Seeing Like a Mayor
Or, How Local Officials Obstructed Romanian Land Restitution
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2402166 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Katherine Verdery (0000-0002-1254-852X, University of Michigan, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 5-33 |
| Publication date | 2002-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ethnography (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1466-1381 • E-ISSN: 1741-2714 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14661380222231054 |
| OpenAlex | W2121341123 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 24 |
| References cited | 13 |
A decade after the law returning land rights to previous owners in Romania had been passed in 1991, the process was still incomplete; titling was delayed and lawsuits dragged on by the year. Contrary to widespread opinion, I argue that this delay came not primarily from a government that intended to postpone land restitution but from obstructionism by officials in the administrative units (communes) charged with implementing restitution. Using data from ethnographic research, I discuss a variety of ways in which mayors and their commune allies hindered the restitution process: through their structural relations with the center, their use of land to accumulate political capital and their control over the knowledge that counted most in pursuing a claim as well as through the abdication of responsibility by both lower- and higher-level authorities who might have checked mayors' ambitions. The results of their actions included undermining both the legitimacy of private property institutions and the strength of the emergent Romanian state
Abdication · Capital (architecture · Ethnography · Geography · Government (linguistics · Legitimacy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Private property · Property rights · Restitution · Romanian · Sociology · State (computer science · Variety (cybernetics · Land Rights and Reforms · Law · Public Administration · Urbanization and City Planning
Property
From the Mayor's Viewpoint
Commoning, access, and sovereignty
The shared boundary
Law and Mutual Assistance in Families
Making and Unmaking Territories with Plants in the Riverine Peat Landscape of Central Kalimantan
Fiefdom forests
The Rents of Illegal Logging
What is political about political ethnography? On the context of discovery and the normalization of an emergent subfield
Navigating conflicting landscape aspirations
From scythe to smartphone
Modernität, Mangelwirtschaft und Postsozialismus. Probleme ethnologischer und soziologischer Theoriebildung angesichts gesellschaftlicher Veränderung
Ethnographies of postsocialist change
Property, Lawfare, and the Politics of Hope in Weak States
Kaip įvertinti, ar aš geresnis, ar tu geresnis
Negotiating Post-Socialist Property and State
Access and Property
The Rise and Fall of a Timber Baron
Reproduction familiale et changement social en milieu rural
Re-placing work
Infrastructure, feral waters and power relations in rural Romania
Shortage, fuzzy property and other dead ends in the anthropological analysis of (post)socialism
Locating the State
The other frontier
Money Unmade
Revolution from Abroad
The Dynamics of the Breakthrough in Eastern Europe
National Ideology Under SocialismIdentity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania
National Ideology Under Socialism
What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next
Information Management in Bolshevik-type Party States
Transylvanian villagers
Elasticity of Land
Seeing Like a State
| Unique citing works | 24 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,14 |
| Citation span | 2005 - 2024 (20) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 22 |