Economic Regimes, Local Worlds and the Changing Meanings of Work in Rural Transylvania
Economic Regimes, Local Worlds and the Changing Meanings of Work in Rural Transylvania

Summary/Abstract: Abstract. This article presents the phenomenon of traditional reciprocal work (the kaláka) in rural agrarian communities in Transylvania. The paper’s theoretical background is derived from different approaches in economic anthropology, but it also makes use of perspectives from historical ethnography, economic history and economic sociology. While the paper begins with a particular social phenomenon that is characteristic mainly of rural communities where both agrarian and non-agrarian work is done, it also offers an insight into general changes in the everyday conceptions and practices of work, and into the areas of wage labour, communal labour and household labour. The analysis of the kaláka in historical and contemporary perspective can shed new light on the way morality and rationality, aimed at risk reduction and going beyond profit maximization, as well as informality and formality, communal and individual behaviour are opposed but also interconnected in the everyday economic practices of such communities.

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