Pădureni – un experiment neoliberal
Pădureni – A Neoliberal Experiment

Summary/Abstract: This paper is based on the ethnographic research of a mountain rural community, which between 1997 and 2012,in the context of timber trade liberalization and the global economic integration of Romania, has known a substantial economic and social transformation. This site's particularities make possible a close observation of the processes that take place under conditions of a free market economy and a minimal state. I will show from a historical perspective how these conditions, along with a global system of work organization that makes work possible only in dependent relation to capital, produce a profound social stratification and inequality. I will also present ways in which individuals internalize and accept the justificatory discourse of this organization system, as well as their indignation, the critique they produce, and the resistance practices they adopt.On the other hand, this paper refutes the apprehension of the Romanian neoliberalism as a Western borrowed system, institutionally implemented, and imitated at organizational level, arguing instead that it emerged by itself in novel ways, at the level of individual actions and shared beliefs, due to Romania's opening to global economic system, and under the structuring power of this system.This paper is based on the ethnographic research of a mountain rural community, which between 1997 and 2012, in the context of timber trade liberalization and the global economic integration of Romania, has known a substantial economic and social transformation. This site's particularities make possible a close observation of the processes that take place under conditions of a free market economy and a minimal state. I will show from a historical perspective how these conditions, along with a global system of work organization that makes work possible only in dependent relation to capital, produce a profound social stratification and inequality. I will also present ways in which individuals internalize and accept the justificatory discourse of this organization system, as well as their indignation, the critique they produce, and the resistance practices they adopt. On the other hand, this paper refutes the apprehension of the Romanian neoliberalism as a Western borrowed system, institutionally implemented, and imitated at organizational level, arguing instead that it emerged by itself in novel ways, at the level of individual actions and shared beliefs, due to Romania's opening to global economic system, and under the structuring power of this system.

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