its back door - coloniality, and as such was subjected to the economical, political, but also epistemological redistribution of power that the modern world-system had put into effect. If race was not a prominent criterion of differentiation within Europe itself, unlike in its ‘official’ 8 Manuela Boatcă 6 colonies overseas, the negative term of opposing pairs such as ‘civilized- barbarian’, ‘rational-irrational’, ‘developed-underdeveloped’ applied to its eastern regions nonetheless. Hence, the systematic process of constructing inferior ‘Others’ as a core mechanism of legitimation for political intervention in, economic exploitation and epistemological patronage of the periphery had also led to the emergence of ‘pathological regions’ in that area of the modern world-system whose ‘North’ was its West. It was against this background of Western Europe’s ambivalent relationship with its ‘Other within’, the lesser European East, that Romania had to position itself in the second half of the nineteenth century. As the Ottoman economic pressure was loosening, the Western, and particularly French, cultural influence gained ever more ground in the Principalities. Westernization, civilization, and economic progress were viewed as closely related and mutually reinforcing processes (Love 1996, p. 26). A French-inspired, liberal revolution in 1848 laying claim to national independence for all Romanians and stifled that same year by Russian and Turkish intervention had also addressed issues such as serf emancipation, abolition of the Belgian-inspired constitution and the privileges it warranted to the land-controlling class, equality of civic and political rights, freedom of speech and of the press, and the creation of a national army. Yet, unlike in the West, obstacles to cultural, political and economic modernization in the European periphery were, first, imperial military domination, and second, the expansion of international capital. This meant that, once politically independent, Romania had to resist economic conquest in order to safeguard its national identity. Development issues could therefore only be formulated in terms of the foreign domination to which the country was subjected at that time, such that incipient sociological concerns were aimed less at ‘global designs’ – i.e., at abstract evolutionary models applicable across space and time - and much more interested in the historical analysis of the nation – i.e., in ‘local history’.

THE WESTERN WAR FOR MEN’S MINDS ON THE EASTERN MARGINS OF EMPIRE

The 1848 revolutionaries, for their most part young intellectuals educated in Western universities, had advocated reforms in keeping with the country’s traditions as well as the need for critical evaluation of the cultural imports. But their social thought, however concerned with the nation’s wellbeing, was deeply rooted in the liberal ideology underlying their revolutionary activities, in their firm belief in progress as mankind’s universal law and in civilization (chiefly understood in a Western European sense) as a superior stage of social evolution. Conservative thought, on the other hand, with its emphasis on organicity, tradition, collective values, and gradual change, was in itself critical of modernity. The acceptance it gained in Romania, where the awareness of peripherality invited 7 Coloniality in the 19th Century Romania 9 critical rethinking, amounted to what has elsewhere been called a ‘double critique’ or ‘border thinking’ – i.e., a critical attitude toward two traditions that implies thinking from both, and at the same time from neither (Mignolo 2000, p. 67). By undertaking a critique from within modernity through the use of central elements of Western conservatism, and at the same time from its exteriority as an intellectual stance prompted by the social realities of the system’s periphery, Romanian conservative thought as first illustrated by the literary critic Titu Maiorescu, founder and leader of the most influential cultural society of the time, Junimea (The Youth), postulated the borderline between the Western core and the Eastern European periphery as a new locus of enunciation from which it was possible to rethink modernity. In order to ensure that the benefits of Western culture could be appropriated in a country situated at the border between barbarianism and civilization, as he put it, a critical view of the modernizing process was necessary, Maiorescu argued. Given Romania’s exposure to an array of proximate foreign powers, thorough social change – as it resulted from the economic and cultural opening toward the West of Europe and the corresponding adoption of modern institutional structures – represented a new kind of aggression, one on which the nation’s survival came to depend. Dealing with the issue of the culture change in ‘primitive areas’ in the 1960s, evolutionary anthropologists critical of the US modernization school would similarly refer to the importation of Western ideology and political institutions by former European colonies lacking the corresponding technological and economical foundation as ‘a war for men’s minds’ (Sahlins/ Service 1960, p. 117f.) waged by the West in the attempt to preserve world dominance after formal decolonization. One hundred years earlier, Maiorescu warned that, in the absence of constructive criticism, evolution – viewed not so much as a teleological process, but as the gradual development of given potentialities – could easily fail to result in the progress advocated by Enlightenment philosophy and the liberal doctrine in its wake. His classically conservative stance on the positive function of criticism and of the continuity of traditions in times of disruptive social change delivered the means for framing his analysis of Romania’s hasty modernization in terms of what would become a highly consequential approach, the theory of forms without substance (Boatcă 2003). A peasant country like Romania, he argued, had not been prepared by anything in its history to receive all the ‘outer forms’ of civilization in the absence of ‘the deeper historical foundations which with necessity produced’ (Maiorescu 1973a, p. 164) them and it lacked the means to support them – industrial production and a middle class. Contrary to the liberals’ claims, imported superstructural forms did not foster progress, but only concealed the power structures inherent in the relationship between Western and Eastern Europe (Maiorescu 1973b, p. 239), the better to exploit the latter. Consequently, Romania’s sole possibility of preserving national independence throughout the process of modernization depended on her providing a specific – cultural, 10 Manuela Boatcă 8 economic, and political - foundation to match and sustain the adopted forms, a conclusion that evolutionary anthropology would reach with respect to the all the new states exposed to the ideological domination of the system’s core powers after World War II (Sahlins/Service 1960, p. 119). Although he mainly referred to cultural and political superstructural elements, Maiorescu clearly viewed both intellectual and economic progress as determining the issue of national sovereignty in the context of cultural dominance, thus warning against the dangers inherent in the ‘modernization theory’ of his own time. Much like the policy prescriptions of twentieth century US modernizationists, the liberal reforms implemented in mid- nineteenth century Romania disregarded the power structures within Europe, and placed the country in a dependency situation. ‘As soon as a higher culture is located in the vicinity of a people, it is bound to have some bearing on it. [...] One cannot resist this call: union in terms of cultural principles is the necessary fate of every European people. The question is only whether one can accomplish it as an equal companion or as an obedient slave; whether by preserving and strengthening one’s national independence or by submitting to the foreign power. And this question can only be solved by the vitality of the people’s economic and intellectual life’ (Maiorescu 1973, p. 239). The costs of ‘modernization’, Maiorescu noted one century in advance of Celso Furtado and Andre Gunder Frank, can only be assessed by considering both terms of the relationship, not by mandating modernity in self-contained societies. In the following decades, an amazing variety of sociological and economic theories of social development would use Titu Maiorescu’s model in order to define a proper evolutionary path along the lines of either ‘form’ or ‘substance’. On the conservative side, it was the writer and columnist Mihai Eminescu who continued and expanded Maiorescu’s approach into a coherent sociopolitical theory of Romania’s dependency status. For him, the mechanisms of the country’s renewed peripheralization – and as such, the means by which the ‘war for men’s minds’ was waged – were not only economic, but also ideological. These, in his view, operated through the agency of a ‘cosmopolitan element’, first represented by Christianity (more particularly Catholicism) and later on, after the Enlightenment and the advent of the secular world-view, by internationally active economic agents. Cosmopolitanism – understood as ‘an unseen power, alien everywhere and at home everywhere, trying to realize the ideal of a universal empire’ (Eminescu 1876, p. 45) – provided both the ideological cohesiveness and a motive force for the imperial projects of European powers, of which Austria- Hungary, posing the most direct threat to the Romanian provinces, was Eminescu’s main point of reference. In twenty-first century parlance, Eminescu therefore denounced the capitalist system’s reliance on successive ideological strategies acting as ‘global designs’ and intent on providing a common identity to the otherwise historically and structurally heterogeneous (Quijano 2000) world-system in expansion during the nineteenth century. 9 Coloniality in the 19th Century Romania 11

Cosmopolitanism’s emphasis on individualism, free trade, rational social organization based on universal and impersonal norms, and egalitarianism had found a well-suited agent in Romania’s liberal government, Eminescu argued. Although they stood in sharp contrast to Romania’s existing class structure, social mobility, and economic level, most ‘cosmopolitan principles’ had already been forced upon Romanian society as part of the institutional reforms following the 1848 liberal revolution. Far from inducing development, these legislative changes wrought a serious breach in Romania’s organic evolution: they disintegrated the traditional class system by displacing the indigenous bourgeoisie, destabilized the economy by enhancing consumption levels while diminishing production, and created gaps in the opportunity structure later to be filled by foreign economic agents. The Romanian Constitution, which, unlike its Belgian counterpart, from which it had heavily borrowed, failed to represent precisely the largest segment of the population, the peasantry, was symptomatic for this mechanical adoption of foreign institutions lacking in local social substance:

‘Every constitution, as a state’s fundamental law, has as its correlate a particular class on which it is based. The correlate of the Western states’ constitutions is a rich and cultivated middle class, a class of patricians, of industrial manufacturers - who see in the constitution the means of representing their interests in line with their significance [...] Where are our positive classes? The historical aristocracy [...] has almost disappeared, there is no positive middle class, the gaps are filled by foreigners, the peasantry is too uncultivated, and, although it is the only positive class, no one understands it, no one represents it, no one cares about it’. (Eminescu 1876, p. 59)

For Eminescu, then, cosmopolitanism (in its liberal variant), although acting as a global design, was rooted in the local history of the Western societies that elaborated it. The ideology it sought to export to underdeveloped countries by means of rational models of capitalist organization was a success story, but one that consciously ignored the historical realities which it confronted in the Eastern European periphery. Social revolutions such as had taken place in 1848 all over Europe were a ‘luxury’ which small states, whose political or economic independence was constantly threatened, could not afford. Hence, advocating individual liberties in such a context could only act, as it already had, to the detriment of state power. Eminescu thus pleaded against a contractualist state, against individualism, free trade, and strictly formal modernization, and for a state representing the entire nation (instead of just separate individuals), for safeguarding nationality, and for protectionism. Consequently, in the context of peripheral development, Romanian liberalism was not even a valid doctrine in need of revamping, but just ‘pseudo-liberalism’ (Eminescu 1879a, p. 301) – i.e., a form without substance, while ‘true liberalism’, 12 Manuela Boatcă 10 like ‘true liberty’, the very basis of which was ‘a middle class that produces something’ (Eminescu 1877, p. 18), represented the outgrowth of Western economic and social circumstances that found their formal expression in the state constitution. The absence of these economic correlates in Romania thus explained why the implementation of a liberal constitution and of democratic principles could not benefit Romanian society and instead ended up serving the interests of the geohistorical location that had engendered and propagated them – Western Europe:

‘So we allowed foreign legislations? Well, we did not allow them for Romanians, the needs of whom they did not match, but for economic elements that they did match and that know how to put them to use. We created a public atmosphere for exotic plants which proves lethal to the indigenous one. For today we have the most advanced liberal institutions. Control, people’s sovereignty, French codes, departmental and communal councils. Are we better off because of them? No, we are ten times worse off, for the new institutions did not match our degree of culture, the sum of work power available to us, the quality of our work, so we have to exhaust all these in order to sustain the modern state’s costly and useless apparatus’. (Eminescu 1877, p. 20)

The main factors responsible for the increasing access foreigners gained to Romania’s visibly growing state machinery had been, in Eminescu’s view, the emergence of a favorable climate for social mobility and the creation of new socioeconomic positions especially in urban areas in the context of the rise of political liberalism. They, too, accounted for the resulting polarization of the country’s class structure into a foreign urban minority and a large rural, native majority financing the former’s consumerist habits. Eminescu explained the functioning of this mechanism by means of a three-layered model: the ‘real land’ – the large mass of the peasantry (four-fifths of the population), the country’s sole productive force; the liberal institutions – the ‘legal land’ – providing the juridical apparatus needed for creating and justifying both the polarized structure and the economic exploitation; and, finally, the ‘superimposed layer’ of parasitical elements, rendered indispensable to the mass of the population by usurious practices (Eminescu 1881a, p. 75). The social and economic function of the superimposed layer turned out to be the creation of a structure of fiscal exploitation sheltered by Romanian legislation at the expense of Romanian economy. By labeling the foreign elite a ‘xenocracy’ (Eminescu 1881b, p. 323) in charge of the social and economic dimensions of the transition from a protocolonial to a neocolonial society, and further distinguishing between a ‘xenocracy by conquest’, i.e., a political one, as in the case of the Ottoman rule, and a ‘xenocracy by insidiousness’ – i.e., one employing ideological and economic mechanisms characteristic of a neocolonial model, Eminescu thus captured one of the most significant aspects of the phenomenon of ‘coloniality of power’ – the contribution of neocolonial elites to peripheralization after formal juridical decolonization. 11 Coloniality in the 19th Century Romania 13

Not only was the country not approaching the Western standards of civilization, Eminescu claimed, but the very use of the notion of progress in Romania’s current economic state was proof of the practical limitations and ideological sterility of imported political doctrines based on this notion - which, alongside liberalism, also included socialism. Since Romania’s economic and social state could be placed nowhere on the alleged continuum leading from barbarism to civilization, Eminescu dubbed it ‘semibarbarism’, ‘this state a hundred times worse than barbarism, not to speak of its detriment in relation to true civilization’ (Eminescu 1881c, p. 375), thus questioning both Western ideology’s postulate of progress and that of the unidirectionality of evolution. His theoretical model therefore transcended the single-country level of analysis and became a starting point for understanding peripheral evolution in general: as it diagnosed a ‘pathological’ condition with respect to organic evolution, it explained it within the larger context of the power relations embedded in the international division of labor and hence as an instance of the ‘development of underdevelopment’ (Frank 1966). Eminescu’s conservative solution to semibarbarism involved a recuperation of the potentialities inherent in the borrowed forms, and a bridging of the gaps created in the process. If an evolution from forms to substance was possible, it had to proceed from a national and historical basis, whose reproduction had been stunted by the exploitative action of the superimposed layer:

‘A people’s true civilization does not consist in heedless borrowing of foreign laws, forms, institutions, labels, clothes. It consists in the organic, natural development of its own powers, of its own faculties. There is no general human civilization, accessible to all people to the same degree and in the same way, but every people has its own civilization, although a lot of elements common to other peoples go into it as well’ (Eminescu 1881d, p. 379).

This argument, serving both as a premise and as a conclusion to Eminescu’s approach to social evolution, is above all further evidence of the remarkable productivity of the subaltern perspective. If theorists from the world system’s periphery managed to identify and admit the failure of unilinear evolutionism in explaining underdevelopment in the periphery so much earlier than Western theorists, it was mainly because theirs was the local history overrun by global designs, not the one disseminating them. Theorizing about and from that local history, they were more sensitive to the spatial confrontation between a prescribed, uniformitarian evolutionary model and the social reality of the periphery than Western scientists, for whom the periphery was a mere object of study, if oftentimes a deviant one. Against this background, insistence on the primacy of a peripheral country’s national interest was a plea for the divergent character of evolution in general, for an acknowledgment of specific evolution in particular, and at the same time a form 14 Manuela Boatcă 12 of resistance to the imposition of the global design of the ‘civilizing mission’, according to which the one general human civilization toward which evolution proceeded was European modernity. Thus, for Eminescu, the decision on whether or not industrialization was a choice for an agricultural country was not the predermined result of a rigid sequence of stages, but the logical consequence of the advantages entailed by an industrialized country’s relation to capital. Therefore, if Romania should industrialize, it was not because this was the inevitable evolutionary path, but because this particular form of internal organization of work would allow it to participate in the productivity of foreign capital, as opposed to being exploited by it.

ROMANIAN CONSERVATISM AS BORDER THINKING

Even more than Maiorescu’s, the type of conservatism Eminescu embraced represents one of the clearest instances in which a Western political doctrine was resignified according to the historical realities of the world-system’s periphery. By criticizing modernity from its exteriority, i.e., from the perspective of coloniality inscribed in Romanian local history, he thus discarded the reproductibility of Western modernity as a myth. Consequently, to rule that the common denominator of such substantially different thinkers as Charles Maurras, the Slavophiles, Mihai Eminescu, and the ‘agrarian’ school of writers in the US South was ‘the view that the foreigner was bad, modern society was bad, industry was bad, the soil was good, the past was noble, the nation had to be saved’ (Chirot 1978, p. 36), as Daniel Chirot did in a sweeping survey of conservative reactions to orthogenetic evolutionism, is to wrongly equate Western conservatism with its reinterpretation outside the Euro- American core. This attitude, however, illustrates only too well the previously discussed Eurocentrism of critical approaches enunciated from within modernity, and their subsequent blindness to its obverse, coloniality. That Chirot’s reference to Eminescu’s socio-political writings as the expression of a type of obscurantism rooted in the rejection of ‘modernism and industrial society’ (idem) is badly misplaced, clearly ensues from the preceding discussion on the Romanian writer’s views on industrialization. The point to be made is that it is precisely subalternization of knowledge as a consequence of coloniality which renders particular ideologies not only politically, but also epistemologically functional. This was the case with the conservative doctrine in the East European periphery, transformed into a form of cultural and ideological resistance to global designs, particularly liberalism. As in its Western variant, the emphasis conservatism placed on organic evolution was the counterpart of both liberalism’s and Marxism’s view of human history as essentially progressive, as already pointed out in the discussion of Titu Maiorescu’s conservative sociology. 13 Coloniality in the 19th Century Romania 15

Yet in addition to it, peripheral conservatism, present as well in Maiorescu’s work, but more clearly in Eminescu’s political articles, provided an account of organic evolution with respect to local histories rather than to the universal(izing) history which Western modernity postulated. It thereby not only identified the different logic of a particular regional history, but, more importantly, it analyzed the effects produced in peripheral areas by the tension between subaltern and hegemonic concepts of history, or between local histories and global designs. Briefly, while the ‘tradition’ and the ‘evolution’ advocated by Western conservatism were still rooted in modernity, the ‘tradition’ promoted by peripheral conservatism was located in time before modernity/coloniality, i.e., before the beginning of peripheralization through the encroachment of global designs. Therein lies the decisive difference between Western conservatism and its reformulation in the Eastern European periphery. The former clung to tradition as a repository of feudal privileges whose disappearance in the course of the transition to capitalism it considered prejudicial to social evolution. In short, it was reactionary by virtue of its response to liberal ideology. In contrast, Eminescu pointed out that the very premises for a reactionary movement were absent in Romania, and that the meaning of ‘conservative’ was therefore lopsided (Eminescu 1879b, p. 165).

The conservatism, nationalism, and antiuniformitarianism along whose lines Chirot3 and other Western critics defined Eminescu’s work were categories of a Western culture of scholarship arisen in response to the needs of a particular geohistorical location, namely, Western Europe. Educated in the West, but theorizing about the East European periphery, the nineteenth century Romanian conservatives discussed above realized that Western cultural categories cannot be ‘exported’ uncritically without risking that the subalternization of knowledge be added to the economic peripheralization. They therefore were among the first Romanian thinkers to resignify the method of Western cultures of scholarship - in this case, conservatism and its evolutionary doctrine - precisely as a response to the uncritical borrowing of formal institutions, doctrines, and development policies by the liberal regime. In particular Mihai Eminescu, who made this perspective the very center of his theorizing, became the mouthpiece of what has elsewhere been called ‘subaltern knowledges situated at the historical intersection of the traditional and the modern’ (Grosfoguel 2002, p. 221) in the particular context of nineteenth century Romania. Writing from the periphery, and not ‘only’ about it, both Maiorescu and Eminescu thus made an epistemological claim to the theoretization of social reality that would be both echoed and independently discovered in those peripheral regions of the world-system – most notably Latin America, but also China and

3 ‘This type of opposition to uniformitarian theories of change produced a great deal of anti- modern, nostalgic literature and some powerful rightist and nationalist political movements, but it produced very little reputable social science’ (Chirot 1978, p. 36) 16 Manuela Boatcă 14

Russia – which faced similar dependency contexts in the decades to come (see Love 1996). Concepts like Maiorescu’s ‘forms without substance’ or Eminescu’s ‘superimposed layer’ and ‘xenocracy’ – reminiscent of both Celso Furtado’s ‘myth of economic development’ (Furtado 1974) and Andre Gunder Frank’s ‘lumpenbourgeoisie’ (Frank 1974) – all represent attempts to outline specific realities of the modern world-system’s periphery for which hegemonic social science, centered around European experience and its claim to universal truth, had no labels. This consistent groping for conceptual clarity on the part of theorists writing from colonial perspectives only goes to show that, since many of the concepts relevant to our analysis of modernity were coined in and about the core, their explanatory and predictive power should be assessed differently depending on the structural location of their origin. During the following sequence of imperial control of Eastern Europe, the Communist one, these and related theoretical approaches were condemned precisely along the lines of their national dimension, which stood in disagreement with the internationalism that Communism propagated, as well as their conservative dimension, whose underlying evolutionism and advocacy of organicity blatantly contradicted the official government doctrine of revolutionary transformation. Accordingly, the works of Titu Maiorescu were banned for his alleged anti-progressivism, Eminescu’s for nationalism and ‘proto-fascism’, and the political implications of the theory of ‘forms without substance’ silenced under the guise of applying solely to the field of literary criticism. Recuperation of this theoretical tradition still proves problematic in the post-Communist era, when political, economic, and intellectual alignment with the Western European norms, entailing the (however vague) promise of European integration, dictates the dismissal of approaches critical of globalization, wholesale Westernization, and cultural leveling out and therefore makes epistemic oblivion a prerequisite for political and economic acknowledgment. The shift of axis that Romania once again faced with the Communist demise at the end of the twentieth century thus represents both a chance and a risk: On the one hand, a rich theoretical heritage tackling the issue of peripheralization in the face of economic and political dominance could prove invaluable when confronted with a novel modernization theory once again professing the adoption of forms without substance in the shape of IMF provisions and EU regulations. On the other hand, what Immanuel Wallerstein has termed the ‘gigantic liberal-Marxist consensus’ (Wallerstein 1991, p. 182), and which Eminescu had viewed as responsible for the importation of forms without substance in nineteenth-century Romania, is still very much active in the region in the shape of a concerted Communist-cum-neoliberal epistemic control of knowledge production by old and new elites judging the intellectual production of the periphery in terms of categories – such as progress, development, modernity, globalization – created in the core. The chance to reassess and promote old solutions to a recurrent problem 15 Coloniality in the 19th Century Romania 17 in the context of a vacuum of – or at least a shift in – political hegemony in post- Communist Eastern Europe is thus stunted by the continued epistemic discredit of forms of resistance containing a national component, accordingly denounced as dubious scholarship and political dynamite. This lack of definition power could not only become the new geohistorical edge deciding this – and other – colonialized regions’ renewed drift into the periphery, but also a further missed opportunity to shape modernity from its borders. Phrasing the issue in terms of one or several modernities, therefore, is asking the wrong question. The modernity that Western social sciences were called upon to analyze, but also to imagine, is a Western macronarrative, to be understood against the background of the history, cultural traditions and economic development of its place of origin – Western Europe. A bird’s eye view of world modernity in turn requires taking into account the hitherto silent knowledges speaking from coloniality and able to translate between epistemological locations on account of having been trained in modern thought while living under (neo)colonial realities. The resulting picture will probably be neither modern nor colonial, neither postmodern nor postcolonial, but a synthesis incorporating both experiences while presupposing neither.

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Eminescu (1989), Opere, vol. X, Publicistică: Bucharest, R.S.R., pp. 165–168. ** (1881a) [Editorial], by Mihai Eminescu (1985), Opere, vol. XII, Publicistică: Bucharest, R.S.R., pp. 75–76. ** (1881b) [Editorial], by Mihai Eminescu (1985), Opere, vol. XII, Publicistică: Bucharest, R.S.R., pp. 320–324. ** (1881c) [Editorial], by Mihai Eminescu (1985), Opere, vol. XII, Publicistică: Bucharest, R.S.R., pp. 375–376. ** (1881d) [Editorial], by Mihai Eminescu (1985), Opere, vol. XII, Publicistică: Bucharest, R.S.R., pp. 378–379. Frank, Andre Gunder (1966) ‘The Development of Underdevelopment’, Monthly Review, vol. 18, no. 4, S. 17–31. ** (1974) Lumpenbourgeoisie: Lumpendevelopment. Dependence, Class, and Politics in Latin America, New York and London: Monthly Review Press. Furtado, Celso. (1974). The Myth of Economic Development and the Future of the Third World. University of Cambridge, Centre of Latin American Studies: Cambridge. Grosfoguel, Ramo´n. (2002). ‘Colonial Difference, Geopolitics of Knowledge and Global Coloniality in the Modern/Colonial Capitalist World-System’, Review, vol. XXV, no. 3, pp. 203–224. Love, Joseph L. (1996). Crafting the Third World. Theorizing Underdevelopment in Rumania and Brazil.Stanford: Stanford University Press. Maiorescu, Titu (1973a) ‘In contra direcţiei de astăzi’, in: Critice, Bucharest: Minerva, pp. 160–171 (first published 1868). ** (1973b) ‘Direcţia nouă’, in: Critice, Bucharest: Minerva (first published 1872). Mignolo, Walter .(2000). Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Quijano, Anı´bal. (2000). ‘Colonialidad del Poder y Clasificacio’n Social’, Journal of World- Systems Research, vol. VI, no. 2, pp. 342–386. ** (2001) ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’, Nepantla: Views from South, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 533–574. Randeria, Shalini, Fuchs, Martin & Linkenbach, Antje. (2004). ‘Konfigurationen der Moderne: Zur Einleitung’, in: Diskurse zu Indien, ,,Soziale Welt’ spezial issue, eds Randeria, Shalini/Fuchs, Martin/Linkenbach, Antje, Munich: Nomos, pp. 9–34. Rofel, Lisa. (1999). Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China After Socialism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sahlins, Marshall/Service, Elman R. (eds). (1960). Evolution and Culture, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel. (1974). The Modern World System, Vol. I, Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, New York: Academic Press. ** (1991) Unthinking Social Science, Cambridge: Polity Press. ** (1996) ‘Open the Social Sciences’, Items. Social Science Research Council, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 1–7. ** (2000) The Essential Wallerstein, New York: The New Press. POSITIONING IN THE LOGIC OF THE WORLD SYSTEM AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL REALITY

RADU BALTASIU Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest

This paper intends to bring together the economics and the sociology (anthropology) of modern development – as a component of globalization. Globalization has a different impact on the West – considered to be the source of civilization in the East as well – the space in which this civilization is integrated. Each area has a particular sociology, anthropology and its own economics attached to it. The economics of globalization is shaped by the rationality of the dominant actors of the societies, i.e. by a specific anthropology – called “regional anthropology”. The phenomenon of globalization is reviewed mainly from the perspective of two forces that operate differently at the level of the world system: in the West, one of the vectors of globalization is hyperrationalization - the centering of organizations and the actions of individuals on efficiency and calculation at a level unmatched in the modern era. Hyperrationalization is an impersonal force, situated rather above the control of individual will, being considered a system driving force. In the East, the dominant vector of globalization is a social category with a marked ideological load: intelligentsia. Dissatisfied, and even annoyed by their societies lagging behind, the intelligentsia is often a development factor by synchronizing/imitating, sometimes with most curious effects on the historical path of those societies. The issue is not new. The contribution that this article could make is that of bringing together analyses by George Ritzer, Immanuel Wallerstein, Arnold Toynbee, Anthony Smith, etc., alongside older or newer Romanian theories (from Madgearu to Zamfir and Badescu) in order to illuminate, by comparison and from another perspective, the issue of globalization in the East, especially Romania. The approach is not all-encompassing, and is not meant to be. We only concentrated on reviewing some of the effects of the two vectors of globalization.

THE GLOBAL SYSTEM, GLOBALIZATION, AND THE PHENOMENON OF REGIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIES. SOME CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATIONS

Globalization, as a large scale social phenomenon, has an anthropological component as well with serious economic implications. The phenomenon of globalization encompasses not only changes in the world system, but also those regarding humanity, man as an actor and a subject. In what follows, we will circumscribe this component to a few of the phenomena affecting the ordering of social space, especially its definitions: hyperrationalization – at the center of the

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 19–40, Bucureşti, 2008 20 Radu Baltasiu 2 world system, and the intelligentsia at the periphery. Even if they take place under the impact of the same phenomenon called globalization, the changes brought to the anthropology of social space are relatively localized geographically and socially, reported to the position in the social hierarchy of the world system1, hence the name regional anthropologies. The theory of the impact of globalization on anthropology, which becomes regional, makes reference to the research into non-cumulative economic growth, also called non-cumulative stage theories2. One of the central aspects of these theories is unequal exchange. In essence, unequal exchange refers to the structuring of the world system in center, periphery, and semi-periphery, depending on the technological content of products and the related level of wages: “If we think of the exchange between the core and the periphery of a capitalist system being that between high-wage products and low-wage products, there results an ‘unequal exchange’ …, in which a peripheral worker needs to work many hours, at a given level of productivity, to obtain a product produced by a worker in a core country in one hour. … Without unequal exchange … it would not be profitable to maintain a capitalist world-economy, which would then either disintegrate or revert to the form of a redistributive world-empire.” 3 Unequal exchange does not act as a deus ex machina, outside of social and cultural control. It is often possible, as shown by Hirschman and Gunder Frank, as a result of a defective relating to reality of certain important categories of the elite, especially at the periphery of the world system. “As a result of prolonged relative backwardness, a general expectation is that one’s country will continue to perform poorly. … Take the situations in which politicians who have spent the largest part of their lives in the opposition suddenly and unexpectedly gain power: all too often their actions seem almost calculated to make them forfeit that power in the shortest possible time. … Lack of learning is by no means the most serious consequence of fracasomania [i.e. the failure complex] and of the inability or refusal to perceive change. In a government intent upon transforming a country’s socio-economic structure, these traits can lead to complete mishandling of the political situation, from ignoring and needlessly antagonizing groups that could be won to underestimating the strength of others that cannot …”4

1 We are talking here about the logic of the modern world system and its structuring by centers, semiperipheries, and peripheries, by authors such as Wallerstein, Frank, etc. See also Immanuel Wallerstein. (1979). The Capitalist World-Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Andre Gunder Frank. (1978). Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment, London: Macmillan Press. 2 Ilie Bădescu, Dan Dungaciu, Radu Baltasiu. (1996). Istoria sociologiei. Teorii contemporane, Bucureşti: Eminescu, 8. 3 Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy, 71 4 Albert Hirschman. (1984). Essays in Trespassing. Economics to Politics and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 156-157. 3 Positioning in the Logic of the World System 21

The anthropological component of globalization interests us from the perspective of reporting to reality, which is a defining term for the social structure and interaction formula at a given point. Reporting to reality is a collective force, which depends on the direction of globalization, and which is, at the same time, a factor of the new global construction. We see, therefore, that social structure is dependent on the evolution of collective mental evolutions. The social layer that structures this collective mind wily-nilly is built by the elite. Our hypothesis is that, at the center of the world system, the dominant definitions of reality coagulate around a pragmatic paradigm, of social-economic organization, called by George Ritzer5 hyperrationalization. To put it briefly, hyperrationalization represents “an extraordinarily high level of rationality”6, by extending the concern for calculation to all spheres of reality, at the theoretical, substantial, and formal level. This overrationalization, or hyperrationalization, has, however, a set of negative implications, especially on the formal rationality side, synthetically called “McDonaldization”, by reducing the phenomenology of social interaction to an issue of efficiency. Excessive rationalization leads, therefore, to putting pressure on reality, a phenomenon which we call diminished reality. From the sociology of social issues perspective, reality is diminished primarily in situations where the social structure and the personality of the individual cannot reach their potential for development7. The incubator-context of the development of the individual is called by Robert Putnam social capital, which, it seems, suffers because of the new transformations. Social capital is the sum of connections and reciprocal action based on trust. Through it, society is founded in “a network of reciprocal obligations” which is the most important asset of a modern society8. Increased “friction” in society as a result of a diminution in these interactions, the resurgence of some of the medieval ethnic cleavages9, the speed at which the component of cyberspace surveillance is invading private space (secondary,

5 George Ritzer. (2001). Explorations in Social Theory. From Metatheorizing to Rationalization, London: Sage, 198-232. 6 Ritzer, op. cit., 232. 7 The concept of diminished reality was introduced in the expert literature in Romania by Ilie Bădescu by borrowing, in a modern formula, inter-war theories on the relation between the modern social modern and personality development. Society, prof. Bădescu, is “diminished” or does not work “at full potential”, depending on the quality of each individual's expiation in the other Ilie Bădescu. (2002). Noologia. Cunoaşterea ordinii spirituale a lumi. Sistem de sociologie noologică, Bucureşti: Valahia, 167 and passim. 8 Robert Putnam. (2002). Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon & Schuster , 18, 315 and passim. 9 Anthony Smith points at “ethno-nationalism” as a new wave of “ethnic mobilization” all over Europe, including the West, denoting a continuous fragmentation of the so-called “nation-state” mythology established after the French Revolution. Anthony Smith. (1991). National identity, University of Nevada Press, Reno, 125. 22 Radu Baltasiu 4 tertiary, and quaternary relationships)10 are only a few of the elements of diminished reality at the center of the world system. In the East, its particular reality has as its vector a social category, which is very ideologically active, known as intelligentsia. The phenomenon of these elites was established in Western studies in the second half of the 20th century. One of the best known theoreticians is British historian Arnold Toynbee, for whom “the intelligentsia are a class of connecting agents [between the West and the East] who have learned the craft of the civilization that is to be adapted [internalized]”, but who are “uprooted and spiritually uncertain, without being torn physically from their ancestral homes11”. The impact of globalization through this intelligentsia often generates social systems as forms without substance, and at the level of the community network, effects such as the abandoned society complex. In the logic of modern world system theories, this problem results in a further discrepancy, called the discrepancy of position, and is often harder to overcome than the objective-historical one, that of era. The resulting phenomenon, abandoned society, refers to phenomena of unraveling of public space, and to dysfunctionalities of public authority, which is colloquially referred to as “lack of being civilized”. The dominant rationality in these societies is of a redistributive type on a chronically immature domestic market.

THE HYPERRATIONALIZATION AT THE CORE OF THE MODERN WORLD SYSTEM

Hyperrationalization has its “basis of operation” at the level of world economy and of organizational management. The discussion below is largely based on Ritzer's analysis, but I took the liberty, here and there to exceed the neo-Marxist paradigm in which he operates. As a part of the functional dimension of the system, Hyperrationalization operates without much ideological debate, as a pattern of organization-structuring of socio-economic organization. From simple workers to management, this preoccupation with efficiency is considered “natural”, and, in relation to it, an entire literature was developed regarding organizational management and techniques of increasing the efficiency of the workforce. Ritzer shows that hyperrationalization has spread outside industrial organization techniques, becoming a general paradigm for the organization of the whole of society at the level of formal rationality, substantial rationality, theoretical rationality, and practical rationality. Their common denominator is computability – the

10 Brian D. Loader (ed.). (1997). The Governance of Cyberspace. Politics, technology and global restructuring, London and New York: Routledge, 26. 11 Arnold J. Toynbee. (2002). Studiu asupra istoriei. Sinteză a volumelor I-VI de D. C. Somervell, Bucureşti: Humanitas, vol. I, 526. 5 Positioning in the Logic of the World System 23 quantification, or the preoccupation with quantifying reality more or less completely , which, in its turn, aims at efficiency – the shortest route from one objective to another. A significant part of the success of the Western type of enterprise is explained by Ritzer through the perfecting of rationalization techniques. Rationalizing reality “increases civilization”, but can “diminish humanity”, by placing the main emphasis on quantifying the world. Increasing the degree of civilization thus become paradoxical, to the extent that development “pushes away” from people. The exaggeration of the formal component of rationality, over- evaluating the need for efficiency, computability, predictability, and control generates the McDonalidization of society – that is, the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world.”12

Phenomena that can be related to hyperrationalization can be observed on several coordinates: − at the level of economic organization: the workplace moving outside the control of workers, decreasing loyalty towards the workplace (Mullins13 and Ritzer); − in the social construction overall: absent social interaction – interruptions (Friedman14), tertiary relations (Calhoun15), pecuniary emulation (Veblen16); − at the socio-political level: the tendencies of turning democratic society into a surveillance state (quaternary relations), governance by networks (regime theory – Stone and Stoker17, “broker politics” – Loader18). The list above is a limited summary of the effects of the strengthened function that computation has at the mental level dominant at the center of the world system.

The first thing affected by hyperrationalization is the enterprise, which, in order to be more competitive, undergoes mutations at the level of patterns of organization and attitudes towards labor. Economic organization is more flexible

12 Ritzer, op. cit., 198. 13 Laurie J. Mullins. (1998). Management and Organisational Behaviour, fifth edition, (Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 8. 14 Thomas Friedman, „The Taxi Driver”, in The New York Times, 1 Nov. 2006. Thomas Friedman, „The Era of Interruptions”, in Business magazin 107 (44/2006): 74. 15 C. Calhoun, “The Infrastructure of Modernity: Indirect Social Relationships, Information Technology and Social Interaction in H.Haferkamp and N.Smelser”, eds., Social Change and Modernity, (Berkeley: University of California Press), 218-219 apud Brian D. Loader, ed. (1997). The Governance of Cyberspace. Politics, technology and global restructuring, (London and New York: Routledge, 26. 16 T. Veblen. (1970). The Theory of Leisure Class, London: Unwin Books, 39. 17 Gerry Stoker, “Regime Theory and Urban Politics”, in David Judge, Gerry Stoker, and Harold Wolman, eds. (1997). Theories of Urban Politics (London: Sage Publications Ltd., 1995), in Richard T. LeGates, Frederic Stout, eds., The City Reader, New York: Routledge, 268-282. 18 Loader, op. cit., 118. 24 Radu Baltasiu 6 through restructuring into smaller components – with faster reflexes in relation to market fluctuations, strongly dependent upon new technologies. The workplace is more and more automated, where man, when he is present, is present mainly through short term labor contracts. The short term contract (Mullins) and the preponderance of technologies controlling the workers – nonhuman technology (Ritzer19) a lot of times associates with decreased loyalty towards the workplace. As this takes up a lot of the individual’s social life, decreased loyalty towards the workplace has secondary effects that spread throughout the whole of society. Responsibility turns from a implicit component of work ethics into a burden, and the feeling of impotence that the worker feels towards the challenges of the context gains unexpected visibility. Marx's concept of alienation gains new content. The hyperrationalization of the postmodern world in this way claim less savory “resources” of modernity. We recall that alienation towards labor products and processes, as well as towards human being are the three major features of alienation as theorized by Marx20

MUTATIONS IN SOCIABILITY ARE REGISTERED AT THE LEVEL OF SOCIETY AS A WHOLE

Social contact between persons is intensified, but its content gets reduced. What increases is the number of situations in which communication gets diminished symbolic function, becoming simply an instrument for guidance, for signaling. The phenomenon is typical of what Thomas Friedman calls age of interruption. These “diminished” interactions are possible because the communication function is largely taken over by more and more diverse technologies, complex, interconnected, and more and more miniaturized – technological achievements of hyperrationalization.

“After I arrived at my hotel, I reflected on our trip: The driver and I had been together for an hour, and between the two of us we had been doing six different things. He was driving, talking on his phone and watching a video. I was riding, working on my laptop and listening to my iPod. There was only one thing we never did: Talk to each other. … Hey, I love having lots of contacts and easy connectivity, but in an age when so many people you know — and even more you don’t know — can contact you by e-mail or cellphone, I’m finding this age of interruption overwhelming. I was much smarter when I could do only one thing at a time.”21

19 Ritzer, op. cit., p. 200 20 Randy Hodson, Teresa A. Sullivan. (1994). The Social Organization of Work, Belmont: Wadsworth, 95. 21 Friedman, ibidem. 7 Positioning in the Logic of the World System 25

For Craig Calhoun, the situation described by Friedman is far from being an individual experience described by an analyst with journalistic talent, it is part of a pattern that defines more and more the space of social interaction. The hyperrationalized cyberspace is dominated by indirect relationships, mediated by technology or by power entities which are very much based on IT technology. Calhoun thus adds to the classical typology of relating socially (made up of primary and secondary relationships) tertiary and quaternary relationships, typical of the virtual space that accompanies hyperrationalization. Social life becomes mediated, a part of a colossal database, and often without the substance of personal involvement. If in tertiary relationships interaction happens by the agreement of both parties, in the quaternary kind the social relationship loses its significance, getting reduced to contact by surveillance, in which one of the actors is unaware of the fact that he is being made the object of interest for the one manipulating the management technology by “scanning” the social space. “There is as much (or more) reason to think that computerization and new communications technologies will lead to, or accompany further deterioration of interpersonal relationships. A drift toward relationships of convenience might be accelerated; passive enjoyments from the mass media might predominate over active social participation. A few people might even have wind up preferring relationships based on single common interests and mediated through computer networks — or worse (from the point of view of social integration), preferring the company of computers themselves, which are dependable, don’t talk back, and don’t make silly mistakes very often.”22 By the paradigm of pecuniary emulation, Veblen supplies us with another facet of the diminished contemporary reality. An effect of industrial modernity of the late 19th and early 20th century, pecuniary emulation is gaining a new ground of manifestation with the increasing rationalization of social space. One of the mass effects of the continuous rationalization of enterprise is the centering, generally, of social interaction around (economic) interest. Interest often overlaps with what is considered to be efficient – the shortest route to a purpose in relation to the means at one's disposal. The thesis of pecuniary emulation observes this very re-centering of everyday relationships towards efficiency- interest. The means by which social success is measured (the efficiency of the individual’s insertion in society) are money and social position. Modern individual’s social space rationalization is, therefore, expressed through symbolic possessions – social position and money.

22 C. Calhoun. (1986). “Computer Technology, Large-Scale Social Integration and the Local Community” in Urban Affairs Quarterly 22: 2 (1986): 337 in David Holmes, “The Fallacies and Fortunes of ‘Interactivity’ in Communication Theory”, http://www.cem.itesm.mx/dacs/publicaciones/ logos/anteriores/n58/dholmes.pdf 26 Radu Baltasiu 8

“It becomes indispensable to accumulate, to acquire property, in order to retain one's good name. When accumulated goods have in this way once become the accepted badge of efficiency, the possession of wealth presently assumes the character of an independent and definitive basis of esteem. ... … The end sought by accumulation is to rank high in comparison with the rest of the community in point of pecuniary strength. So long as the comparison is distinctly unfavourable to himself, the normal, average individual will live in chronic dissatisfaction with his present lot; and when he has reached what may be called the normal pecuniary standard of the community, or of his class in the community, this chronic dissatisfaction will give place to a restless straining to place a wider and ever-widening pecuniary interval between himself and this average standard. The invidious comparison can never become so favourable to the individual making it that he would not gladly rate himself still higher relatively to his competitors in the struggle for pecuniary reputability.”23

Of course, it is hard to pinpoint how widely spread is the expansion of the behavior described by Veblen. It does not necessarily, and completely, illustrate a negative phenomenon, it rather draws our attention to the secondary effects of social structuring around the competition for goods outside of the human being, which can hardly fulfill the needs for spiritual achievement, typical to humanity. Nowadays, Robert Putnam draws attention precisely to such a secondary effect when he talks about weakened neighborhoods – which he calls “social units”24, which in their turn are a part of a strong cohesive factor called “social capital”. For Putnam, cooperation between individuals as neighbors- neighborhoods represents “accumulating social capital”, which will create a social network of “mutual obligations”, based on trust, and which benefits everyone, directly or indirectly. Social capital in its most visible expression – as civic engagement – is eroding, registering important decreases from the generation of the 1960s to this one, the “generation of TV” and of computer access. The correlated phenomenon, also noticed by other theoreticians of the “health” of social space, is the “privatization of social space”, more precisely its fragmentation. Brian Loader shows that the “rationalization” of individual space with the computer (the new social space, the individual cyberspace), takes the form of the de facto narrowing of the social interaction area. The individual involved in public issues – the main actor of the social capital, is about to become obsolete: “The Homo politicus, the citoyen, is no longer the dominant actor. Systems are becoming more and more intelligent and at a growing pace are better at several things. … Reality is the unintended result of decisions, increasingly taken by machine. And the individual in cyberspace is fragmented in databases and

23 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York, Berlin: Globusz Publishing, n.d.), http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/LeisureClass/00000012.htm. 24 Robert Putnam, op. cit., 19 and passim 9 Positioning in the Logic of the World System 27

networks. As a result of this fragmentation, the individual as a meaningful entity becomes decentered and multiplied. … We become postmodern.”25

At the socio-political level, the rationalization of power based on the new information technologies is reconfiguring the role of networks and interest groups, which have gained the capacity to manage their access to resources completely autonomously, becoming self-steering or self-organizing societal actors26. Classical democratic governance overlaps and intermingles with an entire infrastructure of entities with decisional autonomy, more or less transparent. At this entire level, the role of government is reduced, politics becoming a space for the “brokerage” of power, where legitimate authority through voting has mainly a procedural function. The entities with power autonomy which constitute themselves in informal power structure with access to institutional resources, which, although not democratically elected, have a word to say in the governance of local communities, and even of society as a whole. We recalled here the phenomenon of regimes described by Stone27. The issue is not new, as sociology has a good theoretical experience regarding lobbying groups, pressure groups, etc. before the postindustrial technology revolution. What is truly new is the fact that the political actor is perfecting the techniques of power with the aid of the completely new infrastructure of cyberspace. Stoker and Loader have noticed that, with possibilities of strategic knowledge, of extraordinary organization and propaganda with computer matrix support, the policy of regimes can detach itself in an manner unimagined since the French Revolution from the popular support of the act of power. On the other hand, the real time management (rationalization) of public space turns it into an area quasipermanently monitored by electronic-informatic means. As a result, a new species of social relationships emerges, called by Calhoun28 quaternary relationships, in which private or public entities know about the movements in the public space, sometimes even those in the citizens' private space, without their knowledge or consent. The Economist suggested in 2007 that British society was the most monitored in the world, where each citizen could be recorder as much as 300 times a day29.

25 Loader, op. cit., 125. 26 Loader, op. cit., 118. 27 Clarence Stone, „Urban Regimes and the Capacity to Govern: A Political Economy Approach”, Journal of Urban Affairs 15: 1 (1993): 1-28, in Gerry Stoker, loc.cit. 28 C. Calhoun, “The Infrastructure of Modernity: Indirect Social Relationships, Information Technology and Social Interaction in H.Haferkamp and N.Smelser”, eds., Social Change and Modernity, (Berkeley: University of California Press), 218-219, in Loader, loc. cit. 29 “Learning to live with Big Brother.”, The Economist, 27 September 2007 28 Radu Baltasiu 10

THE NEW REALITY AT THE PERIPHERY OF THE WORLD SYSTEM. THE ROLE OF THE CULTURE OF DEVELOPMENT

At the periphery of the system, the situation is different. If at the center of the system reality is faced with the complications of “overrationalization”, at the periphery it sometimes takes on the formula of the “evolution without social growth”. For instance, even if Romania recorded a sustained economic growth in GDP terms over the last 7 years, it is not clear if the social structure got a significant improvement. The contemporary French sociology coined the term of the “diminished society” for Eastern Europe, in order to emphasize the deep social destructuration of the former communist countries30. Our hypothesis is that here the dominant phenomenon is called intelligentsia, and its most important consequence is the abandoned society, with the entire constellation of behaviors that are more or less anarchic (also called “uncivilized”). Although also consumption oriented, for reasons of the domestic market being underdeveloped, and, subsequently, buying power being underdeveloped as well, of the lack of competition, social action is less affected by the issue of hyperrationalization. Hyperrationalization, where it exists, could be uncovered mainly at the local sources of some of the large transnationals, in relation to what some theories of development call “enclave economies” (enclave enterprises)31. Our hypothesis is that the role of elites in shifting from one position to another in the world system is decisive. They are, however, the most vulnerable area at the same time, exactly because of their role as media distributors of the new behaviors necessary for progress, through administrative policies (administration can serve development), fiscal policies (through taxes and incentives certain economic activities are encouraged, while others are discouraged), school policies (here social attitude and identity models are distributed), cultural policies (by cultivating certain definitions regarding social success, social identity, personal success techniques, collective dignity, etc.). These behaviors are a part of the culture, and this, in turn, selects social order, the failure of manipulating cultural vectors being able to pull along processes of social retardation that are hard to overcome.

30 Alain Tourraine, in La retour de l’acteur (Fayard, ed. 1989) pays a special attention to the phenomenon of the society engulfed by the formerly communist state. Society has no real structure, only dominant and regulative institutions. 31 Synthesizing research by Frank, Rostow and Hirschman of this problem, an enclave economy is that part of a society with tighter relations with the world financial, commercial, technological, etc., circuit, where there is a salary coefficient above the national average, but which is not strong enough, or not interested enough in producing relationship effects, to multiply its success into the rest of society. Frank showed that enclave industries or activities are only a relatively perfected means of draining the local surplus production. Development, according to Hirschman, occurs when successful businesses generate relationship effects beyond themselves, building a network of growth effects in the entire social whole. See Albert Hirschman. (1984). Essays in Trespassing. Economics to Politics and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge, 65-67. 11 Positioning in the Logic of the World System 29

A FEW CONCEPTUAL DELIMITATIONS REGARDING THE INTELLIGENTSIA

The anthropology of (European) periphery is dominated by the elites by a fairly sinuous historical road. The intelligentsia is a specialized social class in backwards countries, whose predominant social function is that of link between the civilized world and their own society, with a predominantly ideological function. Toynbee describes it briefly as “a class of linking agents that have learned the craft of the civilization that is to be adapted to the extent that it is necessary to allow their own civilization, through them, to integrate into a new social environment, in which life is no longer lived according to the old local traditions, and is lived more and more according to the style imposed by the expanding civilization on the foreigners that fall under its influence”32. The contact between the developed society and the backwards society occurs, of course, upon the initiative of the expanding one (the developed society). The main mediator on the side of the backwards society is the intelligentsia that manages the connection between the two types of society, most of the time by imitation, by importing legislation, and of through democratic institutions. The dominant notion of these elites is that backwards societies only have access to progress by 'synchronizing' local structures with the Western ones, development being from form to substance. The substance, meaning the whole of aptitudes and behavioral predispositions of the masses, even if it is foreign or 'inadequate' in relation to the imported superstructure, has to change in order to match the profile of the new institutional matrices. Development is not possible by their own means, hence the name synchronization of this type of evolution by imitation. There is, therefore, a single model, the Western model, and backwards countries have no access to it save by imitation. The process has been theorized in Romania by Eugen Lovinescu33 in the first half of the 20th century, and it is generally known as the paradigm of synchronization. In our hypothesis, the elites, therefore the intelligentsia, are important because of their role in defining social space. The elites can fundamentally change the perception framework of tradition, just as they also disseminate in society the models for relating to reality: the frameworks of sociability, the typology of individual success, the 'project' of progress in general, etc., all these being subordinated to the definitions issued by the elite at a given point. Backwards societies will incur additional costs in the effort to effectively integrate into the new era, with costs related precisely to the behaviors and perceptions ancillary to overcoming the effects of a backwards position in relation to the era that one wishes to integrate in. Anthony Smith showed that local elites have to make huge efforts for their own societies to overcome the status of ‘subject communities’34.

32 Arnold J.Toynbee. (1997). Studiu asupra Istoriei. Sinteza a volumelor I-VI de D.C. Somervell, trans., Dan. A. Lăzărescu, Bucureşti: Humanitas, vol. I, 526. 33 Eugen Lovinescu. (1997). Istoria civilizaţiei române modern, Bucureşti: Minerva. 34 Anthony D. Smith. (1991). National identity, Reno: University of Nevada Press, 61. 30 Radu Baltasiu 12

In what regards contemporary Romania, an original analysis of the relations between the intellectual and the political elites, between them and the evolution of society, is to be found in the recently published work by Liliana Pop- Democratizing Capitalism?35 Starting from the quoted work, we shall develop upon certain topics that seem relevant to our subject matter: – The intellectual elite have truly taken upon itself the role of mediator between the West and the society in transition (Romanian society). – Aside from this role, the intelligentsia took upon themselves also the function of moral censors of society. The main targets of the effort to ‘purify’ the economic, political, cultural, etc. space were the politicians, but also the intellectuals that are considered to have been ‘Securitate agents’, ‘nationalists’, 'communists'. The problem of this effort consisted mainly in the lack of legal support, but especially in the absence of a doctrine that is unequivocal and accessible to the public regarding the 'harmfulness' of the actors of the 'old regime'. The public could not assimilate in their entirety the labels proposed by the intelligentsia in the context in which the political configurations supported by them were considered responsible for the sharp drop in the standard of living, especially after 198936. – In the relation with Western donors, and with their approval, the intelligentsia has turned into a gatekeeper with the function of ‘guarding’ the contact with the civilization chosen as a model. Contact with the backwards societies, traumatized by communism, with the model of evolution of the era (the West) was thus not only mediated, but also filtered by the groups defined by the intelligentsia, because they had also assumed another function, that of social labeling. In this way, the intelligentsia groups proposed ways of modernization according to a relatively limited definition of civil society, in which the issue of reconstructing social space became limited to a few topics, and the ones that did not ‘fall in line’ with the vision considered ‘acceptable’ could even be placed within the area of ‘public condemnation’. Paradoxically, the humanistic elite meets in the same space of vehemence of language with the resentful discourse of the groups in government considered neo- Communist. This situation largely defined public communication in the first few years after 1989: “The field was initially dominated by humanists, who had some room for development under the communist regime. They were an important political force after the 1990 and had a gate-keeping role in creating a representation of the state

35 Liliana Pop. (2006). Democratising capitalism? The political economy of postcommunist transformations in Romania, 1989–2001, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. 36 After the 2000 elections, the coalition supported by the ‘humanistic elite’ disintegrated. The National Peasant Party, with the most vehement discourse regarding ‘restoration’, disappeared from the Romanian political scene. 13 Positioning in the Logic of the World System 31

of affairs in the country, both internally and in relation to foreign agencies and donors. Their position was similar to those of other local groups in the region which channeled foreign aid ... Their lack of social science training encouraged a propensity towards sweeping, usually negative judgments about the state of the society and the economy, and a preference for – p.51 metaphor at the expense of analysis. It cultivated an uncompromising style based on essentialist and elitist idea, of conservative and libertarian inspiration ...”37 – The intelligentsia has taken on the role of ‘defining’ society, often in opposition to the state, which they saw as a limiting factor in relation to civil liberties, private initiative, and with the imperative of moral purging. This ideology was strengthened by the fact that that particular ‘humanistic elite’ saw in the leftist governments in power in Romania after 1990 only offshoots of the communist regime; – The limits of ‘definitions’ regarding the modernization of society, the function of authority, the state, relations between society and state, and the relative self-isolation in the ‘ivory tower’ had important consequences on the rest of society. The reform and institutions suffered, often becoming the field on which were performed political disputes or the acts of rewarding personal or party loyalties. Although situated close to certain public needs strongly neglected by the communists, the ‘humanistic elite’ stayed fairly isolated from the ‘public at large’, and did not manage to initialize a long term relationship with the political class, which was thus left without doctrinary ‘guidance’. We are thus able to explain in this way the shortcomings of the projects for internal and foreign policy of the political act38. In the absence of effective collaboration between the intellectuals and the political class, Euro-Atlantic integration was one of the few landmarks on the political agenda in post-December Romania. The cumulated result of failure to reform institutions and the incoherence of the political act was that, for a long time, the state administration proved ineffectual, and the governing act was manifested through executive orders (emergency ordnances).

“During the 1990s in Romania, when the boundaries between the economy and politics were still in the process of being drawn, we would expect to find evidence of how … would argue, institutions are established through an act of political delegation. Elster, Offe and Preuss (1998)39, also anticipated that weak political authority would lead to weak

37 Liliana Pop, op. cit., 50. 38 We are tempted to say that, aside from Euro-Atlantic integration, political actors have been without projects, and political parties did not have projects or platforms as such, but lists of priorities which they followed more or less closely. 39 Elster John, Claus Offe and Ulrick K. Preuss. (1998). Institutional design in postcommunist societies: rebuilding the ship at sea, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press in Liliana Pop, op. cit., 101. 32 Radu Baltasiu 14

delegation, decree-ism and reversals. This hypothesis is confirmed by the study of change in state and marked institutions in post-communist Romania.”40 – Romanian society, however, has progressed. In time, the humanistic elite has reformed itself, and has reinvented its discourse, which has become more solid, more applied in relation to concrete challenges of society. Especially from the private economic space and certain public institutions came a managerial corps able to answer the challenges posed by the liberalization of the economy and the Euro-Atlantic integration of society. This is the new elite, called by Liliana Pop ‘pragmatic’, but which also has the role to link the backwards society and the Western model, nevertheless the process of bringing them closer occurs ‘as we go’, in comparison with the local requirements, and ‘bottom to top’. “From near a complete dominance over debates and practices, the heroic model41 of action … was slowly replaced by more pragmatic and limited evaluations of success and failure. This process is parallel to that of the constitution of politics as democratic and the consolidation of democracy.”42

BURNING STAGES AND THE ‘MIDDLE CLASS’ DEFICIT

Passing from one stage to another means progress, first and foremost for the societies initiating a new historical stage. Progress means society manages successfully to enter a self-sustained process of social and economic development, with beneficial effects for all strata of society43 . From an attitude point of view, the progress of societies with initiative in history is centered on the spirit of savings (versus consumer behavior) and on productive activities (versus speculative ones), and from an institutional point of view, progress associates with the emergence of new institutional and social configurations based on the success of start-up activities and industries44. The new stage reached by advanced societies will mark the entry of the world system in a new era. There are situations when

40 Liliana Pop, op. cit., 101. 41 The phrase ‘heroic model’ is insufficiently explained by Liliana Pop. We accept it with reservations. Heroism, personal sacrifice for the collective interest, has not been often found in the social area to which she refers. 42 Liliana Pop, op. cit., 36. 43 The concept of progress was defined from this perspective by W.W. Rostow, in The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), the French Edition: Les Etapes de la croissance économique, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1963). We only considered the stage called by Rostow takeoff, meaning the capacity for economic growth at a constant pace, and therefore for ‘self- sustaining’ the internal relationship effects , Rostow, op. cit., 18. 44 A savings rate of under 5% of the GDP is typical of underdeveloped societies, see Rostow, op. cit., 19, 66, 73, 81. 15 Positioning in the Logic of the World System 33 underdeveloped societies shall burn stages in order to keep up, without necessarily managing to expand progress to the whole of society.

The concept of burning stages of historical development – the stages followed by the West – was introduced at the beginning of the 20th century by the analyses made by Stefan Zeletin regarding the development of backwards countries, such as Romania, under the impact of introducing British, then French and German capital in the Lower Danube area: „With financial capitalism, our society makes a leap directly from mercantilism to imperialism, from developing national production forces to organizing them under the supremacy of big finance. The political consequences are immense; in truth, ... Romania no longer goes through an intermediate stage of liberalism, of decentralization and real democracy [the emphasis is ours]... This type of evolution by leaps and bounds is not unique; it characterizes all late bourgeoisies that tend to shorten the stages of the development of capitalism, and is found first and foremost in Germany and the United States... the organ that acts as an intermediary between nation and industry, gathering the savings of the first, is the bank itself. Thus, the development of late bourgeoisies leads straight to financial oligarchy.”45

It seems that, in order to burn stages, the backwards society needs two types of ‘fuel’: a ‘project for development’, and room for adequate social maneuvering – to encourage social mobility and the formation of the ‘new middle class’. Thus, burning stages presupposes support provided to the new bourgeoisie by the local intelligentsia. After 1989, based on the hesitant evolution of Romanian society, we realize that the ‘significant project’ – in the sense of point of orientation for the social body – was less relevant than required by the acute need for progress. Although Romanian universities, with the help of mainly European programs, have sent a multitude of young people abroad for studies, once returned to their country, they did not develop an ‘ideological project’. The social success in Romanian society was measured rather as a sum of individualized results, either as initiatives at the level of the new capitalist enterprises, or by the financial success of individuals. The best representatives of the young intelligentsia, sent to study abroad in order to resume intellectual and spiritual ties with the West, have opted massively to stay abroad.46 This ‘defection’ is attributed to the political class, who

45 Ştefan Zeletin. (1991). Burghezia română. Originea şi rolul ei istoric, Bucureşti: Humanitas, 181-182. 46 After 1991, Romania had massive emigration, especially among young university graduates, which make up about 12% of the 2 million Romanians abroad. Of them, 50.000 are considered ‘exceptional’, or ‘gifted’ individuals. After the 2001 liberalization of circulation towards the West for Romanians, there were further waves of emigration, dominated by qualified labor or workers from other areas. Sources: “Tinereţe fără educaţie şi viaţă fără de viitor”, Cotidianul, 12 septembrie 2005. Academia Română, Institutul Naţional de Cercetări Economice, Centrul de cercetări demografice “Vladimir Trebici”, Vasile Gheţău, Declinul demografic şi viitorul populaţiei României. O perspectivă din anul 2007 asupra populaţiei României în secolul 21, Raport (Alpha MDN, 2007). 34 Radu Baltasiu 16 did not know how to attract those young people to their country, especially the havoc in the mechanism of appreciating values in the economic system and that of public institutions. The middle class acts as a social relay, as the main catalyst of the forces that make up the market and technological progress. In terms of income and ideologically, the middle class overlaps only partially with the intelligentsia, being rather a strongly aspirational social structure, tied by the perspectives of improving social mobility, economic growth, and job creation. In essence, the middle class represents a liberal lifestyle, with average to high incomes, which includes a large part of the professions with high technological content, or with important social responsibilities (for instance, the technocrats in government) 47. With regard to Romania, after almost 20 years of reform, the middle class is still in statu nascendi. Depending on income and the category of occupation, in 1999 the middle class was estimated to be 9 to 10% of the population48, and in 2006 it was estimated at around 16,000 people49, depending on income. In terms of jobs, some of the recent estimates indicate that around 30 to 35% of the population would fall within the type of occupation typical of the middle class: intellectuals, entrepreneurs, administration clerks, foremen, etc. From our point of view this estimate is less relevant, as in a society still in transition, the occupational categories taken into consideration only partially represent the middle class – a social category characterized first and foremost by entrepreneurial spirit and a relatively important economic success. The middle class, from this point of view, is a social layer that transgresses the statistical-occupational categories used by the Statistical Yearbook in Romania.

Alarmed by the evolutions of the reform that risk to consume the main driving factor of development, the Romanian Association of Business People defined the middle class in the following terms: − „it is the most important taxpayer group, therefore the essential source of social income for redistribution at the national level. − It is an important source of financial resources for investment feeding the sustainable growth of the nation. Putting in danger the potential profit of the

“Patru din cinci tineri vor să plece în străinătate. Următoarea destinaţie a muncitorilor români va fi Irlanda”, BloomBiz.ro, http://www.bloombiz.ro/article--Business-Economie- Patru_din_cinci_tineri_vor_sa_plece_in_strainatate._Urmatoarea_destinatie_a_muncitorilor_romani_ va_fi_Irlanda--1250492.html (14 Decembrie 2007). 47 Our conclusion is derived from the synthesis of theories of social stratification and the middle class from the following works: Ramona L. Ford. (1988). Work, Organization and Power. Introduction to Industrial Sociology, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 259-266. Ioan Mărginean, Maria Larionescu, Gabriela Neagu. (2006). Constituirea clasei mijlocii în România, Bucureşti: Editura Economică, 2007. 48 “Poziţia Asociaţiei Oamenilor de Afaceri din România (AOAR) cu privire la Starea economiei româneşti – martie 1999 – Document adoptat cu ocazia reuniunii Senatului AOAR din 29 martie 1999”, published at www.aoar.ro/pozitii/3/r2.htm) 49 “Upgrade de viaţă”, Business Magazin, 13-19 December 2006. 17 Positioning in the Logic of the World System 35

middle class is the last thing wished by the economic decision makers. − Within the ranks of this class are the majority of those that are concerned with developing the labor force of the nation (educators in the widest sense of the world, scientists and people of culture and mass media). Their voice is decisive not only because they know how to express themselves, but they also have the possibility of influencing public opinion”50.

From an attitude point of view, the middle class deficit has implications on the lack of landmarks in terms of work ethics and consumption. We say that that society is 'uncivilized'. The middle class is the main repository for motivations and attitudes that increase work productivity, savings51 and investments for the future. Of course, at least in the Romanian case, consumption higher than income is also the expression of correcting some historical disbalances, regarding access to elementary consumption goods for contemporary society, through easy loans. Inflationary pressure will be stronger, however – a currency not covered by goods and services – where consumption is the expression of a cultural deficit, the disbalance between expectations and attitudes. This deficit can explain partially the excessive duration of the takeoff of transition, and reveals the non-productive character of the relation so far between the project of reform proposed by the intelligentsia and its political operationalization by the power factors in Romania.

THE ABANDONED SOCIETY AND BEHAVIORAL MUTATIONS: POLITICIANISM

In our hypothesis, an abandoned society is the expression of a deficit of reform, and, implicitly, of the merely partial integration in the system of civilized order. The main characteristic of the abandoned society is the dysfunctional character of the state and administration, in general. The state administration gains irrational accents by the predatory character of taxation52, grave shortcomings in

50 AOAR, idem. 51 Compared to the average EU savings rate of 11%, in Romania this was 5.2% in 2006. Only families with their own business had a higher savings rate than the European average, namely 17%. Generally speaking, 40% of Romanian households had higher spending than income. Romania’s situation is not unique among transition countries: the rate in the Czech Republic was 5.1%, in Latvia it was 1.1%, in Lithuania it was 1.5%. It seems that Western Europe is also registering a fall in the savings rate, together with a wider European phenomenon of ‘degradation of the middle class’ (see Louis Chauvel, Les classes moyennes à la dérive, Paris, Le Seuil, 2006), but the reasons are different, and we shall not analyze them here. Source: „Est-europenii încep să pună banii «la saltea»” (Eastern Europeans are starting to ‘stash their money under their mattresses’), Capital, 19 june, 2007. 52 “Countries in the former Soviet and Eastern bloc account for six of the bottom 10 countries in terms of the number of tax payments [96] a company has to make. Romania, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Belarus are ranked the bottom four in the world on this measure which is reflected by the sheer number and variety of taxes a company is required to pay in these countries. In two of these countries, 36 Radu Baltasiu 18 the justice system, and the social retardation function that it exercises in relation to public interests. At the level of the political system, one of the manifestations of the abandon of society by the elites is the phenomenon of politicianism. Politicianism is the subordination of public interest to the interest of persons who gain positions and functions, and the parties giving up significant concerns, of a directional (‘doctrinary’) nature regarding the evolution of society. The party is a vehicle, accepted by public consciousness and by 'Europe', used, however, for getting rich quick. The political idea, which should have been the link between collective interests and the administration of power within the state is strongly diminished, if not absent entirely. Under these conditions, capital becomes a factor of civilization as a result of the exceptions in the system, due to the international layout in which the backwards society is included (NATO and EU member), either by entrepreneurs taking on the functions that the state fails to carry out, and by the ‘classical’ ideological components of civil society. The disconnect between the ‘real country’, ‘of those who work’53, and the ‘legal country’ – of those who rule, involve great medium and long term risks, typical of weak governments. Given the growth of the local market without any apparent fostering policies, it seems that the market has its own powers to develop, but for how long without a stable and visionary politics and judicial system?

In one of its regional analyses, The Economist Intelligence Unit54 observes that the Romanian market is undergoing a rapid process of growth- maturity (by the evolutions of purchasing power and of competition), new enterprises are standards of efficiency for the whole of Europe (at the level of perception of some investors, “Romania is one of the tiger markets of Europe, with the biggest market potential after Russia and Ukraine. The Romanian plant is close in efficiency to Poland, the European benchmark.”), the rate of investments in capital products (fixed investments), which is critical to ensure the base of development, with growth rates between 15% (2008) and 25% (2007) per year, considering the fact that the justice system is still a serious obstacle for development („implementation of laws is as usual the main headache”), and political action is chaotic and inefficient (“political ineptitude is more of a risk ...”). The latter cast uncertainty on economic growth, which is still ‘under the protection’ of capital initiatives (generally foreign) and of the ‘perverse effects’ (unintentionally)

Romania and Ukraine, flat rate corporate profits taxes have been introduced, but the number of payments required and the contribution of other taxes are significant and so mitigate the perceived benefits of the flat tax system.” – Source: „Paying Taxes 2008. The Global Picture”, The World Bank, PricewaterhouseCoopers, 38-39. (http://www.doingbusiness.org/taxes). 53 “The country of those that work” – a slogan from the communist period of Romania. 54 Dr. Daniel Thorniley. (February 2008). “Romania – The business outlook”, The Economist Intelligence Unit. Corporate network, electronically distributed material. 19 Positioning in the Logic of the World System 37

positive55 emanating from the political apparatus. The economic and social background of growth is, however, the most fragile in Europe, The Economist indicates, after the Baltic countries, a result of the chasm between rural and urban environments, of the low tolerance that the population has towards bank debt („repaying consumer loans of €15 per month is a burden for many consumers”), and, due to the structure of consumption spending (40% of consumption is still made to cover basic needs, double the amount in Central European countries). In our hypothesis, the political class sets its action coordinates in relation to an implicit program set by the intelligentsia. ‘Euro-Atlantic integration’, ‘the market economy’, ‘human rights’, ‘privatization’, ‘minority rights’ – these key formulations that have made possible Romania’s getting back in close proximity to the West were uttered almost compulsively by most of the Romanian intellectual elite. The political class conformed with these imperatives depending on the flexibility of party interests, and of the capacity to comprehend the imperative of Romania's European re-integration. However, the effort seems to have been too much. Trying to solve two overwhelming tasks: national (re)construction and social progress, the intelligentsia did not manage very well the connection with the civilized world, and the political class often fell into politicianism, a phenomenon which, as we know from direct experience, is still contemporary: „By ‘politicianism we understand a type of political activity... by which a few of the citizens of a state manage to turn public institutions and services from means of working for the public good, as they should be, into means of working for personal interests” – wrote Rădulescu Motru – future president of the Romanian Academy56, in 1904. Anthony D. Smith resumes the role of elites in backwards countries, which he refers to as ethnic intellighentsia57, in relation to the ‘public good’ mentioned in the quote from Motru, along the following coordinates: the transformation of society from the stage of dependent community into an actor with political will by regaining national and civic liberties, ‘mental’ and economic recovery and unification of the territory58. It is obvious that, faced with these objectives, politicianism can mean a failure so much bigger as it compromises the ‘correct’ alignment of the backwards society with the orbit of development specific to the dominant time, to the era. One of the most interesting indirect indicators of this type of deficit (political mismanagement, i.e. politicianism) is trust in the justice system. Public perception

55 Perverse effects are ‘individual or collective effects resulting from the juxtaposition of behaviors that were not among the objectives sought by the actors’ – Raymond Boudon. (1977). Effets pervers et ordre social, Paris: PUF, 10. 56 Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, outstanding representative of Romanian culture in the first half of the 20th century, president of the Romanian Academy between 1938 and 1941. 57 Smith, op. cit., 64. 58 Smith, op. cit., 64. 38 Radu Baltasiu 20 of the justice system sends to, among other things, the degree to which social space is perceived as being ‘just’ or ‘unjust’, meaning to the quality of the distribution of power within the state and society, therefore within politics. At the beginning of 2007, 26% of Romanian trusted the justice system, considering that 62% of the magistrates polled said that ‘there is political pressure in investigations’.59 Therefore, it is not surprising to find out that trust in the political class is at a minimal level. In December 2007, 80% of Romanians believed that members of parliament represent them ‘little or very little’, being excessively concerned with their own businesses and interests. 60 The social logic of contemporary economics is accompanied by phenomena of social blockage and dissolution which, together with other researchers, we called diminished reality. Especially interesting we found to be Ritzer’s analyses regarding excessive rationality, which leads to the ‘McDonaldization of society’. In the East, diminished reality often takes the form of separation of society and administration, and of an acute deficit of doctrinary imagination and political action. If in the West reality becomes problematic due to excessive organization, systematicity, and predictibility, in the East social reality suffers from a de facto abandon by the ideologies and elites. In the context of an ideological project that is deficient at the level of the intelligentsia, with a disoriented political class, and without a properly developed middle class to ensure the ‘combustion’ in the social engine of development, the evolutions in Romanian society, no matter how bright – integration into NATO in 2004, and into the EU in 2007, the extraordinary growth of the market since 2006–2007, still run the risk of a weak social structural growth.

REFERENCES

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59 Eurobarometer published in “Justiţia e chioară (One-eyed justice)”, Gândul, 11 ianuarie 2007. 60 CURS (Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, Bucharest) poll from December 2007, published in “Conform unei cercetări CURS Traian Băsescu, un preşedinte de nota 6 (According to a CURS poll, Traian Basescu gets a D as president”, Gândul, 17 ianuarie 2008). 21 Positioning in the Logic of the World System 39

‘Interactivity’in Communication Theory”, Online: http://www.cem.itesm.mx/dacs/publicaciones/ logos/anteriores/n58/dholmes.pdf; Chauvel, Louis. (2006). Les classes moyennes à la dérive, Paris: Le Seuil. Ford, Ramona L. (1988). Work, Organization and Power. Introduction to Industrial Sociology, Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Frank, Andre Gunder. (1978). Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment, London: Macmillan Press. Friedman, Thomas. (2006). “The Taxi Driver”, in The New York Times, 1 Nov. 2006. Thomas Friedman, “The Era of Interruptions”, in Business magazin 107 (44/2006): 74. Gheţău, Vasile. (2007). Declinul demografic şi viitorul populaţiei României. O perspectivă din anul 2007 asupra populaţiei României în secolul 21, Raport (Alpha MDN, 2007), Academia Română, Institutul Naţional de Cercetări Economice, Centrul de cercetări demografice “Vladimir Trebici”. Hirschman, Albert. (1984). Essays in Trespassing. Economics to Politics and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hodson, Randy, Sullivan, Teresa A. (1994). The Social Organization of Work, Belmont: Wadsworth. John, Elster, Offe, Claus and Preuss, Ulrick K. (1998). Institutional design in postcommunist societies: rebuilding the ship at sea, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press in Liliana Pop. (2006), Democratising capitalism? The political economy of postcommunist transformations in Romania, 1989-2001, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Loader, Brian D. (ed.). (1997). The Governance of Cyberspace. Politics, technology and global restructuring, London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Lovinescu, Eugen. (1997). Istoria civilizaţiei române moderne , Bucureşti: Minerva. Mărginean, Ioan, Larionescu, Maria, Neagu, Gabriela. (2006). Constituirea clasei mijlocii în România, Bucureşti: Editura Economică. Mullins, Laurie J. (1999). Management and Organisational Behaviour, fifth edition, Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 1999. Pop, Liliana. (2006). Democratising capitalism? The political economy of postcommunist transformations in Romania, 1989-2001, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Putnam, Robert. (2000). Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon & Schuster. Ritzer, George. (2001). Explorations in Social Theory. From Metatheorizing to Rationalization, London: Sage. Smith, Anthony. (1991). National identity, University of Nevada Press, Reno. Stoker, Gerry. “Regime Theory and Urban Politics”, in David Judge, Gerry Stoker, and Harold Wolman, eds., Theories of Urban Politics (London: Sage Publications Ltd., 1995), in Richard T. LeGates, Frederic Stout, eds. (1997). The City Reader, New York: Routledge. Stone, Clarence. (1993). „Urban Regimes and the Capacity to Govern: A Political Economy Approach”, Journal of Urban Affairs 15: 1 (1993): 1-28, in Gerry Stoker, “Regime Theory and Urban Politics”, in David Judge, Gerry Stoker, and Harold Wolman, eds. (1995). Theories of Urban Politics, London: Sage Publications Ltd. in Richard T. LeGates, Frederic Stout, eds. (1997). The City Reader, New York: Routledge. Toynbee, Arnold J. (1997). Studiu asupra Istoriei. Sinteza a volumelor I-VI de D.C. Somervell, trans., Dan. A. Lăzărescu, Bucureşti: Humanitas. Toynbee, Arnold J. (2002). Studiu asupra istoriei. Sinteză a volumelor I-VI de D. C. Somervell, Bucureşti: Humanitas. Thorniley, Daniel. (February 2008). “Romania – The business outlook”, The Economist Intelligence Unit. Corporate network, electronically distributed material; Veblen, Thorstein. (1970). The Theory of Leisure Class,London: Unwin Books. Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Clas, New York, Berlin: Globusz Publishing, n.d..Online: http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/LeisureClass/00000012.htm. Zeletin, Ştefan (1991). Burghezia română. Originea şi rolul ei istoric, Bucureşti: Humanitas. 40 Radu Baltasiu 22

Wallerstein, Immanuel. (1979). The Capitalist World-Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. “Tinereţe fără educaţie şi viaţă fără de viitor”, Cotidianul, 12 septembrie 2005; “Upgrade de viaţă”, Business Magazin, 13-19 December 2006; “Est-europenii încep să pună banii «la saltea»”, Capital, 19 iunie, 2007; “Learning to live with Big Brother.”, The Economist, 27 September 2007; “Patru din cinci tineri vor să plece în străinătate. Următoarea destinaţie a muncitorilor români va fi Irlanda”, BloomBiz.ro, available at: http://www.bloombiz.ro/article--Business-Economie- Patru_din_cinci_tineri_vor_sa_plece_in_strainatate._Urmatoarea_destinatie_a_muncitorilor_r omani_va_fi_Irlanda--1250492.html (14 Decembrie 2007); “Poziţia Asociaţiei Oamenilor de Afaceri din România (AOAR) cu privire la Starea economiei româneşti – martie 1999 – Document adoptat cu ocazia reuniunii Senatului AOAR din 29 martie 1999” published at www.aoar.ro/pozitii/3/r2.htm); “Paying Taxes 2008. The Global Picture”, The World Bank, PricewaterhouseCoopers, published at: (http://www.doingbusiness.org/taxes);

FIRMS AND THEIR GROWTH IN THE GLOBALIZATION ERA

GRIGORE CIPRIAN Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest

One firm’s design and production activities and also marketing functions took place under the same roof a few decades ago. In the 1970’s, as multinational corporations started to locate labor-intensive activities in developing countries, this situation changed. Soon, due to the production and technological flows involved, it has become obvious that the organization’s internal structure is less important than the structure of the value chain in which the organization is only a node. Nowadays, different functional areas of the organization are not analyzed in their organizational context, but in a globalized business environment which is characterized by a network of interconnected organizational structures.

I. GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN. CORE AND PERIPHERAL FIRMS

1. TYPES OF VALUE CHAIN’S GOVERNANCE IN A GLOBALIZED BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

Traditionally, various functional areas of the organization are analyzed in their organizational context. The organization itself evolved towards a more complex structure proper to a kind of network of interconnected organizational structures in a globalized business environment. The organizational conditions “are often the result of global forces”1 within what is called “global value chains”. “The concept of a global value chain recognizes that the production of goods and services has become globalized. A shirt, for example, may be designed in New York, cut in India, assembled in Kenya, and sold to a consumer in Los Angeles.”2 Various parts of the final product are often manufactured in different geographic locations situated at hundreds of km distance one from another. The internal organizational structure became less important because the production and technological flows involve, often, more than one organizational

1 McCormick, Dorothy; Schmitz, Hubert (2001). Manual for Value Chain Research on Homeworkers in the Garment Industry, p. 17. 2 Ibid., p. 17.

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 41–53, Bucureşti, 2008 42 Grigore Ciprian 2 structure. The global value chain has become inter-linked organizational structures based on various flows of values within networks of organizations. The structure of the value chain in which the organization is only a part became more important than the structure or functioning of different areas within the organization. “In the past, manufacturing usually happened in one place. Large firms had their design, production, and marketing functions under one roof, or at least within easy reach of one another. (…) Even the re-emergence of multinationals corporations in the 1950s and 1960s did not change this very much. Firms establishing plants in foreign countries undertook the full range of manufacturing activities in each location.”3 By the 1970s, multinational corporations started “to locate labor-intensive activities in developing countries as part of a global restructuring and rationalization of their operations.”4 They realized that sourcing some parts of the production process in developing countries would reduce the costs. “The design, production and marketing of many products now involve a chain of activities divided among enterprises located in different places.”5 The chain is the collection of all “product’s stages of development, from its design, to its sourced raw materials and intermediate inputs, its marketing, its distribution, and its support to the final consumer.”6 Designing, purchasing raw materials, production and distribution are all inter-linked stages within the chain of value adding activities.

Chain of value adding activities

Raw Materials Production Distribution

Source: Adapted from McCormick, Dorothy; Schmitz, Hubert (2001). Op. cit., p. 18.

Services such as finance and transport “may be needed to keep the process going.”7 These are so-called “supporting services” needed at each stage of the value chain. The five stages – “design, inputs, production, wholesale, and retail / remain a handy device for understanding each step of the process.”8 There is, also, a “less

3 Ibid., p. 17. 4 Ibid., p. 17. 5 Ibid., p. 17. 6 Ibid., p. 18. 7 Ibid., p. 18. 8 Ibid., p. 18. 3 Firms and Their Growth in the Globalization Era 43 visible structure”9 of the value chain that is “made up of the flow of knowledge and expertise necessary for the physical input-output structure to function.”10 It is, actually, the input-output structure of inter-linked unique organizational capabilities which can make the difference between various interconnected organizations in terms of competitive advantage. “The flow of knowledge generally parallels the material flows, but its intensity may differ. For example, the knowledge inputs at a product’s design stage may be much greater than the material inputs; production, on the other hand, needs large quantities of materials, but in many cases requires only standard or routine knowledge.”11 We are more concerned with the intensity factor of the “flow of knowledge and expertise” that is able to transform a company from a standard or routine knowledge-based organization to a unique or greater knowledge-based one. The extent to which an organization can attract as well as generate greater knowledge inputs and outputs may have a significant impact on that organization’s capability to induce core competences as a prerequisite for generating competitive advantage. Another dimension of the value chain is its geographic spread. “Some chains are truly global, with activities taking place in many countries (…). Others are more limited, involving only a few locations in different parts of the world.”12 A UK retailer may, for instance, contract with a Romanian garment producer. “The finished goods will then be shipped directly to the UK retailer.”13 Finally, there is the dimension of the value chain in which various actors can have the power to control some or all activities making up the chain. The UK retailer from the previous example may have the power to control the way the Romanian garment manufacturer produces the garments. Another retailer, for instance, may have the power to control “the way he sells, but may be limited (indirectly controlled) by the range of goods available from wholesalers and producers.”14 “The pattern of direct and indirect control in a value chain is called its governance.”15 McCormick and Schmitz identified four main types of governance shown in the following table.

9 Ibid., p. 18. 10 Ibid., p. 18. 11 Ibid., p. 18. 12 Ibid., p. 18. 13 Ibid., p. 18. 14 Ibid., p. 19. 15 Ibid., p. 19. 44 Grigore Ciprian 4

Source: Adapted from Humphrey and Schmitz (2000) apud McCormick, Dorothy; Schmitz, Hubert (2001). Op. cit., p. 19.

The power of one organization to control all or some parts of the process of creating value along the value chain may induce advantages in terms of cost control factor. There are so-called “lead firms” that “do not merely buy goods in the market. Rather they specify what is to be produced by whom, and they monitor the performance of the producing firms. In some cases, the networks are directed, or “driven” by large producers such as transnational corporations or other large integrated industrial enterprises.”16 In the apparel industry’s value chain the situation may change as “many leading brand-name companies do no production themselves. Instead, they concentrate on design and marketing. Their strength as buyers enables them to dominate certain value chains. They determine what fabrics will be used, what styles will be produced, and in what colors.”17 Directed and/or non-directed relationships between companies govern value chains in different sectors and industries. Some organizations like the “lead firms” manage to control other companies and, consequently, they are able to induce directed relationships. Other organizations “form networks in which no one firm or group of firms exercises undue control over the others.”18 These are non-directed networks.

16 Ibid., p. 20. 17 Ibid., p. 20. 18 Ibid., p. 19. 5 Firms and Their Growth in the Globalization Era 45

2. CORE AND PERIPHERAL FIRMS. A CASE STUDY

Calling back to the second dimension of value chain, its geographic spread, we recall the distinction McCormick has made between those chains which are truly global and the chains which are but regional chains as long as a lead firm gets control over companies located in other different countries on a certain area (a region). The theory of core-periphery relationship defines the leading firm calling it core-company and the other firms which are under its control appears to get but a peripheral, highly dependent position within the value chains. Figure below describes that type of value chain constellation.

P

P C P

P

C = Core-firm or “lead-firm” P = Peripheral firm

The firms operate like actors getting power to control at different degree the same value chain, as McCormick himself underlines it. The core-firms have not only the greatest power of control they can exert over the highest number of activities making up the chain, but they come to distinguish themselves by their geographic reach that is by overarching geographic control of the value chain constellation. Let’s take the example of OMV in Romania. “OMV bought a 51% stake in Petrom for EUR 1.6 billion late 2004, becoming the largest oil and gas group in Central and Eastern Europe.”19 Petrom became part of a wider value chain controlled by OMV. Moreover, Petrom became a so-called “peripheral firm” as part of the value chain controlled by OMV. The issue of considering one company as being either a peripheral firm or a core firm in an economy was addressed by Eric Nilsson, professor at California State University San Bernardino, Department of Economics. He argues that “the core includes the large giant firms. These core firms are typically able to avoid extreme competitive environments and, as a result, earn higher profit rates than average. The periphery includes the other firms: small and

19 Privatization Barometer. Available from: http://www.privatizationbarometer.net/news.php?id=7943 46 Grigore Ciprian 6 medium sized firms which face high levels of competition and which typically earn fairly modest profits. A single industry might have within it firms from the core and firms from the periphery. The core firms typically dominate the industry and sell the most profitable product lines within the industry. The peripheral firms in the industry might be stuck in relatively unprofitable product lines and are often small niche players in the market.”20 Nellson’s idea is that the core firms dominate the market while the peripheral firms are dominated by the market. The second observation is that the core firms are really capable to develop and promote their own policies while the peripheral firms are almost unable to promote their own policies within a certain value chain constellation. Petrom might be regarded as a peripheral firm in a globalized business environment dominated by large giant firms like Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Chevron. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that OMV is not among the biggest petroleum companies in the international market. OMV might be rather considered as a company aspiring to become a lead-firm. OMV is, actually, pursuing a strategy of consolidation by acquiring firms like Petrom in order to secure its position in a market dominated by large giant firms like the ones above mentioned. OMV proved to be successful in its policy of consolidating its value chain of integrated activities. Petrom became a strategic node within an integrated network of companies and activities like exploration, production, distribution and retailing of OMV’s product portfolio. Petrom is the “anchor firm” acting as a key catalyst in Southeastern Europe: “Following the acquisition of a majority in Petrom, Romania and Austria are the main sources of our oil and gas production, and together account for about 75% of our output of 338,000 boe/d. Due to the massive increase in production brought about by the Petrom acquisition, we have already surpassed the target of doubling output to 160,000 boe/d by 2008.”21 The net profit reported by OMV as a group in the first three months of 2006 was 430 million EUR and OMV Petrom generated 251 million EUR (58% of the OMV Group’s net profit). In the same time, Petrom’s sales accounted for 20.7% comparing with OMV (including Petrom). The conclusion is that the majority of the positive financial results of OMV Group are due to Petrom’s activity. Petrom managed to generate more than half of the OMV group’s net profit.

20 Nilsson, Eric. Core and Periphery in Capitalism: Power, Profits, and Human Flourishing. Available from: http://economics.csusb.edu/faculty/nilsson/nilsson.htm 21 OMV’s Annual Report 2005. Available from OMV’s corporate website, p. 12. 7 Firms and Their Growth in the Globalization Era 47

Table – Millions EUR/USD – Company Sales Net Profit Profitability Petrom (Euro) 893 251 28,1% OMV (including Petrom) (Euro) 4,298 430 10% Rompetrol ($) 504 –23 – Royal Dutch Shell ($) 75,964 7,000 9,2% British Petroleum ($) 67,082 5,265 7,8% Conoco Phillips ($) 47,900 3,290 6,8% Exxon Mobil ($) 88,980 8,400 9,4% Chevron ($) 54,000 4,000 7,4% Source: Companies’ Reports

Sales in the first three months of Profitability in the first three 2006 months of 2006

30% Petrom Petrom 6000 20% Millions 4000 EUR 2000 OMV - 10% OMV - including 0 including 0% Sales Petrom Profitability Petrom

Petrom proved to be much profitable than OMV as a group in the first three months of 2006. Petrom’s profitability figure of 28,1% comparing with OMV Group’s (10%) combined with the fact that Romania and Austria are the main sources of the oil and gas production, accounting for about 75% of the output of 338,000 boe/d proved that Petrom has become a major source of competitive advantage for the entire OMV group. Petrom is more than a peripheral firm within OMV’s value chain. It has become a so-called “anchor” firm for the entire OMV as a group. Assuming that Petrom would not have been part of the OMV Group, than the profitability of the OMV – excluding Petrom – would fall to 5,2%. Moreover, more than 50% of the actual profitability of OMV (including Petrom) is due to Petrom’s contribution. It means that 20,7% representing the contribution of Petrom (the proportion of Petrom’s sales in OMV’s sales (including Petrom) for the first three months of 2006) generated half of the profitability of the entire OMV group. 48 Grigore Ciprian 8

Table

– Millions EUR – (continuea)

Company Sales Net Profit Profitability (%) Petrom 893 251 28,1 OMV 3,405 179 5,2 (excluding Petrom) OMV 4,298 430 10 (including Petrom) Source: Companies’ Reports

100%

Sales Net Profit Profitability OMV – including Petrom Petrom

“As importantly, the 80–20 ratio seems to hold true for many input/outputs, causes/consequences, or efforts/results.”22 It also holds true for our example in which, on the one side, Petrom’s contribution (sales reported by Petrom) represented 20,7% of the OMV’s sales as a group (including Petrom). On the other side, keeping in mind the idea of 80–20 ratio, the results showed that Petrom generated 50% of the OMV group’s profitability (including Petrom). “Richard Koch, author of The 80/20 Principle, suggests that the key to earning more and working less is to pick the right thing to do and only those things that add the highest value.”23 It seems to us that OMV “picked” the right “thing” to do, which is Petrom. The Romanian company proved to be able to generate one of the highest values comparing with the other companies being part of OMV’s group.

22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 9 Firms and Their Growth in the Globalization Era 49

The conclusion is that OMV relies on Petrom’s capacities. The fact that OMV is pursuing a strategy of consolidation by incorporating firms like Petrom shows that the Austrian corporation has not yet become a so-called “lead firm” on the overall market like others, e.g. Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum and Exxon Mobil. Firms like OMV need “anchor” firms, i.e. activities and markets being controlled by local firms like Petrom in certain local markets, in order to consolidate their positions and, therefore, increase their market shares as prerequisites for becoming “lead firms”. Firms like Petrom are, actually, acting instruments by which corporations like OMV would become “lead firms”. When we change the reference frame taking into account the position of such firms not only as “actors” within the value chain, but particularly within the overall economy, where they share with other similar firms a common sector of activity, we can conclude that firms like OMV and\or Petrom are illustrating a special type of firms. That is why we notice more than two sectors of the capitalist economic system as Eric Nilsson argued. There are, actually, three sectors as follows: ƒ The sector of the core firms made up of “giant firms that dominate particular industries and the economy (and have divisions in many different industries)”24; ƒ The sector of the peripheral firms comprising the majority of the small and medium sized firms in the economy; ƒ The sector of the transitional firms which is made up of the following possible types of companies: o Corporations aspiring to become high ranked companies among the similar firms upon the market; o Corporations aspiring to become high ranked firms as to their profitability compared to the profitability of another similar firms; o Corporations aspiring to consolidate their positions and, therefore, increase their market shares as prerequisites for becoming “lead firms”; o Corporations aspiring to become the “anchor” firms as a key catalyst throughout an area like that of a Southeastern European one. We can conclude that such a difference is owed to the effect of the positions the two firms get within a wider value chain. Hypothetically, we can say that their difference is due to the effect of being “lead firm” compared with getting but a certain, rather peripheral position in the chain. The conclusion is that the insertion of a firm in a value chain does not annul the dependency effect upon a firm following its insertion in a given value chain. We can emphasize that a firm like Petrom is not properly speaking a peripheral firm although it is not neither a core firm. What makes from a certain firm a core-firm is its dominant role in the constellation of the firms similar by their own nature and economic content. “The common characteristic of the

24 Nilsson, Eric. Op. cit., p. 165. 50 Grigore Ciprian 10 members of the periphery is that they are not giant: most are very small. They have generally failed to achieve any dominant position within their industry”25. We may conclude that Romanian company has the significance of a “leverage point” in the value chain of the entire Southeastern and Central European oil market, which locate Romania itself in a strategic position for the entire region.

II. MAPPING A VALUE CHAIN

1. HOW TO MAP A VALUE CHAIN

McCormick and Schmitz argue that the value chain analysis can provide an understanding of the way the producers of developing countries can acquire production capabilities. Once they gain access to a chain’s lead firm, McCormick argues that “they are pushed to upgrade their production capability very quickly.”26 Kaplan and Norton used the concept of synergy to designate such an effect of upgrading the production capability very quickly once a certain producer gains access to a lead firm. The production flow and workers’ skills along with the best practices and hands-on advice are transmitted across the borders that previously kept on separated those firms. Another area wherein the value chain analysis proved to be useful is that of “understanding the distribution along the chain”.27 As long as you come to know “how and by whom a chain is governed”, you may understand, by consequence, “the distribution of gain among firms along that chain.”28 Value chain analysis allow us also to find “leverage points for policy and organizing initiatives”29, that is, it allows us to understand the “workings of a chain” which help us further “to identify levers where policy and/or organizing could be used to improve the distribution of gains. Value chain analysis can help us to answer questions like “who has the power to change things?”30 or “which actors are the right ones to pressure?”31 Is there any reason to look at the lead firm also as the ones which has entitled to exert the right pressure in order to get the suppliers “to raise their labors and environmental standards”32? Finally, the value chain analysis appears to be helpful for “identifying funnels for technical assistance”33: “Multilateral and bilateral donor agencies wanting to provide effective technical

25 Ibid. 26 McCormick, Dorothy; Schmitz, Hubert (2001). Op. cit. p. 22. 27 Ibid., p. 22. 28 Ibid., p. 22. 29 Ibid., p. 22. 30 Ibid., p. 22. 31 Ibid., p. 22. 32 Ibid., p. 22. 33 Ibid., p. 22. 11 Firms and Their Growth in the Globalization Era 51 assistance to developing country producers are beginning to look at value chains. Their idea is to combine technical assistance with connectivity.”34 The value chain analysis makes us rather optimistic about the integration process no matter where it brings about. It proved to be helpful for understanding issues such as “market access, skill acquisition, labor standard and many others.”35 Let’s focus now on the methodology of value chain analysis such as McCormick and Schmitz worked it out to be of use for those who want to carry out researches based on such a theory. The examination of a value chain starts by mapping a chain that gives us a “visual representation of the connection between the actors”36 Mapping value chains, in its simplest form, “is merely a flow diagram.”37 It shows us the size of different actors in the chain, the degree of importance of different connection by comparing them with each other, the “bottlenecks and leverage points.”38 Constructing a map is depending on the knowledge available to you about enterprises and workers “whose place in the global economy you try to capture.”39 Which are the steps in constructing a map? McCormick and Schmitz consider the following steps which are to be run through whenever somebody resorts to such a type of analysis: ƒ Having a clear cut starting question. McCormick argues that if the question you are trying to answer by doing a value chain analysis cannot be understood straight away by somebody else and, on the contrary, “s/he only understand it after explaining it for 30 minutes, you do not have a clear question.”40 Here is a type of question driving such an investigation: “what is the scope for local strategies to improve the learning opportunities of garment homeworkers in our regions? How do wage levels in our region compare with wages in competing regions?”41 Of course, one of the most significant question driving an investigation based on refers to the effect that are brought up by the insertion of a firm in different chains bring advantages in terms of skill acquisition and income.”42 Are these advantages fostering both the lead firm and the new inserted firm in the chain? Is an advantage like this spreading over the entire population of the area wherein the new inserted firm is located?

34 Ibid., p. 23. 35 Ibid., p. 23. 36 Ibid., p. 39. 37 Ibid., p. 39. 38 Ibid., p. 39. 39 Ibid., p. 39. 40 Ibid., p. 39. 41 Ibid., p. 39. 42 Ibid., p. 39. 52 Grigore Ciprian 12

ƒ Mapping the value chain. A value chain is made up of the activities carried out locally, their connections to activities elsewhere and to the market. To elaborate the final map “the quantification of key variables, identification of strategic and non-strategic activities”43 are requested. Finally, we sha;; have the following types of maps: – A map regarding the “number of the enterprises in each stage”44; – A map of the “average earnings in various part of the chain”45 – A map showing “the number of the workers in each stage of the chain”46. This map can be read from the top or bottom. Such a reading will discover us three chains: – The first one, that of the positions occupied by different stages of the chain and displaying the feeding of goods and activities from local producers via wholesalers to retailers; – A second chain that is made up of the selling activities of producers “directly to the retailers who drive chain”47 – A third chain is that of the “vertical integration from retailing back to production”48. McCormick adds the fourth line connection between “parent company and subsidiary”49 We are driven to take into account the difference between a chain connecting the enterprises placed in different stages of the chain and another chain illustrating the profitability of the same enterprises. The first type of chain portrays the market power of the firms (enterprises). The second type of chain shows the profitability rank of the firms. It, often, happens that a powerful firm on the market generates lower levels of profitability comparing with a firm having weaker market position than the first one. An outstanding example is given by comparing OMV (the Austrian petroleum company) with Petrom (a Romanian petroleum company recently acquired by OMV). The idea is that, before acquisition, OMV proved to be more powerful on the market than Petrom. The last one, after the acquisition, proved to be more profitable than OMV. The financial results for the first three months of 2006 showed that the profitability of Petrom was 28.1% comparing with 10% reported by OMV, including Petrom. The conclusion is that a gap between the market rank of a company and its profitability rank might emerge revealing an over exploitive relationship among the firms integrated within the same value chain. The most powerful firm may over exploit the most profitable company within a certain

43 Ibid., p. 40. 44 Ibid., p. 40. 45 Ibid., p. 40. 46 Ibid., p. 40. 47 Ibid., pp. 40–41. 48 Ibid., p. 41. 49 Ibid., p. 41. 13 Firms and Their Growth in the Globalization Era 53 value chain. So, asking “who has the power to produce value” is not the same with asking “who has the power to change things”.

Diagram A Diagram B

OMV Petrom Sales = 4298 millions EUR Profitability = 28.1%

Petrom OMV Sales = 892 millions EUR Profitability = 10%

The two diagrams show two types of dependency between OMV and Petrom analyzed within a value chain: o The sales-based dependency relationship in which OMV has a dominant position in the value chain as this company reported higher sales comparing with Petrom. (see diagram A); o The profitability-based dependency relationship in which Petrom has a dominant position as this company reported a higher profitability comparing with OMV. (see diagram B) The conclusion is that Petrom is conspicuously an “anchor” firm for OMV Group in terms of profitability whereas OMV is an “anchor” firm for Petrom in terms of sales’ volumes.

REFERENCES

Nilsson, Eric. Core and Periphery in Capitalism: Power, Profits, and Human Flourishing. Available at: http://economics.csusb.edu/faculty/nilsson/nilsson.htm. McCormick, Dorothy, Schmitz, Hubert. (2001). Manual for Value Chain Research on Homeworkers in the Garment Industry. OMV’s Annual Report. (2005). Available from OMV’s corporate website. Privatization Barometer. Available at: from:http://www.privatizationbarometer.net/news.php?id=7943.

54 Grigore Ciprian 14

ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGIES IN A GLOBAL ERA

CIPRIAN BĂDESCU

Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest

One state’s ability to employ capital and labor at improved productivity rates has a double outgrowth: it raises its citizens’ standard of living, but it also improves its competitiveness in the realm of international relations. Such an output depends on the way that every state negotiates with transnational companies. Being mentioned just in passing a few decades ago, international companies have come to play a central role in the international business environment. A rapidly changing context has given birth to a new concept, the organization’s strategy, which entwines economic analysis with military science.

I. UNDERSTANDING THE MODERN FIRM’S STRATEGIES: THEORIES AND CONCEPTS

1. ORGANIZATION’S STRATEGY AND STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

“The traditional view of international relations holds that the object of study is the behaviors of states towards other states, and the outcome of such behaviors for states: whether they are better or worse off, less or more powerful or secure. Transnational corporations may be mentioned in passing, but they are seen as adjuncts or instruments of state policy. Our contention is that transnational corporations should now be put centre stage; that their corporate strategies in choosing host countries as partners are already having great influence on the development of global political economy, and will continue increasingly to do so.”1 Such a context requires and makes possible to reconsider the relationship between the two concepts of the organizational analysis: firms and strategy. While the concept of the firm arose within the economic analysis, the notion of the strategy passed in the field of the organizational analysis being borrowed from the military

1 According to Susan Strange, “States, Firms, and Diplomacy”, in Jeffry A. Frieden, David A. Lake, eds., “International Political Economy. Perspectives on Global Power and Wealth”, London, 2000, p. 66

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 55–77, Bucureşti, 2008 56 Ciprian Bădescu 2 science. Having the two concepts put together there emerged a new one: the organization’s strategy. Organizational strategy is a “«game plan» management for positioning the company in its chosen market arena, competing successfully, pleasing customers, and achieving good business performance.”2 The similarity between the organization’s analysis perspective and military analysis perspective appears to us as a more than obvious one. Of course, the new perspective resulted from the synergy effect of getting together those two separate perspectives is much more than a mere addition of them, as the whole is much more than the sum of parts. “An organization's strategy deals with how to make management's strategic vision for the company a reality - it represents the game plan for moving the company into an attractive business position and building a sustainable competitive advantage.”3 Organization’s strategy, therefore, is a process of improving organization’s strategic management function. “The term strategic management refers to the managerial process of forming a strategic vision, setting objectives, crafting a strategy, implementing and executing the strategy, and then over time initiating whatever corrective adjustments in the vision, objectives, strategy, and execution are deemed appropriate.”4 Therefore, organizational strategy is a continuing process of positioning firm in the market for facilitating the best use of both organizational (i.e. internal) and external resources for achieving competitive advantage. The term “competitive advantage”, on its turn, refers to “the strategies, skills, knowledge, resources or competencies that differentiate a business from its competitors.”5 There is a relationship between organizational strategy, strategic management and competitive advantage as the organizational strategic process involves all organizational resources, skills, knowledge and competences used in connection with present organizational positioning for moving towards a desired state of the business in order to build and sustain competitive advantages. Thus, the organizational strategy is a continuous process of searching the best options for achieving sustainable competitive advantages. The firm exists not only for generating maximum returns for its stakeholders, but, also, as a “vehicle” for generating sustained competitive advantages, i.e. securing returns at higher rates comparing to its competitors. The organizational strategy is, also, a continuous process of fitting the internal organizational resources and capabilities

2 According to Thompson, Jr., Arthur A.; Strickland III, A. J. (1999). “Strategic Management – Concepts and Cases”. International Edition: Irwin McGraw-Hill 3 Online Learning System. (2003). McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Available from: http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072443715/student_view0/glossary.html 4 Ibid. 5Canada’s Business and Consumer Site (http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/insof- sdf.nsf/en/so03148e.html) 3 Organizational Strategies in a Global Era 57 with the external opportunities and threats. The strategic fit plays a vital role in crafting, implementing and executing company’s strategies. “Strategic fit indicates how well the firm's mission and strategies fit its internal capabilities and its external environment.”6

2. A THEORETICAL CLUSTER OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT THEORIES: THE PIONEERS OF THE NEW PERSPECTIVE

When an interest is arising for the development of a new perspective in the dynamic of science, there emerge also the interest to find out who are the most influential initiators and promoters of that perspective. They appear to be the agents of making us aware of that perspective itself. The most influential pioneers in strategic management are considered to be Alfred Chandler, Philip Selznick, Igor Ansoff, and Peter Drucker.7 Alfred Chandler considered that a long-term organizational strategy “was necessary to give a company structure, direction, and focus.”8 He pointed to one of the main key elements of the organizational strategy, i.e. “determination of the basic long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise (…).”9 Philip Selznick, on his turn, argued that it should be a connection between internal, organizational influencing factors and external environment. This idea originated the “SWOT Analysis” developed by “Learned, Andrews, and others at the Harvard Business School General Management Group.”10 SWOT Analysis is a comparative assessment based on balancing strengths and weaknesses as internal, organizational influencing factors, on one side, and opportunities and threats as influencing factors coming from external, business environment, on the other side. Igor Ansoff, additionally, almost reinvented the vocabulary of strategy, “developing a strategy grid that compared market penetration strategies, product development strategies, market development strategies and horizontal and vertical integration and diversification strategies.”11 He pointed out that the organization should systematically develop and follow one of these strategies for leveraging organizational resources and achieving sustained competitive advantages. Ansoff developed, also, the method of “gap analysis” emphasizing the importance of

6 Power, D. J. (2005). PlanningSkills.COMsm. Source: http://planningskills.com/glossary/84.php 7 Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia .(2005). “Strategic Management”, Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_management 8 Ibid. 9 Chandler, Alfred. (1966). “Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of Industrial Enterprise”, p. 16 apud “Economic Geography Glossary”. Source: http://faculty.washington.edu/ krumme/gloss/s.html 10 Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia. (2005). “Strategic Management”, op. cit. 11 Ibid. 58 Ciprian Bădescu 4 bridging the gap “between where we are currently and where we would like to be, then [you may] develop what he called <>.”12 Peter Drucker, another pioneer in strategic management, emphasized the strategic importance of organizational objectives. Any firm should clarify its objectives, according to his theoretical approach. Otherwise the organization would face difficulties in developing and implementing a certain strategic direction. He developed his famous theory called “management by objectives (MBO)”13. The organization should, firstly, develop a set of clear objectives and, then, articulate the entire organizational activity according to these objectives. Drucker predicted the emergence of so-called “knowledge worker” acting in non-hierarchical, team- based working processes. The rise of “intellectual capital” is related to the new concept of “knowledge worker”. Up to this point of presentation, we can say: in order that a firm should consider itself a modern unity, i.e. a unity capable to compete to any other comparable units, it has to transmute the new paradigm that requests from its personnel to use a team-based working process, a SWOT analysis as a tool for the staff orientation, a management by objectives, a “gap analysis”, a strategy grid, into an appropriate way (pattern) of thinking on the organization, its problems and internal processes, and to adopt many other managerial instruments as the ones presented bellow. Such an instrument is, also, the portfolio theory developed by Markowitz.

3. GROWTH AND PORTFOLIO THEORY

The key concept such a theory relies on is that of the firm’s portfolio. A portfolio, în the vision of the modern portfolio theory, is a collection of investments or financial assets. “Modern Portfolio Theory”, developed by Harry Markowitz, seems to be preoccupied of “how rational investors will use diversification to optimize their portfolios, and how an asset should be priced given its risk relative to the market as a whole.”14 The rational investor is related to the concept of “homo economicus” (…) seen as “rational” in the sense that well-being as defined by the utility function is optimized given perceived opportunities.”15 Markowitz’ portfolio theory states that a broad portfolio of financial assets induces lower risks. The rationale of “modern portfolio theory” was extended to

12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia. (2005). “Modern Portfolio Theory”, Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_investor 15 Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia. (2005). “Homo Economicus”, Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_investor 5 Organizational Strategies in a Global Era 59 include operating division portfolios. The corporation can be seen as a portfolio of operating divisions, each one having its own revenues, costs, objectives and strategic directions. When a corporation enlarges its number of operating divisions as an extended portfolio, its capability to gain a competitive advantage may increase. Here we are confronted with another group of competitive advantage theories, focused on organizational competence and the competitive advantage of a certain firm.

4. CORE COMPETENCES AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

Firms should capitalize those unique organizational capabilities in order to gain competitive advantages. Willing to explain such a process, C. K Prahalad and Gary Hamel introduced the concept of “core competency” defined as “an area of specialized expertise that is the result of harmonizing complex streams of technology and work activity."16 A core competence is referring to a process of “employing” “knowledge, skills, attributes, and behavioral traits required for individual and organizational success.”17 Core competences “can be anything, from product development to employee dedication.”18 A firm’s core competence should normally bring in long-term advantage to the company as a prerequisite for achieving sustainable competitive advantages. Core competence provides “potential access to a large variety of markets, increases perceived customer benefits and it is hard for competitors to imitate.”19 Core competences differentiate a company strategically, i.e. make firm’s presence unique in the market. Individual and team’s abilities to perform different tasks within the firm are not by themselves organizational core competences. Organizational capability of aggregating and leveraging all of these abilities, “where synergy is created that has sustainable value and broad applicability"20 generate core competences. Michael Porter, the most influential strategist, introduced many new concepts, frameworks, theories used for explaining why some organizations are more competitive than others and why some nations became more competitive than others. He wrote one of the most influential treaties on the competitive advantages of nations: “The Competitive Advantage of Nations”.

16 Hamel, Gary; Prahalad, C. K. .(1990). “The Core Competence of the Corporation”, Harvard Business Review, vol. 68, no. 3, May-June. (1990). cited in Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia, “Core Competence”, Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_competency 17 Competences Model, University of Rochester. (2004). Available from: http://www.rochester.edu/working/hr/performancemgt/competency.html 18 Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia. (2005). Core Competence, Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_competency 19 Ibid. 20 Gallon, Stillman, and Coates. (1995). cited in Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia, 2005. op. cit. 60 Ciprian Bădescu 6

5. NATIONS AND COMPETITION

“Nations don’t compete. Companies compete. Nations can make it hard or easy for them to do so.”21 The principal aim of a nation is to raise the standard of living for its citizens. The ability of any nation to employ capital and labor at improved productivity rates is the key issue when addressing the problem of competition. Nations do have a growing role in sourcing skills and knowledge that underpin competitive advantage within a globalized and more international business environment. Porter argues that the intensity of domestic competition is a key issue in fueling success on a global stage.22 Porter introduces the concept of “national diamond” which is made up of four factors: ¾ “Factor conditions” – data communication, research activities performed by various institutions, specialized skills available in a particular industry sector or field of activity. ¾ “Demand conditions” – A head start of any industry or economic sector in a globalized business environment is based on a strong level of domestic competition.23 ¾ “Related and supporting industries” – “Industries which are strong in a particular country are often surrounded by successful related industries.”24 ¾ “Firm strategy, structure, and rivalry” – “Domestic competition fuels growth and competitive strength.”25 Porter refers, also, to the concept of “clusters of industries” as to the way how nations succeed in terms of competitiveness: “Nations succeed not in isolated industries, but in clusters of industries connected through vertical and horizontal relationships.”26

6. PORTER’S FIVE FORCES

Firms as well as nations, nations as well as firms, succeed only if they make use of the particular management strategies and strategy-focused organizations within their own internal dynamics. Porter refers to three such “generic strategies”:

21 Porter, Michael. (1998). “The Competitive Advantage of Nations”. 2nd Ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan cited by “Business – The Ultimate Resource”. (2002) London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. p. 900. 22 According to “Business – The Ultimate Resource”, op. cit. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., p. 900. 25 Ibid., p. 900. 26 Porter, Michael. Op. cit. 7 Organizational Strategies in a Global Era 61

¾ “Cost leadership” – Firms pursuing a “cost leadership” strategy should employ resources and capabilities in order to become the lowest-cost producer in the marketplace. ¾ “Differentiation” – Companies pursuing a “differentiation” strategy should focus their energies on providing something special, different or extra. ¾ “Focus” – Firms pursuing a “focus” strategy should target a niche market. The “Five Forces” model describes the relationships between competitors within an industry, potential competitors, suppliers, buyers and solutions for minimizing potential risks induced by different competitors in the market as well as leveraging potential benefits by exploiting resources and capabilities for achieving competitive advantages. The company should choose the right generic strategy at the right time. “These generic strategies are driven by five competitive forces that the organization has to take into account.”27 These are: ¾ “Bargaining Power of Buyers” – Firm has to take into account that buyers may have the power to influence pricing and, consequently, reduce firm’s margins. ¾ “Bargaining Power of Suppliers” – Firm’s suppliers may have the power to impose their own distribution policies and, consequently, influence firm’s pricing. ¾ “Threats of Substitutes Products or Services” – Some firm’s competitors may offer similar products or services in the market. Thus, the company would have to reduce the prices of its products or services in order to maintain its competitiveness in terms of pricing. ¾ “Rivalry among existing firms” – Some companies may compete in markets with high level of competition. Some firms have to make further investments in marketing and research. Others should reduce its profit margins in order to sustain their competitiveness. ¾ “Potential entrants” – For instance, some firms may compete in emerging markets with increasing rates of return. New firms might enter these markets due to the promising perspectives. Therefore, there is a high probability of increasing the level of rivalry in the emergent markets in the near future. The firm should take into account all of these competitive forces as a condition for positioning itself in the market. Moreover, companies should “ask how the five forces can help to rewrite industry rules in the organization’s favor.”28

27 “Business – The Ultimate Resource”, p. 1038. 28 Ibid., p. 1039. 62 Ciprian Bădescu 8

PORTER’S FIVE FORCES MODEL

Source: “The Power of Perfect Strategy”, “Michael Porter Five Forces Model”, Available from: http://www.brs-inc.com/porter.asp

7. STRATEGIC VS. OPERATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

The old strategic paradigm emphasized the role of productivity, increasing market share and lowering costs as conditions for achieving sustainable competitive advantages. Managerial methods and concepts like total quality management, benchmarking, outsourcing and process re-engineer were seen as “key drivers for operational improvements”29 in the 1980s. Porter argues that managers failed to distinguish between strategic and operational effectiveness.30 The strategic factors appears to be the mainly ones able to induce effectiveness on the firm’s behavior, resulting in the comparative differentiation on the market, i.e. entailing the comparative advantages of that firm when compared with the others of the same profile. In Porter’s view, firms should achieve differentiation based on the following strategic factors:

29 Ibid. p. 1039. 30 Ibid. p. 1039 apud Porter, Michael. (1980). Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. London: Free Press. 9 Organizational Strategies in a Global Era 63

¾ The unique capabilities and activities of the firm, i.e. those capabilities and activities which are difficult to be imitated. Strategy rests on those unique capabilities and activities, “based on customers’ needs, customers’ accessibility, or the variety of a company’s products or services.”31 ¾ “The company’s activities must fit and link together. In terms of value chain, one link is prone to imitation but with a chain, [therefore] imitation is very difficult.”32 ¾ Companies should make a “conscious choice not to do others (…) Trade- offs deliberately limit what a company offers. The essence of strategy lies in what not to do.”33 If the firm chooses to be a “jack of all trades”, it will be “lost” in the mass.34 We are on the fringe of invoking a parameter allowing us to measure the corporate success. In the view of J. Kay such a parameter could be the value added interpreted as a value chain.

8. ADDED VALUE AND CORPORATE SUCCESS

John Kay, Professor of Economics at London Business School, refers to the concept of added value as a “key measure of corporate success (…)”35 He “took the idea of the value chain to a financial level claiming.”36 The added value, at corporate level, is “the difference between the (comprehensively accounted) value of a firm’s output and the (comprehensively accounted) cost of the firm’s inputs.”37 Added value is “both the proper motivation of corporate activity and the measure of its achievement.”38 Assembling a collection of assets that would add value to the business is a key issue in mobilizing firm’s core competences. “He claims that there are three types of capabilities that can do it: innovation, reputation and organizational structure.”39 Before focusing on the value chain concept, we shall insist on the idea of the strategic process and on the different types of strategies as H. Mintzberg put them on.

31 Ibid. p. 1039. 32 Ibid. p. 1039. 33 Ibid. p. 1039. 34 According to “Business – The Ultimate Resource”. Op. cit. 35 Kay, John. (1993). “Foundations of Corporate Success – How Business Strategies Add Value”. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., p. 19. 36 Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia. (2005). “Strategic Management”. Op. cit. 37 Kay, John. (1993). Op. cit. p. 19. 38 Ibid. p. 19. 39 Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia. (2005). Strategic Management. Op. cit. 64 Ciprian Bădescu 10

9. THE NATURE OF STRATEGIC PROCESS

Henry Mintzberg refers to five types of strategies: ¾ “Strategy as plan – a direction, guide, course of action – intention rather than actual; ¾ Strategy as ploy – a maneuver intended to outwit a competitor; ¾ Strategy as pattern – a consistent pattern of past behavior – realized rather than intended; ¾ Strategy as position – location of brands, products, or companies within the conceptual framework of consumers or other stakeholders – strategy determined primarily by factors outside the firm; ¾ Strategy as perspective – strategy determined primarily by a master strategist.”40 Thus, there are multiple facets of organizational strategy. The strategy is a continuous process of adjusting organization’s internal resources and capabilities to external, business environment. The nature of strategic process can, also, change as the strategy can be regarded in five different ways, according to Mintzberg. The organizational strategy can be seen as positioning, emphasizing the importance of brands and products within the conceptual framework of consumers. The main problem for a strategist is to make from the firm’s brand an important part of the conceptual framework of the consumers, as if they could not think any longer of certain products but in terms of brands the firm created and distributed on the symbolic market of the brands. This type of strategy is rather influenced by factors outside of the firm. Strategy as plan, on its turn, is rather intentional in its nature, focusing on providing directions, course of actions. Strategy as ploy deals with competition, providing ways of outwitting competitors. Finally, strategy as pattern is less intentional in its nature, being rather focused on past behaviors. Such a strategy reveals the great importance of the cultural environment of a firm as a key factor of its success and legitimates a cultural approach of the firm and even of the strategic management. It has been frequently in the last century that a firm looked to achieve success on the market by creating top-down, in the uphill of the process, not only certain expectancies but also even customs, sustainable habitudes among the people, so that the firm’s products to become sustainable needs, as if they emerged from a proper way of life. Constantinos Markides, also, reexamined the complex nature of strategic planning itself. Strategy is “an on-going, never-ending, integrated process requiring continuous reassessment and reformation.”41

40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 11 Organizational Strategies in a Global Era 65

J. Moncrieff (1999) also refers to strategic planning. “He recognized that strategy is partially deliberate and partially unplanned. The unplanned element comes from two sources: emergent strategies (result from the emergence of opportunities and threats in the environment) and strategies in action (ad hoc actions by many people from all parts of the organization).”42

II. THE PROCESS OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

1. WHAT IS A STRATEGY?

In order to understand what a strategy means we need to answer first to a question like this one: what is a strategic management process? This section is structured based on three inter-related stages of strategic management process as follows: ¾ Strategy Formulation Process ¾ Strategy Content ¾ Strategy in Action Strategic management seen as a continuous process of adjusting organizational resources and unique capabilities to external business environment will be discussed based on a structured approach to strategic planning. Organizational strategy is seen as a continuing process based on three inter-related stages as follows: ¾ Strategy Formulation Process – It is the first stage of strategic process. The purpose of strategy formulation process is about assessing the followings: o Strategic Intent – Any organization should formulate its intentions. “Without an underlying intent, strategy lacks an overall sense of direction and there is no reason to choose one direction rather than another.”43 o Strategic context – The analysis of both internal and external environment provides a first insight into the real life of the organization. It is the starting point before going further with formulating strategic choices. o Strategic Options – It provides the link to strategic action. Which strategic options will the firm choose in order to fulfill its strategic

42 Ibid. 43 Macmillan, Hugh; Tampoe, Mahen. (2000). Strategic Management – Process, Content, and Implementation, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 64. 66 Ciprian Bădescu 12

intent? The answer to this question is the nexus of potential strategic directions for business development. ¾ Strategy Content – It is about “strategies that emerge from the process and constitute a blueprint of desirable actions that the organization should take to secure its future.”44 ¾ Strategy in Action – It is the last stage of the entire strategic process. Strategy in Action is about implementing what was conceived within the precedent stages of the strategic process, i.e. strategy formulation process and strategy content. The next three sections will highlight some of the most significant concepts, methods and techniques used for formulating each stage of the strategic process.

2. “STRATEGY FORMULATION PROCESS” AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS

The strategy formulation process45 is a structured approach of strategic thinking conceiving the future state of the firm. This process should be “tailored to the current needs of the organization.”46 The strategy formulation process has several characteristics as follows: ¾ The strategy/process considers the company as a whole; ¾ There is a long-term approach when formulating the strategic process; ¾ Strategic thinking should “address both the relationship of the enterprise with its external and its own capabilities and resources.”47 The strategy formulation process has three main “logical elements”: strategic intent, strategic assessment and strategic choice.

2.1. STRATEGIC INTENT

“Strategic intent is concerned with the ends and purposes of the enterprise and combines a vision of the future with the intent to make that vision a reality.”48 Strategic intent is a way of reconciling firm’s end to its means.49 Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad argue that strategic intent has three attributes as follows: ¾ “Sense of Direction”: Strategic intent is a “view of the future conveying a unifying and personalizing sense of direction.”50

44 Ibid. p. 163. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. p. 63. 47 Ibid. p. 63. 48 Ibid. p. 70. 49 According to Hamel, Gary and Prahalad, C.K. Available from: http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_hamel_prahalad_strategic_intent.html 50 Ibid. 13 Organizational Strategies in a Global Era 67

¾ “Sense of Discovery”: “A strategic intent is differentiated; it implies a competitively unique point of view about the future.”51 ¾ “Sense of Destiny”: “Strategic intent has an emotional edge to it; it is a goal that employees perceive as inherently worthwhile.”52 The business mission is an “organization's vision translated into written form.”53 The business mission of any company should contain the following elements: ¾ “Purpose: Why the business exist? ¾ Values: What management believes in? ¾ Standards and behaviors: The rules that guide how the business operates. ¾ Strategy and Scope: What business and how?”54

The Elements of a Clear Business Mission

Source: Tutor2u (2005) “Strategic Planning – Mission”, Available from: http://www.tutor2u.net/business/strategy/mission.htm

51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 “Corporate Vision, Mission, Goals and Strategies - Traditional and New Approaches”, Available from: http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/crosscuttings/vision_mission_strategy.html 54 Tutor2u (2005) “Strategic Planning – Mission”, Available from: http://www.tutor2u.net/business/strategy/mission.htm 68 Ciprian Bădescu 14

2.2. STRATEGIC CONTEXT

The strategic context refers to the analysis of both external and internal environment in which the firm operates. External assessment is concerned with changes in the business environment. Internal assessment is concerned with the organizational resources, i.e. physical resources (e.g., plants, equipments, etc.), unique capabilities, i.e. “capabilities, and competencies of the enterprise and the potential for these to meet future customer needs.”55 The strategic context is the assessment of the “current position of the enterprise as a whole in its relationship with to the outside world.”56 There is a continuous interdependency between the strategic assessment and the following influencing factors: ¾ Internal, organizational environment; ¾ External, business environment in which the company operates; ¾ Strategic intent or the strategic purpose, i.e. organizational mission and vision; ¾ Strategic choice or the options made in relation with the strategic intent; ¾ Operational results; ¾ Triggers: “Occasionally (…) the gap between expectations and achievement requires more fundamental change. The awareness of this gap may act as a trigger for new thinking and new strategies.”57 Thus, the strategic assessment or assessing the strategic context is based on: ¾ Organizational mission and vision; ¾ Assessing the organizational context, i.e. the starting point in crafting the strategic process; ¾ Formulating strategic options depends on the reality perceived as a result of assessing both internal and external environment. Equally, strategic assessment may constrain or expand strategic intent.

2.3. STRATEGIC CHOICE

The strategic choice is the “process of selecting one option for implementation.”58 “A strategic option is a set of related options (typically combining options for product/markets and resources) that form a potential strategy.”59 The chosen strategy is the result of the strategic process where various decision makers within the organization decide on a course of action based on the agreed strategic intent and the situational analysis, i.e. strategic context.

55 Macmillan, Hugh; Tampoe, Mahen. Op. cit. p. 81. 56 Ibid. p. 82. 57 Ibid. p. 83. 58 Macmillan, Hugh; Tampoe, Mahen. Op. cit. p. 133. 59 Ibid. p. 133. 15 Organizational Strategies in a Global Era 69

There is a structure for making strategic choice based on formulating various options as following: ¾ “Options about products, markets, and services; ¾ Options to improve resources and capabilities; ¾ Option of method on how to progress.”60 There are, also, various decision makers involved in the process of strategic choice that use criteria and theoretical frameworks for making strategic choice. Finally, the chosen strategy is the result of a process concerning: ¾ Different kinds of options, i.e. options regarding products or services, options for improving resources and capabilities and options on how to progress; ¾ Various decision makers implied in the strategic process; ¾ Different criteria and theoretical frameworks used for making strategic choice. Ansoff’s Product/Market Grid is one of the most famous theoretical frameworks for determining strategic choice.

Results of the Strategy Formulation Process

Source: Macmillan, Hugh; Tampoe, Mahen. Op. cit. p. 134.

2.3.1 ANSOFF’S PRODUCT/MARKET GRID

Ansoff’s Product/Market Grid is a model used in business unit strategy processes for determining business growth opportunities.61 This model is based on two main dimensions:

60 Ibid. p. 135. 61 According to Value Based Management.net. (2005). “Product/Market Grid – Ansoff” Available from: http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_productmarketgrid.html 70 Ciprian Bădescu 16

¾ Products ¾ Markets

Source: Value Based Management.net (2005) “Product/Market Grid – Ansoff” Available from: http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_productmarketgrid.html

The model defines four growth strategies as following: o Market penetration: Firms pursuing a market penetration strategy “normally focus on changing incidental clients to regular clients, and regular client into heavy clients.”62 It is based on selling more of the same products or services in the current markets. Volume discounts, bonus cards and customer relationship management are systems used in connection with the market penetration strategy. Firms pursuing this kind of strategy want to achieve “economies of scale, more efficient distribution, more purchasing power, overhead sharing.”63 o Market development: It implies selling more of the same products or services in new markets. “These strategies often try to lure clients away from competitors or introduce existing products in foreign markets or introduce new brand names in a market.”64 o Product development: “Sell new products or services in current markets. These strategies often try to sell other products to (regular) clients. These can be accessories, add-ons, or completely new products.”65

62 Ibid. 63 Product/Market Grid (Ansoff), 12manage.com. (2005). Available from: http://www.12manage.com/methods_productmarketgrid.html 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 17 Organizational Strategies in a Global Era 71

o Diversification: It is the most risky strategy as firms try to diversify its activities by selling new products and/or services in new markets. Large corporations can, actually, reduce risks by pursuing a diversification strategy as its associated risks can be spread over a large and diversified business portfolio made out of a multitude of products and/or services. There are four types of diversification strategies as following: ƒ Horizontal diversification. “This occurs when the company acquires or develops new products that could appeal to its current customer groups even though those new products may be technologically unrelated to the existing product lines.”66 ƒ Vertical diversification. The company moves up or down within its vertical chain by either developing its own capacities or acquiring existing businesses positioned upstream or downstream along the same vertical chain. ƒ Concentric diversification. “This results in new product lines or services that have technological and/or marketing synergies with existing product lines, even though the products may appeal to a new customer group.”67 ƒ Conglomerate diversification. “This occurs when there is neither technological nor marketing synergy and this requires reaching new customer groups.”68

3. STRATEGY CONTENT

The strategy content is concerned with the emergence of organizational strategy that “constitutes a blueprint of desirable actions that the organization should take to secure its future.”69 It is the output of the strategy formulation process. The strategy content is, also, the input to the implementation process.70 Mahoney and McCue outlined the content of a strategy as following: ¾ “Select the right business or businesses to be in and get out of the rest; ¾ Understand what drives success in the business and do these things superbly; ¾ Constantly innovate to renew the business or to redefine it in new, attractive ways; ¾ Maintain financial flexibility to seize on opportunities;

66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Macmillan, Hugh; Tampoe, Mahen. Op. cit. p. 163. 70 According to Macmillan, Hugh; Tampoe, Mahen. Op. cit. 72 Ciprian Bădescu 18

¾ Measure the success of the enterprise by creation of superior shareholder value now and over time. But don’t forget the other stakeholders.”71 Macmillan and Tampoe argue that the overall organizational strategy should be divided into corporate, business and functional strategies.72 There is only one corporate strategy that “outline the general purposes and the core values of the enterprise and express the broadest strategy of the enterprise in a succinct form.”73 Large, diversified organizations have more than one business unit. Each business unit should have its own business strategy.74 This kind of strategy focus on how each business unit should compete in a particular market place. A large organization based on a multitude of separate business units “may have as many business strategies as it has separate businesses or activities.”75 Sometimes, the term “business strategy” is used in relation with the overall purpose and core values of the entire organization. It is the case of the corporations that have one single business unit. Functional strategy refers to each major organizational function. Thus, there are marketing strategies, information technology strategies, and human resources strategies. The functional strategy focuses on improving performances at each major functional level. The organizational strategy regarded either at corporate, business or functional level is concerned with minimizing those potential risk factors coming from inside (organizational environment) or outside (business environment) and maximizing those potential benefits based on leveraging organizational resources and capabilities. Therefore, all kinds of strategies have the same major goal, i.e. achieving sustained competitive advantage. The difference between different types of strategies is based on the way that various decision makers are implied in the process of delivering superior results for the business. There are different types of decision makers within the firm who are in charge with crafting and implementing a certain strategic architecture. Decision makers positioned at the highest managerial level within the organization are concerned with crafting the corporate strategy process. The decision makers positioned at lower managerial levels within different business units in large, diversified organizations are in charge with building and implementing business strategies. Other decision makers like managers being in charge with coordinating major organizational functions are

71 Ibid. p. 164 apud Mahoney, R.J. and McCue, J. A. (1999). “Insights from Business Strategy and Management: “Big Ideas” of the Past Three Decades: Are They Fads or Enablers”. Report published by the Centre for the Study of American Business, Washington University in St. Louis. CEO Series Issue No. 29, Jan. 72 According to Macmillan, Hugh; Tampoe, Mahen. Op. cit. 73 Ibid. p. 165. 74 According to Macmillan, Hugh; Tampoe, Mahen. Op. cit. 75Ibid. p. 165. 19 Organizational Strategies in a Global Era 73 concerned with improving the performance of these functions. They are concerned with building and implementing specific functional strategies. Let’s examine the various characteristics of different types of strategies.

3.1. THE BUSINESS STRATEGIES

“A business strategy describes how a particular business intends to succeed in its chosen market place against its competitors.”76 The management of the company should provide answers to the following questions when defining and securing its future as outlined below: ¾ “What is the scope of the business to which this strategy applies? ¾ What are the current and future needs of customers and potential customers of this business? ¾ What are the distinctive capabilities or unique competence that will give us competitive advantage in meeting these needs now and in the future? ¾ What in broad terms needs to be done to secure the future of our business?”77 Therefore, the business strategy of the corporation should be based on five qualitative factors as following: ¾ Defining a proper scope of business strategy: “There is a need for a balance in choosing the scope for each ‘business’.”78 Large corporations have to define a scope for each business unit. Mathur and Kenyon suggest that “there should be a separate competitive strategy for each “offering” defined as the unit of customer choice.”79 ¾ Using appropriate documentation having five headings as outlined below: o “Statement of strategic intent for the business”80: A clear strategic intent should be described, outlining in practical and tangible terms how the future of the company is different from the present.81 o “Principal findings of strategic assessment”82: A detailed analysis of both the external and internal environment should be provided.83 “However, this section should provide a reasoned assessment of current status and future prospects of the business if present strategies were to be continued.”84

76 Ibid. p. 170 77 Ibid. p. 170 78 Ibid. p. 171 79 Ibid. p. 171 apud Mathur, S. S. and Kenyon, A. (1997). Creating Value: Shaping Tomorrow’s Business (Oxford: Butterworth Heinermann) 80 Macmillan, Hugh; Tampoe, Mahen. Op. cit. p. 172 81 According to Macmillan, Hugh; Tampoe, Mahen. Op. cit. 82 Ibid. p. 172 83 Ibid. 84 Macmillan, Hugh; Tampoe, Mahen. Op. cit. p. 172. 74 Ciprian Bădescu 20

o “Strategic choices which have been made and supporting rationale”85: Summarizing the options identified and choices made provide the path towards achieving the ultimate goal of any organizational strategy, i.e. achieving competitive advantage. o “Statement of goals and objectives”86: It is the starting point in the process of moving towards the realization of the overall strategic goal. o “Outline of strategic initiatives.”87 ¾ Understanding customers’ needs is a major driver of the business strategy: “Business strategy is therefore market driven (…).”88 ¾ Exploiting firm’s core competences: Identifying a unique core competence that can provide the basis for differentiating firm’s own products or services away from that of its competitors is a key issue in accomplishing the objectives outlined in the business strategy. ¾ “Providing sustainable competitive advantage: “The best business strategies are those which use the capabilities of the firm to address customer needs in a way which leads to sustainable competitive advantage.”89

3.2. CORPORATE-LEVEL STRATEGY

“Corporate strategy seeks to create value beyond the sum of the individual parts. It is thus concerned with corporate advantage much as business strategies are concerned with competitive advantage.”90 The main goal of corporate-level strategy is adding value to every business in the company’s portfolio. The corporate-level strategy is about: ¾ Finding the path towards accomplishing corporation’s goals: “Where is the business trying to get to in the long-term (direction).”91 ¾ Defining the markets and the scope of the business: “Which markets should a business compete in and what kind of activities is involved in such markets? (markets; scope).”92 ¾ Clarifying the nature of corporate advantage: “How can the business perform better than the competition in those markets? (advantage)?”93

85 Ibid. p. 172. 86 Ibid. p. 172. 87 Ibid. p. 172. 88 Ibid. p. 173. 89 Ibid. p. 174. 90 Ibid. p. 182. 91 Tutor2u Limited .(2005). “Strategy - What is Strategy?” Available from: http://www.tutor2u.net/business/strategy/what_is_strategy.htm 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 21 Organizational Strategies in a Global Era 75

¾ Finding out what are those resources that may be used for building unique capabilities, i.e. core competencies required for generating competitive advantage: “What resources (skills, assets, finance, relationships, technical competence, facilities) are required in order to be able to compete? (resources)?”94 ¾ Coping with those influencing factors coming from the business environment that would affect corporation’s competitive position in the market: “What external, environmental factors affect the businesses' ability to compete? (environment)?” ¾ The added value at corporate-level should satisfy the needs of different stakeholders’ groups: “What are the values and expectations of those who have power in and around the business? (stakeholders).”95

4. STRATEGY IN ACTION

Strategy in action is about implementing strategy as the last element of the strategic management process. All the elements of the strategic management process, i.e. the strategy formulation process, the strategy content and the strategy implementation have to fit together. “Strategic thinking, strategy content, and strategy implementation must all be valid within the constraints of the context.”96 “If implementation is poor, all other elements of strategic management become a waste of time and effort.”97 Appropriate capabilities are needed in order to make the strategy work. “Trained and motivated managers, strategic information, fluid and responsive systems and structure”98 are all required capabilities for successfully implementation of the organizational strategy.

4.1. THE SCOPE OF STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION

Strategy implementation brings in changes in systems, processes, culture and organizational structure. Above all, the strategy implementation affects the way that different individuals, either managers at different levels or people from “execution levels”, think and act in organizations: “Strategic change causes significant upheaval to people as they struggle to find their feet with the new arrangements.”99

94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Macmillan, Hugh; Tampoe, Mahen. Op. cit. p. 185. 97 Ibid. p. 185. 98 Ibid. p. 185. 99 Ibid. p. 187. 76 Ciprian Bădescu 22

Macmillan and Tampoe suggest that changes due to strategy implementation “may be classified under three headings”100: ¾ “Change in systems and processes”101: For example, one retailer may decide to pursue a vertical integration strategy. The chosen strategy, in this hypothetical example, requires developing distribution capabilities in order to increase efficiency of distribution channels situated upstream along the vertical chain. Assuming that the retailer from our example successfully managed to vertically integrate by developing its own distribution capacities, it would control better the costs by streamlining the distribution flows. The implementation of this strategy requires major re-configuration of systems and processes. It, also, implies significant financial resources for developing distribution capabilities. ¾ “Change in culture”102: The strategy implementation may require changes that would contradict the old values of the firm. “The rules and regulations that sustained the old values may have to be changed to reflect the new behaviors expected from staff.”103 ¾ “Change in organizational culture”104: Implementing a new strategic architecture affects the organizational structure as people “may have to be moved, either physically and in terms of whom they report to.”105 Implementing strategy can lead to disruptions of networks based on relationships between people working at different organizational levels. People, usually, build support networks in order to facilitate their works in organization. The change process “often breaks these support networks and introduces inefficiencies and ineffectiveness to a dynamic situation. The result may be chaos and failed strategy.”106 In conclusion, the process of implementing a new strategic architecture may cause various changes of organizational settings. The implementation of strategy should be properly managed in order to reduce those potential risk factors that would bring in failures in managing change.

REFERENCES

Chandler, Alfred. (1966). “Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of Industrial Enterprise” apud “Economic Geography Glossary”. Available at: http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/ gloss/s.html.

100 Ibid. p. 187. 101 Ibid. p. 187. 102 Ibid. p. 187. 103 Ibid. p. 187. 104 Ibid. p. 187. 105 Ibid. p. 187. 106 Ibid. p. 194. 23 Organizational Strategies in a Global Era 77

Hamel, Gary, Prahalad, C. K. (1990). "The Core Competence of the Corporation", HarvardBusiness Review, vol. 68, no. 3, May-June (1990) cited in Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia, “Core Competence”, Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_competency. Hamel, Gary and Prahalad, C.K. Available at: http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_hamel _prahalad_strategic_intent.html. Kay, John. (1993). “Foundations of Corporate Success – How Business Strategies Add Value”. New York: Oxford University Press Inc. Macmillan, Hugh, Tampoe, Mahen. (2000). Strategic Management – Process, Content, and Implementation, New York: Oxford University Press. Porter, Michael. (1980). Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. London: Free Press. Porter, Michael. (1998). “The Competitive Advantage of Nations”. 2nd Ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan cited by “Business – The Ultimate Resource”. (2002) London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Power, D. J. (2005). PlanningSkills.COMsm. Available at: http://planningskills.com/glossary/84.php; Strange, Susan. “States, Firms, and Diplomacy”, in Jeffry A. Frieden, David A. Lake, eds.(2002). “International Political Economy. Perspectives on Global Power and Wealth”, London. Thompson, Jr., Arthur A., Strickland III, A. J. (1999). “Strategic Management – Concepts and Cases”. International Edition: Irwin McGraw-Hill.

Canada’s Business and Consumer Site. Available at: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/insof- sdf.nsf/en/so03148e.html). Competences Model, University of Rochester (2004) Available at: http://www.rochester.edu/working/hr/performancemgt/competency.html. “Corporate Vision, Mission, Goals and Strategies - Traditional and New Approaches”, Available at: http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/crosscuttings/vision_mission_strategy.html. Online Learning System (2003) McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Available at: http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072443715/student_view0/glossary.html; Tutor2u (2005) “Strategic Planning – Mission”, Available at: http://www.tutor2u.net/business/strategy/mission.htm; Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia (2005) “Strategic Management”.

78 Ciprian Bădescu 24

COMMUNITIES IN A CHANGING CONTEXT

THE ROMANIAN VILLAGES’ VIRTUALITIES THROUGH THE LENSES OF DIMITRIE GUSTI’S SOCIOLOGICAL SYSTEM

LUCIAN DUMITRESCU

The Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy

In the interwar period, Dimitrie Gusti, the founder of the Sociological School of Bucharest, along with other remarkable Romanian intelectuals, came to the conclusion that Romania’s social, economic, spiritual and political development was to be substantially infuenced by the way peasantry’s problem was to be taken care of. In thinking so, Gusti initiated the monograph camapaigns which were to examine the Romanian village’s specific problems from a scientific point of view. Based on Gusti’s sociological system, the monographic teams revealed a traditional life shaped by a philosophy that had been the guiding thread of a millenary culture and civilization, namely, the peasant one. Closely following Traian Herseni’s book Sociology Course, this article is going to present the conditionings of the interwar Romanian village’s social life or, in accordance with Gusti’s thinking system, its virtualities, its development possibilities, as they were displayed in the analysis carried out by the Sociological School of Bucharest.

INTRODUCTION

Throughout the centuries happiness has been defined in various ways. One of them states that happiness could also mean the fulfillment of an ideal tailored at an early stage of life. If we had given credit to this approach of happiness, Dimitrie Gusti should have been a happy man. In one of his writings, the man who set up the Sociological School of Bucharest at the beginnig of the XXth century, reveals one of his youth ambitions: setting up a seminar of ethics and sociology in Bucharest in accordance with the well-known model spread throughout the world by the Solvay Institute of Sociology from Brusells, the seminars held in Leipzig by Bücher and Lamprecht1, and last but not least, the criminalistic seminar coordinated by Liszt in Berlin. Always searching a middle route between the theoretical and practical approach of sociology, between thinking and action, Dimitrie Gusti has initially made cautious steps on the realm of sociology, by

1 Between 1900–1904, Dimitrie Gusti attended moral philosophy classes at the University of Leipzig, where Lamprecht and Bücher taught universal history and public administration respectively.

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 79–94, Bucureşti, 2008 80 Lucian Dumitrescu 2 choosing sociologia cogitans, that is a philosophical perspective on the science to which he has devoted his entire life. Little by little though, he comes to the conclusion that a solely theoretical perspective, now matter how brilliant this could be, cannot boost a society to its maximum potential, and remains pointless. That being said, Dimitrie Gusti’s extraordinay scientific career has been always configured by a guiding thread consisting of an inspired and full of valuable results mixture between a theoretical and practical approach of sociology. But that special ingredient that has made a marvellous synthesis between the two different dimensions of Dimitrie Gusti’s scientific career, the philosophical and the practical one, it is represented by his teaching activity2 that he has never given up on, not even when he has been appointed as Ministry of Education. It is not our intention to fully present the spiritual and intelectual intinerary that Dimitrie Gusti has followed. However, we should mention that he has always been a dedicated scientist who has been permanently tied with his native country’s specific problems, being a good citizen and an active intelectual at the same time. We will focus, after a short presentation of Dimitrie Gusti’s sociological system, on the way that the Romanian village’s virtualities, a social unit that has always played a tremendous role within the material and spiritual development of Romania, are reflected in the analysis carried out by the Sociological School of Bucharest. Although it is not an ideal political form, the village displays itself as “the human settlement that is most favourable to kindness”3, a special world with inhabitants that master almost completely the conditions of their own existence. Cradle of eternity, with specific life, genuine culture and traditions, the village represents a microcosmos that has its own laws. In one of Lucian Blaga4’s interwar writings, village is placed in the centre of the world, and described as sharing a cosmical destiny. Between WWI and WWII, the Romanian village meant not ancient, nor patriarchal Romania, but genuine Romania, more than 14 million souls sharing a life philosophy shaped by the values of a millenary peasant culture. It was a time when urban areas had no more than 3 million inhabitants. As we have mentioned earlier, Dimitrie Gusti has always had a strong and vivid bond with “the real country” and its problems, although he was far away, studying in Germany. Writing about the XIXth century agrarian reform and the so-called liberty given by

2 Throughout many wonderful pages dedicated to his teacher, Mircea Vulcănescu reveals Dimitrie Gusti’s point of view on the teacher’s social function. Being both conservative and creative, teacher’s social function should provide, on the one hand, an unaltered handing over of values and knowledge that make up his/her class, and, on the other hand, an enlargement of the appropriated cultural patrimony, either directly, by devising new research directions, or indirectly, by creating genuine people of culture. 3 M. Vulcănescu. (2005). Opere, Bucureşti: Ed. Fundaţiei Naţionale pentru Ştiinţă şi Artă, Vol. II, p. 723. 4 Lucian Blaga also taught rural sociology. For more details go to T. Herseni. (2007). Curs de sociologie rurală, Bucureşti: Ed. Renaissance. 3 The Romanian Villages’ Virtualities 81 this to the Romanian peasant, the brilliant student has purported that a reform that lacked peasants’ right to get access to money funds, and also the right to bring cattle to forest and grass-land was only a deceit. Such a reform, that had been tailored by “the legal country”, a legal country that had been always blind when dealing with peasant’s problems, could have brought not liberty, but famine and death. Monographical movement, field sociological research with multidisciplinary character, but also a sociological doctrine – a particular way of understanding the role of sociology –, the Sociological School of Bucharest founded by Dimitrie Gusti tried to understand the Romanian village from inside its own world. The main purpose of the monographical sociology is to try to understand the meanings and the problems of a particular world, placed by its inhabitants in the centre of the world, and also to identify its development possibilities. For Frenchman Le Play, the sociological monograph was just a research method. Imbued with Gusti’s brilliant way of thinking, the sociological monograph has been given a new status. It hasn’t been just a research method, but a sociological system, too.

DIMITRIE GUSTI’S SOCIOLOGICAL SYSTEM. SHORT PRESENTATION

Different both from ethics, science of the ethical ideal, and politics, science that studies the system of means necessary to achieve future society’s social and ethical norms, sociology has been defined by Dimitrie Gusti as the way of knowing the present social reality. The founder of the Sociological School of Bucharest firstly presented his sociological system in front of a Romanian audience on the occasion of the maiden lecture of The Greek Philosophy’s History, Ethics and Sociology class held at the University of Iaşi on 08.04.1910.5 From Gusti’s point of view, understanding social reality actually means to explain human social life, a comprehensive approach that necessarily starts from individual. Although the border between individual and its physical-biological surrounding reality is mapped out by certain characteristics such as self- consciousness and will6, Dimitrie Gusti stresses the role of sympathy, the most

5 Starting from 01. 04. 1910, Dimitrie Gusti became full professor of the Greek Philosophy’s History, Ethics and Sociology Department at the University of Iaşi, being transferred 10 years later to Bucharest, where he was given the Sociology, Ethics, Politics and Aesthetics Department at the University of Bucharest. 6 Self-love, the way that every individual takes act of his own identity, sympathy, thanks to which every individual can be more than himself, and religionsity, pious feeling towards mystery, are the three fundamental dimensions of self-consciousness that along with will separates human nature from animal nature. According to Auguste Comte, says professor Ilie Bădescu, there are three elements of human nature, namely, activity, feeling and inteligence, for every one of these existing a corresponding social force in every society: material force, moral force and intelectual force. For further details see Ilie Bădescu. (2002). Istoria sociologiei. Perioada marilor sisteme, Bucureşti: Ed. Economică, Vol. I, p. 88. 82 Lucian Dumitrescu 4 important ingredient of the so-called sociological apriorism, namely, individual’s ability of being social before entering any association. Due to the structure of human consciousness, every individual, contends Gusti, is a possibility of society, as well as society which, thanks to sympathy, finds itself in every individual as a virtuality.7 This is the point where the Romanian sociology no longer goes along with the French one, according to which society is a reality outside individuals8, a coercive reality that affects every individual. In Gusti’s sociological system, society is depicted as a spiritual-objective reality, and not merely as a psychological one. Society becomes visible through its social units, groups of humans that live together. Groups, communities and institutions are just a couple examples of social units. In Gusti’s sociological system every social unit, regardless of its size, is characterized by a round o’clock activity which is called social manifestation. In order to fulfill every human being’s spiritual and material needs, every social unit unfolds particular activities. Subsequently, one can observe, on the one hand, economic manifestations, and, on the other hand, spiritual manifestations or activities that reflect individual’s superior needs. Because these activities represents the very baseis of Dimitrie Gusti’s sociological system, they have been named constitutive activities by the Romanian scientist. There is also another group of activities meant to harmonize the antagonic goals that the constitutive activities usually aim at, that is society’s regulative activities or manifestations which consist in political activities – leadership, organization and administration – and juridical activities – which regulate rights and obligations. The last group of activities have a special importance for social reality because, according to D. Gusti, they make it last. Sociology aims not only at depicting social manifestations, but, as an explanatory science, also tries to find out their roots. In the explanatory model tailored by Dimitrie Gusti, the factor responsible for the appearance of the four mentioned above social activities is social will, “a dynamic complex of values, goals and means, the social action’s atitudinal basis, foundation and expression of socialization”.9 Social will, that is every human’s will in accordance to a social goal, updates the society’s virtualities that are named frames in Gusti’s sociological system. In the absence of social will, society would be only a possibility, because social will is the dynamic factor of every social reality, its very essence. What makes social will that important is the fact that through it every society’s frames, the so-called virtualities, are transformed in social activities. This process that makes possible the transformation of society’s frames in economic, spiritual,

7 Aristotle starts with the premise that humans are zoon politikon. It means that every human is a social being due to his nature. That is why, humans take part at social life not out of interest, but because of their very nature. He also adds that an individual that doesn’t have the desire to live in society is not a human being anymore, but either God or animal. From Nitzsche’s point of view, such an individual is neither God, nor animal. Just a philosopher. 8 See Emile Durkheim’s social facts theory. 9 D. Gusti. (1969). Opere, Bucureşti: Editura Academiei, Vol. II, p. 27. 5 The Romanian Villages’ Virtualities 83 political and judicial activities through social will is called social actuality. It is of great importance to mention that social actuality is always influenced by the society’s current dominant values and also by the height of contemporary social goals. Dimitrie Gusti has succeeded in shaping a typology of the social life’s conditional factors that are eventually arranged in four classes: the cosmic frame, the biological frame, the psychological frame and the historical frame. One should notice the similarity between the number of social activities and the number of frames, an exact correspondence being established between the type of a certain frame and the type of social activity. Whilst the cosmic and the biological frame reflects one society’s environmental particularities, the psychological and the historical frames are considered spiritual frames, that is society’s traditions and also its collective spiritual phenomena. Meaning one society’s virtualities, the frames are just an outward conditioning10 of social actions, social processes and social phenomena, the inward conditioning being represented by the group’s social will. In the mean time, due to a self-determination of social life, society benefits from a certain autonomy with respect to its frames, an autonomy given by society’s influence upon its frames through social manifestation. It is not our intention to make an exhaustive presentation of Gusti’s sociological system, but our article will definitely be incomplete without mentioning the law of sociological parallelism. Its first component refers to a parallelism relation between the frames and the social will which indicates that social life is the result of a necessary symbiosis between the frames and the social will.11 There is also, as a second dimension of this law, a parallelism between the frames, which means that social life is conditioned not only by one frame, but by all four frames in the same time. And last, but not least, the third component of Gusti’s law of sociological parallelism shows a parallelism that takes place between the four social manifestations, meaning that every society is characterized by all four activities which are interdependent, but irreducible to one another. Traian Herseni and Mircea Vulcănescu’s perspectives on Gusti’s sociological system make it more comprehensible. That is why, the following paragraphs comprise the thoughts of these two significant members of the Sociological School of Bucharest. According to Herseni’s standpoint, every social life has an existence that is conditioned by three different moments: the social will, the social activities and the society’s frames. Much attention it is paid in Herseni’s writings to the relation between the three moments mentioned above. “ The relation between social will and social manifestations is the relation between an individual and its deed. Social manifestations are just the expression of the social will that supports them, which entails the need to stress two issues: the social will is characterized by its

10 We emphasize the fact that Gusti believes that the frames are just conditionings, but not causes of social life. 11 Gusti’s formula of social life: W (will) + F (frames) = Social Manifestations (SM). 84 Lucian Dumitrescu 6 manifestations, and manifestations have an inward causality in the social will’s active nature. The relation between manifestations and frames is the relation between activity and its conditioning”.12 In the pages of The History of the Romanian Sociology, Traian Herseni states that Dimitrie Gusti’s sociological, ethical and political system has always had a unique brightness in Mircea Vulcanescu’s commentary. The founder of the Sociological School of Bucharest was a remarkable organizer, but, according to Herseni, was not that brilliant at writing. Mircea Vulcănescu, known as the economist and the philosopher of the Sociological School of Bucharest, perceived the social will as a reaction towards the frames’ influence on social life, the outgrowth being represented by social manifestations. According to Vulcănescu’s perspective on society, which is very close to Gusti’s one, one society’s frames are just conditionings and not causes of social life, whilst social will is endowed with its own ability to react. It is interesting that from Gusti’s point of view social manifestation is obtained by adding social will to the frames. Vulcănescu shares a different perspective on the social manifestation’s formula. In his opinion, the social manifestation are not obtained by adding social will to the frames, as Gusti thinks, but by multiplying social will and the frames: W (will) • F (frames) = Social Manifestations (SM). Subsequently, it results that SM/F =W. Here is a short presentation of a schema drawn up by Vulcănescu which shows how the frames influence the social will and how this one answers back.

FACTOR FRAME ACTION REACTION SPACE cosmic nature culture LIFE biological race (type) selection SPIRITUAL LIFE psychological coercion autonomy tendency TIME historical tradition innovation

By including all social reality’s elements in his theoretical model13, Dimitrie Gusti has tried to offer an unitary perspective on society. This is how all unilateral scientific attempts of explaininig social life have been shadowed, because the results of partial sociologies, such as historical sociology, geographic sociology, biological sociology and social psychology, become worthy only within a synthesis. In the following sections of our article, we are going to present an analysis tailored by the Sociological School of Bucharest, in accordance with Gusti’s theoretical model, regarding the virtualities of the Romanian village. It is an appropriate moment to pinpoint the difference between virtuality and possibility. Traian Herseni purports that virtualities are inside humans, whilst possibilities find

12 Tr. Herseni. (1935). Realitatea socială. Încercare de ontologie regională, Bucuresti: Ed. Institutului Social Român, p. 124. 13 Its particularity and value is given by the fact that it is both a research method and a thinking system. It is also a theoretical system that has been successfully tested while its inventor was still alive. 7 The Romanian Villages’ Virtualities 85 themselves in the surrounding environment. In other words, one society’s natural frames can have so many possibilities for which individual has no virtuality, but also the other way around. For instance, Herseni says that a Romanian, although he may have the virtuality of becoming a pilot, he cannot materialize it, because plains hadn’t been invented yet. Consequently, although social life is conditioned by frames, it is eventually shaped only by those frames that correspond to the virtualities that one society’s members have at a certain time.

THE COSMIC FRAME14

Defining geography, Simion Mehedinţi15 presents it as a science that tries to explain the connection among the four different covers of planet Earth: atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and biosphere, individuals being geographical agents of the last cover. We should say from the beginning that sociology pays attention to natural environment only from one perspective: its influences on social life. There is an interesting and productive clash between sociology and geography, a polemic discussion that has been initiated by George Vâlsan’s article16 Sociological Researches Analyzed from a Geographical Point of View.

14 There is a good reason why Gusti has named one of the social life’s conditionings the cosmic frame, instead of geographical frame. In his sociological system, the cosmic frame illustrates the influence that the whole universe has on society, the cosmic frame being more comprising then the geographical one. 15 We mentioned earlier in this article that Dimitrie Gusti is the founder of the Sociological School of Bucharest. Simion Mehedinţi has set up the Romanian school of geography, whilst Vasile Pârvan has laid the foundations of the first school of archaeology in Romania. 16 Vâlsan along with Petre Andrei are both very critical towards the monographic sociology. In the geographical researches the monographic method is used quite often, says George Vâlsan. He adds that, in geography, field researches are classified as pedagogical researches and scientific researches. A small number of participants and a long period spent on the field, with a return possibility for the researcher, are only a few aspects that characterize the monographic research carried out by geographs. There are many similarities between the comprehensive effort of the monographic teams organized by the Sociological School of Bucharest and the geographical pedagogical researches, such as a large group of field researches and a short period of time spent on the field. According to Vâlsan, another shortcoming of the monographic researches carried out by the Sociological School of Bucharest is their aprioristic knowledge and the disturbance of the local communication environment. He concludes that the only significant monographs are the regional ones, those centered on local communities being less valuable from a scientific point of view. The reader should not forget Dimitrie Gusti’s perspective on sociology, a science which aquires its meaning only by studying the largest social unit, that is the nation, which understanding starts from knowing the Romanian villages’ particularities. With respect to Petre Andrei’s critical standpoint towards the monographic research, the famous Romanian sociologist from Iaşi purports that the Sociological School of Bucharest has never really carried out scientific researches, but rather reformist actions. That is why, concludes Petre Andrei, the sociological monograph is nothing else but a gathering of descriptive material. 86 Lucian Dumitrescu 8

Following the idea of Emile Durkheim, according to whom sociology’s study object is similar to that specific to natural sciences, Vâlsan contends that this opinion of the French sociologist is out of question. He also adds, mentioning the way Durkheim has defined social morphology, that sociology assesses geography as a second-rate science. In order to be more specific, social morphology is a science that studies the social substratum. From the French sociologist’s perspective, society’s material form is the result of social division of labor. Consequently, there is no need of geography for explaining one society’s morphology. Being interested in the social function that the geographical factors could have, Ion Conea understands geography as the science of humanized landscape, stating that every natural region has its own personality. One can sense here the influences of Carl Ritter, a well-known German geographer from the XIXth century, according to whom land is a nursery school (Erziehungshaus) of human genre, the regional forms of relief profoundly influencing the life style. But here is Dimitrie Gusti’s perspective on the cosmic frame. When studying one social unit’s cosmic frame, sociology is firstly interested in explaining how one society influences its geographical outskirts, the way that a particular community leaves its mark on the environment. For instance, the sociology of space preoccupies itself with the study of one community’s reactions towards its natural environment, in this particular science’s study object being also included the way that natural resources and climate factors alters the inhabitants’ life. Secondly, the effects that nature has on the village is of great importance for sociology. From this perspective, one very important research object is social life’s rhythm in the rural areas. It is known that villagers’ life has its own specific characteristics. In summer, the locals work quite hard, whilst in winter, on the contrary, because all the tasks related to agriculture have been already fulfilled, there is not much to do. Winter is a season when peasants’ life rhythm is rather slow, a special attention being paid to traditional celebrations that make possible a return to a primordial time. Due to unfriendly weather conditions, that are not favourable to agriculture, much of the economical activities are directed towards the domestic industries. From daily’s life perspective, the urban life finds itself at the opposite pole in comparison to the village. Whilst in the country the locals work hard in summer, townspeople usually take vacations. In the same time, important institutions, like school and Parliament, close their gates in summer. Nature’s socialization process, that is cultural intervention in nature17, having as a result farmed fields, wineries, orchards, drainigs and so on, means human interventions on nature, another point of interest for sociology with respect to the cosmic frame.

17 Humanized landscape – houses, roads, crops, deforestations, mines – means one village’s vital space, according to Ion Conea. 9 The Romanian Villages’ Virtualities 87

The way that time flows in the village is a research subject that should also be encompassed in the cosmic frame, according to Ion Conea, one of the main authors of the Clopotiva Monograph. He advocates his opinion by stating that the local climate should not be approached only through data collected by meteorology institutes, but mainly through the locals’ experience, the understanding of one community’s special way of perceiving time being of great importance. And so it is, considering that the planning of locals’ activities has been always influenced by time. That is why, the most suitable informants, in order to understand how the elapse of time is perceived in the country side, are the very locals. The horizontal space, that is the cardinal points’ issue and that of the world’s regions, the vertical space, namely the problem of hierarchy and that of the outer space, and the perfection’s issue, are nothing but projections of villagers’ mentality on the cosmic frame, says Horia Bernea. Although it plays an important role in every monographic research, especially for finding out one village’s development potential, especially from an economical point of view, the importance of the cosmic frame should no be overestimated, considering that in Gusti’s sociological system it is just one of the four conditionigs of the social life.

THE BIOLOGICAL FRAME

The first attempts of explaining social life are based on analogies with the human body, sociology being dominated by biologism in the early stages of the XIXth century, a time when organicism and social darwinism theories were at their peak. But soon, the sociological point of view, that had revealed the characteristics of social life, gained ground, and made the once valued biological perspective on society look obsolete. However, Dimitrie Gusti has included the biological frame in his explanatory model of social life, this particular frame along with the cosmic one forming one society’s natural frames. The main point of interest of this social life’s second virtuality – what we shouldn’t forget is that from Gusti’s perspective one society’s frames are just virtualities of social life – is represented by population. Sociology approaches population from both a quantitative and a qualitative perspective, being especially interested in the way that village’s life patterns are affected by its inhabitants’ life style. From a quantitative point of view, the most important aspects that draw sociology’s attention to population’s problems are represented by migration, population’s structure and its transformations. The Sociological School of Bucharest has always valued the monographic census, a census that has been usually carried out by specialists. Apart from being carried out by specialists, there is another important aspect that makes the difference between the official and the monographic census: the monographic 88 Lucian Dumitrescu 10 teams’ members, who carried out the monographic census, have taken into consideration every family’s dead members, but also those locals that had left the village for good. Every demographic census’ objective is to provide data regarding a population’s structure, that is the number of men, women and children, their age and cultural level. In comparison to demography, sociology is particularly interested in observing and explaining one population’s influences on the village’s distinctive life. For instance, a village characterized by a high birth rate looks more optimistically to the future, despondency, ossification and resignation being the characteristics of a village with a mostly aged population. A large number of men, that is more significant than the number of women, has, as a consequence, an increased number of adulteries, quarrels among those who want to get married, and it also favours emigration to other towns or villages. We shouldn’t forget to mention the opposed situation, too: one village’s male inhabitants are outnumbered by women. The weakening of manners and a rapidly increasing number of unwanted children are just a few outgowths of such particular circumstances. This lack of balance between sexes plays an important role in expanding the number of bachelors and old spinsters in the population structure. Under these circumstances, most of those that intend to get married are clearly disadvantaged, both male and female inhabitants remaining further bonded with their parents and relatives. Peasant husbandry’s central element is the family group which labor power derives from its structure and oldness. Economically speaking, one family’s18 most productive period of time is that when its children are able to work along with their parents. As mentioned before, young people that don’t get married stay with their parents, and, as familiy’s older members grow older, they have to work harder and harder in order to earn their living. Another important disadvantage of not getting married is also the lack of support at an old age. When researching the biological frame, sociology pays special attention to the social effects of natality, nuptiality and mortality. In the countryside, families used to be characterized as fulfilled or unfulfilled depending on the number of children they had, a happy family comprising at least three children. On the contrary, less than three children and the death or the divorce of one spouse are just a few particularities of unfulfilled families. Demographic problems don’t have only villages with population deficits, but also those ones that have to grapple with an extra population which they cannot support. Villages with population deficits face a gradual diminution of all their social and economic activities, which eventually leads to the village’s extinction.19 Under such unfortunate circumstances, local life’s resurection is possible only through a population brought from other areas, marriages with the locals,

18 We refer to the maximum labor quantity that a husbandry can have at its disposal at a certain time. 19 “The Banat is the Romanian people’s graveyard”. Simion Mehedinţi. 11 The Romanian Villages’ Virtualities 89 colonization and new jobs created by different investors being a few solutions. But special problems have overpopulated villages, too. These ones have to deal with a significant lack of balance caused by the local resources scarcity that cannot support villagers’ consuming needs, a sad situation that spurs the inhabitants to migrate, especially the young ones. But migration is not always an option. Low industrialization and arable field that is hard to find in other areas are far from being good reasons which may convince someone to migrate. Consequently, a permanent crumbling of property leads to poverty, starvation, social and spiritual decay.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FRAME

As one of the social facts’ conditionings, but not a social fact in itself20, the psychological frame is displayed by Gusti’s thinking system as another factor that influences social life. For instance, public opinion21 is an important dimension for both the psychological frame and spiritual social activities. Public opinion’s manifestation and forming way are aspects related to the psychological frame, whilst public opinion’s significance and the way it configures one society’s political, moral and economic life are aspects that play an important role from social activities’ perspective. The psychological frame’s main point of interest refers to the village’s specific mentality. According to Traian Herseni, one village’s psychological structure is the most important conditioning of its social manifestations. Unlike the historical frame, that aims at disappeared and also still surviving social phenomena, no matter what their actual form is, the psychological frame’s research has to cope with this particular frame’s striking actuality, the existing differences between one village’s psychological virtualities and its spiritual manifestations being quite difficult to notice. In other words, one social unit’s virtualities may also display themselves as social manifestations, namely as social facts, a suitable example being represented by collective social phenomena. However, it is out of the question that, opposed to the psychological frame, are every individual’s spiritual traits, such as intelligence and sensitivity. Sociology shows a special interest in villagers’ mental abillities, and, from this perspective, carries out different IQ, personality and manual abillities tests. It pays also particular attention to the locals’ ideas, feelings and life philosophy, all these elements of the spiritual life playing a significant role when it comes to

20 A frame, as one society’s virtuality, is just a potential social manifestation, a possibility for a social fact. 21 In the countryside, public opinion is thought to be the very “mouth” of the village, sometimes playing vulgar role of gossip and intrigue, but being also an important mean for the values’ dissemination. 90 Lucian Dumitrescu 12 analyzing the psychological frame. Unlike psychology, for which all individuals have an equal importance, sociology makes some discriminations, for there are important differences from one individual to another with respect to the mark they leave on social life. That is why, a classification has been made, a classification that encompasses, on one hand, social life’s preserving and intesifying actors, and, on the other hand, social actors that are responsible for spreading social phenomena, sociology always showing a great interest in the innovators22 of the economic, spiritual, judicial and administrative life. Mircea Vulcănescu, who has tried to imbue Dimitrie Gusti’s sociological system with a phenomenological approach, is one of the interwar sociologists that has undertaken studies related to the autochthonous spiritual substratum. In his brilliant analysis, the philosopher and the economist of The Sociological School of Bucharest, displays the Romanian soul as an “architecture of temptations”, the local spirituality’s outward layers being represented by temptations, understood as marks left throughout the centuries on the very essence of the Romanian soul by different people that had travelled all over our country. Paraphrasing one of Valéry’s pieces of witicism, according to whom culture is what somebody still has after she/he had forgotten everything, Vulcănescu states that the primordial layer of the Romanian soul has Thracian origins, other influences, such as the Slavic, Byzantine, Greek, German and French ones, meaning just ,“superficial egos” of the local soul. In one of his writings, Constantin Noica purported that the Romanian soul had become agrarian for no more than one hundred years, better stated since 1829, when diplomats of the Ottoman and the Russian Empire signed a peace treaty in Adrianopole. According to Ştefan Zeletin, 1829 is the starting point of the forming process of a new social class in the Romanian Principates, that is the bourgeoisie. These historical circumstances urge Constantin Noica to ask himself whether the genuine origins of the Romanian soul are pastoral, instead of agrarian. Following the guiding thread of Traian Herseni’s book Pastoral Sociology, which pages indicates that all superior forms of Romanian culture, such as traditional fairy tales and doina songs, are the result of pastoral loneliness, Noica gets more and more convinced that the Romanian peasant culture has pastoral roots. The well known Romanian philosopher’s standpoint grows even more forceful thanks to Ovid Densuşianu, who contends that Romanian peasant culture, in its creative stages, has had a pronounced pastoral aspect. For instance, says Densuşianu, why should most of the popular poems talk about forest if they were created by an agrarian culture? If the traditional peasant culture had been agrarian and not pastoral, autumn should have been more valued than spring, but it is exactly the other way around. Without clearly indicating the pastoral basement of the Romanian soul, Mircea Eliade states that spring is the season that best corresponds to the local spirituality: “Faith’s inconstancy looks more like spring’s inconstancy – not like

22 Innovators are valued depending on the particularities of the social changes they facilitate, creators being considered more important than imitators. 13 The Romanian Villages’ Virtualities 91 destiny’s implacable law. And if we were to find a season that matches the Romanian soul, that would undoubtedly be spring”.23 Nevertheless, these discussions about one people’s soul, warns Lucian Blaga, have a tricky base, especially for those that are not enough acclimatized with the thin air specific to the higher regions of the knowledge pyramid, because the dialogue parteners find themselves on the realm of ineffable meanings.24 Paying attention to the warning adressed by the author that places the village in the centre of the world, endowing it with a cosmic destiny, we go back to Traian Herseni’s analysis regarding mentalities, that is the very gist of the psychological frame. Showing a distinctive interest in the villager’s economic, religious and scientific mentality, Herseni reveals two main characteristics of the dominant economic mentality in the country side: the lack of interest towards profit and the synonymy between welfare and what it is strictly necessary. Driven by the urge to buy and sell as little as possible, the Romanian peasant has an autarchical economic behavior. That is why, goods or capital accumulation appears to be senseless to him. That is why, there is a significant cleavage between farmer’s life philosophy and peasant’s mentality.25 Subsequently, we can understand better now why the the peasantry has been always depicted as a “destroyer of machines”, a rapid improvement in the villager’s traditional life style, that is passed almost unchanged from one generation to another, being considered meaningless. Herseni makes an interesting comparison between peasantry’s religious mentality and that specific to townspeople, for the first one the cult paying an important role, whilst, in the second case, the stress lays on dogma. Peasants don’t usually show a lot of interest in science. For instance, there are so many cases of people with health problems in the countryside who don’t get medical care, because, in accordance with one of the locals’ sayings, someone whose turn is not to die yet, gets healthy without the help of a doctor.

THE HISTORICAL FRAME

Whilst sociology preoccupies itself with history’s general and repeatable forms – periods and historical steps, evolution types –, history pays attention to those historical events that are unique and irrepeatable. From Sombart’s point of

23 Mircea Eliade. (2001). Textele ,, legionare” şi despre românism, Cluj-Napoca: Ed. Dacia, p. 70. 24 Lucian Blaga. (1937). Spaţiul mioritic, Bucureşti: Ed. Oficiului de librărie, p. 22. 25 “The farmer, no matter how different he is from a townsman, a manufacturer or a merchant, is eventually an output of the same capitalism, is driven by the same entrepreneurial spirit like the bourgeoisie, and has the same life ideals as the bourgeoisie. (...) On the contrary, the peasant represents a historical world prior to capitalism’s development, he is the prolongation of a world with senses of a different nature. The peasant husbandry is an autarchical economic unit that becomes capitalist only in its dissolution forms.” T. Herseni. (2007). Curs de sociologie rurală, Bucureşti: Ed. Renaissance, p. 34. The farmer means peasant’s end, from Noica’s point of view the sudden entrance in the history of the man that has the consciousness of eternity is similar to his extinction. 92 Lucian Dumitrescu 14 view, history displays itself as the study of individuality and material aspects, generality forming sociology’s point of interest. This is how the University of Berlin, with a stress that lays on Berlin, represents history’s study object, the University of Berlin being what sociology shows interest in. Problems belonging to the sociology of history are included by the Sociological School of Bucharest in the historical frame of Dimitrie Gusti’s thinking system, without limiting social life to this particular conditioning type. Before we start presenting the main study directions followed by the sociological monograph in the analysis of the historical frame, we mention that there are many important historical writings, in which sociology shows a distinctive interest, writings that describe peasantry’s social condition in the XVIIIth and the XIXth century. Because of the feudal system, contends one of the two parties between which a polemical discussion emerged more than one hundred years ago, the land used to be in the ruler and nobles’ possession. Consequently, the peasantry had no property rights. On the contrary, says the other party, by the time serfdom was initiated in the XVth and the XVIth century, peasantry used to possess its own lands. Unfortunately, this polemic discussion doesn’t help much the historical perspective that sociology is interested in. That is why, H. H. Stahl questions “the document superiority”. According to him, because traditional social relations are insufficiently reflected in the written sources, more important data can be obtained by observing one village’s social relations that are regulated by the unwritten customary law. In order to surpass this shortcoming, H. H. Stahl suggests an interesting alternative: instead of using official documents as sources of information, as the historians usually do, a sociologist should lay the stress on the study of the archaic social forms that are still actual in the economic and juridical customs, and also in the territorial and community organizational patterns. In reference to the still vivid forms of archaic social life, in which the sociological monographs show a particular interest, we should say that there are important regional differences, as a result of the Romanian villages’ distinctive past. For instance, in the same area, due to peasantry’s so many social categories, there are considerable differences regarding villages’ morphology. It can be observed autonomous villages belonging to the freeholders and also bondsmen villages, dependent on the local nobles and the central ruler. Răzeşii or moşnenii, mazilii, dvorenii and grănicerii are distinctive categories of the free men, whilst inquilinii, taxaliştii and lăturalnicii represent the bondsmen who had to cope with different fiscal systems. In 1829, George Maior, one of the most important Romanian agrarian economists, undertook a study in the Făgăraş county. The results of his observation made on the 20 villages included in the circle of Şercaia are displayed in a book called Romanian’s Agrarian Policy. The author, who advocates his position with strong evidences, purports that from the 20 studied 15 The Romanian Villages’ Virtualities 93 villages there were not two villages with similar economic and political social relations. Understanding present through past is another important objective that a sociological monograph aims at, because it is considered that actual characteristics of one village’s social life can be better understood by examining the historical roots of the community. In his article called Peasantry’s Social Organization, H. H. Stahl assesses as wrong a thesis advocated by certain historians who have investigated some Romanian villages. According to them, Romanian villages have been founded by a few related families, present inhabitants being their descendants. That is why, village’s land is equally devided between the locals in accordance with the criteria of genealogy, that is the descending line of the village’s founders. But Stahl doesn’t agree with this standpoint. He gives the example of villages that don’t suit this historical explanatory model, such as the villages of ancient Vrancea that were characterized by no proportional joint property. Another example that advocates the importance of explaining present through past is that of welfare differences between the ex-bondsmen’s descendants from Ardeal and those of the local Romanian nobles. After the 1848 Revolution, the bondsmen from Ardeal were put in possession of the land they used to work. In the mean time, because they had lost their lands due to countless conflicts with the Hungarian nobles, the Romanian nobles’ descendants grew poor. Last but not least, when it comes to explaining the historical frame, sociological monograph is also interesed in the social evolution. That is why, for understanding distinctive evolution and development stages of villages from different country’s regions, the comparative method is usually used. For instance, the extension of village’s farmed land indicates a leap that a certain village has made from a pastoral life stage to the agrarian one, a transition that has both social and economical consequences.

REFERENCES

Bădina, Ovidiu, Neamţu, Octavian. (1967). Dimitrie Gusti, Bucureşti: Ed. Tineretului. Bernea, Ernest. (2006). Civilizaţia română sătească, Bucureşti: Ed. Vremea. Blaga, Lucian. (1937). Spaţiul mioritic, Ed. a doua, Bucureşti: Ed. Oficiului de librărie. Conea, Ion. (Februarie-martie 1937). „Geografia satului românesc”, in Sociologie românească, nr. 2–3. Eliade, Mircea. (2001). Textele ,, legionare” şi despre românism, Cluj-Napoca: Ed. Dacia. Gusti, Dimitrie. (1968). Opere, Vol. I, Bucureşti: Editura Academiei. Gusti, Dimitrie. (1969). Opere, Vol. II, Bucureşti: Editura Academiei. 94 Lucian Dumitrescu 16

Gusti, Dimitrie. (1970). Opere, Vol. III, Bucureşti: Editura Academiei. Gusti, Dimitrie, Herseni, Traian. (2002). Îndrumări pentru monografiile sociologice, Bucureşti: Ed. Universităţii din Bucureşti. Herseni, Traian. (2007). Curs de sociologie rurală, Bucureşti: Ed. Renaissance. Herseni, Traian. (2007). Istoria sociologiei româneşti, Bucureşti: Ed. Renaissance. Herseni, Traian.(1935). Realitatea socială. Încercare de ontologie regională, Bucureşti: Ed. Institutului Social Român. Maior, George. (1906). Politica agrară la români. Dezvoltarea chestiunei agrare în toate Ţările locuite de români din secolul XVII, XVIII şi XIX, Bucureşti. Mehedinţi, Simion. (1904). Antropogeografia şi întemeietorul ei Friedrich Ratzel, Bucureşti. Noica, Constantin. (1991). Pagini despre sufletul românesc, Bucureşti: Ed. Humanitas. Vâlsan, George. (1936). Cercetările sociologice privite din punct de vedere geografic, in Buletinul Societăţii Regale Române de Geografie, tom LV, Bucureşti: Atelierele Socec&Co. Vulcănescu, Mircea. (1991). Dimensiunea românească a existenţei, Bucureşti: Ed. Fundaţiei Culturale Române. Vulcănescu, Mircea. (2005). Opere II, Chipuri spirituale. Prolegomene sociologice, Bucureşti: Ed. Fundaţiei Naţionale pentru Ştiinţă şi Artă SOCIOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS AND THE RURAL SOCIOLOGICAL ATLAS

TOWARDS A METHODOLOGY OF RURAL RESEARCH

VERONICA DUMITRAŞCU The Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy

This article attempts to realize a radiography of rural life through the inventory of some research methods and techniques in the Romanian rural communities. The sociological monographs, including the sociological rural atlas, were the epitome of Gustian sociology. The research of the social reality function of some key aspects – economic, political, religious level – would provide a more comprehensive perspective to isolated elements that, otherwise, cannot make up a complete picture of the Romanian village. Hence, the monograph brings unity to past and present realities. The dynamic character of sociology, focused on by the Sociological School of Bucharest can be tapped into nowadays too. The sociologist is called forth more than ever to interfere in the social life. In this case, the methodological tool is very useful. Through the Social Atlas, the problems of rural communities can be diagnosed and can be foreseen and thus some serious problems which take place in a social dimension can be averted. Hence, the Social Atlas project is very useful for the research of rural life, the books of maps which compose this research tool capturing the progress of social change.

“Sociological studies teach us to discover and to understand the historical truth that the village is the sanctuary where the manifestation of life of the Romanian people took refuge and endured (…); the village is the embodiment of the Romanian life in a small edge of humanity. Through pantheist tenacity, the village is the keeper of the metaphysical relations of the nation with eternity. In the depth of the village mysterious and unsuspicious secrets still illuminate, the truths which it spreads form the best symbol of a nation’s science, a new science, which relies on an encyclopedia of life”.1 The monograph research of the Bucharest School was inaugurated in 1925 by the Seminar of Sociology from the University of Bucharest, while being initiated 15 years before by Professor Dimitrie Gusti (1910). The Sociological School of Bucharest started the series of sociological monographs as a possibility of

1 D. Gusti, The introductive study, p.72 apud M. Diaconu, C. Constantinescu, I. Herseni. (2007). Traian Herseni în critica vremii, Piteşti: Ed. Universităţii din Piteşti, p.19.

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 95–109, Bucureşti, 2008 96 Veronica Dumitraşcu 2 researching the social life. Professor Gusti noted that: “sociology will be monographic or it will not be at all.”2 Through this, he specified that the research of social reality must have an interdisciplinary character, the mission of a sociologist being that of exploring social life through field research. The sociological monographs, including the rural sociological maps constituted the reference point for Gustian sociology. The research of social reality on some aspects – economic, political, religious – would provide a more comprehensive perspective to isolated elements that, otherwise, cannot make up a complete picture of the Romanian village. The projection of sociological monographs through the organization of interdisciplinary teams represents “a synthesis in time and in space of a corner of the country”3, a general view through which it can embrace the realities of past and present, in a temporal unity. Dimitrie Gusti pleaded, first and foremost, for an actional sociology: “militans sociology”. “The national reality is a decisive condition of social life through which a work of a state can be organized”.4 “Knowing the country is the best way to serve it”5 coins the militant character of the Gustian sociological system which specifies that in order knowing existing social realities “we need an encyclopedia of cities and villages; we need a Romanian sociological map.”6 The dynamic character of sociology, focused on by the Sociological School of Bucharest can be tapped into nowadays too. The sociologist is called forth more than ever to interfere in the social life. But, in order to succeed, he must have a comprehensive knowledge of the problems that the fortress is confronted with. In this case, the methodological tool is very useful. The projection of rural sociological maps implies the detection of social transformations of realities in time. For the reproduction of the situation in time, it is necessary to elaborate successive and cumulative maps. When we refer to successive maps “it is marked the level of factual situations in time” and we refer to a change at a national or local level and for the determination of changes on a global level there are projected cumulative maps, which reflect the increases and the decreases in time. Immanuel Wallerstein (1974), the founder of global system, indicates for the determination of regional changes the interval of 25 years and for the periodicities of the global system’s evolution, he uses stages such as: 1450–1640, 1600–1750

2 Dimitrie Gusti. (1969). Opere, Texts, comments, notes by Ov. Bădina and Octavian Neamţu, Bucureşti: Ed. Academiei, vol. I, p. 334. 3 Idem. 4 M. Diaconu, C. Constantinescu, I. Herseni. (2007). Traian Herseni în critica vremii, Piteşti: Ed. Universităţii din Piteşti, p. 23. 5 Dimitrie Gusti. (1969). Opere, Texts, comments, notes by Ov. Bădina and Octavian Neamţu, Bucureşti: Ed. Academiei, vol. I, p. 334. 6 Idem. 3 Sociological Monographs and the Rural Sociological Atlas 97 etc., therefore larger periods of times7. In this respect, the maps should reflect certain patterns of development. The construction of sociological maps entails an interdisciplinary work. It is not just a demographic, economic, ethnographic, religious, occupational atlas or one that can capture merely the migration phenomenon. The rural sociological atlas captures all these phenomena. The mission of the atlas is to give a general view on changes from the social reality. A sociological atlas means that the research team should collect demographic, economic, occupational or emigrational data. All this information describes an aspect of social life, emphasizes some changes that take place in society. The social reality can be captured only by restoring a given state of society at a given time. The functioning of a society can be understood by grasping the changes at his structural level, precisely pointed out by social maps. For the construction of the sociological atlas we do not need just to process data, but a comprehensive knowledge of social reality, the pervading of the sociologist into the real world through investigations and surveys, in order to capture the main aspects of social life, from the demographic aspects to the quality of life. For his construct, the zonal or regional sociological researches are necessary. The regional or zonal research contributes to the socio-spatial scientific knowledge.

THE REGIONAL AND ZONAL RESEARCH IN SOCIOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF BUCHAREST

Zonal research intends to give up to exhaustive research of a village and to restrict the researches through sociological monographs. The zonal researches of the problems can fall into the category of regional integration. As Dimitrie Gusti says: “a village cannot be isolated, because it is a part of a group of villages that share a common regional territory”. The settlement of a village is not a pure spatial phenomenon. A series of functional branches are founded between a village and neighboring region.”8 Although Dimitrie Gusti studied the monographs of all villages and cities, at last he opted for a solution given by Anton Golopentia. This considered the statistical regional comparative research as substitute to monographs. Golopentia specified that he “observed the approach of such comparative researches which can allow the exploitation of monographs results through regional, statistical and map- drawing studies.”9

7 Abraham Dorel. (2000). “Atlasul sociologic al schimbării sociale din România postcomunistă” in Romanian Sociology, no. 1. 8 Matei Ion. (1980). “Cercetări zonale şi preocupări urbanistice în concepţia lui Dimitrie Gusti” in H. Stahl. (1980). Dimitrie Gusti:critique studies, Bucureşti: Ed. Ştinţifică şi Enciclopedică, p. 312. 9 Idem, p. 315. 98 Veronica Dumitraşcu 4

The research, like Henri H. Stahl said, provides some information about the places of the village in a certain typology and then about the spreading of a certain type of villages. For zonal researches more methods are identified: – The pilot-village method, inaugurated by the Nerej researches, follows the knowledge of a certain kind of location and his characteristics. The interdisciplinary teams of students achieved documentation about that sort of village, and then they studied a certain type of problems for placing the pilot-village in a certain region. – The method of direct-study of the zone, utilized by Anton Golopentia and Mihai Pop in 1939, following the study of territorial development and local problems. For the spatial organization of the village and for the zonal researches of social realities we will follow two vital elements: territorial vision and the focus of the monographs on certain essential problems.10 The regional research is important because it facilitates the knowledge of reality from a socio-spatial point of view. Utilizing the concrete data from researches and a typology of villages, we can build the sociological rural atlas as a tool of knowing social life. Thus, typological maps can be built (on cultural, religious and economic areas). Also, the data taken from researches can be utilized in databases for other researches and also as a way for scientific documentation. The sociological typologies are, as Dimitrie Gusti pointed out, tools that make a link between the theoretical and practical (empirical) levels of sociological research. The regional research highlights the importance of social indicators that pave the way to comparative, statistical researches and can diagnose a certain territory from the development point of view. One of the founders of the project regarding zonal research (influenced by Frederic Le Play and E. Demolin) was Patrick Geddes.11 Geddes proposes the slogan “Survey before Action”, in other words the foundation of an action based on a synergy between ecology, economy, politics and anthropology. Composing an interdisciplinary team, Demolins succeeded to elaborate a new methodology which combines sociology and geography. For him, “the place” that Le Play was talking about, represents not only a geographical place, “not just a place in space, but also a tragedy in time”.12 His methodology was based on “Simultaneous Thinking” method (simultaneous thinking facilitated by the superposition of maps-drawing)

10 Ibidem, p. 316–317. 11 Abraham Dorel. (2000). “Atlasul sociologic al schimbării sociale din România postcomunistă” in Romanian Sociology, no. 1, p. 5. 12 Stahl Henri H. (1975). Teoria şi practica investigaţiilor sociale, Bucureşti: Ed. Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, vol. 2, p. 43. 5 Sociological Monographs and the Rural Sociological Atlas 99

which entails the study of a natural region where the city is seen in connection with the transformation of its surrounding area.13 The Chicago School applied on a wide scale the Geddes working plan. This zonal research method was used in the territorial systematization actions started in 1949 by Stefan Popovici, when summary monographs were attempted, using the method initiated by Geddes, “simultaneous thinking”. Researches were made in 1949 in Hunedoara until in 1956, in Constanta, Tulcea, Bistrita and Argeş. The territorial systematization falls into the category of the research on urban-rural area for posterior territorial arrangements and for the reorganization of networking locations. In order to draft the territorial systematization, a typological complex of social indicators was created. For the construction of social maps, we can take in account the following methods: – “the pattern of social net and the systematization problem”, mentioned by Henri Stahl, the recording of territoriality and social structure during the research; – The main method proposed by Stahl – “social archaeology”; – The problem of mental maps in geopolitics.

THE METHOD OF TERRITORIAL SYSTEMATIZATION

First works about territorial systematization were made in 1938–1939 within the sociological movements from Bucharest.14 The sociological School of Bucharest wanted to achieve a research about population’s health, for the experimentation of sociological methods in sanitary domain. Doctor G. Banu extended his studies from the pattern of sanitary net to all social aspects organized on the administrative territory.15 Surprising some social phenomenon on a certain territory we can synthetize the stamping of social structure on the field. As H. Stahl said, the territory is humanized, the nature is socialized and it can be understand only through an historical study. In this way, geographical and social studies must be together. The geography must be understood as human science, in other words, it must be a connection between people and the living territory. It was built some “blank form maps” with the purpose of surprising social changes cartographically. It was made an administrative division inside the

13 Abraham Dorel. (2000). “Atlasul sociologic al schimbării sociale din România postcomunistă” in Romanian Sociology, no. 1, p. 5. 14 Stahl Henri H. (1975). Teoria şi practica investigaţiilor sociale, Bucureşti: Ed. Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, vol. 1, p. 39. 15 Idem, p. 39. 100 Veronica Dumitraşcu 6 country’s boundaries (for example, demographic densities maps). Registering only the average values from the villages, average density of population, we can observe some changes in the way that the population is distributed connected with historical processes. The cartographers have a multidisciplinary character because we can judge spatial presence of many phenomenon and that thing can guide us upon some causal correlations. The problem of territorial systematization, underlined by Henri H. Stahl, deserve to be studied on some aspects: – zonal research has an administrative boundary; – that step ask for an interdisciplinary synthesis; – taking in consideration a space inside an administrative unity can make attention upon urban-rural relation, the zone being a periurban area and the city has a considerable influence upon the village; taking in consideration such a delimitated territory, administrative and periurban area, it can impose the adjustment of considerable attention to facts which are taking place in that geographical area; – it must take into account not only geographical area, but also the understructure of that space, including network system (railways, streets, seaport arrangements), but also the enclosed households and the buildings were the people work (factories, building sites, mines).16

THE METHOD OF SOCIAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Bounded by geographical and historical places, Stahl proposes another method, social archaeology. This method presumes the reconstitution of the past through the analysis of material residuum of juridical, social and economical structures. The method of observation, the description and interpretation of natural objects and places, can be restored through the composing of photographs on large scale and of maps which can surprise some “past traces”. A series of marks are emphasized, marks which can show the nature of village location, the presence of some historical traces which can reconstitute the past of settlement and which can frame it in a historical typology and the way of economical organization of geographical landscape. Henry Stahl reminds of so- called “socio-graphical signs”– sinks, micro-relief’s different from naturals ones, “phitological signs”– different colors of plants after the nature of soil which they grow, “pedagogical signs”– different colors of soil, after its immediately substructure, “hygrometric signs”– zones sooner dryed than other and “topographical signs”.17 All this signs give us information about the oldness of

16 Stahl Henri H. (1975). Teoria şi practica investigaţiilor sociale, Bucureşti: Ed. Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, vol. 1, p. 40. 17 Idem, p. 196–197. 7 Sociological Monographs and the Rural Sociological Atlas 101 location, its interior structure, economical used techniques, how the plots were made, the nature of location: agricultural, pastoral, with networking and hydrographical nettings. Having all this information, the sociologist can make a classification of villages depending on historical oldness, the character of location, the way of geographical and social organization. These data can be used especially by archeologists who can cartography some zones where they can find historical traces. With the contribution of this data it can be made zonal cartographies which can indicate the character and the way of organizing the locations and their zonal distribution. The study of social morphology (it is considered the sociology’s annex) takes in consideration a typology of socio-economic formations, as well as the study of human collectivities and of formal and informal social groups.18 We don’t have to study just the objects or things from social reality but, first of all, we, the sociologists, have to study and the way that people have transformed them in their actions. Within the investigations, the territorial limits which can be traced on the map through a line have great importance, but some unclear delimitation interferes, as Henri Stahl said. For example, the passing from urban locations to rural locations. Besides geographical spaces, there are also social spaces, which can’t be delimitated. Cartographically, only statistical average value can be represented. Also, the isolated facts can be hardly transformed into maps, as Stahl specified. It can’t be reprezentated through a line or delimitation, but, at most, through a score method, marking with some signs the special villages where a social phenomenon is present. A method mentioned by Stahl is that of “social isobaric curve”. This is used in cartography when we talk about demographic pressures (for example demographic densities, women or men’s percent). The sociological research must follow not only the problem of space from the geographical point of view, but also from the architectural point of view. In this way, we deal with the problem of town– planning and of territorial systematization. In this passing from exhaustive monographs of villages to summary monographs, urban-rural monographs from territorial systematization, the sociologists from the School of Bucharest consult foreign works, especially the researches from Germany or USA. Between the two world wars it can be find researches about regions. There were delimitated so-called “nodal regions”, the connection between places and things and the methodology was developed in USA and Germany.19

18 Stahl Henri H. (1975). Teoria şi practica investigaţiilor sociale, Bucureşti: Ed. Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, vol. 1, p. 204. 19 Abraham Dorel. (2000). “Atlasul sociologic al schimbării sociale din România postcomunistă” in Romanian Sociology, no. 1, p. 6. 102 Veronica Dumitraşcu 8

THE REGIONALIZATION SUBJECT AND MENTAL MAPS IN GEOPOLITICS

The adjacent notions and sometimes superposed on the concept of region are: “area”, “territory”, proximity, central area, geopolitical area.20 The regionalization subject involves a delimitation of some spaces on the following reasons: geographical, cultural, political, ideological, economical reasons. For answering the main question: “how could be defined a region?” Deutsch suggests the answer through another question:” How many sections from the Earth area are making together a membership more than others?”21 Same section can belong to many regions: geographically, it can belong to a region and politically and culturally to another region. The regionalization can induce changes in social space. In this way, we can talk about an “advance of regional frontiers” with their ideology, their signs and their symbols. The region is not just a geographical cutting up. The region brings with it the filling of space and the ideas people are working with to settle a legitimate space. Haushofer suggests the term of “pan-idea” for the designation of aggregate between an ethnic and what it is considered to be the territory of legitimate expansion.22 Pan-ideas can remodel an identity space through some “cognitive maps”. Shills specify that the people have a mental, cognitive map of their own representation. The geopolitics of representations took notice the modeling of people’s mental space through the tracing of mental frontiers. Professor Ilie Badescu in “Treaty of geopolitics” makes the distinction between ethno mental maps – “the collective points of view of a space” and “ideological maps”– “the vision of some groups towards the representation of space”23. Ideological maps are those that the politicians, diplomatic and other stakeholders are working with. An example of ideological map is that of Huntington. He ignores ethno- mental representation of people and imposes the tracing of some cultural frontiers between civilization blocks. From the ideological point of view, mental maps have a projective character. Another example of projective map is that proposed by Thomas Barnett, an American geostrategist which projected the so-called Pentagon Map on which he traced security regions (The Functioning Core) and the insecurity area (The Gap)24 or the areas with political and economic stability and those without political and economical stability and which are vulnerable to terrorist attacks. He divided the world in two areas: a functioning core of developed countries with political stability, which are in a process of global integration and nonintegrated areas, sources of threatening for the international security. The map projected by Thomas

20 Bădescu Ilie. (2004). Tratat de geopolitică, Bucureşti: Ed. Mica Valahie, p. 267. 21 Idem, p. 267. 22 Ibidem, p. 294. 23 Ibidem, p.189. 24 http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/ 9 Sociological Monographs and the Rural Sociological Atlas 103

Barnett is an adventurous projection came from American offices which catalogue the people in good and bad, vulnerable or not. The project proposed by Thomas Barnett is an ambitious one, but it is realized for american interest and objective: the project of neoconservative democratization of world, the integration of areas in a democratic core. The maps can be used for people’s interest, but also against them. These can be used also as manipulation tools and can provoke geopolitical or logistical wars. In this way, the projection of some maps can influence the destiny of people and nations.

THE METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH. THE ATLAS OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS. THE WORKING PATTERN OF RURAL POVERTY/ DEVELOPMENT MAPS

The Social Atlas is a series of maps which can surprise some components of social life on localities or zones. This can be built by a series of indicators which can surprise the dynamism of social life on a certain territory. The drawing of Romanian social atlas is founded, as CURS mentions, on: 1. Statistical data of population census from January 1992, statistical annuals and other publications from CNS; 2. Polls on representative sample at national level; 3. Studies and polls at regional level (on historical or cultural areas) and zonal region.25 The construction of a Romanian social atlas was projected after 1990 by CURS, through the achievement of social mobility studies, of the manner of leaving, of social structure or on the attitude of population regarding social, political, religious changes. An atlas of social problems should surprise the dynamic of social life changes, from the socio-demographical and economical changes to the building of a value of social welfare of some regions or geographical and cultural zones. The atlas shouldn’t surprise isolated facts, but a whole system of social processes. Lately, the map of social problems and especially those of rural poverty/ development played an important role in the Romanian social policy. The maps of poverty diagnose the profile of welfare indicating the zones/regions/localities were the poverty is concentrated. There are many ways to study and diagnose the poverty depending on the methodology used for the construction of maps. The projection of maps for community poverty was realized in 1998 by the PNUD team. There were elaborated two methodologies, one for localities and other

25 Abraham Dorel. (2000). “Atlasul sociologic al schimbării sociale din România postcomunistă” in Romanian Sociology, no. 1, p. 4. 104 Veronica Dumitraşcu 10 for urban areas. They are speaking about relative poverty; a locality is poor in comparison with other localities. “The poor communes were identified based on two dimensions of community poverty, one is the cause and the other is the effect. Starting from 10 indicators there were constructed 4 partial dimensions referring to: 1. Biological capital of commune (demographical dependence rate) 2. The infrastructure of commune (factorial score computed by: the habitable surface on residence, number of telephone subscriptions per 1,000 inhabitants and the degree of concentration of population in the biggest village of the commune). 3. The human capital of the commune (factorial score computed by: education stock, the weight of population employed in agriculture and the number of employees on the enterprise from commune per 1000 inhabitants). 4. Demographical phenomenon (factorial score computed by: birth rate, emigration rate and temporary departures, through the change of residence). The cause – dimension of poverty in the commune was obtained as factorial score of partial dimensions 1, 2 and 3 and the effect – dimension was the factorial score of partial dimensions 2, 3 and 4. So, community human capital and the infrastructure were considered causes and effects of commune poverty. The poverty/development of country’s communes was estimated depending on the obtained dimensions.26 Another method for the construction of poverty map was achieved by World Bank in 1998. It was constructed an index measured on 11 criteria, classified on 6 dimensions: 1. the structure of population which don’t favor development (% in agriculture in 1992, % inhabitants of 60 and over, employees in the commune per 1,000 inhabitants) 2. socio-demographic poverty (birth rate, temporary migration rate, emigration rate) 3. habitable area of residence (square meter) 4. modern equipments ( TVs per 1,000 inhabitants, telephones per 1,000 inhabitants) 5. the index of agricultural resources (1* number of cattle + 0,35 * number of porcine + 0,12 * number of sheep + 0,04 * number of birds)/ number of agricultural land in property. 6. urban access For each of 6 dimensions was building an index as factorial score. In the next step it was determined the community poverty/ development index, as factorial score of those 6 indexes”.27

26 Stănculescu Manuela, “The rural poverty map in Romania”, www.iccv.ro 27 Idem. 11 Sociological Monographs and the Rural Sociological Atlas 105

Another method proposed is that of aggregate index. The development or the poverty of village can be measured as a combination of material, human, social, biological capital. For the measuring of rural development index it can be used the socio- demographic indicator (the demographic phenomena of poverty identified through low birth rate, a great emigration rate and great temporary emigration rate), human capital (measured as the weight of population from agriculture and industry, number of registered scholars, number of doctors and number of professors), economical capital as index of agricultural resources. The index of agricultural resources, used by World Bank for the construction of poverty map in 1998 is measured as weighted average of animals from household, using the scores: 1 for cattle, 0,35 for porcine, 0,12 for ovine and 0,04 for birds divided on agriculture hectare land. The capital of infrastructure is measured as modern endowment of households through the number of TV subscription, telephone subscriptions per 1,000 inhabitants and habitable capital (habitable average area per person). Using the aggregation method, standardized values of index are gathered in a synthetic index and, after that, through cluster method there can be identified localities with developed or poor community capital. An important role for understanding of rural development is given by the demographic potential of communities. The villages with lower birth rate and raised migration are poor villages. According to the economic factor, an important role is played by household’s resources, reevaluated as consumption of households, understood as stock of material welfare. Human capital is important in a community; it shows human potential of development, the degree of rural education, the percent of salaried persons. The modern endowment of households and the habitable surface of households show the degree of rural modernization. The map show us that the chain of poverty is lenghting from the North–West of the country to South and South–East of the country, where the poverty is accentuated. Everything takes the form of poor communitarian capital passage. The map of development index emphasizes the fact that the rural poverty is more accentuated in the North–East of the country and in the South of the country, and also in the West. The most affected districts concerning the communitarian capital are those from the North–East of the country, Vaslui, Neamt, Botosani and Bacau, Vrancea, than the districts from the South of the country, Ialomita, Teleorman, Olt, Dolj, Dâmboviţa, Vâlcea, Argeş. In the South–East of the country, communities under poverty are in Constanta, Călăraşi, Ialomita and, partially, Tulcea. Developed and more developed communities concerning communitarian capital are those from the North, in the middle and in the west of the country. 106 Veronica Dumitraşcu 12

THE MEASURING OF POVERTY/ DEVELOPMENT OF VILLAGE DEPENDING ON RURAL CAPITAL

Birth rate

Teporary migrational Socio-demographic rate indicatory Emigration rate

Habitable surfaces

Radio subscription on 1000 inhabitans

TV on 1000 Rural Modern endowment inhabitans development of residence- index understructure capital Phones on 1000 inhabitans locuitori

Agricultural Value=(1*cattlee+0.35* resources index porcines+0.12*ovines+ Economical capital +0.04* birds)/ha agricultural ground

Pupils on 1000 inhabitans

Industry salaried Human capital Agricultural salaried Doctor on 1000

Teaching staff on 1000 inhabitans Index of development communities below the poverty poor communities communities at the level of development communities developed highly developed communities

108 Veronica Dumitraşcu 14

The main sectors of poverty are in the East and in the South of the country where there are many people occupied in agriculture, the understructure is poorer and the education is lower. Also, in these areas, the infant mortality is bigger. The progress of communitarian development is influenced by the birth rate, mortality rate, and, if we can follow demographic progress, we can observe a superposition with the development level of villages. The infant mortality is bigger in the north– east and in the south of the country, where there is a low level of development index. Also, the poverty island is situated at the periphery of the country and the poorer communities are situated toward the periphery of the districts. The pole of the poverty can be considerate the South of the country, where the natality is very low and the infant mortality is relatively raised with a natural spor (births– deaths) negative, (–6,81 at 1000 inhabitants). Concerning human capital, there is a very small number of employees, many of them being concentrated in big cities. The south of the country is exposed to communitarian poverty concerning not only demographical aspect but also economical, social and emigrational aspects. The index of communitarian development shows us the problem of poverty, how we can take action and where, concerning the area of rural underdevelopment. Social book of maps can be very useful for the diagnosis of some social problems in certain regions or localities. These express the changes which took place in a course of time on regional areas or on localities. Starting from the study of these maps, we can act for the improvement of fortress life, through reforms for social life. The atlas, as book of maps, can confer information about all changes which take place in time on some social and geographical areas.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIOLOGICAL ATLAS

The atlas represents the pulse of a community, the way how that community is organized and its progress. Through social atlas it can be diagnosed the problems from rural communities and it can be a warning upon some serious problems from a social space. Among the objectives specified by Dorel Abraham for the construction of social Atlas: – the substantiation and development of regional research for the construction of Atlas – the identification of main sorts of habituating on geographical area – the determination of occupational progress and of levels of education – the determination of socio/demographical structure – the determination of the relation between the households, the quality of life, demographical behavior and the style of life – The identification of local problems 15 Sociological Monographs and the Rural Sociological Atlas 109

– The determination of behavior, attitudes and religious feeling of population – The progress of political behavior after 1990 – The determination of interethnic studies at regional level.28 The construction of Social Atlas can provide some information upon the way of organization and the pattern of changing of some regions and geographical zones. The worry about some problems from rural life can be express through maps collection which can diagnose the estate of a community. These represent a radiography of rural life with all changes from the community and the sociologist should construct and investigate different ways to study the villages and to propose different solutions for the improvement of the quality of life for the development of rural communities.

REFERENCES

Abraham, Dorel. (2000). ,,Atlasul sociologic al schimbării sociale din România Postcomunistă” în Sociologie Românească, nr. 1, 2000. Bădescu, Ilie. (2004).Tratat de geopolitică, Bucureşti: Ed. Mica Valahie. Diaconu, M., Constantinescu, C., Herseni I. (2007). Traian Herseni în critica vremii, Piteşti:Ed. Universităţii din Piteşti. Gusti, Dimitrie. (1969). Opere, vol. I, Texte stabilite, comentarii, note de Ov. Bădina şi Octavian Neamţu, Bucureşti: Ed. Academiei. Stahl H. (1975). Tehnica şi metoda investigaţiilor sociologic, vol. 1 şi vol. 2, Bucureşti: Ed. Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică. Stahl H. (1980). Dimitrie Gusti: studii critice, Bucureşti: Ed. Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică. Stănculescu, Manuela. Harta sărăciei rurale în Români, www.iccv.ro. http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/

28 Abraham Dorel, Atlasul sociologic al schimbării sociale din România postcomunistă, (The sociological Atlas of social changes from postcommunist Romania) in Romanian Sociology, no. 1, 2000.

110 Veronica Dumitraşcu 16

ARTISANSHIP AND OPEN-AIR TRADE IN CONTEMPORARY ROMANIA∗

MARIN CONSTANTIN

“Francisc Rainer” Institute of Anthropology, Bucharest

My article deals with the trading dimension in the artisanship process as it takes place in the 2000s Romania. The research is centred on the institution of folk fair, which is described at the level of five ethnographic museums in Bucharest, Sibiu, Timisoara, and Suceava. Artisans appear to be interested not only in the traditional transmission from generation to generation of their crafts, but also in meeting and keeping a clientele for the artefacts they make. Even though, at present, craftsmanship and rural farming are separate branches of peasant economy, in the past, the folk fairs and the agricultural markets were unified, in accordance with the needs for exchange among peasants in their native countryside.

In 2002–2003, I conducted an investigation at the level of the craftsmen’s workshops in five ethnographic areas of Romania (Maramureş, Mărginimea Sibiului, Oltenia, Vrancea, and Tulcea), in such domains of specialization as woodcarving, weaving, pottery, mask-making, and fishing. Since craftsmen make artefacts not solely for a domestic use in their village households, but equally for sale within the urban folk fairs, I considered it relevant to extend my previous research over such a market process. Information for my article was collected during five folk fairs, held in 2005, in the following museums: the Museum of Peasants (Bucharest, 15–17 July), the Museum of Banat Villages (Timişoara, 5–7 August), the Astra Museum of Folk Civilisation (Sibiu, 12–15 August), the Museum of Suceava and Bukovine (Suceava, 19–21 August), and the Village Museum (Bucharest, 16–18

∗ Acknowledgements. This text is part of a research report that I wrote after accomplishing my project When Tradition is Given a Trademark. The Market Enrolment of Folk Artisanship in Post- Socialist Romania in the framework of Centre for Advanced Study (CAS), Sofia (2005–2006). I express here my gratitude to the CAS institution (particularly, to Professor Alexander Kiossev), and also to all my colleagues from the program “Roles, Identities, and Hybrids”, for their warm encouragements and advices. I am also deeply grateful to all my field interlocutors – the folk artisans and the museum directors – whose names are indicated at the end of my article. The entire responsibility for the content of the following material is mine.

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 111–132, Bucureşti, 2008 112 Marin Constantin 2

September)1. The museum fairs are not regular events, but they depend on fixed religious feasts or locally significant dates. As a result, the schedule of my fieldwork was made in accord with the above fairs. As regards the institutional relevance of the museums concerned here, we first distinguish the chronological primacy and sociological encompassing of the Village Museum (founded in 1936 by the members of sociological teams led by Dimitrie Gusti, with representation of the different peasant cultures of Romania). Another case (the Museum of Peasants) is outstanding for the contemporary professional achievement of the EMYA distinction, as “the best European museum of the year” (1996). As for the Astra Museum, we take into account the profile and capacity of its establishment, as devoted to “the folk civilisation and technology in Romania” within a perimeter of 100 hectares; at the same time, the Astra Museum is the house of several national associations in artisanship. With respect to the other two museums in discussion (the Museum and the Suceava Museum), they represent the largest counties of Romania (Timiş: 8,697 km²; Suceava: 8,553 km²), and also cases of regional open-air museums that are currently hosting folk fairs; another reason here is that of the multiethnic folk programmes of the two museums. As regards the institutional relevance of the museums concerned here, I first distinguish the chronological primacy and sociological encompassing of the Bucharest Village Museum (founded in 1936 by the members of sociological teams led by Dimitrie Gusti, with representation of the different peasant cultures of Romania). Another case (the Bucharest Museum of Peasants) is outstanding for the contemporary professional achievement of the EMYA distinction, as “the best European museum of the year” (1996). As for the Sibiu Astra Museum, we take into account the profile and capacity of its establishment, as devoted to “the folk civilisation and technology in Romania” within a perimeter of 100 hectares; at the same time, the Astra Museum is the house of several national associations in artisanship. With respect to the other two museums in discussion (the Timişoara Museum and the Suceava Museum), they represent the largest counties of Romania (Timiş: 8,697 km2; Suceava: 8,553 km2), and also cases of regional open-air museums that are currently hosting folk fairs; another reason here is that of the multiethnic folk programmes of the two museums.

1 The folk fair is a peasant institution that the ethnographic museums seem to have borrowed from the peasant cultural milieu within which it had developed for centuries. Such fairs – called nedei, singular nedeie – took place since the medieval times on the western, southern, and eastern sides of the Romanian Carpathians. Anthropologist Gheorghiţă Geană provides (2006: 93-4) the annual calendar of sixteen folk fairs in the villages of Bârseşti, Năruja, Tirchiş, and Vidra (Vrancea County), as held between 23 April and 6 December, at fixes dates, usually representing Christian feasts”. According to the author (who also relies on ethno-folkloristic and sociological descriptions of Carpathian fairs in the 1930s), a series of functions may be associated with the mountain folk fairs in Romania, including the “institutionalised entertainment” as a “means of socialisation for young people”, the “economic exchanges as influential peasant markets”, and the “ethnic function” of “reinforcing the primordial ties” between the Romanians who live in Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania (Geană 2006: 94–7). 3 Artisanship and Open-air Trade in Contemporary Romania 113

THE FOLK-FAIR

As hosted by ethnographic museums, the folk fairs constitute the main “cultural scene” where the peasant “traditions” and “folk art” are displayed in front of an urban audience. In fact, the very notion of “fair” is intriguing when it matches the “museum” one. Folk fairs in Romania have been reported since medieval times2, but they were institutions of peasantry only, with no cultural assistance from the state, the church, or the nobility. As will be seen, the twentieth-century (ethnographic) museums in Romania were for a long time assigned specialised tasks of patrimony management, and not popularising or “cultural revival” functions. In our study, we are interested in discussing the market character of folk fairs (which seems to prevail over the museum programmes of “folk-culture” custody). This is to examine the trading metamorphosis of “artefacts” into “products”, and of “tradition” or “folk art” into “commodity-defined goods”. We also seek to understand the effectiveness degree of some market strategies among craftsmen, as well as the market social organisation of them. A series of important factors seem to accurately indicate the market character of the folk-fair artisanship. Among such factors, we mention the artisans’ seasonal working schedule, their collectively-shared definition of “collegiality”, the national-scale of the folk-fairs network, and the openness toward other “market” frameworks in Romania (particularly, regional and urban festivals). MP suggests that the museum-hosted folk-fairs agenda during the main Orthodox feasts of the year (Christmas and Easter, days of saints like Peter and Paul, Elias, Holy Virgin, Day of Holy Cross, Saint Demetrius, and Saint Nicholas) would reproduce the peasants’ traditional calendar and alternation of work and ritual time. At times, craftsmen describe their seasonal division of labour between artisanship and local farming activities, which they need to schedule rigorously in order to attend spring, summer, autumn, and winter fairs (for instance, AR, IB, MAP, and TB). Other artisans (CP, VA) argue their interest in the seasonal rotation of their crafts in terms of winter timing necessary for the home manufacture of objects. VMold depicts the atmosphere of the folk fairs in the past, when farming

2 The folk fair is a peasant institution that the ethnographic museums seem to have borrowed from the peasant cultural milieu within which it had developed for centuries. Such fairs – called nedei, singular nedeie – took place since the medieval times on the western, southern, and eastern sides of the Romanian Carpathians. Anthropologist Gheorghiţă Geană provides (2006: 93–4) the annual calendar of sixteen folk fairs in the villages of Bârseşti, Năruja, Tirchiş, and Vidra (Vrancea County), as held between 23 April and 6 December, at fixes dates, usually representing Christian feasts”. According to the author (who also relies on ethno-folkloristic and sociological descriptions of Carpathian fairs in the 1930s), a series of functions may be associated with the mountain folk fairs in Romania, including the “institutionalised entertainment” as a “means of socialisation for young people”, the “economic exchanges as influential peasant markets”, and the “ethnic function” of “reinforcing the primordial ties” between the Romanians who live in Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania (Geană 2006: 94–7). 114 Marin Constantin 4 products, wooden artefacts, and pottery were usually brought and sold together. Perhaps as a reminiscence of such traditional markets, some artisans are engaged into “barter” transactions during the fairs of today, as when ZMB exchanged one of her wooden artefacts for a folk costume made by a colleague, or when TBus offered a wind-instrument for a table cloth. CP and IB argue their advantage to sell at the fair, in comparison with the small-priced transactions at home. In general, craftsmen recognise that the museum folk-fair is the proper place to meet their clientele (ES, MD, SA, SB, and VB). According to OD, a museum folk-fair also operates a “selection of [craft] values”, to the benefit of public. IB remembers that in the beginning of 1990s, many fairs were open to any craftsman, even with no museum invitation needed, while nowadays artisans face new hardships (especially the requirement to found their own trading society in order to be allowed to commercialize objects under the museum custody). The most nominated folk-fairs among artisans are those hosted by the Bucharest Village Museum (28 references), the Sibiu Astra Museum (27 references), the Bucharest Museum of Peasants (25 references), the Oradea Museum (15 references), the Suceava Museum (10 references), the Timişoara Museum (6 references), the Braşov Museum of Bran (5 references), the Câmpulung-Moldovenesc Museum (4 references), and the Braşov Museum (3 references)3. Several craftsmen point out the commercial potential of the Bucharest museums (EP, VA, VMold, and ZMB). Other folk fairs mentioned by artisans are located in Iaşi (14 nominations), Cluj (8), Constanţa (6), Craiova (4), Botoşani (3), Mănăstirea Humorului (3), Piteşti (3), Arad (2), Deva (2), Târgu-Mureş (2), Târgu- Neamţ (2), Vaslui (2), Baia Mare (1), Bistriţa (1), Buftea (1), Buzău (1), Curtea de Argeş (1), Focşani (1), Paşcani (1), Rădăuţi (1), Râmnicu-Vâlcea (1), Roman (1), Reghin (1), Sfântul Gheorghe (1), Sighişoara (1), Slatina (1), and Vatra Dornei (1). EV (artisan from the Republic of Moldova) attends mostly the fairs from the towns of Orhei, Bălţi, and Chisinau4. A recurrent opinion is that of the folk-fair “large-family atmosphere” among artisans when they meet each other and exchange information, craft working models, and impressions about their work (DC, DM, DG, IM, SA, SB, MP, MR, ŞC, VKR, and VL). EV equates her participation to the fairs with an “exchange of experience”, in that she finds there ideas difficult to imagine at home. IA speaks of

3 The notoriety of museums is also associated with their advertising investment, which is generalised as a market strategy of all the museums concerned here: radio and TV publicity, along with banners and promotional leafs (CEU), radio and TV, printed media (PP), Astra Film studio, tourism agencies and hotels, and TV (CB). 4 The general policy of museums and municipalities in hosting the folk fairs is to invite artisans from all the ethnographic areas of Romania. For example, the National Festival of Folk Traditions (Astra Museum, Sibiu) brings together 400 craftsmen of which 100 from Transylvania, 100 from Moldavia and Moldova, 100 from Wallachia, and 100 from Dobroudja (CB). 5 Artisanship and Open-air Trade in Contemporary Romania 115 his “kindred” colleagues from the folk fairs. Such a “corporate” self-representation is particularly associated with those fairs when (in the 1990s) the craftsmen’s participation was smaller than today, and when their cohesion would have been “stronger” (ZMB). MP claims that museum folk-fair is not (due to artisans’ “collegiality”) a place for “competition”.

I think there is no real competition [among craftsmen] since customers there are for all of us. The customer comes and sees many objects, and he will choose what he wishes; maybe he would need some of my objects or something else from my colleague… So I think we artisans are rather colleagues, than rivals… It is true that […] when we see one of us bringing to fair something new, we all will try at the next fair to present a novel, astonishing, and interesting thing. This is indeed “competition”, but an artistic one…!

Artisans rhetorically use to oppose the museum-fair to urban open-air markets (APC, CP, DC, IA, MP, NM, SA, TBus, and VLin). ND sees the markets as sites where “China-made [serial] objects” and “plastics” are usually found. However, several artisans also mention markets and diverse other places and opportunities to sell their artefacts in the city. Thus, they take part to municipality- hosted folk fairs (CP, DM, and FM). GS is present at the “Beer Festival” held in Timişoara. Weaver MD attends the “Golden Stag” international music festival in Braşov. FM reaches the 1812-dated “Manuc Inn” in Bucharest. MJ and MM are usually invited to urban feasts like the “Festival of Hearts” and the “Harvest Day”, in Timişoara, as well as to the “Days of Timişoara” (another “Harvest Day” fair takes place in the Moreni town, cf. VMold). SA is participant at the “Days of the Iaşi City”. NM travels with his painted-icons to the “Muntele Găina” ancient folk- fair (in the Transylvanian Carpathians); DC is another artisan participant to this traditional fair. VKR has attended international folklore festivals in the towns of Târgu-Jiu, Târgovişte, and Caransebeş. According to EV, in the Republic of Moldova, similar folk fairs are those held in the “Day of the Bălţi town” and during the “Wine Feast” in Chisinau. Sometimes one artisans’ participation is said “not to fit the festival profile”, such as in the case of weaver AN at the Sighişoara Medieval Festival in Southern Transylvania. Instead, woodcarver TE does include the Sighişoara festival (along with the “Wine Festival” in Târgu-Mureş) in the agenda of his folk-fair involvement. FB has attended (and has been awarded a prize) at the “Festival of Painted Eggs”, in Ciocăneşti-Suceava, while VB is present at the “Chestnuts Feast” in Baia Mare. FC plans to reach a Bucharest-based “Fair of Bread”. Other similar “festivals” of interest for artisanship are “The Folk Young-Men of Braşov” and the “Garlic Festival” in Botoşani (OD)5.

5 In the summer of 2005, the folk fairs were relocated from the city centres to the ethnographic museums in Suceava and Timişoara, which occurred at the request of the local municipality councils (CEU and IVP). In both cases, the directors of the above museums contend that their institutions would “protect” in such way the artisans and the folk art. 116 Marin Constantin 6

Artisans generally explain their presence at the fair by need of demonstration for visitors in order that “customers understand why we ask their money…” (VKR) (similar “demonstrative” sessions are those carried out by TBus and VL). VMold says his habit is “to narrate” for his clients the “fireplace-icon story” (that is one of his artefacts). According to FC, in his “first working phase” the “[folk] creator” is satisfied when making qualitative objects; in “the second phase”, however, he “has to sell [the artefacts]”. Instead, VM claims that “I dislike selling the commodity I make…” Moreover, unlike his wife (who is “rapacious”), VM happens to reduce his prices. One the other hand, when the artisan and firm holder AN leaves her artefacts under the museum custody, she establishes “good prices”, so that sale will be made even with the museum commission included; she calls herself to be a “business partner” of museums. In general, craftsmen take the price making as their trading right, as a result of market negotiation (MP, NM, and OD), or as a placement within the general price trend of a given fair (EU), with a refusal of the museum intercession (FC, TBus). Sometimes, however, museums are claimed to “advice” the artisans when the prices they set up would be “too small” (IA, VMold). Craftsmen like AF, FM, OD, and TB label “commodity” the artefacts they bring to museums, or which they leave under the museum custody. Market calculation within the folk fair is sometimes denied, since according to NM, “it should not be proper to negotiate the price of an icon…” On the contrary, ceramist OD’s viewpoint is that “since this is a fair, our commodity must be negotiated as such!” Notwithstanding such a tension between what “is”, and what “should not become” commerce (also present in the discourse of IM and DG), IA succeeded to sell not less than 60 masks at a three-days fair of the Museum of Peasants in Bucharest. Likewise, DM sold more than 100 wooden artefacts in two days, while MM once sold 24 little wallets. MP usually deals out “20, 30… or 50 [folk-worn] puppets” for the artisanry shops. Such wholesale is not regular among the craftsmen. MAP says, for instance, that her family association’s “commodity” is not in demand within the Astra Museum. DC and FC are similarly sceptical as to the real “purchasing power” of their folk-fair clientele. Another motivation for retail trade is that of the craftsmen who need long time to make their artefacts (IB, ZMB). A major concern among artisans is the transportation of their artefacts to the fairs. A series of craftsmen make here use of their personal cars (AF, AP, AN, CP, EP, EU, FB, IG, MDen, MJ, MPop, ND, NM, TE, ŞC, ZMB, VMold and VT). According to artisans like IA, EV, VKR, collaboration in the transport payment is another possibility for reaching a fair. Many artisans come to the fairs followed by their relatives, including the ego’s father (AT), brother (ŞC), wife (APC, CP, EP, and FB), son (DM, FC, and ND), daughter (MJ), and granddaughter (GS). A family’s division of labour is effective in VM’s case: while he attends the Suceava museum-fair, his wife is present at another fair, in the Roman town. TB and SA make their artefacts with 7 Artisanship and Open-air Trade in Contemporary Romania 117 their spouses’ help; besides, the artisans’ spouses will remain at home for farming work, while they leave for the fairs. In the above phenomena, artisanship appears to reflect the “market- orientation” of peasantry toward the cities, in the framework of a production-and- exchange process that depends on seasonal labour organisation necessary to provide and diffuse the “commodity” demanded by the craftsmen’s urban and foreign clientele. Manufacture and sale of artefacts are also adapted to the seasonal tourist presence, as in the case of the summer fairs and festivals in Braşov, Sighişoara, Gura Humorului, and Constanţa (EU, TE, VKR, and ZMB). The folk-fair institution in contemporary Romania is the urban “delivery unit” the artisans envisage for distribution of their “products” at a regional or national scale. Participation to local folk-markets only is quite rarely reported, either in the case of the “small museum fairs” from Timişoara (MJ, MM) and Suceava (EU, MAP, ŞC), or in that of the “large fairs” from the Sibiu Astra Museum (DC, EV), the Bucharest Museum of Peasants (SB), and the Bucharest Village Museum (MP, MR, OD). Instead, majority of craftsmen inscribe themselves into a national circuit of museum-based folk fairs and municipality- hosted city feasts, as well as tourism festivals (APC, AT, CP, DG, EP, FM, IA, IG, IM, MDen, MPop, ND, SA, TBus, VA, and VMold). As a result, the “folk fair” is to be seen as a market framework that extends artisanship beyond the museum more-or-less effective policy of “traditional values selection” or “revitalisation”6. Of course, the museum fairs are (due to reasons to discuss in the following chapter) claimed to best meet the artisans’ formal commercial needs. In many respects, however, the craftsmen’s network of urban diversified-location fairs seems at least equally consistent with the ecotourism industry in socialist and especially post-socialist Romania. DM’s membership in ANTREC (Romanian Association for Ecotourism) is relevant as to such development of artisanship.

As we are ANTREC members, the Association invites us as to attend specialised fairs it sets up for the foreign tourists. […] Thus we took part to a fair organised with support of the European Union […]. We conduct the project of an itinerary for the private pensions associated with ANTREC, which will be advertised within an international exhibit.

6 For the “salvaging” vision in the Romanian museography, see the situation of the Timişoara Museum, in the case of the acquisition of a pottery workshop, from a local village where the craft concerned had disappeared (IVP). Such approach is reinforced by the refuse of change in the folk traditions, since “nothing can replace a given tradition” (IVP). According to CEU, the “first mission” of an ethnographic museum is to keep “the trend of authentic folk art”, which makes the artisans “to accept the critiques and take out their stands such improper products”. CB mentions some “echoes” of the artisanship policy of the Astra Museum in Transylvanian villages where peasants start wearing again their old folk-costumes (for instance, while the church rituals) and learn their children folk dances, songs, and myths. 118 Marin Constantin 8

We have mentioned in this study several types of “membership” among the craftsmen, including organisations like the Association of Folk Artisans (AFA) and the Academy of Traditional Arts (ATA)(Sibiu), the Union of the Fine Artists (UAF)(Bucharest), and the “Association of the Amateur Painters” (AAP)(Alba). Of these associations, it is only the AFA and ATA that are linked to the museum framework of the folk fairs, while the non-governmental organisations like UAF, AAP, and ANTREC reflect another affiliation register of the artisans, at the level of private institutionalisation and interests. On such bases – of a state and private character – is also grounded the branch “collegiality” among the artisans. Do such metaphors as the “family” or “brotherhood” self-representation of the craftsmen’s professional group account for any “guild” awareness in times of social and economic transformation in Romania? Probably they do. While it is still following diversified policies of planning and hosting the folk fairs by museums, municipalities, and NGOs, artisanship is expected to possible evolutions from a subaltern condition toward autonomous initiatives and sociality. This seems, at any rate, to be the meaning of the artisans’ private trading strategies and resources when they are present at the folk fairs. As seen earlier, many craftsmen promote wholesale and the direct or “face-to-face” price-making, which is pertinent for their increasing expertise in the market exchange of “art goods”. The use of artisans’ personal cars for their transportation to and from the fairs is an example relevant for the craftsmen’s need to detach themselves from the assistance of their work by museums or other “sponsors”. Some “projective” trading mastery in the market artisanship could also be inferred among those artisans who come to the fairs followed by their children (GS, SA) or juvenile apprentices (EU, SB). Most of all, specialisation in commerce through the folk fairs is evident in the case of artisans’ family division of labour on the market. The family associations we have mentioned in the social framework of the “workshop-based artisanship” become this time effective also in the distribution of artefacts. As will be seen, this is the premise of a shift from the status of “client” status toward a “condition of reciprocity” between artisans and the ethnographic museums.

CLIENTELE FOR ARTEFACTS

A hypothesis of our analysis on the market enrolment of artisanship claims that production of the artefacts is built on a regular base made up of some “consumption” peculiarities associated with such folk-art “goods”. Possibility of a “ready-made” demand for objects and services in artisanry (such as the “craft- teaching sessions” and the “culinary art”) depend as seen on the agency of museums and municipalities (which artisans undertake as costs and benefits). However, beyond this mediation artisans find terrain open for their direct relationship with customers, as well as for their equally direct “distribution channels”. 9 Artisanship and Open-air Trade in Contemporary Romania 119

Our approach will first take into account the role that the personal relationships plays in the making and keeping of a clientele for artisanship, to attempt then to discern a “typology” of the artisans’ clients. It is important to notice that, while artisanship is made as a branch of peasant economy (which involves specialisation, labour division, investments etc.) it seems to still be seen as only “folk-art” among urban and foreign customers (with implication of “intrinsic” and “ineffable”, rather than “accountable”, value of one’s artefacts). As a consequence, the market demand for artefacts is balanced between what artisans choose to “represent” as folk traditions and arts, and what their clientele happens to mean as “traditional” or “artistic” as regards peasantry. Icon-painter NM is evocative for such a “folk-market negotiation”:

[As an artisan] I strive to meet the customers’ expectancies […] This is problematic, since I am supposed to conform to someone’s interest in a painted icon… for the rest of his/her life, so that I have to make it as that client wants…

Artisans generally contend they are establishing “their own clientele”. According to IB, he engages “friendships” with those who buy his artefacts, since such clients usually continue to frequent him. “Personalised” sale relationships are also developed among craftsmen like AT, FB, MAP, MM, and VL. IA speaks of his “20 years-known clients”. Similarly, ZMB meet customers who regularly pay visits to her stand for “two-three years long”. Other artisans describe how clientele asks them for their phone number and address, with intention of further demands (AN, EM, OD). “Monograms” or engraved trademarks on wooden artefacts, with the craftsmen’s name initials and residence (AR, IB, VMold), are similarly used in order to keep clients informed with the craft paternity. According to MP and VLin, their “long time-made clients” use to recommend them to further customers from among acquaintances. VMold speaks of his “fans” within the folk-fair framework, which concerns visitors who ask for details about the artisan’s “professional evolution” and even dare to draw his attention upon the use of row materials other than “traditional”. A regular customer category is that of the Romanians who leave their country and take with them artefacts as “souvenirs” (AN, AR, CP, MAP, MM, SB, ŞC, and VA). MP sees this fact as a “transmission of our folk art abroad”. Private tourism-houses make up a constant clientele for artisanship. When VL attended a folk fair in his native Tulcea town, a tourism-house owner asked some of his wind-instruments to exhibit in front of tourists. AP has received similar demand for her carpets. In Bessarabia, EV is currently working together with a tourism-specialised private house in the Tribujeni town. Several artisans distinguish between their Romanian and foreign clients according to absence of negotiation in the foreigners’ market behaviour (EM, TB), or contrarily to one’s preference for negotiation with foreigners, not with co-nationals (MJ). 120 Marin Constantin 10

According to MD, the foreign clients are interested in buying artisanery as a handmade category of objects. Potter EP knows that foreigners are those who buy his “high-value” items. Artisans like DM, IMold, and VM praise the foreigners’ better payment as well. Handicraft for tourists is sometimes alleged to cause degeneration of the traditional art-making, as in FM’s case when concerning the “peasant” shoes made in some areas of Transylvania. ND equates the “traditional” mark of his artefacts with the “souvenir” use of them among the tourists. Sometimes, such clients are associated with a given ethnic identity: Frenchmen (cf. FM, MM, MP), Dutchmen (cf. MM), Italians (cf. IG), and Germans (cf. IMold). NM says he once took (when wearing his folk costume from Southern Transylvania area) a photograph with… his Jamaican clients; he also sold in France many icons with the “Saint George” motive. According to DC, Spanish and Swiss clients are buying his violins-with-trumpet not for playing, but for keeping them as “museum objects”. Artisans like AT, FC, and VMold speak of their “clientele” made of ambassadors of the United States of America in Romania. In other situations, however, foreign clients may seem as “avaricious” to artisans like VA. Artisans are also given opportunities to meet their foreign clients in international contexts. EP travelled (thanks to the national Ministry of Foreign Affairs) to Austria (2000), Germany (2004), and Canada (2005). ND claims that his clay-made “peasant characters” were collected by museums in Tokio and Washington (the Smithsonian Institute). By the ANTREC tourism association, DM went to Bulgaria, Hungary, and Austria. AR took a trip to Augsburg, Germany, with support of the Suceava Museum. IG opened exhibitions (through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Museum of Peasants) in Washington, the United States of America, as well as in Koblenz, Regensburg, and Ulm, Germany. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (as well as the National Cultural Foundation, and the Astra Museum, together with the Smithsonian Institution) has also supported IA and AT for their participation at Washington 1999 folk festival. The Romanian Ministry of Tourism sponsored VLin’s participation to international exhibits in the USA, England, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia, and Turkey… A self-supported participation to international fairs is that of FC (in the case of the Munich ceramic fair). Artisanship envisages a large array of private clients among a series of “beneficiaries” more or less connected to “folk-art” production. One of CP’s demands is from the part of restaurant patrons who ask him to write the name of the firms concerned, on the pottery items he makes. Among IMold’s usual clients for his wooden hogsheads are mentioned the patrons of local wine cellars. One of MAP’s demands is that of a restaurant in Braşov; in this case, MAP and her husband were asked to make the needed vessel, including mugs and soup tureens. Further clientele for artisanship is provided from among local folk-dance bands (MM) or fiddlers (TBus, VA). Similarly, VL’s clients in wind-instruments craft are intended to play those instruments, and not to only collect them. 11 Artisanship and Open-air Trade in Contemporary Romania 121

MPop, SB, and TBus report some school-made demand for artisanship. VA recently worked for a kindergarten in Bucharest; she also sold some of her folk- costumes at the Gura Humorului Monastery. Similarly, MN seeks for customers interested in her egg-painting works at the Moldoviţa Monastery, while SA mentions her collaboration with the Hanu Monastery (Neamţ County), as regards some of her wooden crosses. Icon-painter FB undertakes often collaboration with local churches. EP speaks of those “enriched” compatriots interested in “folk art” but who in fact are claimed to prefer only “kitsch” objects. IB notices the scarce presence of businessmen within the folk fairs, while most of tourists generally prefer little souvenirs (he is making wooden “statues”). The theme of “small purchasing power” of the co-national clientele is general among the Romanian artisans (EV, FC, MJ, NM, SF, ŞC, and VM). AT is worried about those artisans whose work is unqualified, and which is at the same time sold at prices lower than in the case of the artefacts made by skilful craftsmen. Some of ND’s clients would become “collectors” of his ceramic artefacts. Similar “collectors” are those of IA’s masks, as well as those who collect AT’s bulrush-made baskets. FC is making special pottery (of longer handwork duration) for private collectors. Nevertheless, DG claims that collectors are few today – among the Romanians –, since “people do not afford any more folk-art collections”. At times, local clients are recruited from among the so-called “connoisseurs of folk art” (AR, APC, EP, NM). ND notices that, while the “folk art” was en vogue among peasants in the past, it is now in demand among “sirs”. MR’s “target clientele” is mostly made up by women, since they “have a sense of the home decoration”. Some artisans (MP, NM) associate such “art expertise” with foreign clientele (which would understand Romanian folk-art “better” than Romanians do). In accordance with the field data, “personalisation” in making one’s clientele among craftsmen is apparently a means to assure regularity in the distribution of artisanry. More precisely, those long time-based market relationships are designed to build up particular “niches” in the chain of production and sale of folk-art items. In such cases, artisans obtain not only continuous demand but also confidence and prestige, which is well epitomised by the account of weaver MM.

Last year, when attending the municipality-set fair in the Timişoara city centre, I simply met a Romanian family who lives in Italy. […] Lady wanted one of the overcoats I make. She came to my home and made such a demand to me. I made that overcoat for her, and she was to wear it. Well, this year she came back and met me again [at the fair], looked at me, and said, “When did I meet you… this happened last year!” So we recognised each other, and she was to buy two little wallets from me! This is a satisfaction…

However, we may ask if the personalised trade in artisanship is preferred (for reasons of fluidity in the sale of artefacts) to the craftsmen’s freedom in their price- 122 Marin Constantin 12 making process. While majority of artisans claim they are “open to negotiation” and that they even agree with price reductions (for instance FC and TBus), situations also occur when negotiation is not accepted (APC, SA, VM’s wife), which may be relevant for the craftsmen’s firmness in defending their market interests, and not those concerned with one’s clientele’s “friendship” or “taste”. As a matter of fact, artisans describe differentiated “types” of customers depending on criteria such as their clientele’s specialisation in folk art, ethnic identity, purchasing-power, educational purposes, and so on. Thus we could distinguish between the “main”, “secondary”, and “tertiary” client types in artisanship, which makes it difficult to accept the profile of some broad “ready-made” or “target” audience for the craftsmen’s work and “products”. The “main” type of clientele in artisanry is that of the co-nationals who travel abroad and the foreign tourists who visit Romania. As seen above, a series of institutionalised “distribution units” have gradually been specialising in the market industry of the folk art and artefacts, such as artisanry shops, “folk” restaurants, folk fairs (of museum or municipality hosting) etc. In this process, artisans are present not only as “providers” for “middle-sale”, but they increasingly seek to directly access their travelling or touring clients, and thus to shorten distance from one’s village workshop to his/her trade stands. In particular, the artisans’ tourism- houses are meant to fulfil (in accordance with ecotourism in Romania) the function of “sale representative”, which is still preponderantly played upon by the above urban “partners”. The “secondary” clientele for artisanry is more heterogeneous. Even so, it is endowed with “folk-specialisation” among customers like the patrons of “folk” restaurants or shops, as well as the folk-music bands and fiddlers. Besides, we find here demand from schools or churches, as associated with the educational and spiritual function of folk art. Finally, this group also contains those “enriched people” interested in folk art, but whose knowledge or tastes in artisanry may not be consistent. As for the “tertiary” client type, which is reported to a lesser extent, it does include the “collectors” and “connoisseurs of folk art”. Specialised clientele in this case is expected not only to assure one’s sale of artefacts, but also to confer public validation for those artefacts’ “traditional genuineness”, “aesthetic refinement”, “ethnographic authenticity” etc. As seen in a precedent chapter, artisans are sometimes subject to evaluation from specialised committees of museums. However, the museums’ evaluation of artisanry is part of the official politics of “culture” in Romania, with scopes like the preservation and restoration of the peasant traditions, and it is manifestly not associated with the “popular culture” or common-sense of the “specialised” visitors. That is, a “collector” or “connoisseur” will not necessarily reflect the museum vision on what folk-art is or should be, but will probably follow his/her particular goals and interests (including perhaps commercial ones). The above classification (which especially relies on the rate of the craftsmen’s clientele) could be related to the distinction between “local-and- 13 Artisanship and Open-air Trade in Contemporary Romania 123 regional”, “national”, and “international” layers of client extraction. Such distinction might be useful in order to avoid some possible misinterpretation of the “clientele typology” in artisanship in essentialist terms about “patriotism” or “globalisation” in the diffusion of artefacts. Again, the differences in the clientele localisation are heuristic as regards the shift in the cultural meaning of artefacts when sold on markets remote from the craftsmen’s ethnographic areas. Local-and-regional clientele is particularly reported among the “secondary” type of customers (such as folk-music bands and fiddlers, as well as schools and churches). National-level clientele is present among Romanians who travel abroad (= the “main” client type), as well as among some folk-art “collectors” and “connoisseurs” (= the “tertiary” type of clientele). As for the international layer of clients, it includes foreign tourists and co-nationals who live abroad (= the “main” purchasing sector)7. To meet their clients, artisans need either (1) to found their own tourism pensions at home (=“main client type” + “international” client layer), or (2) to attend the national network of folk fairs (=“main”, “secondary”, and “tertiary” client types + “national” and “international” client layers), or finally (3) to travel for exhibitions abroad (= “main” client type + “international” client layer). In fact, such a dilatation in the “consumption network” for artefacts is another facet of artisanship seen as a “craftwork-and-fair” process. We have identified as a “workshop phase” in the artisans’ work, which takes place as a home industry in their villages, and a subsequent “folk-fair phase”, which occurs as commerce in the cities8. Probably, the “secondary” client type is more expected to address first the “use-value” of artefacts (at least, in the case of some restaurants and fiddlers), which as seen is associated with local-and-regional customers. Instead, the “main” and “tertiary” types of clientele are best suited for the “exchange-value” of artefacts, namely in relation to “national” and “international” groups of customers.

CONTEXTUALISING ARTISANSHIP: FOLK FAIRS AND OPEN-AIR MARKETS IN ROMANIA AND EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE

Artisanship is a part of the market economy in post-socialism. It was also well integrated in the socialist economy. Ethnographic and historical information exists on folk fairs as peasant markets in medieval and modern times. What is the

7 A particular example on the implications of the foreign “partnership” and clientele for the folk artisanship in Romania is that of the “Aid to Artisans” project, which a private foundation from Connecticut, the United States of America, developed with the Astra Museum in Sibiu. According to CB, the above collaboration consisted of international training in marketing for artisans, invitation for craftsmen to international fairs and festivals, publishing in the United States of America of a comprehensive catalogue on artisanship in Romania, demands for Romanian women-weavers from the part of American fashion houses, etc. 8 Director IVP correlates craftsmanship with the “market passion” and artisanery with “necessity” – both of these being taken as basic traits among the artisans. A similar understanding of artisans as “craftsmen” but also “traders” is shared by the directors CEU and PP. 124 Marin Constantin 14 extent to which the artisanship process can be relevant for a broader understanding of the peasant economies today, in what generally concerns the market exchange between peasantry and the urban population? A comparative discussion on the folk, agricultural, and bazaar-like “open-air markets” (OAMs) in Romania and Central- and-Eastern Europe will be undertaken here as an attempt to contextualise artisanship. A historical relationship. From the perspective of economic research, the open-air markets in Central and Eastern Europe were preceded by “traditional fairs with licensed artisans in the centre and trader-tourists around the fringe” (Sik & Wallace 1999: 698; Csako and Sik 1999: 723). More specifically, in the case of the “folk” or “traditional” OAMs in medieval Hungary.

[…] serf vendors usually brought grain or food surplus to market towns, as the roads leading to these places were usually more accessible and they could buy the hand-crafted goods that other highlanders transported to the marketplace and were permitted to sell according to set rules. (Csako & Sik 1999: 718)

On the other hand, ethnographic evidences reveal how agricultural producers found within the 1930s folk fairs in the mountains of Transylvania a proper place to trade their goods aside the craftsmen who were selling artefacts. Following the data provided by sociologist Florea Florescu (apud Geană 2006: 94).

[…] more than 2,300 individuals – men and women, young and old – from about 70 villages participated in the famous fair of Găina Mountain, which took place on 18 July 1937. All kinds of goods were displayed on that occasion, but especially three categories: wooden vessels and tools, pottery, and sheepskin coats. These categories corresponded to the main branches of the division of labour within the large area of villages which attended the fair. Otherwise, the spectrum of goods for sale was much larger and comprised, for example, textiles, drinks, cereals, and fruits.9

The socialism-postsocialism cultural continuum. The data of our current database indicate that many artisans in Romania learned and practiced their crafts under communism (see also Constantin 2003). Prior to 1989, they worked within socialist cooperatives, and their artefacts were distributed through the state-owned artisanry shops. Likewise, artisans began the public representation of their handicrafts and artefacts in the framework of nationalistic festivals of political propaganda, as well as through museum-hosted folk fairs based in Bucharest and Sibiu. Autarchy, centralism, and uniformity have been described as main factors of economic decline that determined in the 1980s the breakdown between artisans and the socialist policies.

9 Coexistence of artisanship with agriculture and pastoralism is still present in some ethnographic areas of the Romanian Carpathians. Thus, in the herding villages in Southern Transylvania, artisanship and agriculture are “incorporated” within the “dominant” economy of transhumance (which also includes the modern industry of ecotourism)(Constantin 2004: 84, 101). 15 Artisanship and Open-air Trade in Contemporary Romania 125

Among the attributes of the “Comecon OAM trade”10 in socialist Hungary, there are mentioned the context of economic shortages, set prices, limited border- crossing, tourist traffic with foreign goods cheaper and of best quality than those from home, retailers and itinerant traders, autarchy, uniformly low level of incomes, limited standard of living, demand for cheap (though low quality) goods, and the1970s orientation toward Western goods (Csako & Sik 1999). The above authors also evoke the “folk trading” that accompanied before 1989 the state monopole over commerce, as well as the “traditional seasonal fairs” whose omnipresence in Eastern and Central Europe would have “reduced the costs of setting up the comecon marketplaces”. In their post-socialist “market-economy apprenticeship”, artisans in Romania rely upon media advertising, investments in row-material supply and transportation, private initiatives in family associations and firms, ecotourism, partnerships with state and private institutions and agents etc. In several cases, the craft specialisation accompanies the former or current practice of modern professions, or is the result of economic conversion from industry to artisanship. After 1989, the land restitution and industrial decline determined many peasants to reconvert themselves into agricultural producers, with the Bucharest OAMs as “trade laboratories” where they engage in relationships with customers, middlemen, and market administration in order to obtain selling facilities and distribute their farming produces (Chelcea et al. 2003; Constantin 2005). In the Hungarian OAMs of Kecskemet, Szeged, Pécs, and Budapest-Josefvaros, the post- socialist trade supplied a need for products cheaper than in normal retail outlets, in association with decline of living standards among many people; the average number of traders increased from 87 (1995) to 92 (1997), while price hunting appears as a main strategy to cope with the worse economic condition in the Central Europe countries (Csako & Sik 1999). Replacement of socialist with privatised retail, the end of state paternalism, the growth of consumer culture, and the response to context of hyper-inflation and currency destabilisation are further phenomena associated with the OAMs continuation in post-socialist East and Central Europe (Sik & Wallace 1999)11.

10 “Comecon” is an acronym for the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, an intergovernmental organization that covered the Soviet-Bloc countries, aimed at “joint planning and the promotion of bilateral and multilateral trade, along with cooperation in the specialization of production, establishing of joint enterprises, and so on” (Csako & Sik 1999: 715). 11 Agnes Csako and Endre Sik speak of a “path-dependent legacy” in the Hungarian OAMs of today, in association with both “pre-communist institutions and human capital” and “structural characteristics of the communist and Comecon systems”, with the result of “the spread of a marketplace-based system of retail trade”. While the legacy of different frames and types of commerce is present in artisanship and the OAM trade as well, this should not be equated with the maintenance of some autarchic enclaves in the distribution of craft, agricultural, or non-agricultural goods in post-socialism. Artisanry within the network of open-air museums in Romania, as well as the trader tourism in Bulgaria and the countries of Central Europe, are patterns of exchange set up at a national and, respectively, international scale, which is a distinctive trait of the contemporary market economy. 126 Marin Constantin 16

Economic and administrative characteristics. Across our current “categories of analysis” of artisanship (as well as in Constantin 2003), we have described artisans as rural craft-workers engaged in “exhibits-for-sale” through the folk fairs that open-air museums set up in the cities of Bucharest, Sibiu, Timişoara, and Suceava. We have also mentioned the farming or agricultural activities of many craftsmen. Either as “traditions” or as “folk arts”, or still as ethnic groups, the artisans have been referred to as peasant groups who take their countryside- originated crafts and artefacts as an economic resource to exploit on the urban markets. “Folk” traders in Hungarian contemporary OAMs are reported in Pécs, where they sell “popular art from Romania” (Csako & Sik 1999: 724). Similarly, in Pécs and Kecskemet, traders who originate in the villages wear folk costumes (Idem, p. 728). In the 2000s Bucharest OAMs, the peasant producers or growers are referred to as the main social “actors” (Chelcea et al. 2003) or “groups” (Constantin 2005) of urban marketplaces. Agricultural producers are rural landowners and possess their own farming goods. Some of them are presented as having “seniority” in the OAM trade (Chelcea et al. 2003) but also as depending on their productive schedules in agriculture (Constantin 2005). Weekly-held OAMs were set up in the 1990s Hungary to bring together the producers and consumers of agricultural goods (Sik & Wallace 1999: 707). Within the Pécs fair, animals were sold in the mid-1980s (Csako & Sik 1999: 724). In the OAM of Varna (the ex-socialist Kolhozen Pasar) Bulgarian farmers from the region sell their farm produces, mainly fruit and vegetables (Thuen 1999: 742). Artisans who attend the folk fairs in Romania make use of their trademarks or visit cards in order to legitimise their craftwork as well as to promote their production of artefacts. At the same time, many craftsmen are registered as family associations or firms, and they take membership in artisanship associations as a means to be allowed to attend the folk fairs organised by museums. Producer licenses and badges are reported among the trading farmers in Bucharest OAMs (Chelcea et al. 2003; Constantin 2005). In Hungarian OAMs from Kecskemet, Szeged, Pécs, and Budapest-Josefvaros, permanent traders of non-agricultural goods are associated with the possession of a permit or ticket (Csako & Sik 1999: 726). Artisans in Romania subordinate themselves to the state policy by museums and municipalities in setting up folk fairs (as concerns the schedule, location, taxation, custody of artefacts, public relations, etc.) and officially in “preserving traditions”. They also engage in private partnerships with tourism agencies, hotels, artisanry shops, restaurants etc. OAMs in Bucharest, Kecskemet, Szeged, Pécs, Budapest-Josefvaros, and Varna are mostly under the state administration (city-councils)(Chelcea et al. 2003; Csako and Sik 1999; Thuen 1999). Private stakeholders by franchise contracts with municipality are reported in five OAMs of the 6th Bucharest district (Chelcea et al. 17 Artisanship and Open-air Trade in Contemporary Romania 127

2003), as well as in an OAM from the 4th district of Romanian capital (Constantin 2005); such OAMs remain subject of control by the city councils, police, Office of Consumer’s Protection etc. The state-institutions’ policy for a “civilised trade” (aimed at delimiting legal selling areas and eliminating the middlemen) are described for the Bucharest OAMs (Chelcea et al. 2003). Artisans in Romania usually undertake the retail trade. However, depending on demands and time planning, they also consent to wholesale transactions. Some artisans speak of their artefacts in terms of “commodities” and “stocks”. Craftsmen generally take the price making as their trading right, as a result of market negotiation, are paid amounts in advance, and make use of museum custody and private partnerships in the distribution of their goods. In the Progresul OAM from Bucharest, rotation of retail and wholesale trade is described as a market strategy among the peasants and middlemen (Constantin 2005). In other Bucharest OAMs, the agricultural producers develop trading strategies such as renting more than one stall; renting the stalls by the market administration for middlemen and subletting them by the same middlemen to peasant producers is a practice associated with retailing and wholesale in the Bucharest OAMs (Chelcea et al. 2003). Retail traders of the Varna OAM depend on the wholesale markets in Istanbul for the supply with non-agricultural goods (Thuen 1999). The prices that producers set up depend on haggling and market “face-to-face” transactions (Constantin 2005). In the Hungarian OAMs of Kecskemet, Szeged, Pécs, and Budapest-Josefvaros, the prices are set as a result of bargaining between seller and buyer “in one-third of the cases” (Csako & Sik 1999). As artisans attend a national-wide network of folk fairs in Romania, they need to invest in transportation (by train, bus, or personal cars). They are sometimes assisted here by museums and municipalities, unless they may associate themselves in covering their travel expenses. Renting of co-villagers’ transportation facilities by the peasant producers coming to Bucharest OAMs, as well as peasant’s association in paying the transportation costs, are reported by Chelcea et al. (2003). Non-agricultural trader tourism of Bulgarian middle citizens, Turks, and Gypsies from the Varna OAM to Istanbul dwells on travel arrangements with bus drivers and custom officers (Thuen 1999). Small-scale non-agricultural traders from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus to Hungary, Poland, and Czech Republic need to borrow money for their trips abroad by train or bus, as well as to face the changing state regulations in crossing the border (Wallace et al. 1999)12.

12 While within the traditional fairs, the craft trade was accompanied by the market distribution of agricultural goods, the open-air markets bring together agricultural and non-agricultural products. According to Csako and Sik (1999: 729–731), four main types of products are sold and bought within the Hungarian markets of Budapest-Josefvaros, Kecskemet, Pecs, and Szeged, as follows: food (mainly in the Pecs OAM), clothes (in all the OAMs), household products, appliances, and cosmetics (= Pecs), and culture or hobby products (= Pecs, Kecskemet). As regards the trader tourism from Eastern to Central Europe, it includes textiles, cigarettes, alcohol, videos, CDs, computer software, small domestic utensils, food etc. (Wallace et al. 1999: 758) 128 Marin Constantin 18

Artisans’ professional status is a matter of formalisation-and-informality scale as regards the lack of any official framework for their handicrafts in economic terms, taxation on the craft production and exchange, supply of raw materials, delimitation of distribution etc. Informality in Bucharest OAMs is described in the case of illegal sidewalk selling (Chelcea et al. 2003) and in the wholesale flow of goods from agricultural growers to middlemen (Constantin 2005). Occasional sellers devoid of licenses and market-selling facilities are reported for the OAMs in Pécs (47% of the local traders), as well as in Kecskemet (Csako and Sik 1999). An “informal social control” is played upon (through middlemen, co-ethnics, family and social networks) by trader-tourists from Russia, Ukraine, Romania etc., when they bring their commodities in Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Poland (Wallace et al. 1999). One of the craftsmen’s market strategies is to argue some “ethics of trade” when they consider the price making and “education of public” within the folk fairs, and particularly in denying the commercial nature of artisanship. Moral overtones in Bucharest OAMs are contained in the “ethic of subsistence” that some market administrators exhibit with concern to their “tolerance” for the street traders’ poverty (Chelcea et al. 2003), as well as in the blame by public and the city authorities on the “speculative” trading activity of the market middlemen (Constantin 2005). Morality of commerce is also present in the Roma trading-tourism specialisation (when opposed to condemnation of trade from socialist or ethnic-majority perspectives)(Thuen 1999). Another instance of morality issue is that of the “trader’s dilemma” (capitalistic wealth-accumulation or profit disbursement amongst one’s kin?) as present in the “social capital investment” of the East-European traders into their ethnic ties, family and social networks (Wallace et al. 1999)13. Kin and ethnic groups and networks. Kin-structured patterns shape the artisanship process both at the level of craftwork and within the folk fairs in Romania, in relation to ego’s paternal and maternal grand-parents, parents, spouse, sons and daughters, and even grandsons and granddaughters. Private associations and division of labour among and within the artisans’ families are basic in their craft specialisation in socialist and post-socialist contexts. Family cooperation (as among ego’s parents, spouse, sons and daughters, kinsmen in law etc.) is effective in the Bucharest OAM of Progresul (Constantin 2005). Producers’ networks of relatives, in-laws, and neighbours are also reported

13 With respect to the use of “social capital” in trade, Claire Wallace et al. argue (1999) that “The extent of moral obligation or the kind of moral ties which are developed during the turbulent post-communist period can affect the kind of capitalism which develops there”. From this perspective, the “morality of trade” among artisans and the OAM traders seems to be more related to the post-socialist redefinition of the trade as a permanent profession and specialisation, than to some connection between the “nature” of commerce and a given social or ethnic group. 19 Artisanship and Open-air Trade in Contemporary Romania 129 in the OAMs of the 4th and 5th districts of Bucharest (Chelcea et al. 2003). In the case of the Varna OAM, participation of the Gypsies in trade turns to be a family affair (Thuen 1999). Social networks and strategies in the trader tourism in the Central and Eastern Europe are described as “strong ties” within the nuclear and there-generation families of East-European small-scale traders (Wallace et al. 1999). In Romania, ethnicity is present in artisanship with a function of “specificity assertion” among Romanian and Hungarian craftsmen, across the phases of production, distribution, and representation of artefacts. Roma tinsmiths and their products within the folk fairs from Bucharest and Sibiu are equated with the “increasing openness toward multiculturalism” in the policy of Romanian museums. The “specialised trading-category” of Roma is a social actor in the Progresul OAM from Bucharest, while the transactions between Romanian producers and Roma merchants play a “central role” in articulating the local commerce (Constantin 2005). Middlemen and “their important role” in the Bucharest OAMs are recruited from marginal ethnic groups such as Roma (Chelcea et al. 2003). Gadzhe (non-Roma) and Roma travellers are associated in the trader tourism from Varna to Istanbul (Thuen 1999). Foreign traders are reported in the Hungarian OAMs from Kecskemet (Poles and Ukrainians), Pécs (Chinese), Szeged (Uzbekistani and Indonesians), and Budapest-Josefvaros (Chinese, Vietnamese, Romanians, Turks)(Csako and Sik 1999). 73% of small traders from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus in Poland, 38% in Slovakia and 21% in Hungary mention the resort to their co-nationals during the journeys across the border in order to trade; knit ethnic groups characterise the Chinese and Vietnamese traders in Hungary, while others (Hungarians from Romania, Romanians, Ukrainians), melt easier into the local population in Hungary or Poland (Wallace et all 1999)14. Conclusions: similarities and differences between artisanship and the OAM trade. To some extent, artisanship and OAM trade are analogous phenomena. They share a historical background and display important common features during socialism and post-socialism as well. A series of patterns of exchange (such as possession of goods and trademarks, relationships with state and private partners, wholesale and retail strategies, investments in transportation, the formalisation-and-informality scale, and the ethic of trade) are encountered both in

14 The kin and ethnic loyalties in the OAM trade are generally relevant for the “Lack of formal regulation to guarantee or protect activity of small-scale traders in post-communism” (Wallace et al. 1999: 751), and the craftsmen’ reliance on their kinsmen and co-nationals in the artisanship process may be similarly interpreted in terms of a need to substitute for the absence in the Romanian legislation of the economic validation of artisanship. At the same time, the social capital of kinship and ethnicity is described as a “currency of trading” in both socialist and capitalist contexts, to the extent in which “economic activity is socially embedded in social, family and ethnic networks” (Wallace et al. 1999: 752, 767). While it is obviously “socially embedded” (in term of kinship) as well, artisanship in Romania seems to play upon ethnicity, like upon the “folk” traditions and arts, in order to assert one’s identity in the process of exchange outside and not within his or her ethnic boundaries. 130 Marin Constantin 20 the framework of the folk fairs and urban marketplaces. After all, the artisans and OAM traders undertake their market economies within and through kin and ethnic ties and networks. At the same time, comparison of artisanship with OAM trade is inadequate in that the artisans are traders of their own goods, namely artefacts made by craftwork, while the OAM traders divide between agricultural growers and sellers of industrial products. Moreover, the OAM trading “tourists” behave somehow on the fringes of the legality/illegality interplay, which is not the case of artisans who are members of national associations and place their commerce under the control (and protection) of municipalities and museums. While the OAMs of today are locations for the small-scale retail of industrial or serial commodities, the museum- hosted folk fairs are presented as a cultural restoration of the traditional markets among peasants. It seems that a broad and definitive bifurcation has occurred between the “folk” and “bazaar” types of open-air markets, which makes difficult the endeavour to situate artisanship in the sphere of the OAM trade in whatever conditions. The accuracy of such a contextualising approach asks therefore that artisans can only be paralleled and discussed upon in relation to peasant farming producers. In fact, according to the historical sources, the agricultural markets and folk fairs were unified in the past. As seen earlier, there still exists some contact between artisanship and OAM trade in that some craftsmen are also engaged in farming activities, and they are at times reported within agricultural markets. What we described as “regeneration” of the contemporary peasant crafts in terms of a self- directed “enforcement in professional status” and “revival of auctorial ethos” among artisans is mutatis mutandis similar to the rural growers’ private economic initiatives and licenses. Probably that the folk fair and the open-air marketplace will wholly meet each other again once the peasant households still mostly devoted to a subsistence economy in post-socialist Romania would be turned into productive farms to effectively get involved with the urban clientele.

REFERENCES

Chelcea, Liviu, Cosmin Radu and Livia Constantinescu. (2003). “Marketplaces, Morality and Political Practices: The Geography of Shopping in Two Districts of Bucharest”, Romanian Journal of Society and Politics, 3 (2), pp. 185–221. Constantin, Marin. (2004). “Capitalism and Transhumance. A Comparison of Three Pastoral Market-Types in Europe (1950-2000)”, in New Europe College Yearbook 2003–2004, pp. 57–116. Idem, (2005). “Negoţ şi neguţători într-o piaţă din Bucureşti [Trade and Traders within a Bucharest Marketplace]”, in Sociologie Românească, New series, 3, pp. 247-57. Csako, Agnes, and Endre Sik. (1999). “Characteristics and Origin of the Comecon Open-Air Market in Hungary”, in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 23 (4), pp. 715–37. Geană, Gheorghiţă. (2006). “The Carpathian Folk Fairs and The Origins of National Consciousness among Romanians”, in Nationalities Papers, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 91–110. Sik, Endre and Claire Wallace. (1999). “The Development of Open-air Markets in East-Central Europe”, in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 23 (4), pp. 697–713. 21 Artisanship and Open-air Trade in Contemporary Romania 131

Thuen, Trond. (1999). “The Significance of Borders in the East European Transition”, in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 23 (4), pp. 738–50. Wallace, Claire, Oksana Shmulyar, Vasil Bedzir. (1999). “Investing in Social Capital: The case of Small-Scale, Cross-Border Traders in Post-Communist Central Europe”, in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 23 (4), pp. 751–70.

LIST OF THE CITED ARTISANS

AF : Arpad Fabian (Pottery, Corund village, Harghita County, Transylvania, born 1960, Hungarian, Catholic) AG : Ana Grunzu (Maize-leaves knitting, Tomeşti village, Iaşi County, Moldavia, born 1955, Romanian, Orthodox) AN : Adriana Nemeş (Weaving, Cluj, Transylvania, born 1960, Romanian, Orthodox) IA : Ioan Albu (Mask-making, Timişeşti village, Neamţ County, Moldavia, born 1948, Romanian, Orthodox) APC : Alexandru Perţa Cuza (Woodcarving, Târgu Lăpuş town, Maramureş County, transylvania, born 1945, Romanian, Orthodox) AP : Ana Pietraru (Weaving, Valea Seacă village , Neamţ County, Moldavia, born 1940, Romanian, Orthodox) AR : Avram Roşca (Woodcarving, Bălăceana village, Suceava County, Moldavia, born 1959, Romanian, Orthodox. AT : Alice Torella (Bulrush-knitting, Târgu-Mureş town, Transylvania, born 1980, Hungarian, Reformat) CP : Costel Popa (Pottery, Horezu town, Vâlcea County, Oltenia, born 1961, Romanian, Orthodox) DC : Dorel Codoban (Violin-making, Roşia Lazuri village, Bihor County, Transylvania, born 1946, Romanian, Orthodox) DG : Dan Gherasimescu (Woodcarving, Curtea de Argeş town, Muntenia, born 1958, Romanian, Orthodox) DM : Daniel Martalogu (Wooden miniature carving, Bucharest, born 1948, Romanian, Orthodox) EM : Elena Milieş (Icon painting, Piteşti town, Argeş County, Muntenia, born 1950, Romanian, Orthodox) EP : Eugen Petru (Pottery, Vlădeşti village, Vâlcea County, Oltenia, born 1962, Romanian, Orthodox) ES : Elisabeta Stângaciu (Wood choping, Băbeni village, Vâlcea County, Moldavia, born 1956, Romanian, Orthodox) EU : Elena Ursache (Icon-painting and Egg-painting, Slătioara village, Suceava County, born 1968, Romanian, Orthodox) EV : Eleonora Voloşciuc (Maize-leaves knitting, Chiperceni-Orhei, Republic of Moldova, born 1965, Moldavian, Orthodox) FB : Florin Bejinari (Icon-painting and Egg-painting, Rădăuţi town, Moldavia, born 1961, Romanian, Orthodox) FC : Florin Colibaba (Pottery, Rădăuţi town, born 1956, Romanian, Orthodox) FM : Floare Moldovan (Shoemaking, Runcu Salvei village, Bistriţa County, Transylvania, born 1935, Romanian, Orthodox) GS : Genoveva Sauciuc (Egg-painting, Gemenea village, Suceava County, Moldavia, born 1949, Romanian, Orthodox) IA : Ioan Albu (Mask-Making, Timişeşti village, Neamţ County, Moldavia, born 1948, Romanian, Orthodox) IB : Ion Bălan (Woodcarving, Rotaria village, Iaşi County, Moldavia, born 1966, Romanian, Orthodox) IG : Iulia Goran (Embroidery, Breaza town, Muntenia, born 1950, Romanian, Orthodox) IM : Ioan Maric (Naïve art painting, Bacău town, Moldavia, born 1953, Romanian, Orthodox) IMold : Iosef Moldovan (Cooper-work, Pleşa village, Suceava County, born 1938, Romanian and Polish ethnic identity, Catholic) 132 Marin Constantin 22

MD : Maria Dinea (Weaving, Păniceni village, Cluj County, Transylvania, Romanian, Orthodox) MDen : Máthe Dénes (Pottery, Corund village, Harghita County, Transylvania, born 1952, Hungarian, Catholic) MJ : Maria Jebelean (Weaving, Timişoara town, Transylvania, born 1935, Romanian, Orthodox) MAP : Marioara-Angelica Pascaniuc (Pottery, Marginea village, Suceava County, Moldavia, born 1971, Romanian, Orthodox) MM : Mariana Marcovici (Weaving, Timişoara town, Transylvania, born 1957, Romanian, Orthodox) MN : Marioara Negură (Egg-painting, Vatra Moldoviţei village, Suceava County, born 1968, Romanian, Orthodox) MP : Margareta Petrescu (Weaving, Bucharest, born 1948, Romanian, Orthodox) MPop : Monica Popescu (Woodcarving, Bucharest, born 1963, Romanian, Orthodox) MR : Mariana Răileanu (Hemp-knitting, Buftea town, Muntenia, born 1959, Romanian, Orthodox) ND : Nicolae Diaconu (Ceramics, Ţibăneşti village, Iaşi County, Moldavia, born 1955, Romanian, Orthodox) NM : Nicu Muntean (Icon painting, Vinerea village, Alba County, transylvania, born 1949, Romanian, Orthodox) OD : Olimpia Dimitriu (Pottery, Bucharest, born 1960, Romanian, Orthodox) SA : Sonica Apalaghiei (Woodcarving, Săveni village, Botoşani County, Moldavia, born 1962, Romanian, Orthodox) SB : Sânziana Baciu (Icon-painting, Bucharest, born 1959, Romanian, Orthodox) SF : Sandor Fazekas (Horn-and-bone carving, Lunca Ozum, Covasna County, born 1953, Transylvania, Hungarian, Reformat) ŞC : Ştefan Csukat (Ceramics, Suceava town, born 1964, Hungarian and Romanian ethnic identity, Orthodox) TB : Traian Brânduşa (Weaving and Leather processing craft, Salba village, Bistriţa County, Transylvania, born 1933, Romanian, Orthodox) TBus : Teodor Busnea (Wind-instruments making, Râmnicu-Vâlcea town, Muntenia, born 1950, Romanian, Orthodox) TE : Toader Egnătescu (Woodcarving, Suceava town, Moldavia, born 1957, Romanian, Orthodox) VA : Vera Andronic (Weaving, Mănăstirea Humorului town, Moldavia, born 1959, Romanian, Orthodox) VB : Vasile Borodi (Hat-making, Sârbi village, Maramureş County, born 1954, Transylvania, Romanian, Orthodox) VKR : Violeta Karmen Roman (Lace craft, Feldioara village, Braşov County, Transylvania, born 1955, Romanian, Orthodox) VL : Valeriu Leonov (Wind-instruments making, Tulcea town, Dobrodja, born 1964, Romanian, Orthodox) VLin : Virginia Linu (Weaving, Salba village, Bistriţa County, Transylvania, born 1970, Romanian, Orthodox) VM : Valentin Matraş (Basketry, Vorona village, Botoşani County, Moldavia, born 1958, Romanian, Orthodox) VMold : Vasile Moldoveanu (Woodcarving, Moreni town, Muntenia, born 1952, Romanian, Orthodox) VT : Vasiu Tericean (Pottery, Obârşia village, Hunedoara County, Transylvania, born 1935, Romanian, Orthodox) ZMB : Zina Manesa-Burloiu (Woodcarving, Braşov town, Transylvania, born 1970, Romanian, Orthodox)

LIST OF THE CITED MUSEUM DIRECTORS

CB : Corneliu Bucur (Director of the Astra Museum, Sibiu) CEU : Constantin Emil Ursu (Director of the Suceava Museum) PP : Paulina Popoiu (Director of the Village Museum, Bucharest) IVP : Ioan Viorel Popescu (Director of the Timişoara Museum) THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW PERI-URBAN PATTERN IN ROMANIA

IOANA PETRE

The Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy

The phenomenon we are going to refer to in this study is peri-urbanization in residential purposes in Romania today. In fact, the consequences of this process is a new peri-urban pattern witch has, in its centre, social actors who are far from being the poorest people in the town; on the contrary, they belong to the high and the middle class Most inhabitants of peri-urban territories enjoy the benefits of a double residence, since they have kept their old residence from the urban perimeter, driven by the need to be close enough to the work place, or because of the learning centres where their children study, or due to representative cultural landmarks, such as cinemas, theatres and so forth. The present article describes the sociological profile of nowadays peri-urban area.

The phenomenon we are going to refer to emerged in the developed European countries as far as 30 years ago. By all accounts, this aspect is in direct reference to the settling of urban population representatives, their number increasing at fast rates, on territories whose traditional functional and organizational pattern was based on agricultural activities. This process stands out as a source of conflict between urbanity and countryside. Due to its social, political, economic and topographical nature, this conflict turns out to be the expression of agricultural marginalization, by the means of an almost total exclusion of this field from the management and planning strategies for the respective peri-urban territories (Cavailhes, J., Jolie, D., dir., 2006). Peri-urbanization in residential purposes is living its heydays in nowadays’ Romania. Due to this aspect, agricultural peri-urban areas located in the proximity of important Romanian cities seem to undergo a modified dynamic, led by the natural desire of people, who want to become owners of land plots located in territories where the costs for pieces of land are affordable, even to a medium income earning, not only to the rich or very rich citizens. As far as the root of this phenomenon is concerned, one might state that the emergence of peri-urbanism in Romania was as a matter of fact the result of a double crisis: a rural and an urban one; both of them being in fact hypostasis of the deeply rooted dysfunction that came into being way before the 90s, at the same time with the rural depopulation phenomenon; the starting point is set in the

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 133–144, Bucureşti, 2008 134 Ioana Petre 2 migration from rural areas to urban ones, as a result of massive industrialization, accompanied in its turn by an urbanization just as spectacular as the industrialization itself. For the moment, both in the developed European countries, and in countries such as Romania, peri-urbanization means, in fact, dealing with a different type of urbanization. One has to emphasize the first fundamental difference between the old peri- urban pattern and the one emerging nowadays: – the old pattern used to assume that peri-urbanization was located rather on the outskirts of the city, or inside an urban marginality, being characterized by maximum and multilateral poverty, an area where ‘the losers’ living in the city used to flock; – in return, the new peri-urban pattern has in its centre social actors who are far from being the poorest people in the town; but on the contrary, they belong to the high and the middle class (Caruso, G., Peetters, D., Cavailhes, J., Rounsevell, M., 2007). Therefore, in the beginning of the XXIth century we were witnessing a silent mutation, several issues of interest arising out of it, from the social and sociologic point of view – namely new ways of occupying rural territories. The concern for issues regarding the occupancy of rural space has been drawing the public attention and the political one for decades, but in the last 15–20 years it has been experiencing an enhanced intensity. The theoretical frame of the issues regarding the emergence of new types of community would be the one of geopolitical function for occupancy of the national territory by specific human communities. Simultaneously with the orientation of political and scientific speeches towards the necessity of repopulating rural depopulated areas and also towards the fight against rural depopulation, there emerges a new type of human community, having a special relation with both rural and urban areas. (Jean,B., 1992). When taking a closer look at the map of a big city, such as the Romanian Bucharest, the French Paris, or the Canadian Québecetc., the land registers and the ownership certificates would point out that a great number of inhabitants pay taxes directed not only towards the “big city” (the metropolis), but also towards “the small village” on whose territory they have recently settled their residence. In other words, “the big city” cannot legally and instantaneously engulf the surroundings of the space where those inhabitants have established their residence. National statistics count them in as rural population who migrated from the city towards a village, although, taking into consideration many other points of view – such as work places, education, cultural matters and so forth – this is a strictly urban population). On top of that, most inhabitants of peri-urban territories enjoy the benefits of a double residence, since they have kept their old residence from the urban perimeter, driven by the need to be close enough to the work place, or because of 3 The Emergence of a New Peri-Urban Pattern in Romania 135 learning centres where their children study, or due to representative cultural landmarks, such as cinemas, theatres and so forth. Also there are to be found many members of the ‘new socio-politic elites’ who enjoy the benefits of a third or even forth residence, meant to be used when it comes to spending longer or shorter holydays – at the seaside, in the mountains, and not only in their own country, but also abroad. This eclectic mixture of residential statuses possesses most surprising social consequences: regarding the collection of taxes, the fairness of electoral lists, the peri-urban and inter-urban means of transport and so forth. This is precisely why the problem of rural areas occupancy should undergo a thorough re-examination performed not only by the political group, but also by the sociological one. The shapes that are being put on by the occupancy of rural territories in the developed world and even in less developed countries, such as Romania, have undergone radical changes during the last decades, and most probably they are going to be subjected to more modifications. For instance, the concept of “inhabited forest” (signifying ‘continuously inhabited’) was almost inexistent as far as 15–20 years ago, both as social fact and as notion used inside the sociological, politic or social discourse. About two decades ago, there was no mention about the existence of a significant social nucleus. And nowadays we’re witnessing the exercise of huge pressure upon forested territories, phenomenon ending only after the irretrievable occupancy of these areas (achieved by people who establish their permanent residence there). We hereby make mention of the fact that these territories have has, as of late, a purely economic-touristic role. All these mutations require a thorough review of the political and sociological discourses. From the communities’ sociological point of view, not only in Romania, but in general, there’s to be found a total lack of research activities, not to mention the missing paradigms.

THE SOCIOLOGICAL PROFILE OF NOWADAYS PERI-URBAN AREA

In order to define the sociological profiles of the main peri-urban population categories existing nowadays, one should consider a first general classification of the inhabitants of these areas: 1) The first category – the majority – that was formed in Romania during the last 15 years and in the last three decades in Europe, is made up mostly of persons who came from urban areas in order to reside in the countryside adjacent to the town; 2) The second category – the one of native inhabitants – is the one that alienated part of their territory in favour of the new comers, generally because of the lack of financial security. In what the first category is concerned, there are three phenomena offering an explanation for the settling of families originating from urban areas at the 136 Ioana Petre 4 countryside’s outskirts of big cities. These phenomena belong to the evolution of the whole European territory, regardless whether they took place earlier or later. 1. The birth and the strengthening of a middle class social category, after having amassed enough capital in order to become home-owner residents outside the metropolis. 2. The increasingly refuse of the old social urban values and the emerging of the collective consciousness regarding the natural life frame. 3. The reaction of rejecting the previous urban lifestyle, solved by buying lands belonging to the proximity rural areas, and building individual housing spaces on them; the rejection was directed especially towards the most common form of occupancy of apartment houses, in neighbourhoods with blocks of flats, with no parks or other type of green space around. For millions of people living is such areas, life events unfold in a routine characterized by the lack of privacy. However, in Romania this feeling of rejection was doubled by a refutation of the communist inhabiting pattern in the so called ‘match-boxes’ made out of concrete, with no aesthetics or functions whatsoever. The new inhabitants of the small flats migrated to the city from the countryside, in search of a better paid work place and of a better life. 4. The large scale access to public means of interurban transportation and to personal vehicles as well as the development of the road infrastructure facilitated the development of such behavioural patterns, hence making possible the daily journeys within the city, from the town to the residential area. 5. A series of legislative measures favourable to changing the permanent residence, that were not allowed in the past decades; besides, in communist countries owning a second house was not allowed, and the same applied when it came to multiple properties.

THE SOCIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF FAMILIES ORIGINATING FROM THE BIG CITIES ARE SUBSEQUENTLY MENTIONED:

* Generally speaking, these families are younger and more numerous in comparison to the ones from the departure or arrival communities, being made up of four-five persons, respectively husband and wife, their age varying (in the 20–40 age group), with two or three children. In other words, single persons are almost non-existent in this stage of the residential peri-urban perimeter, as the desire for ‘taking roots’ is rather being approved by families, not by single persons. The search for a house outside the alienated space of the city begins especially after having established and consolidated a family, due to the peace, calm, greeneries, freedom and beautiful landscapes. 5 The Emergence of a New Peri-Urban Pattern in Romania 137

* The second characteristic of these families is the individual ownership of their house and of the adjacent plot of land (its size varies, it can be smaller or larger). Despite the fact that individual houses are the norm, small detached houses have been built, or mini-blocks of flats – offered for rent to the newcomers by their business orientated owners, who did not hesitate to seize the opportunity and build housing in the peri-urban areas, in order to rent them later on. * The members of these families are being counted in the national statistics as active migrants, because despite having changed their residential location, most of them did not give up the working place and/or their occupation. The activity rate of peri-urban population, that was originally urban, is greater than the local one. Thanks to public transport means and to road infrastructure, pendular mobility has turned into a rule, despite the higher costs involved: the increasing of transport time and of its costs (fuel and car maintenance), the need to buy a second family car and so forth. One has to emphasize the fact that all these tribulations have a negative effect on the environment, by altering it step by step, in a way that’s beyond control. * Finally, the forth sociologic characteristic of these families resides in the urban culture they have. By changing their residence, the new comers also bring with them their previous lifestyle, their shopping habits, their free- time activities or the ways of using public services and so on.

SOCIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF LOCAL RURAL POPULATION

As mentioned above, peri-urbanisation has been carried on territories inhabited and cultivated by native populations. Some of these territories have been alienated – by means of selling them to urban families wanting to change their residence in a more natural and less polluted surrounding. The local inhabitants who continue to dwell there make up a distinct social body, separated from the ‘social body’ of the new comers, and receiving them as an alien layout. In other words, the old rural ‘social body’ does not identify itself with the new one, stemming from the urban area. The farmers or the peasants make up the socio-occupational category standing as the representative category of the traditional ‘social body’. But under the new conditions they become a minor marginal social strata, with an insignificant role when compared to the active population residing in these peri- urban areas. For instance, according to a series of French national statistics, farmers represent no more than 5% of the total active population, although they occupy 52% of the national territory (Larchers, Gerard, 2007). Nowadays, Romanian 138 Ioana Petre 6 farmers do not face a similar situation. Their share from the total of active or working population is larger, when compared to other developed European countries (around 30%). The general depiction of the nowadays socio-geographical structure of France, according to the author quoted above, looks like this: – 8 millions inhabitants residing in the peri-urban area, this is equivalent to 15% of the whole population, and 22% of the surface, – urban population occupies 7% of the territory and 60% of the whole population of France, – rural population numbers 30 million persons, this is equivalent to 24% of the whole population and 70% of the surface. Defining the identity of the nowadays peri-urban population In order to define as precisely as possible this identity, one needs, first of all, to resort to the concept of “free will” in its acceptation as freedom to choose. From this point of view, nowadays there are two types of peri-urban population: one of them lives in the peri-urbanized area because of a choice made by themselves, while the other one resides here out of obligation or forced by circumstances. In the equation drawn for defining the identity, except for the notion of ‘free choice’, one also has to insert the concept of exclusion. This way, there emerges another classification of the nowadays peri-urban population, divided into two other categories: a) Those persons who managed to achieve their dream of benefiting from the advantages offered by both urban and rural patterns and b) Those who find themselves in situations that exclude them from these opportunities. Another classification of nowadays peri-urban territories, able to bring its contribution to a more precise definition of the identity of its inhabitants, has been published by Gerard Larcher in his work Les avenir des espaces periurbains (Larcher, G., 2007): peri-urban residential areas and peri-urban areas in crisis. In the peri-urban residential areas, social life and associative activities come into being and get developed almost exclusively in the interior of the newcomers’ communities, while the neighbourhood relations with the peri-urban crisis area are rather frail. This way it emerges a phenomenon of socio-residential enclaves reflected upon the newcomers. On the other hand, native inhabitants picture themselves as being excluded from this lifestyle – especially young people get to have this feeling – and this way they develop aggressive behavioural patterns (directed at cars, shops, or other goods symbolising the world that excludes them). Identity becomes questionable both to the population located in the peri- urban area and to the residents of the crisis peri-urban zone. Finding a new identity seems to be as necessary for the inhabitants torn from their usual surroundings, the urban environment, and rooted in a rural area; the same applies to the old rural inhabitants, who feel like they’ve been excluded, so they try to find their roots and 7 The Emergence of a New Peri-Urban Pattern in Romania 139 traditions again, in a bid to revalue them and confer them a new value in the new given conditions. This process of identity construction can turn out to be useful to inhabitants of both areas, including native peasants, able to put their knowledge to advantage within the new circumstances, such as agro-livestock activities, industrial artisanal production, rural tourism (hotels, motels, boarding houses) and so forth. All in all, one might say that the nowadays peri-urban population is an extremely complex category in search for identity, as the present stand of peri- urban areas is at the crossroad of two different identities (urbanity and rurally). They are still behaving like ‘moving boundaries’, continually expanding their territories; if this extension is not properly administrated, it might end up by leading towards an uniform urban lifestyle, causing the loss of positive aspects belonging to the natural and unpolluted rural way of life.

THE COMING INTO BEING OF THE NEW PERI-URBAN PATTERN IN BIG ROMANIAN CITIES

The following paragraphs represent an attempt at decelerating the main factors that led to the proliferation of the field built on a rural-agricultural Romanian territory. At the same time, it is going to draw a comparison between the evolution of Romanian peri-urbanization and the one belonging to the European developed areas. The nowadays peri-urban areas of cities such as Bucharest, Cluj, Brasov, Constanta and so forth emerged out of the request and possibilities of certain categories of people to live in a house situated in a residential area endowed with both rural and urban characteristics. At the same time, as we’ve previously mentioned, they benefit from the advantages offered by both environments: natural space, free of pollution, and the most modern technical-urbanistic facilities (streets, pipe canalization, central heating, running water and others . While we’re at this we might as well mention the fact that not only in our country, but also in other countries where this process unfolded, it has come to a serious lack of balance between the rural area and the surrounding environment (Dubost, Fr., 2003). Despite the fact that a significant segment of the Romanian population got poorer after 1990, there were categories that thrived, and they managed to amass enough capital in order to trigger (as a releaser) the emergence of the new peri- urban Romanian pattern, namely a peri-urban area inhabited by people with a large fortune and an educational level above the average. The new method of urbanizing by putting pressure on the agricultural areas is part of the strictly residential mobility category, sometimes taken only as a holiday destination, without being accompanied by the massive industrialization of the occupied territory, as it happened between the 60s and 70s. On the contrary, the 140 Ioana Petre 8 reason for creating this type of residential area is precisely the attempt to shelter its inhabitants from the negative effects of industrial establishments. The areas standing out as the peri-urban territories of big cities are often to be found along the important roads and highways of the country. The rule shows that the new peri-urban pattern stretches out in a circular way, around big cities, getting its way into the traditional agricultural plots of land, usually to be found at 10-15 kilometres distance from the boundary of the city, and it also destroys it. This way, with each year passing, new residential zones emerged in the north and in the south, in the east and in the west of each important Romanian city, and in time they might become a distinct category of human communities, qualifying as distinctive areas because of their tendency to isolate themselves not only from the jumble and pollution characterising urban areas, but also from the traditional rural areas. By these means, the social stratification of the socio-occupational structures starts to manifest itself on the residential level too. But in socio-occupational strata permeability is not difficult to achieve, unlike in the case of residential peri-urban areas belonging to the new pattern. In this case, strata become almost impermeable: practically, these inhabited peri-urban areas turn into quasi isolated communities, and getting inside them seems unlikely, especially from the inferior strata. The impermeably socio-residential strata are determined, in the first place, by the gap between extremely high incomes of the inhabitants of this area and the income earned by the other categories of population residing in the surroundings. According to an assessment, in the last couple of years, for the development of each peri-urban area, hundreds of hectares of plots of agricultural land have been rendered useless. And this is practically determined by the fact that these plots of land have had their destination changed. Implicitly, this triggered the alteration of the economical-geographical landscape of the country, because of replacing their agricultural destination with the ‘building plot’ one, and hundreds and hundreds of such pieces of land are being subjected to this treatment every year. The development of the new peri-urban was achieved by the means of a specific process of migration from the urban to the rural, improving (at least from a formal point of view) the quality of the human capital belonging to the rural area. Despite the fact that statistics set out things this way, the reality shows that the new inhabitants of rural areas have their own villas, their own bank accounts, and also their high educational level, aspects which determine them not to take part to the life of the rural community where they have settled their residence. On the contrary, it occurs a phenomenon of ‘residential enclavation’, that determines not only an isolation from the village, as welcoming natural environment, but also from the alienated city, abandoned precisely because of the disagreements living in there involved. From the point of view of the inhabiting and living facilities, the new peri- urban space’s characteristics are closer to the urban one, in the detriment of the rural lifestyle. Practically, these new communities have no connection whatsoever with the rural lifestyle, except for their houses being situated in the middle of a 9 The Emergence of a New Peri-Urban Pattern in Romania 141 natural frame. To a certain degree, the emerging and development of the peri-urban areas located in the proximity of important cities, makes its contribution to the deterioration of the welcoming village pattern, at least when it comes to the dwindling category of agricultural used plot lands. The starting point of the recent disintegration and restructuration of the Romanian’s territory open space was determined by the urban pressure put on the rural-agricultural area. The nowadays peri-urbanization came into being as a result of a series of causes, the main ones being listed as it follows: a) The proximity of important cities – situated at about 10–15 kilometres from the urban boundary. Next to the proximity aspect, one also has to take into consideration the development of road infrastructure, connecting the municipality and the county it belongs to, and also connecting it to the counties in the neighbourhood. In this context one also has to mention the daily continuous pendular movement, from the new residence to the work place, situated most of the times in the middle of the urban area. b) The management of real estate. Many investigations were conducted by journalists and persons in charge of applying the law, in an attempt to put an end to speculations regarding land plots. This shows the bad management of Romanian authorities in charge of real estate. Hundreds of hectares conveniently located in such areas of interest have been taken into possession, using rather unorthodox methods, and then speculated in, for exorbitant prices (at the beginning a square meter was about 10-15 dollars / Euros, but as time went by it reached hundreds of Euros, or even more, for a square meter of land). c) The defragmentation of land real estate. The growing number of agricultural exploitations, their size dwindling sometimes, started in the ‘90s in Romania, laying against a background of suppression of the collective CAP and IAS-owned land, and also against the background of simultaneous or non-simultaneous retrocession of land to the rightful owners (basically by abiding to the already famous law 18; unfortunately, not even nowadays is the law being applied correctly). When the allotment process ended, a new defragmentation emerged, by redistributing the land to descents, in the process of succession. In most cases, these descents do not have their permanent residence situated in the rural area, so the idea of selling those plots of lands is more appealing to them in comparison to permanent inhabitants of the village. By selling their land to the new ‘favourites of the era’, the agricultural destination of those plots of land also undergoes changes, becoming a residential one, in most of the cases. One should also add that the prompt decision of selling the inherited or retrocessed land plots was primarily the result of the extreme poverty, increased towards pauperization, of most rural residents. 142 Ioana Petre 10

d) The technical-urbanized process of converting and kitting out the territory. The already existing well-developed road infrastructure made its substantial contribution to the emerging and development of the new peri- urban areas in Romania, and so did the numerous shopping centres or in bulk arcades built at the outskirts of big cities. These regional development centres also made their contribution to the increase of adjacent land price, as they seemed to be appropriate for turning them into permanent residences for the increasing number of members belonging to high and middle social classes. All in all, one might conclude by asserting that the flexibility and the variability of the action system characteristic to public and private actors lay at the basis of the new unsettled communities. Spontaneous habitats, another name by which new peri-urban residential areas go, become specific living manners, with no previous existence in the national geographical space. They get to be circumscribed to certain realities that allow, despite being under compulsion themselves, actions of occupying the land, almost transgressing the law. Another common characteristic of the new peri-urban areas is the almost complete disappearance of agriculture – even the vegetable gardens turned into a dwindling minority, as the ornamental function rules over the productive one, unlike the way things used to be in the traditional village (vegetable gardens are rarely to be found, even when it comes to personal use).

THE PLACE OF AGRICULTURE IN THE PROJECTS OF CONVERTING PERI-URBAN TERRITORIES

As it has been previously shown, in Romania, during the 90s, the occupying and extending of peri-urban areas within residential purposes turned into an unstoppable and difficult to control phenomenon. As a matter of fact, no administrative body and no institution holds exhaustive records, not to mention the lack of the skills needed in order to administrate these processes. In order to find a remedy for these situations, the Romanian government should put into stage a whole battery of measures referring to territorial planning and regional development. The development and urbanism plans, at national or regional level, as well as laws aiming at protecting the plots of land used in agricultural purposes, from the pressure put on them by the urban invasion, are measures that were meant to be introduced in many European countries, by several governments, following one another. Countless cartographic files have been drawn and many airplane taken photos, joining a series of document analysis, in an attempt to use them as tools for solving the problems created by the urban pressure on agricultural plots of land. Unfortunately, the aims of all these projects could not be reached yet. There are numerous reasons that determined this semi-failure: the 11 The Emergence of a New Peri-Urban Pattern in Romania 143 incoherency between sectorial programs, the lack of permanent institutional landmarks to refer to (that might as well confer an operational character to all their decision), the refusal of certain local administrations to comply with these decisions, the relations between owners and lawyers or other people who are supposed to supervise the respect for the body of rules, who allow them and bring their contribution to transforming agricultural plots of land into building urbanized ones etc. It takes an adjustment directed at the way of approaching the problems, in these respects: 1. switching the orientation - from the logical pattern of activities regarding the putting to work of agricultural plots of land – to the drawing of large scale development lasting projects, in order to develop an area rich in landscapist and patrimonial values; 2. setting up realistically operational tools; 3. the control and permanent surveillance performed by local and regional authorities; 4. the exclusive centring of social habitats outside agricultural plots of land; 5. the increase of public awareness regarding the crucial importance of agricultural plots of land. Putting to work the agricultural plots of land belonging to the peri-urban area comes as an urgent necessity, otherwise these areas are also going to gradually turn into pure displays of urbanism, qualitative restrictions of life that are to be found in a city included… It takes a revival of the collective consciousness in what the part of agriculture is concerned, when it comes to maintaining the balance between city life and countryside life (“ville-campagne”) in an attempt to reduce the nowadays effects of mutilating the agricultural rural landscape. All in all, one has to conclude by saying that the evolution of the direction of peri-urbanism in Romania is not unique in Europe or worldwide. Many societies (in fact, most of them) have known similar evolutions, at least in what some sequences are concerned (Moez Bouraoui, M. Si Saida Hammami, Melle, 2005).

REFERENCES

Caruso, G., Peeters, D., Cavailhes, J., Rounsevell, M. (2007). “Spatial configuration in a periurban city. A cellular automata-based microeconomic model”, in Regional Science and Urban Economics. Cavailhes, J. (2002), “Marche foncier rural: entre l’agriculture et la ville”, in Etudes fonciers, 100, 20–21. Cavailhes, J. (2004), “L’extension des villes et la periurbanisation”, in Ville et Economie, Institut des Villes, La Documentation Francaise, pp. 157–184. Cavailhes, J. (2004). “La valeur du cadre de vie agricole dans le couronnes periurbaines”, INRA, Sciences Sociales, 3/03, Janvier. Cavailhes, J. (2005), “Le prix des attributs du logement”, in Economie et Statistique, 381–382, pp. 91–123. 144 Ioana Petre 12

Cavailhes, J., Gaigre, C., Tabuchi, J.F. (2007). “Trade and the Structure of cities”, in Journal of Urban Economics. Cavailhes, J., Joly, D. (dir.). (2006). “Les paysages periurbains et leur prix”, Besancon, Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comte. Cavailhes, J., Peeters, D., Sekeris, E. Thisse, J-F. (2003). “La ville periurbaine”, in Revue Economique, 54, 5–23. Cavailhes, J., Wavrenski, P. (2002). “L’influence urbaine sur le prix des terres agricoles periurbaines’’, in Espace rural, 72, pp. 9–11. Dubast, Fr., 2003. „La nature en ville”, in „Amenagement paysagers et approches durables: actes du coloque” 24, 25, 26 oct. Jean, Bruno. (1992. “Les espaces ruraux en mutation.Vers un typologie des dynamiques rurales” in Geographie sociale nr. 12. Jean, Bruno. (1997). “La lutte au depeuplement rural:la ruralite face au defi demographique”, in Rebate les campagnes, Trois _Pistolles, Editions Trois_Pistolles . Jean, Bruno. (2002). “Les territoires ruraux dans la modernite avanseee la recomposition des sistemes ruraux’’ in Estudos Sociedade e Agricultura, aprilie, pp. 5–27. Larcher, Gerard. (2007) “L’Avenir des espaces periurbains” in Rapport d’information, 292(98–99)- Commission des Affaires Economiques, Senat francaise, Paris, Online : http://senat:fr./rap/r98- 292html Moez Bouraoui, M. si Saida Hammami, Melle. (2005). “Les processus de transformation de l’espace agricole periurbain dans le grand Tunis” in Paysage et Patrimoine, Le Laboratoire d'etude des politiques et practiques du paysage. Ecole Nationale Superieure de Paysage, Versailles, France, Juin. SOCIAL PROBLEMS

VICTIM-OFFENDER MEDIATION PROGRAMMES IN ROMANIA – A USEFUL EXPERIENCE, UNEXPLOITED IN THE LEGISLATION

SORIN M. RĂDULESCU, CRISTINA DÂMBOEANU

The Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy

The article describes the two experimental projects of restorative justice implemented in Romania in 2003 and 2004. The article presents the main difficulties and obstacles faced by these programmes, but also the benefits brought by them into the field of Romanian justice. Despite their usefulness, the practice of restorative justice was not stipulated as such in Romanian legislation. The Law no. 192 regarding the mediation and the organization of the mediator profession ignores both the Romanian experience gained from the implementation of the two experimental project mentioned above, and also the experience from other countries with long tradition in the field, being substantially diverted from the European standards in this domain.

1. MAIN FEATURES OF THE MEDIATION PROCESS

Initially developed as a simple technique used in probation, the victim-offender mediation has become, for some years, one of the most important practices used in restorative justice systems in many countries. The mediation process is considered a viable alternative to the traditional legal system based on the retributive paradigm and it is meant to humanise the legal process and to equally answer the needs and interests of victims, offenders and the community as a whole (Bazemore, G., Umbreit M. S., 1997). The vast majority of the mediation programmes are exclusively dedicated to underage offenders, having committed crimes against properties, assaults, or other relatively minor crimes. However, mediation is also used in many cases of conflict between adults, such as those related to divorce, domestic violence, child custody, commercial litigations and others (Balahur, D., 2001). The main aim of mediation is the support granted to the victim and to make the offender responsible. From the technical point of view, mediation is a direct

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 145–161, Bucureşti, 2008 146 Sorin Rădulescu, Cristina Dâmboeanu 2 meeting, face-to-face, between the victim and the offender, in front of a qualified mediator trained to stimulate an agreement between the parties related to the recovery the damages caused by the crime. Experts have shown that more than 95% of mediation meetings end up with signing an agreement regarding the recovery of the damages suffered by the victim (Umbreit, M. S., Greenwood, J., 2000). However, evaluative surveys show the fact that, for victims, more important than the recovery of such damages is meeting their information and emotional needs, as well as the possibility to directly share with the offenders (criminals) their feelings related to the crime (delinquency). The mediation practice is also known as a dialogue between victim-offender, conference or reconciliation between the two parties. The dialogue between the parties can be witnessed by the members of their families, as well as by representatives of the community. Within this dialogue, victims can directly share with the offender the damages (prejudices) caused by the committed crime, they can get answers to the problems they have, being actively involved in drafting a restoration (repairing) plan making the offender financially responsible for the damages caused by his/her crime (Umbreit, M. S., Greenwood, J., 2000). The victim-offender mediation is generally defined as a process offering the victims of the crime (delinquency) “the opportunity to meet those having committed the crime (delinquency) in a safe and structured location, for the purpose of making the offenders (defendants) directly responsible and also of offering an important support and compensation to the victim” (Umbreit, M. S., 2001). From this point of view, the mediation process is compatible with the fundamental values of the restorative justice, aiming among others at granting priority support to the victims (Balahur, D., forthcoming), at making the offenders responsible and aware of the severity of their deeds, at restoring the community spirit etc. The data of the assessment surveys on the mediation programmes generally have shown the advantages and the positive effects they have. Thus, they provide underage or young offenders with alternative measures as compared to those existing in the official offender justice system, allowing the functioning of mechanisms where victims get excuses and/or repairs for the suffered damages, leading to the possibility of avoiding charges and sentences of the authorities. One of the most important advantages of such programmes, the high satisfaction level of victims and the decrease of number of offenders re-committing crimes (save those having committed property crimes) seem to be the most representative (McCold, P., Wachtel, B., 1998). All these advantages are determined by a series of “moderating” variables, which influence both the application method of restorative justice programmes and their results. For instance, the offender’s (defendant’s) age or the severity of the deed can influence the relapse rate and the victims’ satisfaction rate. 3 Victim-Offender Mediation Programmes in Romania 147

2. IMPLEMENTATION OF VOM IN ROMANIA

2.1. THE FIRST EXPERIMENTAL PROJECT OF RESTORATIVE JUSTICE ∗

In Romania, pursuant to a British project of implementation of mediation in cases with underage people in conflict with the criminal law, in year 2002 two Restorative Justice Experimental Centres were established in Bucharest and Craiova, whose priority objectives included mediation sessions. The project, called “Restorative Justice – a possible answer to juvenile delinquency”, was carried out during September 2002 – December 2003 and aimed among others at experiencing the principles of restorative justice in Romania, as an alternative strategy to the traditional retributive legal model, and at drafting proposals for approval of an act to regulate the victim-offender mediation activity in cases involving underage offenders. The two experimental Centres have been organised under the Social Reintegration and Supervision Department within the Ministry of Justice, the “Family and Child Protection” Foundation, the technical assistance and financial support being ensured by the International Development Department of the British Government. The beneficiaries of the services provided by the two Restorative Justice Centres have been 14–21 year-old underage and young people, from Bucharest and Craiova, having committed crimes for which the criminal case is started after the prior complaint of the injured party, and the parties agreeing to reconcile removed the criminal responsibility; the victims of such deeds and the families of the parties involved in the litigation. Programme functioning was based on a working methodology, focused with priority on mediation (conciliation) between victim-aggressor (offender). For this purpose, the employees of the two Centres carried out the following four types of activities (according to the information available on the website www.cjr.ro): 1. Identification and selection of cases; 2. Psycho-social evaluation of the parties involved in the conflict – carried out by the social worker, with or without the psychologist, including gathering information on the victim and the offender regarding their family context, school and professional status, health condition within the family, factors encouraging the deed, the attitude towards the deed (towards the victim – for offenders), factors influencing their general behaviour etc.;

∗ The information provided under this sub-chapter is taken from the research of Rădulescu, M. S., Banciu, D. (2004), Evaluative Research on Restorative Justice Experimental Programme in Romania, edited in “Evaluation of the Restorative Justice System in Romania”, Bucharest, Oscar Print Publishing House.

148 Sorin Rădulescu, Cristina Dâmboeanu 4

3. Preparing the mediation and the proper mediation – carried out either directly, through a “conference”, where the parties involved meet before a mediator, or indirectly, through letters and messages between the mediation beneficiaries, if they, even though willing to solve the litigation, did not deem necessary a face-to-face meeting; 4. Providing specific services – offering, upon request, post-mediation services to both the parties involved in the mediation procedure, and those who, from certain reasons, were not eventually included in this action: individual and/or group psychological advice, social care for school, professional and social reintegration of beneficiaries, development groups and psychological support, guidance to other services/institutions. The viability and efficiency degree of the restorative justice experimental programme was assessed, during May-June 2003, by a team of researchers within the Sociology Institute of the Romanian Academy. The main objective of this research was the general analysis of the way pilot-centres function and of the problems they have, in order to suggest solutions and measures for optimising their activity in the future.

2.1.1. DIFFICULTIES DEALT WITH BY THE EMPLOYEES OF THE TWO RESTORATIVE JUSTICE EXPERIMENTAL CENTRES

The results of this assessment analysis have shown that the main obstacle dealt with by the employees of the two Centres was related to the selection and reference of cases. Thus, the restrictive feature of the Romanian criminal legislation allowed the involvement, within mediation, of only the cases for which “prior complaint withdrawal” and “parties’ reconciliation” “calls off the criminal liability”. For this reason, a series of other cases were excluded, cases which could have undergone mediation, for instance, those aiming at burglary, school violence or (intra)familial aggressions. Consequently, until the date of ending the assessment (June 2003), very few files had been instrumented by the two Centres – 24 in Bucharest and 19 in Craiova. Also, the teams of the two Centres, especially the one in Bucharest, had troubles collaborating with the authorities which should have sent cases for instrumentation. Thus, in the Capital, the lack of direct access to courts’ archives (save the one of the 6th District Court) caused the non-inclusion in the programme of many cases. On the other hand, judges did not inform the parties on the existence of the restorative justice programme, so the parties did not know what to think of the “official” capacity of such Centres, refusing to accept mediation. In Craiova, the court’s representatives worked with the Centres; the employees had access to the archive and also they had a direct contact with the judges who instrumented cases of prior complaint. 5 Victim-Offender Mediation Programmes in Romania 149

In its turn, the collaboration with the Police was rather difficult, in Bucharest, for instance, from the beginning of the project until the end of the evaluative survey, the Police representatives sent not even one case to the Centre. The inaction shown by the Police referring to cases was justified by the fact that the involvement in the restorative justice experimental programme was not a performance indicator for policemen. On the other hand, in Craiova, they personally got themselves involved in reconciliation of the parties in conflict, appreciating as useless the activity of the Centre’s employees, thus showing little availability referring to cases. Vicious was also the collaboration with the Prosecution Service, some prosecutors considering the actions of the Centres’ employees as “breaches” of the institutional prerogatives of the Prosecution Service, which, together with the law court, would be the only ones able to decide with regard to parties’ reconciliation. Also, some prosecutors claimed in their excuse for lack of cooperation with the Experimental Centres the legal regulations by virtue of which, during criminal investigations, information on the parties cannot be sent to an unofficial institution, as C.J.R. (the Restorative Justice Centre). At the same time, the role of the Local Coordination Committees, that were supposed to support the activity of the two Experimental Centres, was rather a formal one. The lack of involvement of such committees in applying the restorative justice programme characterised mainly the situation in Bucharest; in Craiova, the representatives of the institutions were involved a bit more actively in finding solutions for optimising the project. The members of the Committees did not know how exactly to act in order to ensure the appropriate implementation of the programme, among others also because the Orders of the Ministry of Justice do not mention liabilities and competences of each of the involved institutions, but also because there was no inter-institutional cooperation methodology, which would establish specific and “punctual” tasks and objectives. The committees met only a few times, they did not have a well-established structure (some members left, new ones came and these new ones were not acquainted with the programme) and did not include persons with representative positions which could have influenced a more sustained involvement in the restorative justice programme of authorities they represented. Another problem having affected the programme implementation method was the legal provision requiring parties’ liability that, after finishing the mediation session, they should appear again in the court or at the Police to declare that they reconciled. This had to happen considering that the conference results was registered by mediators with a document subsequently sent to the competent authorities. The liability imposed both on the victim and the offender to notify directly and personally the police officer or the judge that instrumented the case about the reconciliation basically “cancelled” the validity of the drafted document, 150 Sorin Rădulescu, Cristina Dâmboeanu 6 determining the parties to deem “useless” the mediation activities carried out within the two Centres. A difficulty with similar importance was the result of the mediator’s lack of involvement in the negotiations regarding victim’s compensation. Given the exigencies of the Romanian legislation, the mediator was not allowed to participate in finalisation of the agreement between the victim and the offender. This was a reason for which many mediation sessions turned unsuccessful. In mediator’s absence, the parties got to fight and to amplify the conflict, especially when the victim claimed exaggerated material compensations, and at the same time the parties could not reach a compromise regarding other compensative solution than money (for instance, working in victim’s benefit). Among other obstacles, an important one was some beneficiaries’ attitude, who either refused mediation or the service provided by the Centre, or did not cooperate enough with the centres’ employees. Thus, sometimes, the assessors were not welcomed or were not let in by the beneficiaries, and in other cases they refused to provide certain data and information on the material or financial level of the family, family context, health condition etc. In Craiova, a complementary difficulty which impeded the implementation of the experimental programme in appropriate conditions was the limitation of inclusion area of cases only to offenders (respectively, their victims) with permanent residence in Craiova. The activity of the two Centres of the experimental programmes was also affected by some deficiencies, some of them determined by the above mentioned obstacles and difficulties, others directly related to the work within teams. The most important of such deficiencies include the following: a) the lack of a representative selection of the on site cases. In lack of the previously established criteria (categories of crimes, victims, authors etc.), the selection of files was exclusively carried out from the legal point of view (and not also based on sociologic criteria), only according to the provisions included in the orders of the Ministry of Justice; b) the rather compendious nature of the psycho-social assessments. The lack of more detailed information on the parties and their position in the conflict, as well as focusing especially on the social characterisation to the detriment of the psychological one impeded drawing a complete profile of victim’s and offender’s characteristics. Also, the activity of the assessors took place mostly in parties’ families, without extension to the level of other information sources (school, place of work, community police etc.); c) resuming the pre-mediation activity to contacting the parties. The files registering such activity did not contain information on offender’s recognising his/her deed or on victim’s and offender’s attitude towards the possibility of (direct or indirect) mediation and of possible repairs (compensations); 7 Victim-Offender Mediation Programmes in Romania 151

d) the reduced number of mediation sessions organised by the employees of the two centres. From the total of 43 instrumented files during September 2002 – June 2003, only approximately one third were mediated (7 in Bucharest, out of which one with indirect mediation, and 8 in Craiova). This rather low mediation percentage (approximately 35% of the total number of instrumented cases) was due mostly to the victims’ refusal attitudes (advised by relatives, friends or lawyers to solve the litigation with the offender only in front of the court), the offender’s non-admission of the deed, parties’ reconciliation separate from the centres’ intervention and the impossibility of address identification of either of the parties; e) the “didactic” nature of mediators’ intercession within the conferences. This caused rejection reactions of offenders, who did not sincerely regret their deed and contradicted the victim, making him/her co-responsible for committing the crime; f) the lack of monitoring by the mediator of gesticulation, pantomime, language, attitudes and especially reactions of conference participants, so that the entire range of behavioural features of the parties involved in the conflict can be identified. The role of the co-mediator was also a more “passive” one, since he/she simply observed the involved parties, without verbal interventions during mediation sessions; g) the lack of community representatives within conferences, where, excepting the victim and the offender, participated only parties’ pleaders (relatives or friends); h) too long duration of some mediation meetings (2-4 hours), which bores the parties and the support people, who give more and more formal answers to the mediator’s questions; i) mediators’ intercession for answering the satisfaction questionnaires by conference participants. They suggested to the parties what and how to answer the questions, especially when dealing with less trained people or people with mental disabilities. The questionnaires, which were taken from the United Kingdom, without an adjustment to the programme from Romania, did not contain data on the socio-demographic variables of subjects (gender, age, occupation etc.), and some questions had a doubtful translation, confusing those filling them in; j) the great number of refusals regarding the service offer, excepting mediations. The two Centres provided limited complementary services to the beneficiaries – only 6 sessions of psychological advice and 3 guidance sessions to other institutions. Until the time of ending the assessment, the employees of the centres provided no assistance service for school and professional integration/reintegration. The refusal of possible beneficiaries and the lack of collaboration of C.E.J.R. teams with other institutions (for instance, with child protection institutions) were the main causes of such poor activity in a field which was supposed to have priority in both Centres. 152 Sorin Rădulescu, Cristina Dâmboeanu 8

2.1.2. BENEFICIARIES’ SATISFACTION WITH THE RESTORATIVE JUSTICE PROGRAMME

Despite such difficulties, inherent to a certain extent to any project at its beginning, the programme participants, especially those from Craiova, were very satisfied with the way the litigation was instrumented and solved, as well as with the way the mediation process was carried out. The beneficiaries also appreciated the efficiency and the utility of mediation as a method of stopping the existing conflicts. Thus, the secondary analysis of the data and information resulted from the questionnaires run on participants upon closing the mediation conferences showed that, with regard to the level of involvement in the discussions during the mediation, most participants declared they felt being listened to all throughout the conference, they actively participated in the discussions and they could share what they had to say. To a greater extent than the offenders, the victims appreciated that they were involved in making a decision and in reaching an agreement regarding what was about to happen next. All parents felt the same way, unlike the group of other relatives or friends, who felt it only as high as 50%. From the point of view of the conference carrying out correctitude, almost all beneficiaries declared they were happy with the way they were treated, acknowledging the fact that they were all offered equal opportunities to express their points of view, to ask questions and to get answers. Only a few participants, especially among offenders, felt their opinions were considered as being of little importance and/or their needs were not treated appropriately during the mediation session. More than 90% of the participants appreciated as being correct the decisions made at the end of the conference. Especially victims and parents declared they were happy with such decisions. Among offenders, one third expressed their dissatisfaction with the made decisions, considering them as being subjective. Besides, approximately 90% of offenders considered that the decisions were in favour of the victims. On the other hand, more than 70% of the victims agreed that the made decisions answered equally their needs and the offenders’. In their turn, parents felt to a greater extent that the made decisions were rather compliant with the victim’s needs, while the group of friends or relatives were mostly in favour of the offenders. The results of quality survey carried out based on interviews taken with some of the beneficiaries of such services confirmed the very high rates of beneficiaries’ satisfaction with the mediation process, but they also brought a series of complementary information regarding the participants’ satisfaction/dissatisfaction reasons. Thus, generally speaking, the victims declared they were satisfied with obtaining a financial recovery, seen as a compensation for such expenses related to medical care and recovery of goods, and also they were satisfied with the celerity 9 Victim-Offender Mediation Programmes in Romania 153 of solving the conflict with the aggressor and implicitly avoiding long procedures of formal justice, as well as the possibility offered within the conference to express their point of view, to tell what they were through and to share with the others their sufferance. As far as the victims’ dissatisfaction reasons are concerned, they were mostly related to the low quantum of financial recovery and the delay of obtaining the money from the offenders, but also related to the sometimes gentle nature of the sanction received by the aggressor. The main satisfaction reason of the offenders was the possibility offered by the programme to avoid the criminal sentence. On the other hand, the most frequent reason of dissatisfaction mentioned by the offenders was the exaggerated quantum of recoveries claimed by the victims, especially since, in some cases, the victims were, according to the aggressors, the ones that “precipitated” the initiation of the conflict. However, regardless of the way of perceiving the litigation solving and reconciliation through mediation, both the victims and the offenders appreciated to the same extent the correctitude of the concluded agreement.

2.2. THE SECOND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAMME ∗∗

In 2004, the activities carried out in the two Restorative Justice Centres were continued and developed within a new project called “The improvement of the juvenile justice system and crime victims’ protection system”, financed by the European Union, through a PHARE programme. The objectives of this new project were the following: 1. Development of complex services based on the practices of the Restorative Justice within the two Restorative Justice Centres from Bucharest and Craiova; 2. Encouraging the principles of the restorative justice at the level of state’s authorities and the community; 3. Drafting legislative proposals for the improvement of the justice systems for underage people and for victims’ protection. Thus, this second restorative justice programme aimed at a more various range of activities, such as: providing services to beneficiaries, encouraging and raising awareness campaigns run in the community (through the so-called “advocacy” campaign, carried out in 5 university cities of Romania: Iaşi, Cluj, Timişoara, Braşov and Constanţa), training activities for the employees and inter-disciplinary training seminars, drafting a proposal for social and criminal policies to contribute to the efficiency of this justice system for underage people from Romania.

∗∗ The information provided under this sub-chapter is taken from the research developed by Rădulescu, M. S., Banciu, D., Dâmboeanu, C., Balica, E. (October 2004), Assessment of the Restorative Justice Project Implemented in Bucharest and Craiova, available on www.crj.ro 154 Sorin Rădulescu, Cristina Dâmboeanu 10

The focus was especially the development of complex services for the victim and the offender, in order to meet more appropriately their actual needs (need of support, guidance, assistance, information). To this extent, the new programme extended the range of services to all implementation phases of the programme, carrying on with the assessment, pre-mediation and mediation stages, ending with the post-mediation phase. Practically, such services included, apart from mediation between victim and aggressor, other various intercessions, among which: psycho-social advice, social care and psychological services, guidance for other services etc. Another distinct project objective was the enlargement of the target population, along with the underage and young offenders, having committed crimes for which the penal action starts upon victim’s prior complaint, including in the project those having committed burglary and aggravated theft (articles 208 and 209 of the Penal Code). The activity of the employees of the two Restorative Justice Centres was based to a great extent to the experience gathered during the implementation of the first project financed by the Department of International Development of the British Government. Compared to the activity from 2003, the one from 2004 was much improved, taking into consideration also the requirements of the new project financer. As such, the working methodology for the employees of the two centres was improved, certain evaluative techniques were refined, such as the satisfaction questionnaires filled in by the beneficiaries, and new tools were created, among which the monitoring files registering in detail the specific activities to instrument the file or case and the assessment reports (questionnaires) of the activity carried out by the employees related to the services provided to the offender, to the damaged party or to their families. The evaluative survey carried out by the same team of researches from the Sociology Institute of the Romanian Academy showed the following findings regarding the activity of the Restorative Justice Centres: – During February-October 2004, both centres instrumented a total number of 79 files, out of which 48 (representing approximately 61%) in Bucharest and 31 (approximately 39%) in Craiova; – Even though the number of instrumented files was bigger as compared to the previous year, the number of carried out mediations was still at a very low rate – 8 in Bucharest (7.3% of total services) and 10 in Craiova (approximately 9% of total provided services). Despite the fact that there were many reasons explaining this situation, mostly determined by the refusal of the damaged party to participate in the mediation, by the offender’s not recognising his/her deed or by the damaged party’s not being a plaintiff, the minimum number of carried out mediations affected the core principles of the restorative justice, which first requires parties’ reconciliation and complementary recovery of damages; 11 Victim-Offender Mediation Programmes in Romania 155

– Even though one of the objectives of the new project was the enlargement of the range of services provided to the beneficiaries, some of them had an extremely poor percentage of the general provided activities. For instance, all in all, in the two centres, there were provided only 4 services for social care, 3 for school orientation and 5 for guidance to other institutions. The most frequently provided services were the psycho-social evaluations (54 in Bucharest and 58 in Craiova) and pre-mediations (31 in Bucharest and 34 in Craiova); – The greatest number of services (72%) was provided to the offenders and not to the victim.

2.2.1. THE PROGRAMME FUNCTIONING MAIN DEFICIENCIES

From the point of view of the problems and deficiencies dealt with by the employees of the two centres, the most important findings of the above mentioned assessment were the following: – The restrictive nature of the legislation. The same with the first project, the regulatory frame allowed involvement in this programme of only certain cases, strictly limited from the legal point of view; – The lack of standardisation of working procedures. Some files proved to be incomplete since they did not include the psycho-social assessment reports, even though such an assessment was mentioned, others (especially those from Craiova) did not include the self-assessment reports filled in by the employees related to the types of services provided to each party, satisfaction questionnaires filled in by the beneficiaries or their approval to participate in the C.J.R. services. On the other hand, the reports did not mention the actual ways of providing certain services, such as pre-mediation, social care, school orientation and guidance to other institutions. The fact that there were no separate reports or files clearly mentioning how exactly such activities were carried out raised a series of questions related to the way in which such services were provided; – The faulty collaboration with the official institutions involved in the project. The relation of the employees of the two centres, especially the one in Bucharest, with the Police representatives improved, in the sense that police stations became more “receptive” to the recommendation requirement of cases about to be instrumented. This happened also due to the “Order no. 171/ March 19th, 2004 regarding specific tasks assigned to policemen with attributions in working with underage people”, which regulated the collaboration between police officers from Bucharest and Dolj and the representatives of the Restorative Justice Centres. Also, there were assigned contact persons within each police section and more precise responsibilities for them with regard to the collaboration with the C.J.R. representatives. However, the representatives of both Centres further on confronted a series of obstacles mostly determined by the way in which some police officers understood 156 Sorin Rădulescu, Cristina Dâmboeanu 12 the collaboration with the Centres. Thus, the same with the first project, police officers recommended numerous illegible cases for the two Centres. In Craiova, the collaboration with police officers was even in regress regarding the selection and reference of cases proposed for mediation. This faulty collaboration was partly due to the fluctuation of police officers assigned as contact persons for C.J.R. Craiova, to some policemen’s “mentality”, who reacted only upon receiving orders from a hierarchically superior chief or not knowing the restorative justice techniques. On the other hand, the fact that the policemen who were assigned specific tasks for recommendation of cases to C.J.R. had many other professional responsibilities was an equally important reason for the poor Police involvement in project implementation. With regard to the collaboration of the Social Reintegration and Supervision Service (S.R.S.S.) with the two Centres, this was also faulty. Even though the protocol signed with such Service mentioned that it had to recommend to C.J.R. the cases with minor offenders to be included in the restorative justice programme, in fact S.R.S.S. recommended extremely few cases, technically only two – in Bucharest, and in Craiova – none. From the point of view of the collaboration with the Prosecution Service, even though the relations with this institution improved compared to the previous year, such an institution had only a limited formal role in the project, to the extent which, to have access to the files including cases of burglary or aggravated theft, the C.J.R. personnel had to have obligatorily the Prosecution Service’s approval. Regarding the relation with the courts of law, unlike the previous year, the access of Centres’ personnel to courts’ archives became much simpler, enabling the direct selection of cases. In Craiova, the employees of the Centre obtained the direct access to the Court’s archive, having the possibility to select themselves the cases as objects of mediation, and the collaboration was accomplished with a much larger number of judges. Besides, the overwhelming majority of files (approximately 84% from the total number) was referred to the centre by Craiova Court (26 files). In Bucharest, approximately 46% of files (22) were taken from the courts’ archives, especially from courts from the 3rd and 6th districts. – The “unofficial” nature of the restorative justice Centres. Both the victims and especially the offenders did not always recognise the authority of C.J.R. as official institution with a clearly established status, similar to the formal justice system, and as such they often refused to use the services provided by this Centre.

2.2.2. THE LEVEL OF BENEFICIARIES’ SATISFACTION WITH THE SERVICES OF THE RESTORATIVE JUSTICE CENTRES

As far as the beneficiaries’ satisfaction is concerned, it maintained to a very high level, reaching even 100%. Thus, with some small variations, almost all beneficiaries appreciated the utility of the services and the suitability to their needs, 13 Victim-Offender Mediation Programmes in Romania 157 the correctitude of the way C.J.R. services were provided, the correctitude of the decisions made within the mediation meetings, the possibility offered in getting involved in solving the problems and, last but not least, the way in which the litigation was solved. It is also worth mentioning that the measurement tool of the satisfaction level was much simplified, willing to reduce the difficulty level of the question content used for the first experimental project. Also, even though the “satisfaction questionnaires” were given for filling in not only to those participating in mediation conferences, but also to the beneficiaries of the entire range of services provided by the employees of the two centres, such questionnaires did not include specific items to measure the satisfaction with the advice services, social care and guidance to other institutions.

* * * The restorative justice programmes implemented in the two centres were a useful experiment; there is no doubt about it. The legal, institutional and financial difficulties and obstacles dealt with by both experimental programmes prevailed to the potential advantages they offered, determining the termination of their activity after only two years of functioning. Without deeming this situation as a failure in implementing the principles of the restorative justice in Romania, but only as an inevitable stage in the process of embracing new models and practices in the criminal field, we still think that the elements of such a legal approach could be applied in various forms for underage people justice. Among the advantages which such an approach could have in the future, we could mention (Rădulescu, M. S., Banciu, D., 2004): relieving the authorities from a great deal of activities to be carried out to solve some criminal cases, generally minor ones, relieving the state from a part of the expenses needed for accomplishing the judgement, offering an opportunity to the community members to solve their conflict in a different climate and way they were accustomed to up to that moment.

3. THE ROMANIAN LEGISLATION IN THE RESTORATIVE JUSTICE FIELD

In order to align the Romanian legislation to the international standards and the reform regarding justice for underage people (see Balahur, D., Littlechild, B., Smith, R. – forthcoming), our country has adopted in the recent years a series of regulatory acts regarding the protection of child’s rights in criminal cases. However, from the point of view sanctions are ruled out, the focus still stays on the punishment (often by sentencing to jail). 158 Sorin Rădulescu, Cristina Dâmboeanu 14

Neither the New Criminal Code (Law 301/2004) nor the New Criminal Procedure Code mention the restorative justice practices, recommended however in all international documents. For the Police, the police organisation act does not mention anything related to such practices, to mediation of the conflict between the offender and the victim (Rădulescu, M. S., Banciu, D., Dâmboeanu, C., Balica, E., October 2004). The only legal possibility which could be used for implementation at this moment of the restorative practices belongs to the Public Ministry (Rădulescu, M. S., Banciu, D., Dâmboeanu, C., Balica, E., October 2004), which, according to Law 304/2004 regarding the legal organisation (in art. 60, letter a): “(…) performs through the prosecutor the following responsibilities: carries out the criminal prosecution in the cases and under the conditions provided by the law and participates, according to the law, in solving the conflicts through alternative means”.

3.1. MEDIATION AND COMPENSATION IN THE ROMANIAN LEGISLATION

In Europe, through the Recommendations no. 19 from 1999 and no. 22 from 2000, the Europe Council has decided to stimulate the efforts of member and candidate states to ensure the legislative frame necessary for the implementation of VOM and of other restorative justice practices. The alignment of the Romanian legislation to the legal rules of the other European states involves among others the insertion of the restorative justice as a viable alternative to the formal procedures of the retributive justice. From this point of view, the experimental activity of the two Restorative Justice Centres in Bucharest and Craiova proved the doubtless utility of such form of community justice which ensures its beneficiaries (victim, offender, community) increased satisfactions compared to the traditional justice system and involves judgement of crimes without social gravity in a non-criminal manner. A first step in the implementation of the restorative justice in Romania was Law no. 217 from 2003 regarding the prevention and fighting against family violence, which stipulates the mediation possibility in cases of domestic aggressions. Subsequently, Law no. 192 from May 16th, 2006 regarding mediation and organisation of the mediator profession, meant to solve through this activity different conflicts regarding civil, criminal, family and commercial field, was passed. In compliance with the regulations included in this law, the mediation is a “an optional way of amiably solving the conflicts, through a third party qualified as mediator, under such terms as neutrality, impartiality and confidentiality” (art. 1), a “public interest activity” (art. 4) through which both natural and legal entities can “solve disputes both outside and inside the compulsory procedures for amiably solving conflicts provided by the law” (art. 3). According to art. 50, the mediation means the “parties’ cooperation and mediator’s use of specific methods and techniques, based on communication and negotiation” (paragraph 1), where the 15 Victim-Offender Mediation Programmes in Romania 159 latter “cannot force the parties into a solution with regard to the conflict undergoing mediation” (paragraph 3). The law also stipulates (in chapter 5) the procedure prior to the conclusion of the mediation agreement, the content of such an agreement, the way the mediation is carried out and the “termination” of the mediation procedure. Thus, the mediation agreement “is concluded between the mediator, on the one hand, and the parties in conflict, on the other hand” (art. 44, paragraph 2) and includes (art. 45): “the identity of the parties in conflict or, as the case may be, of their representatives; mentioning the object of the conflict; the mediator’s obligation to give explanations to the parties with regard to the mediation principles, rules and effects; parties’ statement, in the sense that they are willing to initiate the mediation procedure and they are decided to cooperate therein; the engagement of the parties in conflict to observe the rules applicable to mediation” etc. In compliance with art. 52, “the parties in conflict have the right to be assisted by a lawyer or other people, under the commonly agreed terms” (paragraph 1), and “during mediation, the parties can be represented by other people, able to act on their behalf under the terms of law” (paragraph 2). An important legal provision stipulates the “agreement” concluded between the parties, “which will include all the agreed clauses and having the value of a document under private signature” (art. 58, paragraph 1). At the same time, art. 60 (paragraph 1) stipulates that “in any stage of the mediation, any of the parties in conflict has the right to waive the mediation agreement, upon a written notification sent to the other party and to the mediator”. Other legal regulations include the conditions for mediator profession to be performed (chapter 2, section 1), for organisation and performance of mediators’ activities (chapter 3), rights and liabilities of the mediator (chapter 4), establishment and functioning of the Mediation Council (chapter 2, section 2), etc. Unfortunately, we consider that, excepting some useful regulations, this act meets only partially the need to introduce the restorative justice in our country, without corresponding to the original idea of the British project for VOM implementation and clearly being too far from the field related European standards. The most important deficiencies of the Law no. 192 are mainly the following: • lack of involvement for the community and its representatives in the mediation process; • absence of a clear distinction between cases for adults and underage offenders that can undergo mediation (the law treats undifferentiated such cases); • exclusion from the mediation process of one or more important issues of the restorative justice, namely compensation and repairs (the law makes no reference to this matter, not even related to the community work); 160 Sorin Rădulescu, Cristina Dâmboeanu 16

• lack of mentions regarding the profession of the people able to act as mediators (even though it emphasises the fact that mediators can carry out their activity within a professional civil organisation or within a non-governmental organisation, the law does not indicate distinct professional categories, referring only to lawyers, notaries public and legal advisors, i.e. people having little to do with the community, as such, being involved, with priority, in the procedures of formal justice). This way, the principles and characteristics defining the restorative justice (not by chance called “community” or “recovery” justice) are to be found to a limited extent in the Law no. 192 from May 16th, 2006, which besides makes no mention on the restorative justice as such. But the current regulatory frame ignores not only the Romanian experience gathered during the implementation of the two above mentioned experimental programmes, rather it seems to ignore to a great extent even the experience of countries with long tradition in this field. This is the only way we can explain why the law lacks references to compensations and recoveries, which is a key element of mediation, regardless of the forms it takes in various countries. The law ignores on the other hand one of the core principles of the restorative justice, requiring the offender to take the responsibility on the committed deed and to apologise to the victim, either directly, through a face-to-face meeting with him/her, or indirectly, through letters and messages (Balahur, D., forthcoming). Besides, the direct dialogue and communication of the parties involved in the conflict are minimised considering the provisions of art. 53, paragraph 2 of the law: “excepting the cases when the mediator deems absolutely necessary the presence of the parties, they can be represented by other people, who can act on their behalf, under the terms of law”. It is also worth mentioning the fact that the current law does not take into consideration the propositions of the two assessment reports pursuant to the restorative justice experimental programmes implemented in our country, namely the necessity to include in the mediation procedure for criminal cases other cases than the ones involving prior complaint. The law does not mention the actual ways to refer the cases or the liabilities and competences of various field-related authorities and does not include provisions regarding special services regarding psychological advice and social care that should be provided to the victims and aggressors. Despite such major deficiencies of the law, we consider that however it can be an important premise for the insertion and the establishment of the restorative justice procedure in our country. Provided that the legislator takes into consideration the core principles of this alternative justice form and, with priority, its exclusive community characteristic. 17 Victim-Offender Mediation Programmes in Romania 161

REFERENCES

Balahur, D. (2001). Child’s Rights Protection as a Principle of Social Work. Bucharest: All Beck Publishing House. Balahur, D., and Balahur, P. (2005). The Discontents of the European Modern Law: Restorative Justice in a Pluralist Europe. Paper presented at the First International Conference of Sociology of Law (Onate, Spain). Balahur, D., Littlechild, B., Smith, R. (forthcoming), Juvenile Justice Reform and Restorative justice in Romania and UK. Balahur, D. (forthcoming), „Restorative Justice and Victim Offender Mediation in Romania”, in Aertsen, I., and Miers, D., eds., Restorative Justice: Evaluative Findings in Europe. Bremen: Polizei und Wissenschaft. Bazemore, G., and Umbreit, M. S. (1997). Restorative Justice for Juveniles. A Framework for Juvenile Justice in the 21st Century. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Coates, R., and Gehm, J. (2002). „An Empirical Assessment”, in Wemmers, J. A., Canuto, M., eds., Victim’s Experiences with, Expectations and Perceptions Of Restorative Justice: A Critical Review of the Literature. International Centre for Comparative Criminology, Université de Montréal. Evje, A., and Cushman, R. (2000). A Summary of Evaluations of Six California Victim Offender Rehabilitation Programs. San Francisco, CA, Judicial Council of California, Administrative Office of the Courts.Learn about Victim-Offender Mediation, VOMA (Victim Offender Mediation Association), available at http://www.voma.org/abtvom.shtml. McCold, P., and Wachtel, B. (1998). Restorative Policing Experiment: The Bethlehem Pennsylvania Police Family Group Conferencing Project. Pipersville, PA, Community Service Foundation. Rădulescu, M. S., and Banciu, D. (2004). “Evaluative Study on the Restorative Justice Experimental Programme in Romania”, edited in The Assessment of the Restorative Justice System in Romania. Bucharest: Oscar Print Publishing House. Rădulescu, M. S., Banciu, D., Dâmboeanu, C., Balica, E. (October 2004), The Assessment of the Restorative Justice Project Implemented in Bucharest and Craiova, report available at www.crj.ro Rădulescu, M. S., Banciu, D., Dâmboeanu, C. (2006). The Restorative Justice. Trends and Perspectives in the Contemporary World. Bucharest: LUMINA LEX Publishing House. Umbreit, M. S., and Greenwood, J. (April 2000). Guidelines for Victim-Sensitive Victim-Offender Mediation: Restorative Justice through Dialogue. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. Umbreit, M. S., Coates, R. B., Vos, B. (November 2000). Victim Impact of Restorative Justice Conferencing with Juvenile Offenders: What We have Learned from Two Decades of Victim- Offender Dialogue through Mediation and Conferencing. Florida Atlantic University. Umbreit, M. S. (2001). The Handbook of Victim Offender Mediation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

www.cjr.ro (Legal Resources Centre, Restorative Justice – An alternative model to the mechanisms of formal retributive justice). www.euforumrj.org (the website of the European Forum for Victim-Offender Mediation and Restorative Justice). http://www.voma.org/abtvom.html. (VOMA – Victim Offender Mediation Association).

162 Sorin Rădulescu, Cristina Dâmboeanu 18

CONTRASTS AND UNBALANCES WITHIN THE EUROPEAN AND ROMANIAN RELIGIOUS CONTEXT

MANUELA GHEORGHE

The Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy

The current paper aims emphasising the contrasts and unbalances representing integral parts of the European religious framework during the last decades, as resulting from the European Commission surveys or from specialised bibliography. We have taken into consideration some of specific religious indicators, namely: religious faiths, religious belonging, attendance to the worship ceremonies, but also another criteria as the regulation of the relationships between the state and the church or the residing environment. The second part of the study intends to argue the idea sustaining that also Romania may be seen as an actor within the contorted and controversial frame implied by the early European membership, at least under the existent regional disparities from an ethnic and religious point of view.

“Reflecting on Europe and religion is inexhaustible” Raimun Panikkar

1. RELIGIOUS CONTRASTS AND DISPARITIES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

The last decades seems to be marked by an increasing tendency of the socio- spatial disparities, under the regional, inter-regional and intra-urban level. The mentioned disparities are changing from country to country and the measurement of their evolution is fulfilled by using some of very particular indicators of social, economic, socio-cultural or religious nature, etc.1. To the European Union level we can discuss on a high degree of heterogeneousness and breaking up, not only for socio-economic or demographic level, but also for a historic, ethic or religious one as well. Regarding the last mentioned issue – the religious one – the current

1 From more than 30 years, the European Commission Eurobarometers, for example, represent a reference instrument for analyising the main European issues. European Social Survey Data (ESS Data) carry out biannial surveys for the European Union countries offering statistical data allowing to measure and explain the values, attitudes, faiths and behaviors variations of the European states citizens, inclusively comparative studies between those countries.

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 163–172, Bucureşti, 2008 164 Manuela Gheorghe 2 religious pluralism, seen in this case under its own sociologic meaning, as contingent datum, historic and social, illustrating enough the diversity and expansion of the instruments by which the Europeans citizens are setting their relations to divinity. 1.1. Christianity. First of all, obvious disparities may be seen to the Christianity level-the common religious inheritance of Europe. North Europe is a prevailing protestant one, Southern Europe has a catholic majority while the eastern remains orthodox. On the other side, although the Jewish-Christian structure continue to remain determinative, it seems that the European Union is aiming now to convert more and more into a religious entity, complex and syncretic enough. Under the influence of the present demographic dynamics, based on the work force flood from the underdeveloped economic countries to the western European area, but also within the context of globalisation, the diversity and religious contrast between the European Union member states tends to become more prominent.2 1.2. Report State-Church. Major differences can be remarked regarding the way the European Union member states understand to settle the relationship between state and church, precisely the position and the mission accomplished by the Churches within society, and also the way the religious worships are legally settled. The traditional classification regarding the type of these relationships is a tripartite one and is based on three categories: the systems of separation, composition and state church. The subject requires a special attention and consequently it will not be detailed at the moment, not being an object of herewith study. Therefore, we mention that, taking the example of France as a recognised laic country, the religion is systematically removed from the public area. As it is the case for Great Britain, the king is considered the head of the Anglican Church but without financially supporting it. Italy, Spain and Portugal could be seen as holding a intermediary position between separation and protection of worships but, as prevailing catholic countries they are paying special attention and support for the catholic church3. In this case we are not entitled to consider with no reason as having a single European pattern when referring to the relationships between church and state in the enlarged Europe. A particular case is represented just by Romania, a country with a clear orthodox majority where the relations between State and Church are regulated by the principle of autonomy and neutrality but in fact the state financially gives support to the Romanian Orthodox Church together with the other legally recognised worships, giving financially support for the remuneration of the

2 The statistics of the last years, for example, stress a serious increase within the European Union countries of the number of muslims, sikhs, budhist, other non-Cristhian adherents for the recent date. By the presence of a numerous community of Romanian emmigrants in Italy, we can discuss in the recent years about a significant orthodox presence in this country. 3 For a more complete overview over this extremely special issue see Margiotta Brolio, C. Mirabelli, F. Onida, (1997). Religioni e sistemi giuridici, Bologna, Il Mulino. 3 Contrasts and Unbalances within the European and Romanian Religious Context 165 worships members remuneration and also for building and consolidating their worship houses etc. 1.3. Religious beliefs. We sustain also that important disparities may to be found as regards the religious beliefs belonging to the European nations. According to the information provided by the European Commission Special Eurobarometer, Social Values, Science and technology, from January-February 2005, one of two Europeans have declared they believe in God (52%), roughly one of four sustain they believe into a supreme spiritual force, impersonal one, (27%), but 18% from them declare they do not believe neither God nor other spiritual supreme, impersonal force. Significant differences are provided especially by the results concerning the religious beliefs of different nationalities: for example in Malta, country with an important catholic tradition, the majority of the population (95%) believe in God. We confront with a similar situation for all other countries with a prevailing religion, especially for the orthodox ones. For Cyprus, with a majority of Greek Cypriot Orthodox citizens, 90% from the total population declared they believe in God. Considerable data percentage can also be found as regard Greece (81%), Portugal (80%), Italy (74%), Ireland (73%). Concerning Romania, a country with a majority orthodox population, strongly attached to the institution of church and tradition, 90% from the respondents sustained, according to the quoted survey their belief in God. The record in the field belongs to Turkey, candidate country to integration in the European Union, having a Muslim population in proportion of 95%. Countries as Czech Republic (50%) and Estonia (54%) offer a strongly contrasting case by the increased percentage of persons believing in God – both ex- communist countries, but also Sweden (53%). Representative for outlining the respondents believing in God are also the data as regards the socio-demographic status of the interviewed (age, level of education, gender, etc.). We notice from the total amount of persons declaring their belief in God, 58% are woman and 45% men, 63% with age of 50 years and over, 49% between 40 and 54 years, 46% between 25 and 39 years, 44% between 15 and 24 years. The highest level of those believing in God is noticed for persons having graduated their studies at 15 years, and the lowest (45%) to the subjects at the age of 20 years and over this age being still involved into a different type of studies4. The existent discrepancies regarding the way the European are relating to religion are highlighted by a European survey dated June 2005, achieved also under the European Commission auspices according to which for the majority of Polish (86%), Italian (74%) and Portuguese (72%) individuals religion holds an important position in their lives. In the mean time, “religion has an important position in life” only for a minority of French (46%), British ( 40%) and Czech Republic (34%). (Table 1)

4 Special Eurobarometer. (Jan.-Feb. 2005). Social Values, Science and technology, TNS Sofres European Commission. 166 Manuela Gheorghe 4

Table 1 What do you think about the following sentence: “Religion holds an important place in my life”

Italy Great Spain Czech Czech France France Poland Britain Finland average average Portugal Republic Pays Bas Germany European European

In great 29 16 23 18 26 39 26 53 42 25 23 measure Less 29 18 30 28 30 35 20 33 30 35 17 Yes 58 34 53 46 56 74 46 86 72 60 40 (average) Almost 15 21 20 18 13 14 16 10 12 11 20 not at all Not at all 27 45 26 36 31 11 38 3 13 28 40 No 42 66 46 54 44 25 54 13 25 39 60 (average) Without 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 3 1 0 opinion Source : “Le Valeurs des européens”. Surveys TNSS Sofres-Euro RSCG. 3. June 2000 (table adopted by the author).

1.4. Religious practice. Regarding the European religious practices, some of the surveys achieved within the European countries have revealed that countries as France, Belgium, Pays Bas and Northern countries are recognised as being areas with a less level of religious belonging and practice. It can be seen sustained, also, the existence of a Scandinavian pattern differentiated by a high degree of religious affiliation but a minimum religious practice. For Ireland, the statistics are showing an exceptional religious behaviour. The Orthodox churches (Greece or Romania, for example) present a similar case as well. (Table 2)

Table 2 Attendance of church in 1990 (as percentage) To important Once by Once by Once by religious Never week or less month year ceremonies etc. European 29 19 8 5 40 average Catholic

countries Belgium 23 8 13 4 52 France 10 7 17 7 59 5 Contrasts and Unbalances within the European and Romanian Religious Context 167

(Continued table 2) Ireland 81 7 6 5 Italy 40 13 23 19 Portugal 33 8 8 47 Protestant

countries Spain 33 10 15 38 Great 13 10 12 8 56 Britain West 19 15 16 9 41 Germany Pays Bas 21 10 16 5 47 North 49 18 6 7 18 Ireland Evangelic

countries Denmark 11 Finland - Island 9 Norway 10 Sweden 10

Source : table adapted by Ashford S., Timms N. (1992). What Europe Thinks: a Study of Western European Values, Aldershot, Dartmouth, p. 46. apud: Grace David, Danièle Hervieu-Léger (coordinators). (1996). Identités religieuses en Europe, Éditions La Découverte, Paris, p. 53.

1.5. Rural religiosity – urban religiosity within European Union countries. Although the distribution of the main religiosity indicators is less highlighted due to the high degree of urbanity for the rural areas, some disparities and contrasts have to be taken into consideration under the European level, inclusively between the population religiosity from rural and urban environment. For this case the special attention for the European sociologists is oriented to the changes taking place in the rural religiosity, in comparison with the phenomenon in full development of “cities urbanity”. Moreover, the analysis of the current aspects regarding the rural and urban space (social morphology, mobility, sociability, new transformations in the scope of religiosity) for the time being is more and more an element of interest and research for the European sociology. In 1966, for example, it was settled LADYSS (Social Dynamics and monopolisation of space) as a mixed centre of research composed of GRMS (Groupe de recherche des mutations des sociétés europeenes) within CNRS and STRATES (Stratégies territoriales et dynamiques des espaces), body that will structure the foundation of an 168 Manuela Gheorghe 6

“Observatory of rural space evolution” (Observatoire de l’Evolution de l’Espace rural) for the European Union countries. Based on the departure point that the urban and rural are representing two categories that has not to be divided into the applied research, starting with 1997, LADYSS decided to enlarge the field of interest over the urban space. It was strongly pointed out that urban and rural, only taken together could really contribute to the “deciphering” of the main social dynamics and actual recomposition of the European framework, of the present social changes. Consequently, according to the new tendencies, the idea of renouncing to the dichotomy theory, the traditional one for these two research fields already mentioned it has become very important. There is a change determined by the current deeply evolutions influencing the both levels: on the first side, the urban followers sustain the imminent disappearance of the rural, taking into account the accelerated development of agriculture and of a serious decreasement of the people actively involved in the agricultural work and of the “villages urbanity”. On the other side, the adepts of the rural theory foreseeing a serious urban crisis and, as a consequence, a true “rural revival”, in the same time with the emergence of a special rurality of post-industrial type. Within the rural environment, they state, as a resistance reaction to the globalisation process, it begins to appear some original economic and cultural changes which, being of little amplitude at the moment could in the future bring to a “rural revival” and finally, towards finding a rural “hidden revival”, to reconfigure a new rurality in the European framework. As regards the rural religiosity in England, the results given by two successive field surveys developed between 1999–2000 by the researcher Josiane Massard – Vincent, entitled her to draw up the conclusion that the inhabitants of the British villages, either the most devoted of them or the habitual ones continue to react to the church as the central body for their social life, in the meaning of the most representative public and meeting place, for socialising as well. Nowdays, within the rural England landscape, the Anglican Church continue to be, above the spatial and architectural pre-eminence, the institution ordering not only the individual time but also the civil one5. In France, the specialists are considering we really assist to a diminution of the differences between the rural and urban religiosity, just as a consequence of attenuation of the distance between rural and urban. During the Old Regime they appreciate the contrast between the religious life of cities and villages was significantly much representative as is the case in the present when the discrepancies are progressively reducing.

5 Josiane Massard – Vincent, Observations preliminaires sur une paroise des Midlands (GB), (http://halshd.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-0006821) 7 Contrasts and Unbalances within the European and Romanian Religious Context 169

2. CASE OF ROMANIA

With regards to Romanian map of regional disparities we could consider without doubt under ethnic-religious point of view that our country remain an extremely homogenous one, the 23 ethnic minorities representing only 10.6% from the total population. The most representative is the Hungarian one: 1 431 807(6.6%)6 with an overwhelming majority of reformed believers (Calvinist tradition) being concentrated especially in the Transylvania area. Within three counties: Harghita, Covasna and Mureş, Hungarian ethnics are prevailing. The Western region unfolds a clear cultural disparity: Hunedoara counting 90% Romanians while the other three component counties : Timiş, Arad and Caraş Severin are strongly cultural influenced by the dynamic of the Hungarian and German minorities. An another distinct religious-ethnic group is represented by the Russians, according to the census from 2002, their number amounting to 35 764 (0.17%)7, their majority sharing the old Orthodox rite, and being especially concentrated in Dobrogea and Moldova. Outstanding discrepancies could be seen as regards the territorial distribution of this ethnic-religious minority. Notwithstanding this minority is spread all over the country, the most important concentration of Russians being found in Dobrogea: Tulcea county (13 326), Constanţa (3 709), Brăila (2792). The second concentration is placed in Moldova: Iaşi (4410), Suceava (2880)8. From the residence point of view, the census from 2002 indicates a representative predominance of the Russians community within the rural area (25538) compared to 25 538 in the urban area9. (ibidem, p. 771, p. 781). From the residence point of view, the religious landscape acquires some special features: the territorial distribution of the Orthodox believers in the rural area, keeping into consideration the development regions, shows that, also preponderant within all eight, is still unequal distributed from a region to another. The most intensive presence of the Orthodox believers in the rural area is found in Oltenia (98.7%), Moldova (98.4%), Bucureşti (98.2%), Dobrogea (94.3%) and Moldova (93.5%). The area counting the lowest Orthodox presence in the rural environment is represented by the followings: Banat (72.0%), Crişana (69.2%), Transilvania (61.7%). Within all these areas, we find the biggest Roman-Catholic concentration: Banat (14.8%), Transylvania (12.1%9, Crişana (10.3%). And another contrast is

6 National Institute of Statics. (2002). The census of population and of their houses, p. 802. 7 Idem. 8 National Institute of Statics, The census op. cit., p. 767 9 ibidem, pp. 771, 781. 170 Manuela Gheorghe 8 represented by the regional territorial diffusion in the rural area of the New- Protestants: Transylvania (10.1%), Crişana (5.5%); in all other areas, their presence is statistically irrelevant: Banat (1.7%), Moldova (0.7%), Bucureşti (0.3%), Muntenia (0.1%), Dobrogea (0.0%), Oltenia (0.0%). As regard the Muslim believers from the rural areas, also for this case they are not homogenous distributed across the development regions: 3.9% in Dobrogea while in all the other regions they are less represented. Interesting elements are provided by the statistical data concerning the diffusion area for the believers belonging to an “another religion”. For this situation, their distribution in areas as Transylvania (13.3%), Crişana (9.8%), Banat (9.2%) proving the reality of multiculturalism and religious syncretism recognised for these areas of Romania. (Table 3)

Table 3 Religious belonging of believers, on development areas, in the rural environment (percentage from the total amount of the region population)

What is your 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. religion? Moldova Muntenia Dobrogea Oltenia Crişana Transilvania Banat

Orthodox 93.5% 98.4% 94.3% 98.7% 69.2% 61.7% 72.0%

Roman- 3.9% 0.2% 1.0% 0.1% 10.3% 12.1% 14.8% Catholic New- 0.7% 0.1% 0.0% 0.0% 5.5% 10.1% 1.7% Protestant Greek- 0.2% 0.0% 0.2% 0.1% 4.6% 2.5% 2.0% Catholic

Muslim 0.0% 0.0% 3.9% 0.0% 0.1% 0.0% 0.0%

Another 1.5% 1.2% 0.7% 0.6% 9.8% 13.2% 9.2% religion Without 0.1% 0.0% 0.0% 0.4% 0.4% 0.1% 0.0% religion Unspecified 0.2% 0.1% 0.0% 0.1% 0.1% 0.2% 0.3% religion . Source: National survey CURS 2003. Data processed within the Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy

A comparative study between the distribution of the believers within the rural and urban environment, based on the development regions entitles us to sustain there are not major discrepancies from this point of view, but by contrary we can 9 Contrasts and Unbalances within the European and Romanian Religious Context 171 notice a clear percentage similarity. Therefore, we distinguish a discrepancy as regards the distribution of the Neo-protestant believers in the Transylvanian area: 10.1% in the rural environment and only 3.5% in the urban environment. (Table 4)

Table 4 Religious belonging of believers, by development areas in the urban environment (percentages from the total population of the region) What is 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. your Moldova Muntenia Dobrogea Oltenia Crişana Transylvania Banat Bucureşti religion?

Orthodox 94.5% 98.0% 94.4% 98.0% 66.3% 68.7% 79.1% 95.0%

Roman- 3.0% 0.3% 0.6% 1.1% 12.2% 12.9% 9.5% 1.6% Catholic New- 0.7% 0.4% 0.6% 0.3% 6.8% 3.5% 2.1% 0.6% protestant Greek- 0.5% 0.4% 0.1% 0.2% 5.4% 4.1% 1.7% 0.9% Catholic

Muslim 0.0% 0.0% 3.8% 0.1% 0.1% 0.0% 0.4% 0.0%

Another 0.9% 0.6% 0.4% 0.3% 8.5% 9.9% 6.6% 0.7% religion Without 0.2% 0.2% 0.1% 0.1% 0.4% 0.5% 0.2% 1.0% religion Unspecified 0.15% 0.1% 0.0% 0.0% 0.3% 0.4% 0.2% 0.2% religion

Source: National survey CURS 2003. Data processed within the Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy

The religious landscape within European countries offers, as we have tried to explain, one of the most significant indicators regarding the religious evolution. The development of what we can designate as sociology of Europe or of the European construction, based on the comparative information provided by, for example, the Observatory of the social changes in Europe and by settling a European comparative library, would really contribute not only to the building of the united Europe, but, in a compulsory way, to find the answer for one of the most important inquiry still seeking the answer, precisely, if Europe goes towards discovering their homogeneity or for emphasising the differences and diversity. 172 Manuela Gheorghe 10

REFERENCES

Ashford S., Timms N. (1992). What Europe Thinks: a Study of Western European Values, Aldershot, Dartmouthm apud David, Grace, Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (coordinators). (1996). Identités religieuses en Europe, Éditions La Découverte, Paris. David, Grace, Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (coordinators). (1996). Identités religieuses en Europe, Éditions La Découverte, Paris. Josiane, Massard – Vincent, Observations preliminaires sur une paroise des Midlands,, Online: http://halshd.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-0006821. Margiotta, Brolio, C. Mirabelli, F. Onida. (1997). Religioni e sistemi giuridici, Bologna: Il Mulino.

Special Eurobarometer. (January-February 2005). Social Values, Science and technology, TNS SofresEuropean Commission. National Institute of Statics. (2002). The census of population and houses. SOCIOLOGICAL PARADIGMS

ASYNCHRONOUS PHENOMENA. PREMISES FOR A NOOLOGICAL SOCIOLOGY

ILIE BĂDESCU

The Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy

There are events and phenomena that are not affected by time. Exceptional happenings, such as the emergence of sainthood, prophets, the genius, heroism and so on, are approached and explained in this article through a new sociological paradigm. Leaping from time, such remarkable events, that give history its rhythm and direction, but refuse to become only history, display themselves under particular circumstances. These blessed areas and periods of time don’t overlap with the areas of certain historical civilizations and, consequently, they should not be mistaken with the great civilizations. Sometimes, in one people’s geographic area take place time transcending events. A “dense space’’ overlaps with the historical context of that people. But it’s just an overlap and not a synonymy between these two areas, because the factors that contribute to their emergence are totally different, opposite in fact.

ASYNCHRONOUS FACTORS IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCES

Asynchronous phenomena. Man is indebted to the time factor with his entire being and his entire existence; everything takes place in time and is a sure target for the unforgiving arrow of time flight. This vision is so strongly rooted in the modern European's mind that he would find it quite hard to believe that so much of what occurs in his life appears to be stronger than time that brings about death. However, the evolution of modern sciences and the entire Scripture lead us to a more comprehensive vision: everything that exists in time is due to certain exceptional events and phenomena that “leap” from time, such as sainthood, prophets, the genius, heroism, etc.; these do not have time, they are asynchronous in relation to the actual historical time. Moreover, historical time itself can be molded, given orientation and direction by such exceptional phenomena. Such exceptional phenomena and situations are in no way indebted to historical time or to any certain “place,” that is, to space, as they are asynchronous in relation to the actual historical time. In other words, they certify the intervention in history of certain factors that occur asynchronously to the usual, ordinary time. The phenomena that derive from the occurrence of such factors are themselves asynchronous and they spread according to a different curve than that of usual,

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 173–200, Bucureşti, 2008 174 Ilie Bădescu 2 descending time. Usual, circumstantial time leads to decline and disappearance, while the asynchronous factors and phenomena bring about an ascending vector; they establish eternal duration and life where it seemed that death was almighty and the only one that could triumph. If we were to refer to a science like geopolitics or sociology from the perspective of the intervention of asynchronous factors in the unfolding of history and therefore in the outcome of all human manifestation, we should talk about geopolitics and sociology of asynchronous phenomena. These would be the sciences of the influence, of the direct intervention of God’s power on and in the entire range of collective manifestations, showing us how much vanity and superficiality there is in the pride of those temporarily powerful who believe they are the craftsmen of human destiny. The geopolitics of asynchronous factors and of the related phenomena is, no matter how unusual the phrase may seem, geopolitics of God’s intervention in history as the most significant of all powers. How much more legitimate can it be to speak of the geopolitics or sociology of various entities built by man such as states, empires, international systems and so on, and not to speak of a geopolitics or sociology of the same entities as entities which include, in one form or another the providential intervention of God in history, that is, about the noological geopolitics and sociology or, to use the term we have suggested above, about the geopolitics of asynchronous factors and their adjacent phenomena? Why should we give more credit to G. Parker's theory, for example, on the domination states, i.e., on empires, than to Daniel's prophecies on empire which represent the most enduring basis for a „science” of empires, valid over epochs and geographical spaces? D. Cantemir, in his study on empires requested by the Russian tsar Peter the Great, has drawn upon Daniel's vision and idea on empire, offering us the first geopolitical study based on the Scriptures in world culture. There have been prior studies of noological geopolitics made by the Arabs, but they were not founded on the Scriptures. This is why the current paper is also based on an idea of a sociology and geopolitics of asynchronous factors, a geopolitics and sociology that aim at rereading great events from the perspective of the idea referring to the providential intervention of God in the great historical occurrences, through what we will call asynchronous events and phenomena which have a pneumatological essence. These are a lot more significant for the evolution of mankind than, for example, political, military or economic events. The prophets of the Old Testament and their epoch have had a much greater impact on universal history than Nebuchadnezzar's empire. Universal history, in its fruitfulness, that is in its quality of series that enhances and uplifts everybody, is hugely indebted to the prophets, therefore to the chosen people, and only in its quality of descending series, only as a cycle that prepares an inexorable decline it is indebted to that empire. This empire has at most the significance of an instrument of „torture” inflicted on all those who decay in one form or another from godliness, the significance of a “whip of God” which strikes the sins and straying that bring about dangers and perdition. For the history and destiny of the Romanian people, 3 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 175 the sacrifice of Constantine Brâncoveanu and of his four children together with his secretary (Vornic) Ienache represents the most important event in the whole 700 years since the Romanian reigns were established, an event more significant and more full of consequences than any other event in Romanian history, no matter what that event may have been. It would have been sufficient for Brâncoveanu to have consented to abjure his faith and to convert to Islam for the humanly overwhelming reason of saving his four children from the Turkish yataghan, for the vertical line in Romanian history to have been broken then and for the history of this Christian nation to have ended. That moment on, Romanians would have had foreign elite as to its religion and every time this kind of phenomenon has had an intervention in history it has opened a series that eventually brought with itself the misfortune of a people, the crushing of its inner being, its disappearance. Such a phenomenon of severe departure of the elites from the Christian line has occurred in European cultures since the Quatrocento, a deviation which has catastrophically grown in the 18th century and again in the second half of the 20th century within the current of massive secularization of the entire Europe. It would have been sufficient for Moses, in his return from Mount Sinai, to have accepted that act of idolatry fulfilled by Aaron's gesture at the request of the wondering people for the history of the Jewish people and by this the history of the world to have stopped then following the fact that the people chosen by God to fulfill the divine plan had answered God’s choice with a refusal. Sacrificing half the people that had slipped into idolatry (Ieşirea 32: 25–29) shows us not only the tragic dimension of spiritual straying but also the crucial importance of pneumatological events for the history of mankind. Which man of those who know what Moses and the Levites’ gesture meant for the whole history that followed does not show his gratitude to the prophet of the Old Testament? God would have never worked with an idolatrous people and the history of the world would have known such a big shake if that would not have been man's very end. It was not for itself that the people of the desert was achieving the act of freeing itself from the Pharaoh but for the Word of God to be fulfilled for the entire mankind. The people had been destined for Canaan and as the people of the prophets, the people of David and of Mary, it had also received an eschatological destiny and mission. Asynchronous phenomena show that there is something in the world that is a lot stronger than the strongest men of the world, stronger than their will and the vector of the great empire's dominant time, which fixes the rhythm of history on the duration of their existence. Compared to the dominant time, fixed by the rhythm of an Ottoman history, for example, what happened with the Brâncoveanu saints is included in the category of asynchronous phenomena. The dominant historical time, the Ottoman one, had no power on the soul, on the spirit of these saints who mediated the triumph of God's will in the world, despite and against the will of the feared empire and of the feared sultan. Compared to Brâncoveanu’s will, the will and power of the sultan, of the most important man in the world at the 176 Ilie Bădescu 4 time, were null. Brâncoveanu and his children together with Vornic Ienache were indeed free, stronger than the most powerful and feared empire of the epoch and one of the strongest in history. Those who were not free were that sultan, together with all the Westerners who consented then to the act of collective crime, tragically and accusingly proving that the West of that time somehow also abjured its faith, because no Western consciousness of the time reacted. Not even one. What was that Western world compared to the will of the sultan? Where was the proof that the West at the time was on the part of the great martyr of Christ in all that entire epoch since the West showed it was on the part of the sultan, on the part of the will and work of Islam, because, as we can see, history has kept no evidence of any Western reaction to the great unchristian wrongdoing of the Crescent?! Throughout the teachings of the Scripture, the idea of asynchronous factors and of asynchronous phenomena is axial and only evolutionism and modern naturalism has driven (deviated) the human mind from this idea. Let us retain that an asynchronous phenomenon, as soon as it is manifest in a given space and in a certain time, acquires the character of factor capable of maintaining asynchronous manifestations in time and space, capable of giving the historical processes influenced by that phenomenon directions of asynchronous, ascending propagation. Therefore, asynchronous phenomena become factors that have a constant action and the property (capacity) of maintaining in the individual and collective living environment asynchronous manifestations, asynchronous propagation directions compared to the time which tends to attract everything towards death. The existence of asynchronous factors gives history and all the dynamisms of life an asynchronous direction, one in which and through which we can certify the providential intervention of God in the entire unfolding of existence, in all places and all centuries. Dense Space. Acknowledging the intervention of asynchronous factors is a significant way towards the knowledge of the action of the supernatural law in history and in the dynamics of human society. Thus, a new science emerges, in the field of sociology, geopolitics, anthropology, etc., which is sensible to the manifestation of asynchronous factors. This starts from the identification of asynchronous phenomena and studies their manifestation as asynchronous factors of the flux of individual and collective life. The emergence of a hero, or of a saint in a give community make of heroism and sainthood asynchronous phenomena in the life of that community in its entirety and in the life of every one of its members. A genius creation has the same effect, a great charismatic person also, a vocation (calling), a great character and so on, all of them has the property of establishing themselves as asynchronous factors of the flux of individual and collective existence, which thus will acquire models that are not related to the natural immanence of things but precisely with the intervention of what is exceptional in the flow of life. Sometimes, in the certain periods of history and in certain areas, such asynchronous phenomena have an enhanced density which gives those epochs 5 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 177 and places a distinguished, exceptional character. We designate such areas and periods of time as the “dense spaces” given the great concentration of the asynchronous phenomena within such areas and time’s intervals. As follows we will make the preliminary observation that history is indebted to certain areas of maximum asynchronous concentration such as the one spanning on the axis that links David’s psalms to the Annunciation and at the same time to the teachings of the Gospels, which come as a continuation of the teachings of the Old Testament, together forming the great corpus of mankind’s revealed teachings. These areas, their existence cannot be explained historically under any circumstance. As for the occurrence of certain exceptional experiences which cannot be explained by anything related to the environment of a civilization or its historical time, it is sufficient to remember that the great renewing experience of the chosen people during exodus, during its exit from being slave to the Pharaoh, occurs entirely in the desert. History cannot explain neither Moses nor the Pentateuch, not the epoch of prophets, nor David’s Psalms and in no case the Gospels or the Acts or St. Apostles Peter and Paul’s Letters or St. John’s Apocalypse. Historically speaking we can for example explain the phenomenon called „imperial apotheosis,” meaning the deification of Roman emperors starting with Octavian Augustus but history cannot explain the strength of Christians to bear persecutions, the terrible interrogatories and tortures, death sentences, executions in prisons and in public arenas without giving up their faith. Moreover, history cannot explain the states of ecstasy of Saint John the Evangelist. Through these states, the saint exiled on Patmos Island “receives from God through Jesus Christ revelation (the apocalypse) of mysteries which he would put down in the book meant to end the New Testament” (Bartolomeu, 2001). This kind of book which concentrates the vision that the “supreme good will triumph through Jesus Christ” over and “despite the huge and devastating attacks of evil” (Bartolomeu, 2001), cannot be explained historically, but only through the intervention of forces that occur asynchronously compared to the historical time which seemed to shelter not the triumph of that very old Christian saint in Ephesus but the triumph of Octavian Augustus and the series of pagan emperors who called themselves gods and asked the citizens to erect them statues in the center of the town and to bring them prayers and offerings. The two series of phenomena are asynchronous, they occur according to different rhythms and in opposed directions. Certainly, the persecution of Christians can be explained half historically but, through the other half, the phenomenon is related to the plan of God, to God's care-taking of the world, because//as long as their power to win over the dominant historical time, over the persecuting empire with its armies, court houses, with its great and terrifying organization, with its entire apparatus and civilization, cannot acquire any explanation from history or from the environment of that civilization. The obstacles in front of the occurrence of asynchronous phenomena have a historical essence but the energy that supports the manifestation 178 Ilie Bădescu 6 of these phenomena and the propagation of these factors is not from this world, it does not have a historical essence. The fog of history always breeds forces that tend to overturn the spreading of the revealed teachings, the action of asynchronous factors and the manifestations of adjacent phenomena. Modernity has brought with itself one of the most powerful attempts to axially overturn these teachings, an attempt that reached its climax with Darwin, Marx and Freud, the three late representatives of an area in which almost all the wanderings, deviations of modernity occurred. Also an area of great asynchronous density is that from which sprang the teachings of the „desert fathers”, the patristic teachings (the Christian Fathers), or the South-Eastern European area, which saw the emergence of a Christian world with a special profile, for which the great historian and religion hermeneutics expert Mircea Eliade invented a special term: “cosmic Christianity.” We can make the hypothesis that all the postmodern evil in the Balkan and Carpathian area are related by direct and indirect effects to the great phenomenon that is the disintegration of cosmic Christianity in this entire area. This raises the issue of the role of the Church to a terrible degree. Nothing from this area will find equilibrium and creative peace out of the Christian Church’s triumph towards the renewing faith cycle at the height of the Brâncoveanu epoch. The area with the greatest asynchronous density proves to be that comprising Bethlehem, the Golgotha and the Carantania Desert, an area that includes the birth place of the Lord, the place of his crucifixion, and the place where Jesus the Lord confronted the evil, let himself be tempted by it and won for the victory of man’s redemption. It was there in the modest Nazareth and in the Desert, that began the great renewal and it is amazing to see how much humanity owes to such “places without place” (Plato), as it appears to be, for instance, the Carantania Desert. The renewal of the being and of man begins thus with the great lesson of the desert, because each being has to face a Carantania desert, its own inner desert, the desert of temptations and of solitude, as they are new beings of the crossroads between good and evil. The first teaching of the renewed man is that without the victory in the Carantania desert and then, on the Golgotha, history would be barren and man would be only a subject deserted through passions and sins, at the mercy of the bad master of this world. Dense Space and the great Civilization. As we can see, such areas do not overlap with the areas of certain historical civilizations and still just those areas are the ones that include the great concentrations of forces and factors that give history its rhythm and direction. These areas of great asynchronous density should not be mistaken with the great civilizations. Sometimes, the two areas are overlapping in one of the same geographic area and even in the location of the same people. It is not even then that the two can be mistaken one for another, because the factors that contribute to their emergence are totally different, opposite in fact. Historians and linguists have long time ago noticed this phenomenon, and made a distinction between stratus, substratus and 7 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 179 adstratus of history, of language and of culture. Between the Christian substratus and the modern adstratus of Europe, many of the ties on which the unity of the modern European spirituality would have depended upon were broken. Thus, the European elites imagine, and what a strange imagining that is, that a European Constitution without any reference to the Christian bases of this culture could be possible. There is already and open conflict between the European Christian culture and the atheist Constitution, a conflict which is revealed by the reactions of the European people in the referenda for this constitution. It was rejected in France and in the Netherlands, and so on. These rejections are popular, at the scale of European peoples and not at the scale of one or other segment of the population, as the promoters of this constitution suggest. We will briefly examine certain asynchronous areas, to which many of the manifest features of our world are related. In a special section we will focus on one of them to which we owe a number of innovations of international relevance and at the same time the organization of peace in the century that has begun. This is the American area. But first of all let us still ponder on the idea of asynchronous factors and asynchronous phenomena, in order to build up a bridge – as fragile as this may be – towards the “new science” based on the whole scripturistic noology, the very one through which this new category of knowledge would impose. This is a very important category because it makes us sensitive to the asynchronous phenomena which constitute the peremptory proofs of the uninterrupted presence of God in the world, in the structure and dynamism of the entire existence, an intervention without which nothing holds and nothing is intelligible. Knowledge itself is possible and real only as a human knowledge within the knowledge of God. Man truly knows something only if the act of his knowledge is within the one with which God knows us and all the being He has created within His design. God has not stopped knowledge at a certain limit, but has made out of knowledge a continuous process and when man’s own lifestyle entirely darkened the light of true knowledge God was not late in intervening, divinely enhancing our knowledge. These interventions took the form of the “natural revelation”, which was transmitted to man via geniuses and through God’s prophets, and the form of the “supernatural revelation” transmitted to man directly, through God the Enhumanized Son, who was made a man for the redemption of both human life and knowledge. Thus, elements of the eternal design are placed in the revealed teachings, in the design of all things, therefore also in the specialized knowledge and it is precisely these elements that form what we want to call by the term that we have already announced: “asynchronous factors” and through a new science: noopolitics. Therefore, what are the asynchronous factors and the asynchronous phenomena? What are the asynchronous factors: the circumscription of a category. The asynchronous factors are the only ones by which we can explain the “novelties” in history, the great renewals and at the same time the exits from the great crises 180 Ilie Bădescu 8 which the historians of civilizations have called “crises of civilization” or “cycle ending crises”. How could we define these factors that have such an “atypical” typology? In a first “circling” of the term, we will mention that the asynchronous factors are those that intervene in the unfolding of a phenomenon, without emerging from the nature of the respective phenomenon, or from its environment (space) of manifestation or from its time. They derive neither from the nature nor the time nor from the space (place) of manifestation of the respective phenomenon; everything occurs as though the odds of the respective phenomenon would come from “beyond”. And this precisely because the entire creation bears on itself, in its structure, the components of God’s design. The autonomous man, without God, does not know anything and he does not want to know anything with respect to God’s design of the world, to the uninterrupted action and intervention of the divine providence in the world and in history. We commit ourselves to all these theories as well as to those of the likes of Berdiaev and Evola, who showed that the edifice of European modernity bears the stigma of the autonomous man, who considers himself the only being endowed with reason and with an ego that mirrors the universe. It was from this kind of hallucinatory belief that the moderns have emerged. From the moment when they closed the world’s arch in a vault without God, the edifice crumbled immediately because in that very moment when the vault of the edifice was being laid out, the resistance parameters were being ignored, the asynchronous factors which are not from this world and which are maintained in the creative act, in any creation and construction as a continuous dialogue with the very directions of God, with “what is not shown and is hidden in his wisdom”. God has made the world in such a way that the factorial parameters of his design became intelligible to the one who is dedicated to the ascending experience and knowledge, experience and knowledge which become, otherwise said, steps towards heaven. We have called these parameters asynchronous factors, because they always elude the descending time, which leads to death and destruction of all that belongs to the natural, material side of existence. All things contain, in their own way, such asynchronous factors and only the wrong kind of knowledge has lead to the lack of knowledge of the real nature of things. The work of the Holy Spirit has seeded in things more than simple “characteristics” wrapped up in the features of the respective thing, as something given and definite. The work of the Holy Spirit has seeded in all things, together with the thing’s features the thing’s uses which make of the thing a sum of unimagined, wonderful promises, so that the thing is at the same time the location of a fulfilling manifestation, not only of the merciless passing which bring ruin and destruction. The second defining characteristic of the asynchronous factors, one that is even closer to the etymologic meaning of the term, refers to their most important characteristic, namely that they have a different rhythm, a different pulsation compared to the time of the phenomenon’s manifestation, therefore to its historical or natural rhythm. These factors are asynchronous, transhistorical and have 9 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 181 supernatural origin. Their manifestation obeys laws that are not from this world, laws that, otherwise said, have a supernatural, transreal character. Their rhythm does not come from the rhythm of historical time. The life of the human species is therefore traversed not only by only one rhythm, by the pulsations of a unique and irreversible time, but by two rhythms, it is ordered according to two temporal patterns, which leads to the co-presence in all epochs of two temporal series, not only of one, as it would be inferred by the immanentist vision of history (which is the essence of historicism), and of two time propagation directions, an ascending and a descending one. While historical time is pulling us downwards with the arrogance of the elites, of the emperors, with the attraction for pleasures, with the pride of ideologies, all these hiding idolatries, the asynchronous factors (unhistorical at the same time) are pulling us upwards. In their supernatural striving they take over the fragile forces of those who are good and humble in this world, making them strong and victorious, and make the rulers of the world appear as unhappy debtors to the despised weak. It is just as in Mihai Eminescu’s poem “You hear as the weak are crying far away// and the oppressed towards us// it is the voice of gentle Basarabia // in the last day of this world”. The triumph of gentle Basarabia, crushed by the oppressing arrogance of the ephemeral worldly rulers is heard through the voice of the weak and oppressed. Their cry is the same as “the voice of gentle Basarabia // in the last day of this world”, that is, in the day when the justice and truth of the many and humble is victorious. That cry is the victory of the rhythm in the depths. Through it, the ascendant movement of the world is triumphant as well as justice and good, which shows us that the “weak”, the many and the humble are the axis of the world. They form the asynchronous factor in life, the resort through which the strong light of love, truth goodness and justice, enter history and the injustice of ages. As opposed to everything that is actualized, the asynchronous factors are pure latency, active virtuality, and axial formative. They enter structures and therefore they allow and even induce determinant chains in the structure of events, while they are indeterminate by principle. The asynchronous factors are “free” of any spatial or temporal determination. Of course, the most terrible and the freest of any cosmic-historical determination among all asynchronous factors is the enhumanization of God the Son. Nothing in history and in the universe could have induced such an event. It is absolutely non-deterministic. This “event” has brought a different calendar, stronger than the calendars with which the great civilizations so far had operated, like the Egyptian one, the Asiro-Babylonian calendar, the ethnographic calendars and so on. They lost all relevance, appearing incapable of constituting a frame of chronological reference for what happened then and afterwards. Otherwise said, the event did not occur in the same time, in the time of those calendars and of those oriental civilizations and empires, and it became incomprehensible for the calendars of that time. This is why this kind of event cannot be explained “in time”, in “that time” but outside the historical time when it 182 Ilie Bădescu 10 happened. Through this second defining feature of the asynchronous factors we have obtained an explanation for the term itself, that is, we are allowed to use the term asynchronous factors and not achronism, achronistic factors as it would have been required by their first feature – atemporality. In fact, the second characteristic proves to be the most significant in the historical and sociological studies, because the asynchronous factors, although they are atemporal in their essence, in their manifestation, they do take something of the stigma of temporality, otherwise said they do establish a certain time, although it is a new time and a new “place”, but still, there is a certain time and place. God the Son Himself slept for a few weeks in Andrew’s house in Capernaum, not in a place without place but in that specific place, on a sort of mat. He wept at Lazarus’ tomb in Bethany, Lazarus who was even brought back to life by the Lord’s tear and by Marta’s faith. He made the miracle of feeding the crowd with only five pieces of bread in Betsaida. All these were specific, humble, ordinary places until the moments that are recorded in the Gospels and the Acts. After that, Capernaum, Bethany and Betsaida were lifted to the trans-historical plan. Through the trans-temporal implication on Jesus’ godliness, they become super-temporal “events” and” places, they become trans- historical, and trans-spatial, showing evidence of a non-local and a-temporal character. This is the character of these places and time intervals in and through which factors that prove to be asynchronous with respect to the previous time, occur in the individual and collective life. Those time intervals and those places seem not to belong to this time and to this world, they have features which make them exceptional and wonderful times and places, because they have a miraculous, unusual character, although they have a humble, ordinary appearance. The same thing can be said about the miracle of the shepherd in Maglavit, or like the apparitions of the Virgin in a humble place to a humble girl, or like Andrew’s house in Capernaum, a humble house with a sort of mat for sleeping, or the region of Betsaida, one of the most ordinary places in Judea, but which became an entirely extraordinary one through the unprecedented act that the Savior made there, an act which cannot be explained by any aspect of the history and circumstances of the time , no matter how small or how hidden, and so on. Last but not least, the third feature of the asynchronous factors is their semi- mysterious feature. They are only attested by some of their frames of actualization, but they are not explained by those frames. By this particularity, they confirm their trans-category character. Thus, excepting the revealed teachings where certain asynchronous factors have a “name” without thus losing their mysterious character, we can speak of them as imponderables that are attested but not explained, and therefore we cannot refer to them as to measured and full-fledged parameters. The gospels attest the seven miracles, and give them names, without the act of naming extinguishing their mystery. Who, for example, can explain the Eucharistic mystery?! And nevertheless, a great doctor such as Keneth McAll (Healing of 11 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 183

Genealogical Tree) is producing peremptory evidence on the efficiency of the liturgical therapy. As for the Christian, the latter “knows” without comprehending that the mysteries are extremely powerful in human life and if he keeps within the righteous order of faith he would not dare trespassing them, although nothing within history forbids him to. The proof of this is precisely the fact that he has trespassed them in the last 200 years and to a great degree, in an avalanche of sins, lost ways and, therefore, falls. Moreover, there are even Christian confessions that do not even give these mysteries great value. Although they do not trespass them, they do not obey the rituals that keep the faithful in their horizon of actualization. These rituals are, otherwise said, actualization frames for the believer, and have entirely mysterious effects. This is the difference between an Orthodox Christian, for example, and a Neo-protestant Christian. The orthodox and the catholic give special significance to the rite through which, in certain days and in certain ways that are fixed by the authority of the Church’s tradition and through the universal model of the patristic Church, one has to fulfill the acts that are meant to bring us back from our wondering way to the righteous order and in direct connection with God as a person. On the contrary, the neo-protestant believer reads the frames of this kind of experience in the frames of everyday life. This difference had its role in the late modern epoch. Since the moment of the conflict between the freethinking intellectuals and the priests in the 18th century – the moment when intellectuals began to relate to an autonomist philosophy – the effect of this conflict was much more destructive in the catholic and orthodox areas than in the neo-protestant ones. This happened because, due to the communitarian and total character of the faith manifestations with the neo-protestants, the intellectuals of this church never departed from the community of believers as it happened with the Catholics and later on with the orthodox when communism appeared. Thus, the neo-protestant elites remained under the guide and control of the Church, which was no longer the case for the Orthodox or Catholics. Here the elites “escaped” from the community. They placed themselves under different influences than that of the Church and sometimes even moved against the influence of the Church, departing entirely, in their worldly manifestations, severed themselves entirely from the demands of the Christian order, without the Church having excommunicating them (we find an exception for the Catholics with the inquisition, but the acts of the inquisition did not prove defending of the dogma but of the Aristotelian character of the doctrine, which explains this inquisitorial character of the reaction to deviation – a character which would not have been possible in dogmatic terms, a fact that is confirmed by the sister universal Church, the Orthodox Church, which did not taken on nor created this kind of reactive institution). The fact that the asynchronism of the two times, the liturgical and the circumstantial or profane time, has become so obvious in the elites of the orthodox and catholic peoples could also explain the spiritual superficiality characterizing many that declare themselves orthodox or catholic in relation to the uninterrupted character of God’s demands for all the moments of 184 Ilie Bădescu 12 life. This dualism, emphasized by the elites’ secularization phenomenon, has given birth to the risk of a breech between the churchly and the worldly (profane) man of everyday life, a breech between the moment of the liturgical experience and the moment of ordinary experiences. These breeches are responsible of the pharisaism so frequent with the lay elites of the Eastern societies, a fact noticed by the theoreticians of forms without fund. Between the façade and the background there is a breech that C. Radulescu-Motru sees as illustrative for the pseudo-culture of Eastern politics and for the disease of pseudo-cultivated societies. Faith stops when certain rites are fulfilled without belief and only for the sake of appearance. The demands of faith are abandoned at the exit from the Church, meaning precisely when the respective individual has passed the fence that surrounds the Church yard. This is the great evil or Eastern societies, more precisely, of their elites. Between the profound faith of the poor and the pharisaical faith of the rich there has always been a breech, attested by the gap between the seemingly (only seemingly) Christian attitude of the rich when he relates to the Church’s space and system of reference and his consumerist, selfish, pharisaical verging on cynicism, attitude that lacks all Christian demands, when he does his businesses and orders his worldly life. Worldly life and churchly life are in one of the ugliest conflicts in almost all Eastern elites and in politicians, “capitalists” and intellectuals. This phenomenon could be related to the consequence of a certain centralism of the rituals related to mysteries, which had not yet occurred in the rural societies of cosmic Christianity. An Eastern countryman would feel as a continuous participant in the great unfolding of the liturgical mystery, as it is attested by the cosmic liturgy with the South-Eastern European peoples until mid 20th century. On the other hand, today’s inhabitant of the city considers this a strict task of the priest while he himself is satisfied with participating in the Holy Liturgy from time to time. Thus, the breech between priests and lay people is emphasized and it is a tragic breech for the spiritual condition of man nowadays. The importance of asynchronous factors is crucial for every science and, at the same time, it can suggest a possible bridge between science and religion. Through the theory of the asynchronous factor we can recuperate, for the land of science, the presence of the divine providence in everything that happens. The asynchronous factors are present in all processes, in any dynamism. Their existence turns comprehensible the processes that are in fact a progress from a maximum indetermination to a progressive determination, in agreement with the trans- historical rhythm and to the new direction imposed by the asynchronous factors. Otherwise said, the asynchronous factors induce a more and more powerful structure in their propagation environment and in the temporal sequence in which they have occurred, a structure that is maintained up to a limit that cannot be overcome in a linear manner, but through the interruption of the series and through the displacement of the evolutionary line towards the unpredictable and indeterminate emergence area of the line of a new becoming and, therefore, of the 13 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 185 new historical cycle. P. Sorokin, a sociologist exiled by Lenin from Bolshevized Russia, has gathered evidence that is irrefutable by universal history that a historical cycle begins with the emergence of “idealist,” religious systems and ends with the triumph of sensualist-empirical, immanentist civilizations which lack the divine reference point. The exit from the crisis of this kind of civilization cannot be anything else than the return to the great religious cycle. This shows that in the secularist civilization’s point of lethal crisis a phenomenon occurs which is totally unpredictable in the terms of that civilization. This phenomenon consists of the growth in the density of asynchronous phenomena, of religious experiences and only in this way mankind, tired by secularism, can get out of the sensualist interregnum. It is true that the agents that make possible this exit from the crisis are others than those who were predominant within the sensualist civilization, thus the spatial dimension of the evolution line. Therefore, a historical progression series ends with discontinuity and spatial movement. We call these cyclical progresses synchronism or synchronizations, and their interruption, followed by the displacement of the evolution line, are called by the term of asynchrony. The cyclical progressions or synchronizations are those through which asynchronous factors become relatively comprehensible, recognizable and, to a certain degree, determinable, so much as to permit us to notice the semi-mysterious act of their intervention in the processes and phenomena of life and history, not more than that. These cyclical projections are, of course, due to the asynchronous factors that are present in their manifestations as axial factors although most of the times those who witness their actualizations are not even aware of their intervention, not even when they are the agents or, more precisely, the vessels of this actualization. The power of these factors becomes noticeable especially in the intervals of interruption of a series, of a historical projection and of the inevitable spatial displacement of the evolutionary line. The asynchronous factors are the cause of this phenomenon. Because of their intervention in history, the world acquires the power to get out of the blockages in which it enters from time to time. This confirms the incapacity of elites to solve the crises by themselves, and therefore immanently. Such blockages have been noticed by all theoreticians of civilizations. Toynbee, for example, calls them interregnum periods. They are typical for those intervals of endemic crisis of a civilization, a crisis for which an elite and the respective civilization do not seem to have intrinsic solutions (A. Toynbee, 22-23). In such periods, the elites can no longer maintain themselves at the top of history with their creative contribution but, as a last resort, with their dominance. They become simple dominant minorities, as Toynbee calls them. Therefore, we must ask ourselves today whether the state in which the world finds itself does not look like the periods of interregnum and to analyze things from the perspective of the geopolitics of asynchronous factors which intervene in such intervals in order to get the world out of the blockage and dead end where it was pushed by the dominant elites up to the moment the interregnum interval is broken. 186 Ilie Bădescu 14

We are therefore directed towards a brief examination of the answer given by European intellectuals to the issue of asynchronous factors in the cycle of late modernity. Together with late modernity, meaning the period after the 18th century – also called the century of the “enlightened” – a strange phenomenon occurs: the intellectual elites of the epoch overturn the meaning of asynchronous phenomena, initiating in history the cycle of great idolatry of ideologies. This phenomenon can be compared to the overturning that the chosen people suffered while Moses was on Mount Sinai, when Aaron, at the request of the people, consents to make them a golden Calf, to which they could bow. The new “golden calf” of the enlightened era was the idolatry of reason and those who performed this act were the elites of the French revolution, prepared by the secret groups of the enlightened. That was the historical beginning of the long series of affirmation of an glove-like overturned Europe. The era that began with the French revolution was to have its climax in the Bolshevik revolution and later on in the great antichristian scenario of Eastern Bolshevism, which we can study in the compressed experience of the “communist reeducation” in communist prisons. The climax of this experience was reached in the communist prisons in Pitesti, Gherla and Aiud in Bolshevized Romania, the country that was hated the most by Bolshevik antichrists. The overturning that brings in the foreground of history the supremacy of ideologies was to be followed by a second one, which Mumford called “the uprising of libido,” which has its climax in Freudianism, just as for the intellectualist cycle we have the climax in Hegelianism and Marxism. Just as in rationalist views everything that exists in the epiphenomenon of reason (reason of history according to Marx, absolute idea according to Hegel), in the light of Freudian pan-sexuality, human behavior is the epiphenomenon of sexual instinct, on the pleasure principle, of the libido. Asynchronous factors in the light of historiology. On November 9, 1793, the elites of the revolution were rededicating the Notre Dame cathedral to the goddess of Reason. That was the dawn of an Europe that contained explicit directions for the rejection of the “revealed religion,” orienting every question to human reason as if towards the ultimate authority and source of answer. In its doctrinarian form, this new orientation was exposed synthetically in a famous book by Kant, “Idea of Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View”, as its title was translated by W. Hostie (apud Patrick Gardiner, ed., “Theories of History”, Glencoll, III: Free Press, 1959). In the light of explaining the world on the background of this Europe and of this world, history is a “rational process” because “reason is the one that provides the plan and purpose of history” (“the history of the human race, seen as a whole, can be considered as the achievement of a hidden plan of nature meant to implement a political structure that is perfect in the inside and because of this perfect on the outside, under the form of a unique state form in which all capacities implemented by it in people can fully develop” (apud Montgomery, 13). This “inner” Europe was the first time eclipsed in the 15 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 187 great Romantic epoch by another model with another spiritual rhythm (Wallerstein, 1974). Together with these “subjective” Europes of the 18th and the 18th centuries, there was another one that appeared around the same epoch. This third one is ignored by intellectual groups but it was later on transposed into a first project and first movement of universalizing history through the American agent. That inner Europe whose model was triumphant in America can be conventionally called “Florentine Europe” because it has its first forms and formations stocked as testimonies and as models in the works of great Florentines, among which we have studied in a different work Leon Battista Alberti (Badescu, 2003). His work is a spiritual document through which we obtain information on this “model” of world which was to direct the process of renewals on the structures of Europe and, later, on the world itself in the postmodernist cycle. In the light of this model, the world is the product of spirit more than the product of economic, political or military forces. The expression of the spiritual power in the process of molding the world is that of the ways of spiritual organization of the peoples and of the world. In “Noology” we have called these spiritual ways, which are at the same time ways of organization and patterns of spiritual experience (traire), noological or spiritual frames (Badescu, 2000). The world is build inside through the contribution of these spiritual frames, transferring itself in a plan of ethno-spiritual or ethno-historical competitions which do not oppose peoples or social classes but the very ways of spiritually organizing the world. These “ways of spiritual organization of the world” are the means by which God’s providential work (His care for the world, God’s grace) are brought into the world. This work is communicated to the world through charismatic persons, saints, heroes, geniuses, great reformers and so on and through their works, which summarize (under the form of models, typologies, proto-categories, prototypes, proto-orientations, archetypes, etc.) the spiritual ways of organizing the dynamisms of life. These occur asynchronously compared to the circumstantial historical time which brings ruin and decline in everything except what has spiritual nature. These exceptional “works” are therefore spiritual proto-organizations, nuclei of the “spiritual organization (structure) of existence” (and take various forms, from rites and customs to proverbs, rules of life, teachings, works of literature, philosophy, ethics, art, theater, theology, science and so on, institutional formulas, practical guides, etc.). They contain the world’s “spiritual reference point” and thus acquire, besides other qualities, that of “spiritual documents” regarding the state of the world and the ungoing of history. Ethnomethodology tells us that reality is essentially the product of our interpretations being always constructed and reconstructed (the essence of deconstructivism). Noology states that before our interpretations are our “experiences.” The experienced world becomes (due to experiences) an organized world, and thus we can say that the experience patterns are for the world (trec asupra lumii ca tipare) patterns of spiritual organization of everyday life. In other words, they acquire the quality of noological or spiritual frames of existence, and therefore of human manifestations, both individual and 188 Ilie Bădescu 16 collective. This is the operational meaning of spiritual or noological frames (ethnomethods). They are at the same time pre-orientations: patterns for a spiritual ordering daily life. In a way, this term has a semantic equivalent in the paradigme. The noological study of the world begins, therefore, with an inventory of spiritual or noological frames (ethnomethods) and ends with emphasizing their architecture, meaning their degree of latency and actuality and of their efficiency at a certain moment. Compared to spiritual or noological frames, all the other expressions of the spirit, starting with “scientific theories” are secondary, that is, they can be used only as angles for reading noological frames and in no way as “primary descriptions” of the state of the world. The description of the world’s spiritual conditions begins in the moment when the “reading” of the spiritual documents in one epoch have mediated the identification of the predominant spiritual frames in the respective epoch, in a certain people, a given society, an elite, in its experiences, meaning at the level of its spiritual manifestations. The predominant noological frames in a given society, the concrete spiritual experiences of its members, also contain the prophecy of a certain world, meaning its outline, read through the hypothesis of the permanent spiritual triumph in the world. “In this process [of spiritual organization of the world], Hegel underlines, the hour of every nation strikes only once, the moment in which it serves as a vehicle for the rational spirit of the world and thus it brings its specific contribution to the history of mankind” (Montgomery, 14). According to Hegel, history is in turns oriental, Greek, Roman, Germanic. For the sociologist, Hegel’s “solution” is “speculative,” lacking all “descent” into the real world. In this vision everything occurs “from the top to the bottom,” from an “objective spirit” towards the great historical process. The fact that this objective spirit “chooses” in turns another coat, first oriental, then Greek, Roman and eventually Germanic, calls for explanations that Hegel does not provide. Moreover, we do not understand the reason why the “objective spirit” has decided to wear in aeternum the Germanic coat. It is true that Hegel refers this entire dynamism to the role of “great people” who play the decisive part in crucial moments, but why they appear and disappear in a certain space and time remains an obscure issue. Hegel was to try to save his vision by resorting to a unique method, a sort of “reason” that self-generates like Athena from Zeus’ head // Afrodita din capul lui Zeus (Atena, zeita intelepciunii, s-a nascut din capul lui Zeus; Afrodita, zeita frumusetii, s-a nascut din spuma marii). This self-generation is called by Hegel “dialectical” and it consists in the universal tendency that the idea has in its unfolding, through all the dimensions of reality (from the biological to the historical one), to appear as a thesis that produces its antithesis, with the fight between the two giving birth to the synthesis. This synthesis, in its turn, becomes a thesis which produces its antithesis and so on. Applied in France, for example, “the absolutist and authoritarian monarchy of the old regime can be considered the thesis compared to which the imminent anarchy and the liberalism of the revolutionary period appear as antithesis. Both of 17 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 189 these extremes combined eventually result in a republican form of government, which has adopted certain elements from both extremes” (Montgomery, op. cit., p. 14). This way of looking at things is, as it has been said, a legitimist one, because it offers a justification for evil in history, since it is related to the fatal (necessary) unfolding of the idea. From here to legitimizing the two great pagan invasions in the history of Europe – Nazism and Communism – there is only one step and it was taken by Marx for communism, Lenin for Bolshevism (which is a synthesis between the two), etc. The only supra-historical justification for “accepting” the evil is a promised final liberty and as such everything is assimilated to an incontinent soteriological preaching which urges people to accept evil in the name of the freedom “that will come.” The same soteriological incontinence dominates the mind of post-December 89 Romanian and Eastern political and intellectual elites, which invoke, according to the same pseudo-messianic model the event of European integration, which justifies the most aberrant experiments made on the people that is manipulated and fooled in the name of an illusory promise of a future freedom, of a happiness that is to come. Everything is based on exploiting the peoples’ soteriological latencies, latencies that in post-materialist epochs are still marked by the historicist patterns, meaning they are still dominated by ideological formulas, by terrestrial promises. This explains the success of the manipulation, the haste with which the masses accept the experiments, pauperization, the theft of private properties, misery, all this evil being accepted in the name of a saving Europe that is to come. In fact, this Europe will actually never come because salvation never occurs when other nations come to those who quietly wait for their conquerors and occupants. The nucleus of all these soteriological exploitations of the human mind is an overturned theology (like the communist or liberaloid one), a class (like the proletarians), an elite (like that of today’s “democrats”), which are thus invested with soteriological powers in history. This investiture is the result of a huge propagandistic action and therefore of an extraordinary manipulation. This overturned theology has bared fruit in Marx’s doctrine of the “class liquidation” and in Lenin’s theory of the “state” that has the right to kill (“the dictatorship of the proletariat”) to imprison or send to concentration camps all those who are “different” ideologically speaking (in their ideas and orientation). We realize that history cannot be like this (or only like this) and as such we have to find another plan of manifestation which would facilitate our access to the (moral) meaning of the historical movement, and to the meaning of history in general. This “manifestation plan” stops us from any reductionist attempt to assimilate the “understanding reason” to a historical agent such as the state (be this even the democratic state), to any type of historical agent (race, class, elite and so on). Understanding reason is not to be reduced to any human agent, no matter what this agent is. It is manifest only in and through the groups of people that participate in a dialogue. Those who participate in the dialogue are those who gather in the same meaning (conventus), and the force that keeps them united is the Word itself, the 190 Ilie Bădescu 18 enhumanized Word, the Logos made human, through which the being itself was renewed. The word is the very “reason” (the logos) of their existence together, a logos that works in and through them, in a mysterious way, though gifts. Any “reality” is therefore an “encounter” between the two dimensions: the dimension of working gifts and the dimension of the community of those who “gather,” find themselves together in the same “word” (meaning), just like those that share and confess it at the same time. Every time those destined manage to use together these gifts (or graces) they will form a charismatic solidarity (born in and through the given manifestations) in space and in time. This allows us to say that they have found their way of “rationalizing” the world. It is established in and through the community of the charismatics, of the gifted ones. It is in this point that the great sophism of ideological manipulators has squeezed trough. They have preached a degraded word. They have not preached Christ the embodied Word, but an earthly agent invested with powers, which is usually identified with the ideologist, with the doctrinarian of an ideology – the likes of Marx, Engels, Lenin – or with the agent called to impose the respective ideology – the proletariat – but also with the ideological commissioners of the soteriological doctrine, of the announced word. These are invested with fake charismas and their organizations are invested with renovating functions. It is clear that, since charismas do not derive from anything real and, moreover, they are simple latencies (energies that can be actualized) compared to everything that is something, they reach the real in a mysterious way and the only institution (organization) that has the right to ritualize the mysteries (entirely) is the one that has received this kind of teaching be it indirectly (prophetic revelation) or directly (supernatural revelation), meaning from God the Son and then on in collaboration with the “saints” who are “the charismatics” of the mysteries (including miracle workers), that is they are channels of the Spirit and therefore Vessels of the sacred. That institution is the Church and all the striving of all kinds of ideologists has been to overturn the Church and replace it through the organizations established on the foundation of ideologies, of false promises, as they make promises without the Word of God and even against it, as it happens with Marxism. Thus, the true charismatics are not isolated, but always “encountered,” “confessors,” “living-together,” communities established in the process of gift “management.” This is why their organizations or noological frames (at the root of all these organizations, frames or patterns of spiritual experience is the Church, the place where the cult of God is achieved) acquire a paradigmatic value. They radiate, they are adopted as “spiritual methods” for ordering individual and collective life (ethnomethods). The “actualizations” are spontaneous and secondary, that is, first the latencies are actualized spontaneously and in this way the actualized “thing” returns to its source, as if it wanted to recognize its “model,” its source, its cause. What follows is a process of “unilateral resemblance,” that is, 19 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 191 the “thing” continuously relates to its identical model and source. Through this process, the respective “thing” is also “perfected,” meaning it fulfils the model through itself. That resembling and search for the model gives birth to the “hypostases” of the one that resembles, its subsistent gradations, without the “model” being degraded or lost (decreased). If the one that has its source and therefore its resemblance in a model stops looking for that model, stops mirroring itself in the model, its manifestations will be marked by precariousness, by un-fulfillment, which leads to the abortion of hypostases, of the secondary “actualizations,” like the incapacity of the woman to become a mother spiritually, the incapacity to feel and act like a mother after the birth of her child. This makes her “frigid” to the creature she has given birth to, as it happens, for example, with the mothers who abandon their children, or actually abort it. Although biologically she is a mother, spiritually and in her soul she is “far” from the hypostasis of “motherhood,” which throws her being into precariousness. We are talking about a “spiritual deficit,” about a tragic un- fulfillment, due to the fact that she does not “assume the model,” due to the refusal of the “resemblance.” The world is the fruit of multiple resemblances, but also the headquarters of “non-resemblances,” more precisely of the refusal of resemblance, starting with the most severe of the refusal, that of the resemblance to God, which is the very refusal od the face. In this search for the dimension of multiple resemblances with what was seeded by God in the order of creation we read the pressure of asynchronous factors in all the structure of existence. Asynchronous factors: the genetic perspective. The asynchronous factors are present in all things, as a sort of roots of things, of species, of systems, of civilizations and so on. They cannot be known intrinsically, but only as a phenomenon of actualization, as an exceptional manifestation and only in the dynamic frame of their progressive actualization. When a species dies, the phenomenon occurs: a) because something has struck its vital support (the individuals or members of the species have been exterminated) and this has caused the appearance of the specific circumstance for its disappearance, although its sentence had not been stated yet; b) or because its development has caused fatal disequilibriums with its life environment (as it happens with historical empires and civilizations) that is, what occurred was an external circumstance for the disappearance, but this is also not a sufficient reason for the disappearance; c) or because the Spirit is leaving that work and it remains unprotected in front of inner, invisible diequilibriums and the result is a quick installation of chaos and therefore of the “white death.” It is only this third factor that brings with it the circumstance of sure disappearance. This is what happens with the final phase of civilizations that, as Spengler says, no longer have any spirit, they lack soul. They have intelligence but they no longer have soul and, therefore, they have no “inner measure”. (Cf. the chapter dedicated to the “death of civilizations” in “Noology”, a chapter which we will present in the third part of the current work as an illustration 192 Ilie Bădescu 20 to the hypothesis of asynchronous factors in geopolitics and geo-culture). There is recession of the asynchronous factor in everything and, as such, that thing, be it a civilization or a species, loses its mystery. We are facing extreme rationalism, when everything becomes cerebral and neurotic. The artistic act becomes itself a simple technique (techne), that is, it becomes a code, formalism and academism appear. Some people even construct “love arts” as it happened with Ovid’s “Ars Amandi” or with ancient India’s famous book of erotic art. The modern civilization, benefiting from the TV, has generated this type of “erotic arts” within the pornographic films. In India, these love arts invaded the architecture of temples, forcing the elites of those times to forbid such arts in the decoration of temples. This is what happened with Octavian Augustus, who exiled Ovid in Dacia, at the Pontus Euxinus, because of his “Ars Amandi”, which the Roman emperor had ruled as corrupting for the youth and threatening for the empire, although that book of the poet of an era of massive decline and of overwhelming sensuality was nothing but the expression of an alarming symptomatology. These arts of love are the aberrant expression of “rationalism” in the epochs of crisis, the most obvious symptom of the crisis of the manifestation of the “asynchronous factor” in its field of actualization, a crisis which would be fatally followed by malady and decline and in the end by the worst malady, that of death. In genetics, the actualization frame of the asynchronous factor is the gene, and the process or the frame that guarantees its propagation and sovereignty in relation to time is called heredity. “The gene is a heredity unit, which bears the entire genetic information of generations and of individuals. It is formed of a chain of molecules of nucleic acids, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) in most organisms and RNA (ribonucleic acid) in certain viruses. These molecules, which are disposed in a linear manner, form chromosomes (…). The arrangement of molecules is different from gene to gene, therefore, no gene is identical to another” (Pr. Gh. Calciu- Dumitreasa, 1998, p.35) As such, genes contain the asynchronous factor in them, since “the arrangement of molecules is different from gene to gene” and no gene is identical to another. The asynchronous factor makes possible the inner differentiation and, at the same time, the unity of differences, as a unit of the vital rhythm. Therefore, genes are the frame of manifestation for the asynchronous factors in everything that exists, factors that confirm their presence and manifestations through differentiations and harmonizations or synchronizations, that is through the fact that every thing is aligned to the same rhythm, to unity, which is the very unity of the vital rhythm, any dysrhythima being in fact the equivalent of the disease. Thus, any outside corpus, any dyschrony, are recognized and eliminated by the organism immediately, with the exception of that bizarre nuclear dyschrony that disorganizes life’s defense system as in the case of cancer, which shows that this disease is due to a deep dyschronism, it is truly a nuclear dyschrony. The gene affirms itself (is 21 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 193 actualized) through synchronisms and synchronizations, it maintains its entire particularity, so that it is impossible to mistaken one individual for another, one species for another, although the individuals are synchronous on the inside and on the outside (they contain harmonizations, synchronizations of rhythms inside and outside). Thus, difference and health are co-involved; they are the complementary sides of the same phenomenon. Only disorder brings disease, difference does not. The different arrangements (of molecules in the genes) give the differences between humans. The disorder in the arrangement of molecules leads to disease” (Calciu-Dumitreasa, 35). As we can see, the gene has a semi-mysterious character since inside it the molecules arrange themselves differently from one gene to another and still genes are harmonized to form the unity of the vital rhythm, guaranteeing the triumph of life and of order where differences seemed to be predominant, leading towards a sort of empire of non-resemblance. What exactly makes so different, so not-resembling elements to be so well harmonized together until they form the unity of the vital rhythm stronger than the everlastingness of death, stronger than the implacable occurrence of the event of death in everything?! Out of the about 80 thousand genes in the human organism, only “30 thousands are identified and stocked, constituting a sort of phone book in which we only have the phone numbers and very few addresses”. Therefore, “scientists can ‘call’ a certain gene, without always knowing its location” (Calciu-Dumitreasa, 35). Still from Craig’s study, which is quoted by Pr. Calciu (through which we have quoted it), we can draw the conclusion that genes behave as a sort of “individuals that are grouped functionally”, in the sense that 1/8 of our genes “lead the process of accumulation and expense of cellular energy, 1/6 survey the locomotive and the architecture of cells, 1/10 of the genes are simply “bureaucrats”, as they deal with surveying and directing the other genes” (Calciu- Dumitreasa, 35). Therefore, the organism is very little “bureaucratized”. Secondly, we notice that the genes have “functional intelligence” which intervenes in the dynamisms of life, having effects in the preservation of the organic structure. We are right to state that the genes are the frames of manifestation for asynchronous factors which are endowed with “functional intelligence. Thus the genes are contributing with their own “science” and “intelligence” to maintaining the organic order and to the preservation of life. Only this mysterious “intelligence” is the sign of the intervention of asynchronous factors, that is, those factors that occur we do not know wherefrom and why in order to take the organism for a certain period of time out of the fatal propagation of the destructing time through which the devastating effect of death is transmitted. Moreover, the genetic arrangement suggests the pattern of a “population of genes” ordered after a just law. Because only 10% offer support and frame to the genetic “bureaucracy”, all the other genes having definite organic functions, working functions. Thirdly, the asynchronous quality of genes is inferred by the fact that although laboratories can take “parts of the gene chain sequence and can analyze them, disintegrating them in the gene 194 Ilie Bădescu 22 bank, where they are frozen, the gene sequence is not entirely known, nor is the function of the entire chain identified. These genes in the deposit have a label for recognition, but it is not entirely known what they do and how their function is harmonized with the function of the entire chain” (Calciu-Dumitreasa, 35). This harmonization of functions is an asynchronous phenomenon, because it is through it that life spreads and this “science” of the functional harmonization of genes among themselves and of each of them with the chain of genes is entirely mysterious and asynchronous compared to the science of death, the science of what is material and corruptible. We call this science, this functional “knowledge” stored in the genes gnosinformation. All our knowledge is therefore characterized by a gap between our knowledge and the functional “knowledge” of the genes, meaning a gap between what we know and what the genes “know.” Compared to our knowledge, the functional “knowledge” of the genes is superior. Between our genesic or genetic “knowledge” and the “knowledge” of the genes themselves there is an enormous gap which science can never possibly annul, unless the noology of genes (that is, their gnosiinformation) would be apo- genetically and therefore absolutely mysteriously transposed in the head of a genial geneticist, who would thus have the same degree of knowledge as the one placed by God under the form of informational energies of the genes in these networks of “gene chains”. And if this were to happen, man would be nothing else but the master of life in his time, and not its very creator. He could “create” life only in a subsequent sense, that is, by taking life from one chain and moving it into a different combination, but he could not create the gene as such, as a root of life. He could introduce it in a material of life, initiating a modeling line in the respective “material,” as we see in cloning, but he could not create the gene itself. These two particularities show us that the gene is the actualization frame of life’s asynchronous factor, in an absolute way. However, the gene is only the frame of this actualization and not the factor itself, which remains hidden, semi-mysterious, which confers life itself a semi-mysterious character, of gift of God. Therefore, certain conclusions can be drawn from here. The first one refers to the character of frame for the asynchronous factor that the genes have in life. The second conclusion refers to the fact that a functional intelligence, superior to any other intelligence or “bank of knowledge” that is deposited in the greatest scholars’ brains of human kind, is seeded in everything that is alive. We call this intelligence and therefore the “gnosinformation” in the live materials of existence “live science”. As no one in nature or in the world has put that live science there, it means that the “designer” is from beyond the world, from above it and from outside it. This is the “Creator” himself, the one who made this order, this noology of organisms or genetic noology, from the perspective of which the living world is an unknown harmony of gnosinformation which is deposited in the genes, and which confers the genes a functional division and a functional autonomy, a sum of gene-sic “competences” (grnosinformation) which we call with a general 23 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 195 term – heredity. That is, organisms have their own “pre-knowledge” regarding what they are to be, as though they somehow “knew” what they can and want to become. Fourthly, we, as reasoning subjects and consciences, are placed in an active relation to this omniscience, only that this happens at a third level of a structure that is a lot more comprehensive which co-involves God, the uncreated energies – meaning this, let’s say, “gnosinformation” - and, last but not least, the human consciousness, under which there are the other steps of the ontological ladder. “Beyond human ignorance, an all-knowing being knows not only the human being, the individual, but its entire structure, starting with the most secret element, which will never be revealed to man, up to the cell with its functions and the harmony of the entire organism. The divine creator and architect knows the works of his hands in its entirety, with the most hidden details. This is why our prayers in the Eucharist say that nothing of what we do or think is unknown to God, in front of whom nothing is lost, “neither the tear nor one drop of that tear” (Calciu-Dumitreasa, 37). “But even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Lc. 12,7). “Numbered are the days and the minutes, the years and the ages of history. Those that are not yet done by us are known to God and his book contains that which hasn’t yet been thought by us. Nothing will be given to us and nothing will be taken from us without his knowledge” (Calciu-Dumitreasa, 38). “Great is the Lord in heaven, on the throne and up to the last piece of grass” (Calciu-Dumitreasa, 38). Scientists try to eclipse the asynchronous factors, meaning they want to overshadow their presence in the structure of everything that exists up to indistinction. Nature offers us proofs of the asynchronous factors everywhere. A team of specialists from the University of Cambridge, coordinated by John B. Gurdon (biologist) have proved that the cell is secreting certain chemical molecules that influence a gene towards a certain development, but they “do not influence the gene in the immediate vicinity towards the same development. Who is determining this selection?” (Calciu-Dumitreasa, 42) It is obvious that the action of the respective molecules on the gene shows that the cell is behaving as an asynchronous factor with respect to the future development. Especially since the very “cell that captures the secretion is making a choice” therefore it itself behaves indeterminately compared to all the other cells and with respect to the process of this secretion. Indeterminate behavior is the sign of asynchronism. The respective cell is inducing an synchronized manifestation in the development process but it itself acts in an asynchronous way, which shows that it obeys other laws (”determinations”) than those related to its connection to other cells, and the vessel of those non-naturalistic “laws” is made up by the very chemical molecules mentioned above. “These intercellular relations in the embryo”, which are marked in a non- deterministic way by the manifestation of a certain factor, a secreted chemical substance called activin, at cell level and by the choice a certain cell makes as soon 196 Ilie Bădescu 24 as it is influenced by this activin, “contradict the mechanical theories of modern science” (Calciu-Dumitreasa, 42). It is true that scientists have reintroduced the determinist hypothesis through the theory the differentiated concentration of activin as a factor of cell-choice differentiation. But even taking this into consideration, these scholars cannot deny the fact that this activin is behaving in an asynchronous manner, that, otherwise said, there is a type of substance that seems not to have other mission than to institute a field of “choices” in the embryo, a frame for asynchronous manifestation, which, although it is signaled by the activin, it is not one and the same thing as this substance. Thus, although the differentiated concentration phenomenon is the one that institutes the frame for the manifestation of the “choice” phenomenon, the very act of choice is not infirmed, only unveiled. Otherwise said, the frame of the choice is not instituted by one factor but by a concentration of factors, meaning by a zone of density which nevertheless is motivated by nothing else but the pure purpose of instituting a frame of “free choice” for a cell, nothing more than that, as the activin does not seem to have other reason to be present in the cell structure except to mediate the formation of a free choice field, of an area of asynchronous density (because it is precisely in this respect that cells behave “freely” and not in a mechanical, deterministic manner). The fact hat the cells participate in this kind of phenomenon of choice is the evidence for the intervention of the asynchronous factor, and thus we can say about the cells that they seem to be at the same time ‘citizens of a cellular country” but also of a “celestial country”, a sort of “empire of freedom” or of “choice” through which a certain design is fulfilled, meaning a certain proto-functional exigency of holistic type, through which the cell “chooses” to participate in a whole which we can call functional system of life. It is as though someone in the very cellular root would want life to go on and not to be extinct. Asynchronous factors: the cosmological perspective. Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin present in a 68 page study published in 1977 in the “Review of Modern Physics” a scenario that divides the history of the world into four eras – “the Stellar (steliferoasa) Era (the current era), the Degenerated Era (in which all the stars of the universe will burn and there will be nothing else but huge pieces of stars, or even dead stars, with a rarefied mass and with a very weak light around them, more like white celestial bodies), the Black Hole Era, in which all stars will collapse and there will be nothing else but a mass of collapsed objects, and the Dark Era, in which black holes will evaporate and everything that will remain of the universe we know today will only be an immense soup of protons, electrons and neutrons” (Calciu-Dumitreasa, 1998). What can be seen in these studies is the apocalypse of matter, as the spiritual hypothesis totally lacks. This universe without space and without time, situated in a-topos, which is the pure noological universe does not follow this scenario. It can survive the material apocalypse, while “matter will follow its path to disappearance, by dissolving in the final soup as the scenario of the two astrophysicists present it” (Calciu-Dumitreasa, 1998, 17). The purely 25 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 197 noological time is not suspended within the time of the apocalypse, its asynchronism being stronger than the disappearance of the matter. Visions as that of the American scientists are impregnated with naturalist ideas, and they are totally apart from any reference to factors that do not obey the time of matter, which we have called asynchronous factors and which are semi-mysterious, as they are only attested by certain actualization frames and are not explicated. The universe in the model constructed by the two scientists is the universe of matter, which lacks the spiritual implicatum even at a hypothetic level. Compared to this kind of vision, Romanian scientist Stefan Lupascu proposes a vision of the universe which takes into account this spiritual implicatum and therefore the asynchronous factors. Lupascu talks about an anti-universe and about anti-matter. To simplify things, says Calciu-Dumitreasa commenting on the Romanian scientist’s vision, “the anti-universe is an a-spatial space close to God, which resembles the ideal and spiritual structure of God” (Calciu-Dumitreasa, 1998, 16). Or, to quote John’s Apocalypse 21: 1 “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea exists no more”, at 20:11, the same Book of Revelation, it is said “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled, and place was not found for them” (Apocalypse, 20, 11). In fact, matter without a spiritual principle, without a noological tension is “unformed and empty”, the “blind nothingness”. Everything starts with the work of God, therefore through the Godly implicatum, without which everything is nothing. As opposed to the apocalypses of matter – therefore the materialistic apocalypses – the noological apocalypses, those of the Bible, speak of a “new heaven and a new earth” when the history of matter is totally irrelevant, because everything is purified, matter is burnt down, and the new world is rebuilt in its pure spirituality, having a pure (noological) light and life, not a material, passing and therefore ephemeral one. “While matter goes gradually towards destruction and disappearance, our souls, freed of concerns and of any material restrictions, will live in spiritual happiness and in the contemplation of the Holy Trinity” (Calciu- Dumitreasa, 1998, 17). We are therefore in a totally Biblical horizon, that is at the examination of the revealed teachings, which are through themselves an axial asynchronous factor for the history of mankind, whose model of manifestation in history has remained insufficiently investigated. One of the epochs in and through which we can attempt to reopen the issue in order to draw a new beginning for the science of asynchronous factors is the prophets’ epoch. This is the best opportunity, the most relevant frame, before the universally crucial moment of God’s Enhumanization, to examine the manifestation model of the asynchronous factor of the revealed teachings in history. Moreover, the teachings of the prophets identify the asynchronous factors of the world and make visionary references to the way in 198 Ilie Bădescu 26 which these factors are manifest in history throughout the millenniums. This is the reason why, after we will have reviewed the confirmations found by means of science to the hypothesis of the asynchronous factors, we will come back to the prophetic teachings, and then we will try to investigate the issue in the light of evangelic teachings. So far, we can draw the conclusion that sciences, specially the sciences of man and of the society, should not ignore the action of the supernatural law in everything that exists, in the most humble and in the most grandiose manifestations in the micro- and macro-universe, in history and in sociology, in anthropology and in geopolitics, and even more in psychology or in the sciences about diseases and cures.

ASYNCHRONOUS FACTORS IN THE LIGHT OF SOCIOBIOLOGY

Protosystemic genes. We have already talked about the importance of the genetic theory for proving the theory of the asynchronous factors. We return here to take a closer look at this idea from a more recent perspective, that of sociobiology. In sociobiology, the organism only counts as a vessel for the genes. According to classical biology and also to sociobiologists, any structure emerges through natural selection, “ that process through which certain genes acquire, in future generations, a superior representation compared to other genes, (…) When in each generation new sexual cells are produced, the winning genes are separated and reassembled in order to produce new organisms” (Wilson, 2003, 25). So far, we are within the methodological naturalism and therefore within the strictly deterministic vision on the evolution of life. The problem is that these genes carry a novelty we do not know where they got it from. Let us suppose they got it from the environment. We still have to consider that this novelty of theirs does not produce the integration into a new system (organism) unless it already contains (as “information”) a “systematic information”, meaning that the genes are proto-systemic and therefore proto- organic, “carriers of organisms and of organic character” before forming organic formations called organisms! Therefore, it is not their “quantity” that is a force of assembling in itself, but their proto-organic character, which acts as a pure latency that comes towards us and in and through the respective quantity of manifest genes (or even through only one gene). This is why we can speak, as Wilson does, about “moral genes”, but we can no longer draw the same conclusion him, that they are the result of a natural selection. Their presence is the preemptory proof of the intervention of asynchronous factors in relation to the naturalist corrupting time. Natural selection can explain the emergence of a new population of genes but not the fact that those genes contain information about those protofunctional units in which a new organism, a proto-organism pre-lives. Who put this “information” there? Natural 27 Asynchronous Phenomena. Premises for a Noological Sociology 199 selection cannot for example explain how the hypothalamic – limbic system appears, nor its persistency. Or this is the “place” where “cerebral centers for emotional control” appear and are act. How is it that these “cerebral centers for emotional control which can be found in the hypothalamus and in the limbic system overwhelm our conscience with all the emotions discussed by the ethical philosophers” acing in a restricting manner on self-knowledge, and they cannot be dislocated or turned away as though there was a proto-system that was keeping them in the same “functional place” called hypothalamus!? This is the problem: the “proto-system”. It is the proof of the intervention in the system of life which we call organism of asynchronous factors which seem to take care of the perpetuation of life in opposition with the factors through which the rhythm of death is pulsating in everything. The hypothalamic-limbic complex is the most terrible proof and confirmation regarding the hypothesis of asynchronous factors. This is what Wilson says, as if to contradict his naturalistic theses: “The hypothalamic-limbic complex of certain very social sciences as is man, knows, or, more exactly, was programmed to function as though it knew that its fundamental genes will be fully proliferated only if they orchestrate behavioral answers, which place at stake an efficient mixture of personal surveillance, reproduction and altruism” (Wilson, 2003, 26) (italic supplied). What is the origin of this “care” and of the strange proto-knowledge that pushes the organism to support its “moral genes? Isn’t this a proof for the “proto-system”? How does that complex know the rule of its survival? How come that threshold (of the proper gene number and combination) was not drowned into the tide of life, so that, although the individuals pass away (die), the system that holds them alive (they and their descendants) remains, it spreads even constantly ascending, or at least stationary (but it never goes below a critical threshold). Moreover, the hypothalamic-limbic system knows that if it orchestrates certain behavioral answers, through which the personal surveillance, reproduction and altruism rule is infringed, the result will be the dismantling of the system. Who, within the system, takes care of the system and therefore takes care of the systemic feature? Thus, the “centers of the complex take care to load the conscious thought with ambivalences” in any stressing situation, so that hate does not acquire an exclusive character, but it is immediately compensated by love, aggressiveness is compensated by fear and so on. But how does the hypothalamic system know to distinguish between love and hate, so that if hate appears, it will immediately program love as well, ands as such these combinations will trigger those combinations meant to “favor the maximal transmission of the fundamental genes”?! All these make up sufficient evidence for the “proto-system”, that is, for the providential intervention of the factors through which the systematic feature spreads despite and against the dismantling processes and effects. The proto- 200 Ilie Bădescu 28 system is a proto-active latency in any of the individual cases, in relation to any individual, as though the latter were nothing but a vehicle for the field of intelligibility in and though which the whole (the species) spreads, which contradicts the individual and yet it supports it as the only vessel for propagation over time of the species itself, as a sort of bridge on which the function passes over time. The individual is nothing else but the bridge on which the species steps from time to time, from past to present and from here to the future and so on. This means the individual is the channel and the vessel of an intervention which “wants” the triumph of life over death, despite the second law of thermodynamics, also called law of entropy. Thus, there is an unexpected triumph of the theory of the emergence of supernatural or, in any case, extra-natural factors in all the processes of the universe, starting with the process of life.

REFERENCES

Bădescu, Ilie. (2003). Sincronism european şi cultură critică românească, Cluj: Ed. Dacia. Bădescu, Ilie. (2000). Cunoaşterea ordinii spirituale a lumii. Sistem de sociologie noologică, Bucharest: Ed. Valahia. IPS Bartolomeu Anania (ed.). (2001). „Introducere la Apocalipsa Sfântului Ioan” în Biblia sau Sfânta Scriptură, Bucharest. Calciu-Dumitreasa, Gh. (1998). Rugăciune şi lumină mistic, Cluj-Napoca: Dacia Press. Frank, A. Gunder; Amin, S. (1975). L’accumulation dépendente. Sociétés precapitalistes et capitalisme, Paris: Editions Anthropos. Gardiner, Patrick (ed.). (1959). Theories of History, Glencoll, III: Free Press. Montgomery, J. W. (1969). Where is History Going?, Zondervan Publishing House. Remond, R. (1974). Introduction a l’histoire de notre temps, t. 2: le XIX-e siecle. 1815–1914, Paris: Edition du Seuil. Toynbee, Arnold. (1962). A Study of History, Oxford University Press, New York, Toronto, vol. I, p. 22–23. Wallerstein, Immanuel. (1974). The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origin of the European World Economy in the Sxteenthe Century, New York: Academic Press. Willson, Ed. O. (2003). Sociobiologia, Bucharest: Ed. Trei. PUBLIC SPACE

ELECTORAL COMMUNICATION AND THE EUROPEAN AGENDA: NEW CAMPAIGN PRACTICES?

(THE 2008 IAMCR CONGRESS)

CAMELIA BECIU

The Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy

Our research relates to the media output of the elections to the European Parliament in a new EU member state: Romania. Voting for the election of the members of the European Parliament (MEPs) appears to be one of the prime institutional concerns, establishing the new status of Romania, a few months after this country became a member of the EU. The study that we propose focuses on communication practices mobilized by the electoral machinery of candidates. The two research questions are the following: on the one hand, have European elections led to a concept of electoral marketing different from the current practices in the Romanian public space? As a working hypothesis: is this a matter of an emerging campaign style which would actually update a new genre of electoral communication? On the other hand, what are the uses of the European argument within the discourse of candidates? The study relies on concepts issued from the constructivist paradigm and from the qualitative methodology (image analysis, setting analysis, political discourse), supplemented by documentation on the electoral context (media positions of electoral staff, internal communication of the parties, etc.).

1. “EUROPE” AS A MEDIA ISSUE–STRATEGIES FOR CONSTRUCTING PUBLIC PROBLEMS IN THE ROMANIAN PRESS

The first euro-parliamentary elections in Romania were held in November 2007, shortly after Romania had become a de facto member of the European Union. On January 1st 2007 Romania had acquired a new political status, by joining the EU. Deemed a “historic event”, the new status marked the end of the so-called pre-accession period, started with the initiation, back in 1999, of the first Romania-EU negotiations. From the perspective of media debate, pre-accession highlighted specific practices for constructing a European “problematic” (Marchetti, 2003; Mercier, 2003; Beciu, 2006).

Rom. Jour. Sociol., New series, nos 1–2, p. 201–212, Bucureşti, 2008 202 Camelia Beciu 2

• A “permanent” agenda. During the negotiations, the media and political discourses were saturated with opinions regarding the barometer of negotiations and with tribulations around the prospective date of Romania’s EU accession (for instance, each time a European official made a declaration, the press started to immediately “split hairs” and interpret it as a “forecast” or impression, with the sole purpose of fuelling the suspense …). Therefore negotiations were dominated by factual information approached from a technocrat perspective, specific to diplomatic discourse. • An expert-type knowledge. Focusing the media discourse on political- diplomatic information media legitimated expert-type knowledge, based on the euro-institutional language derived from the “high diplomacy level” and technocratic prognosis. Therefore value was added to institutional and/or hierarchical actors (political personalities, experts, negotiators, etc.). • A consensual public opinion. The political and media discourse constantly rendered a consensual opinion climate related to EU accession (which was also confirmed by the accession-favourable opinion surveys). So, the initial question referring to the emergence of a European “problematic” becomes: how could the media build a deliberative agenda in a consensual situation? • The expert as a “character”. In the run up to accession (to be more precise between the signing of the EU Accession Treaty in 2005 and accession proper in 2007) there emerged practices that pointed to a certain distancing of journalists from the expert-like style: for instance, the image of the European expert/ negotiator is more and more personalised, taking the shape of a character that is familiar to the public (Beciu, id. 2006). But what’s really outstanding is that journalists started to tackle the accession issue in an identity-related framework: as the date of accession was drawing near, journalists redefined their “mission”, by mainly covering the Profound Romania in the run up to accession. A number of media formats and communication campaigns contributed to defining an “authentic” Romania and to emphasising the symbolic distance between “us, Romanians” and “Europe”. Therefore, upon accession, media coverage of different issues connected to the EU has not contributed to a deliberative media discourse. Euro-scepticism was not a framework for debate and the outlook of nongovernmental or non-institutional actors contributed only to a small extent to shaping up public knowledge. This media context did not change significantly in the first year after accession. Consequently the first euro-parliamentary elections of November 2007 did not generate controversies or electoral mobilization. 3 Electoral Communication and the European Agenda 203

2. THE CAMPAIGN FOR EURO-PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS – BETWEEN “NORM” AND POLITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES

The campaign for the euro-parliamentary elections was perceived by the analysts as a first socialisation exercise of the political class and the electorate with the European system practice. That is why the importance of the event was correlated mainly with the new political status of Romania. On the other hand, the relevance of elections was obscured by another event that dominated the domestic political arena at the time. The almost three-year clashes between Presidency and Parliament focused, among other things, on the introduction of the uninominal voting system. The Parliament decided that the referendum for the introduction of the uninominal vote and the euro-parliamentary elections be held on the same day, on 25th November 2007. Of course, of the two events, the former dominated the media agenda, giving rise to political rifts and heated public debates. Moreover, voters participated in two types of electoral rituals that unfolded simultaneously and were a first in Romania’s post-Communist elections history: the campaign for the euro- parliamentary elections overlapped the other “election” campaign, of the supporters of and opponents to the uninominal voting system. By way of comparison with the stakes of the referendum, the euro-parliamentary elections were perceived more like an abstract event, resulting somehow from the “real” political circumstances. Some of the aspects described above are not specific to the Romanian context though. Generally euro-parliamentary elections, no matter where they were held, pointed to a flaw in political participation, being perceived as an event decoupled from the local political agenda (Marchetti, id. 2003; Garcia; Le Torec, 2003). Hence the interest in analysing the manner in which the campaigns in the respective countries set up a European agenda credible for the electorate.

3. PREMISES FOR STUDYING EUROPEAN ELECTION

ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

In this study we are approaching the campaign for the European elections in Romania from the perspective of the campaign practices used by candidates. Why would such an analysis be relevant given that, as we have seen, elections were held in a context dominated by the “domestic” political agenda? The first premise we are considering refers to analysing the European elections from the perspective of a theory of Europeanization (Graziano; Marteen, 2006; Featherstone, Radaelli, 2003; Risse, 2002). Already established as a concept in the political analysis literature, Europeanization has to do with the impact of regulations on institutions and social actors. Therefore a category of studies emerged, which discuss the structural 204 Camelia Beciu 4 transformations (“top down”) which national institutions undergo following the adoption of European norms. Other studies- actually the most numerous- look at the indirect impact (“bottom up”) which European regulations have on systems and social actors, insisting on the idea of adaptation. The main idea is that Europeanization implies a gap between the European regulations and the manner in which non-institutional actors relate to it (Featherstone, Radaelli, 2003). Approaching Europeanization as an “adaptation” and a “cognitive process” is related to a constructivist model of analysis, focused on the manners in which social and political actors use various European conventions and “repertories” in a given situation. (Christiansen et al., 2001; Hedetoft, 1998). The approach highlights the social actors’ strategies of ‘resistance’ and ‘negotiation’, their affiliation to certain “imagined communities” as well as “the contradictions” that emerge in the practice of European regulations. Or, the campaign for the European elections may be relevant for the so-called Europeanization of political/electoral communication. In this case Europeanization is related to the influence which the European decision making system has on local electoral practices, either we are talking about countries that have already experienced these elections or countries which have recently acquired the status of Community country. In both cases electoral practices will emphasise the political imaginary instated in the respective countries in relation to the European institutions, to the role of the MEP, the “European” rituals and interpretation frames, etc.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

In this study I am talking about adapting electoral practices to the new European context according to a double constraint politicians have to deal with: first, legitimation and secondly, political performance. Legitimation refers to how to appropriate a “representative” political European identity? How to showcase the alleged Europeanization of the politician? The elections to the European Parliament highlighted the question of electoral campaigning as a specific communication genre: via what type of campaign could one reconcile “European discourse” (procedural, normative, expert) and electoral communication? The two research questions are the following: on the one hand, have European elections led to a concept of electoral marketing different from the current practices in the Romanian public sphere? As a working hypothesis: is this a matter of an emerging campaign style which would actually update a new genre of electoral communication? On the other hand, what are the uses of the European argument within the discourse of candidates? By approaching the campaign for the euro-parliamentary elections as a genre of electoral communication (including discursive practices, various types of 5 Electoral Communication and the European Agenda 205 communication, legal regulations, a media system, etc.) we are actually opting for a certain definition of electoral communication: electoral communication is a strategic type of communication pointing to the manner in which political and media actors are relating to: • regulations specific to the system of exerting political power (the political, media system, organisations, etc.), • symbols and values specific to public culture; • political identities. In other words, electoral communication is not equated only with the discursive strategies of the political class and of the teams of advisors who project the image of the politician. The electoral discourse (as a strategic action) presupposes relating the political actor with various “systems”, with public culture and a certain collective memory linked to the past of the politician (Axford, Huggins, 2001; Maarek; Wolfsfeld, 2003).

CORPUS

The analyzed corpus contains electoral advertising and speeches delivered by candidates who represent key political parties in Romanian politics.

METHOD

The study relies on concepts issued from the constructivist paradigm and from the qualitative methodology (image analysis, content analysis, pragmatic analysis of the enunciation), supplemented by documentation on the electoral context. This analytical frame allows us to study the discursive positioning of candidates and the type of character they perform in their relation with the electorate. The results of the research are interpreted depending on the following parameters (supposed to have an influence on the construction of the electoral campaign): 1) the typology of campaign practices; 2) a comparison between the electoral practices used in the euro- parliamentary elections and the electoral communication already set up across Romania; 3) the discursive construction of the “European argument”: how are candidates using European arguments and official discourse in order to legitimize a European position on various issues? Namely, how are politicians invoking European norms: as part of arguments from (regulative) authority (e.g. we have to do x because European regulations make it compulsory), or as an opportunity to open up public debate on the 206 Camelia Beciu 6

matters in question and possibly achieve a contextual adaptation of European norms?

4. FINDINGS

A. CAMPAIGN PRACTICES: “THE MOST QUIET CAMPAIGN?”

The first elections to the European Parliament mark the switch from an electoral communication until then dominated mainly by the media (television playing an essential role) to an intensely advertising communication. Direct (outdoor) or media interactions between the candidate and the electorate make room for another campaign concept, based on visuality and different ways of expressing the candidate’s personality. Thus, electoral posters and advertising in the press were the practices that were mostly used in the electoral communication. Also there appeared new ways of inserting the advertising material in the press. For instance, the main opposition party (the Social Democratic Party- PSD) resorted to the tabloid (Libertatea) which has the widest circulation on the market, to promote its candidates and its euro- electoral discourse. Another opposition party (the Conservative Party) used, among other things, the sports press as a platform for electoral advertising while other parties used free newspapers for that purpose. Also the euro-parliamentary elections established the blog as an electoral communication resource, about which candidates said it was an efficient method of interaction with the “Internet generation” (it should be noticed that most candidates associate the blog with young voters). In the candidates’ view, blogs were conceived of more as spaces for formally promoting their electoral programme; little personalised and rather rigid as far as design is concerned, they ended up resembling an official webpage of the party or of the candidate. Actually some of the candidates said they would keep the blog also after being elected MEPs. It is an “official” resource of communication which the candidate does not actually use to build a deliberative identity. Transformations could be noticed also at the level of outdoor practices: therefore candidates resorted less to traditional meetings, preferring meeting and shaking hands with the crowds as part of non-electoral local events (a wine fair, folk celebrations, religious celebrations, ceremonies, contests, etc.). But what’s most noticeable is the minor role played by television in this campaign. Only two television stations (channel 1 of the public television TVR1 and Realitatea TV) produced an electoral grid. Moreover Realitatea TV, considered a CNN-like news channel chose infotainment formats (during the electoral shows the candidates had to pass various “tests” to prove their “European competence” and received “marks” given by a jury, being assessed by journalists in a humoristic-ironical style). 7 Electoral Communication and the European Agenda 207

As far as communication practices are concerned, the first elections to the European Parliament point to an electoral communication “controlled”, to a large extent, by candidates and parties; the press and televisions did not place the candidates in a deliberative space. The main tendency: the electoral communication was focused on the on the candidate political “persona”. (Bennet, 2003; Corner, 2003; Street, 2001).

B. ELECTORAL ADVERTISING

CONVERGING STRATEGIES

The electoral advertising used in the campaign for the European elections did not include either negative materials or symbols and slogans pointing to the existence of European agenda topics. Parties and candidates opted for a self- assessing-type of advertising. Irrespective of political options, the advertising discourse in this campaign had a common topic: the need for Romania to be properly represented in the parliament in Brussels. Therefore, most electoral posters pointed, one way or another, to the “European competence” of candidates (parties actually counted on the so-called “euro-locomotives”, on those candidates who already enjoyed a more technocrat reputation in the eyes of public opinion). As it focused on this topic, electoral advertising did not mobilize the electorate on the basis of European values. The only intensely mobilized values referred indirectly to the European ethos: so, the advertising campaign drew attention to the importance of the MEP status. More value was added to the new sphere of action of the Romanian politicians, the euro-MPs being considered a special category – a political world with different standards and rules, hence the need for politicians of “a different character” (most advertising materials use either the image of the candidate or the image of the “group”, namely the candidates proposed by the respective party). The implication was that only a certain type of politician can be successful within the new system. Advertising therefore created a certain imaginary related to the European elections and the European institutions: these are systems that from now on will be part of the country’s political culture, but they are based on a political ethos different from that of national systems (such a representation somehow points to the abstract character of the European elections). From a discursive viewpoint, this advertising imaginary related to elections generated a number of specific discourse strategies regarding the construction of the candidate’s image and the mobilisation of the electorate. We therefore distinguish three types of posters, depending on the way in which the relation of the candidate (or of the party) with the electorate is discursively constructed (Charaudeau, 2005). First there is this category at the level of which the visual discourse and the slogan add value to the personality of the candidate and also to his or her 208 Camelia Beciu 8 competence in relation to an electorate that has not yet set up its “European priorities”- as was intimated. So the slogans of the National Liberal Party’s (PNL) campaign were constructed as self-assessments (“I, the candidate, I am competent”) always followed by a questioning of the electorate (“What are you doing?”). Therefore a “pragmatic” power relation is set up between the candidate and the electorate, the latter being bound to contribute “themselves” something to the candidate’s action.

¾ “I’m promoting Romania. What about you?” (PNL) ¾ “I’m promoting Romania. What are you doing?” (PNL) ¾ “I believe in you. Do you believe in me?” (PNL)

In the second category we included posters that point to a didactic power relation, on the one hand, between the candidate and the electorate and, on the other hand, between the candidate and the European machinery. For instance, the posters of one of the opposition parties, the Democratic Party – PD, dwell on the metaphor of the “class” and of the “graduation of a class” to suggest that this party proposes a team of candidates able to socialise and deal with the European structures. In other words, the European system requires special competences of the candidates and, consequently, “a different political class”. Moreover the Democratic Party candidates are credible also because they are being supported by the President of the country (the president’s popularity was thus used as an electoral resource both for the European elections and for a better positioning of the PD on the domestic political arena).

¾ “The first series of graduates of the new political class. Ready for Europe!” (in the centre of the image there is a white spot with no picture, reading: “The teacher – busy with the referendum”/ alluding to the fact that the President was involved in the campaign for the introduction of the uninominal voting system).

¾ “The first series of graduates of the new political class. Ready for Europe! The class has learned from the best!” (PD) But most advertising materials draw on the discursive logic specific to commercial marketing. It’s an electoral advertising that combines the commercial slogan (the customer is assigned the decision-making role, according to the principle “customer, your wish is our demand”), entertainment and populist rhetoric. Most slogans are different types of direct interpellations (second person pronouns are used) through which “friendly voter’’ (and not the citizen) is mobilized or its attention is drawn. This is how a power relationship is instituted between the political “bidder’’, who has the initiative and knows the context, and the voter, seemingly called to decide and to choose the “only European’’ solution. 9 Electoral Communication and the European Agenda 209

¾ “You are making the offer!” (PSD) ¾ Vote for Stolojan! You deserve the best! (PDL) ¾ “You want in Europe, then go for Stolojan!” (PDL) ¾ “I’ll remain a Romanian in Europe” (PNTCD- the Christian Democratic National Peasant Party) - the poster shows the group of PNTCD candidates wearing high official suits and peasant’s sandals. ¾ “Assert yourself, Romanian! The Conservative Party is supporting you!” (PC- the Conservative Party) ¾ “We are promoting Romania. Don’t let yourself be blinded! You know how good is to know!” (PNL)- they make a play upon words in this slogan: ‘blinded’ is translated in Romanian by ‘orbit’ which is also a chewing gum brand ‘ORBIT’; what they imply is: don’t let yourself “chewed” by others. The poster shows an ORBIT chewing gum pack reading the above slogan. ¾ „Make your voice heard in Brussels! Our candidates are waiting for your support!” (PNL)

The PSD, the main opposition party, adopted an advertising discourse that oscillated between commercial slogans such as “You’re making the offer!” and impersonal slogans based on ideological clichés, with no clear reference to the European elections.

¾ “For a strong and just Romania!” (PSD) ¾ “Honest work will provide a decent living!” (PSD) ¾ “A strong economy, safe and well paid jobs!” (PSD)

This type of ideological /impersonal discourse can be found both in the parties’ programme and in their direct interactions with the electorate (public meetings, events, etc.). Electoral communication in this campaign was built, on the one hand, on a populist-commercial dimension and, on the other hand, on wooden language rhetoric, the latter becoming visible in the candidates’ public speeches and in the way in which they built the European argument.

C. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE EUROPEAN ARGUMENT

Speaking of tendencies, the parties’ programmes and the candidates’ discourses took the shape of “party documents”, being simply an inventory of the party’s programmatic principles and “standard” priorities (social, political, economic, etc.)1. Actually the few elements in the parties’ discourse or platform pointed to the existence of an election campaign, be it at national level. Parties and

1 Here is an example: “Reaching a European living standard, by turning Romania into one of Europe’s most competitive economies, able to ensure a high economic growth, without generating imbalances at macroeconomic, regional and environmental levels”. (PDL) 210 Camelia Beciu 10 candidates presented the electorate with a collection of general principles and targets, valid in any situation of political communication. It’s true, to this collection of general facts they added the prefix “euro” (eurohealth, euroeducation, europolitics, etc.) or the adjective ‘European’ (European salaries, European standards, European money, etc.). Candidates and parties used the European argument to legitimise their political identity and in general their actions on the domestic political arena. The result was a ‘hybrid’ discourse, which was not relevant either for a regular election campaign or for a European election, as it lacked a concrete agenda. Therefore, the European argument was not associated with the European values, institutions and policies and with the community space respectively. In the candidates’ discourses “Europe” points, first of all, to a quality of life: “We have one single priority: reaching a European living standard. Romania needs a European level political class”(PDL); “For Romania to have a health care system compatible with the European one, the PSD suggests.. “(PSD). Secondly the European argument was sometimes used as part of an expert- like type of rhetoric, to legitimise the “European competence” of a candidate, or, as the case may be, “the European vision” of the party. Consequently, candidates resorted to statistics, schemes and forecasts, all “wrapped up” in a specialised language typical of managerial technocracy. Actually, the manner in which the electoral actors invoked the European argument on the occasion of elections is similar to the political and media discourses specific to the period when accession negotiations were ongoing- as was shown in the beginning, at that time the media and the political class looked at the phenomenon of European integration from the perspective of the expert-like type of communication. But as negotiations entered the final stage, the mass media, the opinion leaders and, to a certain extent, the politicians gradually gave up the expert-like type of language and the political-diplomatic style (although it should be noticed that the “Europeanization” of the media discourse was more conspicuous than that of the political discourse). Symptomatically, against the backdrop of elections to the European Parliament, the Romanian political class suddenly returned to the communication style used before accession.

D. DISCUSSION

From the point of view of communication practices and the discursive construction of the political character, the campaign for the European Parliament highlights the de-politicization of electoral communication manifested through (i) the discursive logic of the “brand” (a combination of notoriety, populism and entertainment) and (ii) the formal discourse made up banalities2.

2 For the concept of de-politicization, see, Mc Nair, B., 2000 11 Electoral Communication and the European Agenda 211

It’s worth underlining that the de-politicization of the electoral communication is an already existing tendency in Romanian politics. All elections campaigns in which Romania’s incumbent President Traian Basescu participated stood out through a humorous, commercial, populist communication style that turned to good account the entertaining side (Basescu is back to the target!”). Basescu inaugurated this style in the campaign for his re-election as Mayor of Bucharest earlier in 2004: “This campaign had the character of a humorous commercial advertising campaign in which Băsescu was symbolized as a red chilli pepper (ardei iute), a symbol which evoked his tendency to flare up at unpredictable moments, suggested that he adds spice to Romanian politics, that he is fast and efficient, that his presence is inconvenient and irritating to the political establishment, etc.” (Fairclough 2006: 101-105). The European elections were an opportunity for other political actors to also adopt this style of electoral communication. The de-politicization of electoral communication maintained the gap between the “European discourse” and the “electoral discursive logic”. According to the premise of this article, the European elections could make up a type of electoral communication. And one of the conditions for the existence of such a type is the manner in which political actors harmonise, at discourse level, the range of European issues (European values and policies and, in general, the ethos of the European institutions) with the electoral marketing and the national political agenda. From this point of view, the European significance of this campaign was not visible given that political actors simply equated “Europe” either with higher living standards or with a system that needs special political competences. It was not by accident that parties and candidates alike built the European character based on the phrase “European competence” which could be most frequently seen in the bureaucratic, expert like type of language. Being constructed in such a way, the campaign did not contribute to socialising the electorate with the European values and practices. One consequence was that the electoral discourse introduced a status-related distance between the candidate and the electorate, sometime made relative only through the ingredients specific to the commercial discourse (the status-related distance is obvious even at the level of identity statements such as “Assert yourself, Romanian!”).

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