What Do Peasants Want? Equality and Differentiation in Post-Socialist Moldova
What Do Peasants Want? Equality and Differentiation in Post-Socialist Moldova

Summary/Abstract: This article addresses several aspects of the “agrarian question” that have remained unanswered in the historic territory of Bessarabia and the post-socialist Republic of Moldova. Drawing on recent ethnographic fieldwork, national calculations of household poverty levels and consumption patterns, and the legal dimensions of property distribution, I reveal the degree to which “peasant” desires for both social equality and differentiation remain poorly understood by social scientists and policy makers. I conclude with a preliminary sketch of some aspects of the contemporary moral economy in the villages of the southeastern portion of the county.

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