Introduction: Outline of the theme and framework¹

Over the last fifteen to twenty years, anyone following events in Transylvanian² villages will have observed, among other things, that local communities are making increasing use of external resources in the restoration of their built cultural heritage, such as churches. However, we know from historical sources and local collective memory that the construction of churches was traditionally undertaken as a community endeavor, using communal resources. The aim of the present essay is to examine and analyze this phenomenon — the process of the changing proportions of internal and external resources. While focusing primarily on the events of the last fifteen to twenty years, the analysis will cover a broader period of up to several hundred years through the presentation of various examples. Within this analysis, particular emphasis will be given to the example of the household, as a historically changing institution of local adaptation, and the community that unites households — and, more specifically, the cooperating community that unites households by means of various forms of (economic and social) cooperation. However, I do not regard households and local, cooperating communities as spatially isolated entities. Instead, I see them as parts of global distribution networks, thus, in the second half of the paper, I include in the discussion an analysis of the global context, in which emphasis is given to complexity. The ethnographic data and examples are drawn primarily from Nușfalău/Szilágynagyfalu and the region along the river Târnava Mică/Kis-Küküllő, with a particular focus on Bahnea/Bonyha and the Cristuru Secuiesc/Székelykeresztúr area, and especially my own native village of Șimonești/Siménfalva.³

Although the present paper adopts a somewhat flexible approach in terms of location and time, unrelated phenomena are not juxtaposed. The goal of this spatial and temporal flexibility is to demonstrate the extent to which the presented and analyzed phenomena can be considered generally representative of Transylvanian villages. The household, as I will argue, has lost some of its functions (and is no longer necessarily an institution capable of local adaptation and long-term existence). A large part of its work has been outsourced. Some of its regenerative functions have been outsourced. And part of its consumption has even been outsourced. It has become, or is becoming, disconnected from its own ecological and sociocultural environment. Furthermore, cooperative communities — in the diverse forms in which they existed during the socialist era and the early years of the change of regime — have now become part of local collective memory rather than everyday social practices. The paper thus documents the estrangement of these communities from the local environment, their detachment, and their loss of control over their own resources, taking as its framework the approaches of resilience.⁴

The concept of resilience⁵ was introduced by Crawford Stanley Holling, originally in the field of ecology (Holling 1973), to facilitate understanding of non-linear dynamics, such as the processes by which ecosystems maintain themselves in the face of disruption and change (Berkes et al. 2003:13). In this context, resilience is characterized by three key attributes: (1) the level of change alongside which the system retains control over its functions and structure; (2) the degree of self-organization; and (3) the increase in the system's capacity for learning and adaptation (ibid.). Resilience does not simply mean continuity and stability in the face of external influences (Folke 2006:259). Indeed, such qualities appear to lie increasingly outside the interpretation of the concept (Holtorf 2018:639). Resilience is rather the capacity to capitalize on opportunities and demonstrate adaptivity in the wake of disruptions (Folke 2006:529). “Resilience is the capacity to absorb shocks, utilize them, reorganize, and continue to develop without losing fundamental functions” (Barthel 2014:428). Sustainability also belongs to the concept of resilience (Holtorf 2018:639): “A resilient social–ecological system, which can buffer a great deal of change or disturbance, is synonymous with ecological, economic, and social sustainability” (Berkes et al. 2003:15). In an increasingly unsustainable global economic context, built on the exploitation of resources, sustainability is itself an act of resistance, opposition, and sometimes withdrawal, or even an attempt to regain control over local worlds, which acquires political meaning precisely because of the intensity of the context in which it is played out (cf. Scott 1996). Furthermore, resilience can be conceptualized as a tool, an approach, or a way of thinking that offers a perspective for the organization and management of knowledge (Folke 2006:260). Thus, the present study operationalizes the concept of resilience as an academic tool by means of which we are able to make claims about local adaptation, self-sufficiency, and local organization from a new perspective.

The analysis distinguishes between the local and non-local world, while not losing sight of the fact that this distinction is merely an analytical tool to make the subject and its inherent problems easier to grasp. The distinction is analogous to the way in which the social sciences direct attention towards everyday situations and everyday lifeworlds, while at the same time investigating the presence and manifestations of power in everyday life (cf. Gyáni 1997:152). This analytical distinction is also important because, in my interpretation, resilience implies a connection with the immediate ecological and social environment — and the profundity that is based on knowledge and practice — as well as a capacity to influence that environment, to adapt, and to change. In other words, it implies agency. The parallel with everyday lifeworlds is valid in this respect, too. An everyday lifeworld can be defined as the concrete location and moment of the experience and observation of culture. It is the subjective world, the individual's everyday horizon of experience, which they perceive, participate in, and are able to influence on a daily basis (Kaschuba 2004:108). The agency of individual actors can manifest itself only in the social space that they are able to influence. “An invisible agency that makes no difference, produces no transformation, leaves no trace, and enters no account is not an agency.” (Latour 2005:53) In other words, households can have agency in their own environment.

The (intertwined and) omnipresent functioning of the nation-state and the market overrides this local agency.⁶ However, it not only calls agency into question but also diminishes diversity — another important component of resilience (cf. Berkes et al. 2003:23) — by relegating locally accessible resources to the background. Or it simply encourages households and communities to de-emphasize the importance of these locally available resources, since large distribution networks are (apparently) able to solve every local problem. It is also important to note that, beyond the strictly economic aspects,⁷ the issue contains a component of symbolic identification, which is likewise linked to agency: local culture — the household and cooperation — as a source of community cohesion and as the background to identity and belonging are equally relevant in this context. In other words, the present study also demonstrates how the household is relegated to the background as a source of identity and fulfillment.

Peasant households and peasant communities: The importance of local worlds

One of the main arguments put forward by the present study is that a significant proportion of the resources of the traditional (peasant) village in Transylvania were produced, invested, and consumed locally. According to Alan Macfarlane, the Eastern European (according to his terminology: classical, see Macfarlane 1979:33) peasantry — in contrast to the Western peasantry, and besides several other factors — was characterized by the household as a form of organization, strong community control, low mobility, and the secondary role of market relations (Macfarlane 1979:18–33). All these factors reinforce self-sufficiency. However, it is important to underline that I consider neither the peasant villages themselves, nor the societies of the individual peasant villages, as homogeneous. Peasant villages have always been articulated. One of the important traits of the modern history of the peasant village is increased articulation. I am thus aware that self-sufficiency, as an ideal and a practice, was not uniformly characteristic of households (Egyed 1981:226–246; Kideckel 2006:122–147; Vidacs 2015:27). There were many different types of peasant villages, and many different types of individual households within them (cf. Egyed, ibid.). However, beyond these cultural elements, and beyond the patron–client relationships that bridged social differences (Hofer 1991), they were nevertheless connected by the ideal of self-sufficiency and by aspirations related to the land. However, until around the time of collectivization, which completely overturned village society (cf. Kligman – Verdery 2011; Oláh 2001), the patterns of self-sufficiency and household organization did not disappear entirely, and some were revived after the regime change (cf. Szabó 2009, 2014a). In the broader, Eastern European context, the role and resilience of smallholdings in food production must also be taken into account (Visser et al. 2019).

In the local organization of resources, an important role is played, on the one hand, by the ecological environment that provides the framework for village life, and on the other hand by the ways in which the households are connected to this ecological environment and to one another. However, part of my argument will be that these local communities are in fact part of a broader, complex system. I also consider it important to emphasize that, historically speaking, these complex systems have always been an influential presence in village life, although their significance and their weight have become increasingly pronounced since the 18th and 19th centuries, with the growing role of the state and the market.

The two institutions that are of particular importance from the point of view of the present analysis in terms of forms of adaptation, resource allocation, resource exploitation, and the organization of that exploitation, are, on the one hand, the household (the unit of farming, production, and consumption), and on the other hand the local community (the flexible, occasionally changing network and fabric of households). In both cases, one of the important features of agricultural practice is self-sufficiency, or rather the ideal of self-sufficiency, since there was probably never an opportunity for actual self-sufficiency in the history of the peasant village.

Peasant households nevertheless certainly endeavored to generate — as far as possible — the energy and resources necessary for their survival, with the goal of minimizing reliance on external resources. The community, however, was an organization of households that aspired to self-sufficiency, thus in this sense the goal of self-sufficiency can also be observed at this level. Peasant households and communities were aware of the importance of the ecological environment and of the role it played in their lives. And while they probably cannot be considered environmentally conscious in the modern sense of the word (since the problem itself did not even exist in this sense), they were sensitive to balances (Foster 1982). Ecologists who study traditional land use and traditional ecological knowledge claim that the world's first documented reference to ecosystem services is to be found in the Szekler village laws (see Molnár et al. 2015). The peasant community sometimes regulated in meticulous detail the use of the fields on the outskirts of the village, animal husbandry, and access to the environment and communal property (see Imreh 1973, 1983). The community played a key role in access to environmental resources, and one of the fundamental principles was to meet household needs (Imreh 1983:382 and 398). The households within the community knew one another and observed one another, and, in many instances, they worked in voluntary cooperation (Imreh 1983:139–140). This made more precise regulations unnecessary.

It can thus be argued that by means of community cooperation and control, households endeavored to meet their own needs in a sustainable way and by using local resources. In the traditional village, “households were the units of farming, while the village community managed the overall system of cultivation” (Molnár et al. 2015). One might even say that households and village communities were concerned with long-term prosperity, and in this sense with sustainability, too. Seen in this light, these practices were also sustainable: even if we reject the idea that all peasant practices remained unchanged for a thousand years, we do encounter certain practices, techniques, and tools, which, albeit with minor changes and adaptations, defined life in peasant villages for hundreds of years.

Peasant communities, external relations, and changing conditions of success

A successful peasant household, as explained above, meant the successful management of local resources: control over land, animals, and other assets, even communal ones, focus attention on the material aspect of the question, while control over marital and demographic resources, and cultural, social, and symbolic capital, draws attention to its social and intellectual aspects. We are also aware, of course, that economic and social relationships beyond the local world frequently played a role in these local successes: connections with the market and with the representatives of power were able to contribute to the acquisition of material wealth or the accumulation of social capital in ways that differed according to both place and time. With respect to the history of the Hungarian peasantry, market relations might be illustrated by cattle breeding and involvement in trade (Belényesy 1956), while an example of its relationship with the state and authorities might be the Szeklerland under military rule (Imreh 1973). These relationships were, of course, multifaceted and, as mentioned above, they varied in terms of both place and time.

One significant feature of historical changes is the growing prominence of external relationships. Such developments are inevitably accompanied by changes in the broader social and economic context. We might refer to such changes as “waves of modernization.” In this sense, as posited by Eric Wolf and Immanuel Wallerstein, I consider peasant households and communities to be social and economic actors that became increasingly involved in the outside world and increasingly exposed to external processes. It is worth emphasizing once again that in this approach the distinction between the external and internal world can essentially remain valid only at the analytical level, since it is clear from the analysis of historical processes that external influences (mainly the market and the state) are gradually becoming part of local systems and lifeworlds (or, to use another term that also fits within the general terminology employed in the present study, ecosystems).

Numerous examples might be cited to illustrate this process. In economic — and, inevitably, environmental — terms, we might mention the consolidation of the Carpathian Basin in the eighteenth century, the building of cities, and the growing demand for wood, the boom in the European grain industry, and flood control, drainage, and land clearance, or the construction of road and railroad networks. These were global processes that resulted in sometimes immediate, sometimes slow, gradual changes in local worlds, and that led to the rearrangement of the natural environment and local conditions. The creation and operation of collective farms may be one of the most illustrative, and perhaps the most extreme, examples of this process. This large-scale rearrangement of local conditions fundamentally transformed the society and economy of the village, as well as the ways in which culture was organized.⁸ In one of his essays, Sándor Oláh clearly describes how the success of local cooperative farms was dependent on good relationships with the county administration (Oláh 2008). Interviews recorded with the last president of the collective farm in Bahnea/Bonyha support this claim: in order to be successful, a cooperative farm not only had to control and organize the use of resources at the local level, but also had to be actively involved in the administrative world beyond the village on the one hand, and in the socialist supply system on the other.

In light of the above, I argue that local success in these new contexts will involve new components, and that these new components will become increasingly pronounced. Thus, while the previous economic and social components of success remain valid — albeit to varying degrees — the importance, or even dominance, of new resources is becoming unquestionable. David Kideckel's analysis of the socialist village in Transylvania (in the Fogaras/Făgăraș region), and of the changing conditions of household success, illustrates this process: the importance of connections with the city and involvement in party structures — the use of external resources — became increasingly important in terms of the success of individual families (Kideckel 2006:129–130). Following the regime change, the situation perhaps altered to the extent that while, until 1989, belonging to the party hierarchy was perhaps one of the most important components of success, after 1989 the market emerged as the dominant institution.

Indeed, one of the most important findings to emerge from my research in Bahnea/Bonyha concerns the use of external resources: my research led me to the conclusion that those locals who are truly successful (primarily in economic terms) are those who are able to use local resources by channeling them into external relationships and by successfully integrating their activities into the external market (cf. Szabó 2013:130–131). I take as an example one of the large agricultural producers in Bahnea/Bonyha: at their peak, they were farming more than 1,200 ha, and their products — at one point they had over 300 Mangalica pigs, for example — were sold outside the village, often abroad (Szabó 2013:146–150).⁹

Changes in households, communities, and economic practices

The changes described in the previous section, in terms of their general processes and framework conditions, are worth tracing and analyzing at the level of the household and community.

In this context, therefore, the household is considered as the basic unit of rural peasant society. The concept encompasses the social unit, the family, and the economic unit. In this approach, the household is essentially organized within the framework of the family.¹⁰ In the context of peasant society, this unit of production, distribution, and consumption is powerfully influenced by self-sufficiency, or by the aspiration to self-sufficiency (Chayanov 1966). The household is the primary social and economic unit that connects its members to society, as well as to their own environment, through the often complex arrangement of land use and access to other assets, since the owners who use these assets and who benefit from their use are traditionally not individuals but households. However, the problem of self-sufficiency raises other questions: households are linked not only to their immediate environment but also to the broader social and economic arenas — that is, to the state and the market (Mayer 2005:405). Their self-sufficiency and autonomy are — or are not — achieved in these contexts. Self-sufficiency is thus in fact an ideal that largely depends on opportunities within the given social system. We know that contemporary social processes are not necessarily favorable in terms of self-sufficiency and autonomy in a general sense (Gregory 2009:143).¹¹

In summary, I consider households to be flexible, adaptable institutions that exist over long periods of time, even globally (i.e., they have long been found in all peasant societies), and that are of significance even beyond peasant societies. And although my analysis will not extend to working-class households in large cities, or to urban/peri-urban households in the Global South, I will attempt to draw on the insights gained from such studies (cf. Smith – Wallerstein 1992), in which the authors repeatedly conclude that households can even help to mitigate crises and shocks (Bossen 1981). In this sense, I also consider the household to be one of the most important units and institutions of local life. It can thus be considered both as an institution and as a principle for economic organization and management.¹² This is particularly relevant in the context of the long-term study of Hungarian peasant households, since the extent, and the radical nature, of the transformations that have taken place since World War II, and that continue to take place in the present day, are thrown into greater relief from this perspective.

As I have already argued above, peasant households cannot be said to have relied uniformly on their own resources (Vidacs 2015:28). However, what we can say is that even the landless peasantry, who made their living from wage labor, strove to produce and acquire, as far as possible, with the ideal of self-sufficiency in mind. Edit Fél and Tamás Hofer provide a vivid illustration of this in their book. They describe the case of an agrarian proletarian family, in which the elderly head of the household is overcome with emotion when his son brings home the quantity of grain (locally referred to as a “life”) that is needed to sustain the family for a year (Fél – Hofer 1997:178). The diversified product structure, multiple livelihoods, and the combining of animal husbandry and crop cultivation all contributed to this self-sufficiency. We have data and concrete descriptions of this diversity and of adaptation to the natural land (Andrásfalvy 2007) from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries (Imreh 1973, 1983), the early twentieth century (Mohay 1994), and the mid-twentieth century (Fél – Hofer 1997). In mountainous areas, however, even in the 21st century, we find traces not only of this ideal, but also of the connectedness of households and individuals with nature (Babai et al. 2014).

Self-sufficient households were connected by various forms of cooperative spaces and practices, including shared land use, shared resources (the exploitation of pastures, forests, reeds, water, and pannage, to mention only a few), and the often highly detailed regulation of access rights; labor cooperation, ranging from the more strenuous or monotonous agricultural tasks to those performed more rapidly (haying, plowing, harvesting, forest work, etc.); the construction of houses and other buildings; and the organization and management of significant life events, from baptisms to burials (Szabó 2009). All of these are examples that illustrate the functioning of cooperative communities. However, these institutions do not necessarily have a moral basis, despite inevitably being linked to moral concepts. Instead, they are institutions of economic and social organization that emerge and persist within the given natural and technical conditions (Szabó 2014b): when a household has to leave its own environment, it can rely on this cooperating community.

Community — over and above any idealization and bearing in mind the criticism of communitarianism (Blackshaw 2010:130–136) — “is a fusion of feeling and thought, of tradition and commitment, of membership and volition. It may be found in, or be given symbolic expression by, locality, religion, nation, race, occupation… Its archetype is the family….”¹³ The locally organized cooperative community, in this framework, is the local community itself, or a smaller part of the local community, the members of which cooperate with one another in work and other areas of life. The boundaries and membership of the cooperating community may vary — different people, and different numbers of people, may take part in the various kinds of agricultural work (harvesting corn, for example, or roofing buildings). Importantly, cooperating communities accumulate shared knowledge and practices, which are then more or less evenly distributed at village level precisely because the boundaries and membership of the cooperating communities vary. The functioning of a cooperating community is neither contingent nor random. At the level of practice, both its principles and its functioning are subject to rules and are systematically organized (cf. Szabó 2009).

Collectivization and socialist economic organization changed these structures radically, since the autonomous peasant economy constituted an obstacle to the socialist transition. Communities other than the party and those closely affiliated with it were regarded by socialist ideology as rivals. However, it was precisely the socialist organization of the economy that led to the renewed importance of the household — in Hungary, via the stockpiling made possible by household production (Vidacs 2015:31), and in Transylvania/Romania as a way of counterbalancing increasingly acute supply problems in the 1980s (Kideckel 2006:122; Vasile 2015:168–169). This likewise led to the survival of some cooperative systems: households turned to each other for help and received assistance from one another (Szabó 2014c:465; Vidacs 2015:34–35).

At the time of the regime change, peasant society and the peasant household, in the strict sense of the word, were things of the past. However, due to the nature of Romanian reprivatization, economic units emerged that were reminiscent of peasant households and revived their practices: small-scale production, multifaceted farms that combined crop cultivation and livestock production, and, in many places, an extensive system of cooperation that made use of the old patterns were established. In the course of my doctoral research, I also came across one household that reported purchasing only oil and salt from the store, while producing all other items themselves (Szabó 2009:71). This clearly describes merely dreams and aspirations, although it does indicate how the household was able to serve as a space for reorganization and survival amidst the uncertainties of the transition (cf. Pine 2002:96). These processes also had an emotional, restorative character — as was the case throughout Eastern Europe and the former socialist bloc (Giordano – Kostova 2002:77–79) — which contributed to the euphoria and enthusiasm with which households once again embraced agriculture (cf. Peti – Szabó 2006).

The re-appropriation of land for cultivation, the absence of any technical background, and the extant, inherited, and familiar patterns revived household practices on the one hand, and community cooperation on the other (cf. Szabó 2014c:466). As mentioned above, one of the important features of the traditional peasant economy is the detailed regulation of land use. Although not in as much detail as in the Szekler village laws, village and street communities were still regulating the use of village land in the 1990s (cf. Szabó 2009:111). The opening up of otherwise individually owned orchards, hayfields, and stubble fields at the end of the summer or in the fall, and their use as communal resources, was still common practice until around the mid to late 1990s. By then it had become evident that small-scale households, no longer fully peasant although based on peasant traditions and practices, and cooperation among them, were no longer sustainable in a strictly economic and financial sense. The narrow economist approach increasingly gained prominence as “marketization” became an important aspect of the transition (Hann et al. 2002:21).

From the early 2000s, and especially in the wake of Romania's accession to the EU, there were notable changes in agricultural production in rural areas, including the transformation of small-scale production, also influenced by subsidy schemes favoring large-scale production (cf. Fox 2011). Self-sufficient, peasant-style households increasingly abandoned production, land holdings began to be concentrated, and agricultural production was increasingly provided by large farms. This was inevitably accompanied by the transformation — and in many cases the disappearance — of cooperative systems, which were not encouraged by large estates or by significant disparities in the size of estates. The shift in the meaning of the word kaláka (voluntary cooperative work) is telling: as local practice is increasingly transformed into a nationally canonized phenomenon, what we now refer to as kaláka is the assistance provided by Hungarian architecture students to renovate folk baths in the Szeklerland. Technically, this is no longer kaláka, largely because locals are unable to reciprocate. As local worlds disintegrated and broke apart, the patron–client systems that had previously provided some social cohesion also changed. Day laborers complained about a lack of work due to the emergence of bigger farms and the mechanization of labor. In turn, large farms complained that they were unable to find workers.

In the following section, these changes will be illustrated by means of examples of activities that once dominated the work of households but that have since undergone significant transformation.

Changing local practices: From self-sufficient households to capitalist farms

One of the prominent sites of transformation is the plot and the plot structure. Changes in the structure of plots can even be seen as a litmus test of the transition: the double plot, a common feature in Transylvanian villages, underwent a radical transformation during this period. Agricultural work — cultivation and animal husbandry — was either excluded from household activities or became increasingly concentrated in the second yard, or in many cases behind the barn. The change in the utilization of time and the structure of production is also illustrated by a response I once received, in relation to the decline in vegetable production: my interviewee explained that he certainly was not going to worry about the weather and getting his hands dirty, when vegetables were always available in the shop. This is an entirely different attitude from that observed in peasant households. As part of the new lifestyle, front yards were transformed into spaces primarily dedicated to leisure activities. These yards were grassed over¹⁴ (something that would have been unthinkable in the context of animal husbandry), playhouses and swings were set up for children, and summerhouses and arbors for adults, while in many places cart sheds were converted into garages. Households increasingly became places of consumption and leisure rather than production and consumption, indicating a radical change in the everyday activities of households.

In 2015 and 2016, we implemented a multidisciplinary research project, employing the findings and methodologies of art history, ethnography, ecology, and archaeology, in and around the village of Nușfalău/Szilágynagyfalu to investigate landscape use and natural and cultural heritage management (see Szabó et al. 2017). As the above-mentioned processes were given particular emphasis in the research, in the spring of 2017 we carried out a survey of 110 households in the village, as well as interviews and focus group discussions on the transformation of household practices.¹⁵ Our interest extended beyond the process itself to the tensions arising from the transformation of households, fluctuations in identity, and the compensatory nostalgia employed to handle such fluctuations. The interviews also revealed that although local people regard change as a natural phenomenon, their experience of the related processes is not without tension. In what follows, I draw on the findings of the survey to highlight the local characteristics of this process.¹⁶

As discussed above, one of the defining characteristics of peasant households that aspired to self-sufficiency was diversification, including the combination of crop cultivation and livestock production, and the capacity to earn a livelihood from multiple sources. The framework for this was provided by village agriculture and the plot structure that had originated in the Middle Ages and had thus survived for centuries (cf. Szabó I. 1969:9–77). This naturally gave rise to the mosaic land structure, the system of sustainable land use, the application of animal manure (and natural fertilization, e.g., via grazing sheep and the use of sheep pens), and crop rotation (the cultivation of leguminous plants to restore soil fertility). Households kept a variety of livestock. And even if not everyone had horses or cows (again, village society was also financially articulated), the keeping of pigs was extremely widespread. At the same time, the importance of pig farming was enhanced by the fact that pigs were integrated into the ecological environment without exerting significant pressure on the resources utilized by humans and other animals, since, before collectivization, they were allowed to graze in herds in areas that could not be otherwise used, while, on the other hand, pigs also consumed household waste. The keeping and slaughtering of pigs also has a symbolic significance, representing the autonomy of the household, including the wish to have control over one's own life, as well as the rejection of industrial meat products.

In pig farming, therefore, the earlier self-sufficiency and self-sustainability — or at least an approximation of it — is achieved through the establishment of a local market (where locals have an insight into the production process and a direct relationship with the animal farmer) and through the rejection of industrial meat production.

However, as shown by the survey data, patterns of cow (cattle) and horse breeding have undergone a radical transformation. Of the surveyed households, ninety-three had no cattle, seven kept one or two cows, six had three to four, and three had between eight and thirty-five, while one household alone had 170 head of cattle.¹⁷ Importantly, this last household also had 2,000 sheep and farmed hundreds of hectares of land, comprising both its own and rented fields. The distribution of horses shows a broadly similar pattern. Ninety-six households reported no horses, ten households had one horse, two had two horses, one had eight horses, while one household had ten. The owner of the ten horses was also the farmer who owned 170 head of cattle — he worked the land with tractors and kept horses only as a hobby. The data clearly indicate that some kind of peasant model can still be observed in ten to twelve of the 110 households, and that farms are becoming increasingly profit oriented, while hobbies — like the transformation of yards for leisure activities — are becoming a determining factor in livestock farming (the keeping of horses, in our case).¹⁸ Tellingly, prior to the household survey analyzed here, our survey and inventory of heritage in the region around the village of Nușfalău/Szilágynagyfalu, along the Upper Barcău/Berettyó, revealed just one blacksmith's shop, which had otherwise recently closed.

The transformation of animal husbandry is not only meaningful in itself, of course, nor does it simply result in a change in the structure of yards and plots. Rather, as previously stated, the reorganization of yards is merely indicative of bigger processes — the transformation of animal husbandry, crop production, land use, and production regimes. However, it is also important to recognize that households are — or rather were — connected to nature and to the ecological environment through animal husbandry, thus changes in animal husbandry have led to the alteration, and in some cases the radical transformation, of these connections. As a result, relationships among households and the network of households have also changed: an important area of cooperation (the common grazing and pasturing of animals) is vanishing, while an often conflictual relationship is emerging between landowners and tenants (or simply users).

Due to the abandonment of plowlands and hayfields, much of the land around the village is becoming pastureland, mainly for grazing sheep, and sheep farming, which was previously an integral part of the peasant economy, is becoming increasingly integrated into the capitalist and competitive market (cf. Szabó 2013:113). Without going into specific detail, it is also worth taking note of developments in the number of sheep: 102 households no longer keep any sheep at all, five households keep between two and ten sheep, and finally three households keep 200, 400, and 2,000 sheep respectively (to the nearest hundred). These trends are in keeping with my observations in Bahnea/Bonyha. At the same time, traditional knowledge in relation to grazing is disappearing. During our fieldwork in wooded pastures, we were surprised to learn the extent to which the shepherds regarded their activities as temporary, and how little understanding they had of their environment, grazing, and plant communities — in contrast to reports from other regions (Szabó et al. 2017:131–132).

Seen from the perspective of adaptation and resilience, there is another important feature of the change in attitudes towards the natural environment and resource use. Foraging, the non-interventional, non-productive utilization of natural resources, was a prominent aspect of land use among Hungarian peasants (Gunda 1966). The importance of foraging and of the changing use of natural resources can be compared to the significance of wood cutting (Andrásfalvy 2007:217–259). The use of nature can also be interpreted in terms of ecosystem services (Molnár et al. 2015).¹⁹ However, with the change in the structure of the economy, the amount of time spent in nature is also decreasing (Vadász 2023): occasions when members of the household go by cart or on foot to the fields with their tools on their shoulders, foraging as they go, are becoming increasingly rare, or simply no longer exist. “We don't often see people [out in the fields]. In maize season and the like we'd see people with their hoes on their shoulders, heading for the fields and coming home again. That's a thing of the past now.” (Focus group interview, Nușfalău/Szilágynagyfalu, May 3, 2017). This transformation, and this kind of withdrawal from nature, are corroborated by data from Bahnea/Bonyha: “At one time, a good few years back, I'd walk the hillsides too; we'd go to the forest sometimes, just sometimes, rarely, but now it seems so far away” (M. F., woman); “…so I don't go to the fields, I don't go foraging in the fields” (I. K., woman, collected by Tímea Pap). Besides this, market distribution plays an increasingly important role: “There are all sorts of teas in the shop, but the fact is, not one of them is any good” (I. K., woman). Of course, I am not claiming that foraging has disappeared entirely, but its role in everyday household practice has certainly changed.

Besides the marginalization of animal husbandry and foraging, the transformation of peasant autonomy can be illustrated through the example of bread, and, more precisely, by the decline in bread making (cf. Vidacs 2015:32). As mentioned above in relation to the head of the agrarian proletarian family who was moved to tears, grain has always held special significance for the Hungarian peasantry. In many places it was even referred to as “life.” In the context of nutrition, bread played both a symbolic and a ritual role. It was almost obligatory for girls to acquire bread-making skills, and there were regional variations that persisted up until collectivization, or even in the socialist period that followed (Korompainé 1976:287). Bread making is increasingly being relegated from household practice, although there are still households where bread continues to be baked for a variety of reasons (as something that is cheaper, healthier, more filling, or traditional). In Bahnea/Bonyha, I came across a household that even cultivated large quantities of grain, where bread was baked on the premises to feed the dozens of seasonal workers who gathered there daily. Nevertheless, as a general tendency traditional bread making is on the decline. Again, the data from Nușfalău/Szilágynagyfalu are telling: seventy-four households no longer baked bread at all; twenty-three households said they rarely baked bread; ten households responded that they often or very often baked bread; while just three households baked bread on a regular basis. This simultaneously practical and symbolic aspect of self-sufficiency is gradually vanishing from among household routines.

As a final example, I present changes in the systems of cooperation. In my earlier publications, which were largely based on the research carried out for my doctoral thesis, I examined this question from several perspectives. In these studies, I not only relied on examples from Hungary or the Carpathian Basin but also endeavored to present international parallels, demonstrating that it is the pre-industrial peasant community, and the society in border areas, that tend to favor the survival of such work. In these same studies, I also traced the general decline in strictly labor-oriented cooperation, and, no less paradoxically, while many forms of cooperation survived under socialism, following a recurrence in the 1990s they had become increasingly rare by the mid-2000s (Szabó 2009, 2014c). Forms of cooperation have survived mainly in the context of the organization of ritual life (Szabó 2009), while in the context of a discourse that emphatically, but only latently, employs moral attitudes, the national canonization of forms of cooperation, especially kaláka, has begun (Szabó 2014b).

Working together in a crisis is considered as a specific form of collaboration. In the event of natural disasters, fire damage, the loss of large animals (cows, horses), or an untimely, unexpected death, the community would rally round, organize a collection, or offer their work to help the family or household in need (Imreh 1983:139–145; Szabó 2009). In the early 2000s, these systems also ground to a halt. I cite the example of a household in a village on the Târnava Mică / Kis-Küküllő river, where a collection was organized because of the death of a sow. The villagers helped the victim according to their custom. Later it turned out that the meat from the sow had been sold in the neighboring village. The incident radically shook the villagers' confidence in the established system. In another example of a crisis of confidence, also from the Târnava Mică / Kis-Küküllő region, milk-producing households went on strike to obtain a better price from their wholesaler. Later, however, they realized that everyone was still selling milk to the wholesaler in secret, undermining the impact of the strike (Szabó 2006).

Nevertheless, there is no denying that households do have the capacity to make decisions, and that these decisions are legitimate. Indeed, households are the economic units that, at a given moment, make decisions that are optimal for them based on the information at their disposal (Chayanov 1966; Ortiz 2005). This remains valid even taking into account that some decisions are embedded in practices and cultural beliefs (Ortiz 2005) and thus do not necessarily — or do not only — reflect individual considerations but sometimes also the accumulated experience of generations.

Market developments, the globalization of production, and the exposure of local worlds

The interconnectedness of the globalized world can be illustrated by numerous processes and examples. One notable case was when the container ship Ever Given ran aground in the Suez Canal in the spring of 2021: according to some sources, the stranding of the ship brought approximately ten percent of global trade to a halt. The disruption was particularly noticeable in terms of European goods delivery.²⁰ The interconnectedness of the world and its complex production and distribution networks are not, of course, something new. Eric Wolf argues that isolated cultures never existed, and that interconnectedness increased dramatically following the European expansion initiated by Columbus (Wolf 2010 [1982]). According to Immanuel Wallerstein, this expansion has led to the construction of a world system (one that was already inherent in European feudalism) in which core countries connect to themselves peripheral and semi-peripheral countries that provide cheap raw materials and cheap labor (Wallerstein 1974). It is a system in which the transformation of production at one end of the world affects wages at the other end — and vice versa. Local worlds are becoming increasingly dependent on these global processes.

The European grain boom in the nineteenth century, and its subsequent decline, provide a telling example of these processes. The growth in the urban population of Europe increased demand for grain (high-quality grain for bread making). This also gave rise to natural and social transformations on the periphery of Europe: the drainage, plowing, and cultivation of previously waterlogged areas with a diversity of uses transformed the characteristic, and until then dominant, forms and patterns of land relief in the Carpathian Basin. This was complemented by a growth in demand for wood and the resulting deforestation, legal reforms, and changes in the appearance of catchment areas, which provided further justification for river regulation and drainage. New grain production areas were created, along with new estates linked to European trade. The part-time bands of laborers recruited to work on these estates often came from mountainous areas and hoped to earn their annual supply of grain by providing a few weeks of harvesting and threshing (Andrásfalvy 2007:19–20; Borsos 2000:139–149; Egyed 1981:237–240). A more or less well-functioning local system that reflected regional patterns of labor division emerged (even if, as subsequently became evident, its ecological sustainability was questionable, cf. Borsos 2000:156–157).

At the same time, however, conditions for the cultivation of grain overseas improved, shipping became cheaper, and, by the end of the century, overseas grains represented stiff competition to the grain being produced in Southern and Eastern Europe. The appearance of cheap grain led to a decline in wages, which resulted in general discontent and, in many places, agrarian movements and protests (Gunst 1993). This was subsequently exacerbated and intensified by mechanization, and particularly the emergence of threshing machines, which greatly reduced the demand for human labor (Egyed 1981:219).

Reforms implemented by the state in response to market pressures had a comparable impact. The abolition of traditional community rights and the proportional distribution of land (Hungarian: arányosítás) had disastrous consequences in the Szeklerland. The inhabitants of Szekler villages — exploiting the characteristic features of a plot-based agricultural system that was communally organized and managed — had varying degrees of access to their natural environment, and especially to grazing rights and the right to gather firewood from the landowner's forest. As a result of the proportional distribution of land, a significant number of poor Szekler inhabitants were deprived of these benefits. The buying and selling (i.e., the marketing) of forests and forest rights exacerbated the situation, even amongst those who did obtain forests, since speculators were quick to seize the available opportunities, and, lacking financial awareness, households were swiftly dispossessed of their assets (Egyed 1981:202–203).

What lessons are we able to draw from the foregoing? I have already mentioned E. Mayer's research on peasant households in the Andes. According to Mayer, (peasant) households must be seen as part of a system of interconnections, in which they are linked, on the one hand, to the local world and other households, and, on the other, to the nation-state and the market (Mayer 2005:405). Their connection to the latter two can be traced through historical examples, as can the way in which peasant households are at a disadvantage in the nation-state and global arenas. However, there is also a (worrying) interpretation of these processes from the perspective of neoliberal economic policies and practices. It is once again E. Mayer who points out how neoliberal practices transform those aspirations that still, to some extent, respect local specificities, and how peasant households are forced into the position of global poverty production, where households are seen as inefficient producers and insufficient consumers (Mayer 2002:313–323).

Peoples' lives and local worlds can be seen in the context of repositioning, and being repositioned, among the immediate environment (individuals, households, local groups), state structures, and market activities (Wacquant 2012; Szabó 2016). One of the significant components of this positioning is the way in which these households are talked about, and the practices that emerge as a result. Underdevelopment/backwardness as a label, and development and modernization as aspirations, are powerful instruments for initiating the transformation of local worlds in the context of neoliberal practices. However, these processes are largely outside the control of local actors. Moreover, such processes are accompanied by a decline in the role of the state and state involvement, and by the financialization of households (Palomera 2014), as well as the emergence of market-based (or quasi-market-based) competition in place of state involvement. While apparently giving households agency, financialization in fact results in subordination (Palomera 2014; Gregory 2012), while competition leads to the emergence of project classes, in which the new discourses and practices are controlled by more or less closed groups (Kovách – Kučerová 2006).²¹

Historical examples and contemporary developments show that in an ever-changing world, external pressures on households and communities are increasing. Households and communities have little control over these external pressures and expectations, or over global processes. Local actors have limited opportunity to shape these processes. This is what I refer to as subaltern rurality (subordinate or dependent rurality, Szabó 2013:104, 231), where both ideologies and ideals, and the practices by which they are implemented, are externally driven. I contrast this with having disposal over locally available and locally controlled resources. I would also like to point out that the importance — or rather the severity — of the marginalization of local resources truly becomes evident in this context.

In this context, the following question is worth raising once again: What is the significance of households, and of the communities that connect them, in this globally interconnected world? Households deserve to be seen as resilient, adaptive institutions that absorb the negative consequences of shocks. One important conclusion that has emerged from household research since the 1970s is that households and household resources play a crucial role when it comes to surviving and adapting to crises. It is for this reason that Joan Smith and Immanuel Wallerstein call households the long-term institutions of the world economy (Smith – Wallerstein 1992). Furthermore, multi-site research focusing on Eastern Europe has revealed that households were providing a viable and resilient framework for economic activity even at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries (Gudeman – Hann 2015:6). Not to mention the significant role that households, and the small-scale economic practices that are organized around them, play today in farming (energy extraction and food production), landscape maintenance, the preservation of the mosaic landscape structure (Babai et al. 2014; Szabó et al. 2017), the maintenance of genetic diversity (Mayer 2002:327), and the repudiation of monopolies (Bové – Dufour 2002).

My argument is explicitly limited to socioeconomic aspects. However, it is also worth briefly highlighting the identity-related factors, and the components of freedom and non-dependence, that can originate from the functioning of self-sufficient, autonomous households (Vasile 2015:177–178; Vidacs 2015:28). This same identity-related perspective is also applicable in the case of well-functioning communities. It perhaps goes without saying that a stable sense of belonging is an enormous (emotional) resource in the present-day context. But let us limit ourselves here to the socioeconomic aspects. We cannot ignore the fact that communities often work in non-democratic ways, and that they can also foster exclusion and negative prejudices (Blackshaw 2010:130–136). Nor can we ignore the fact that the transformation of external (bridging) and internal (bonding) relations, and the shift of emphasis to the former, disrupts access to resources. This latter phenomenon, however, in fact serves to uphold our argument, underscoring as it does the disintegration of communities. Like households, communities can be effective tools in the handling of crises and shocks: some researchers have even concluded that the biggest influence on community stability has been not so much the available resources as cooperation among households (Ungar 2018).

I have already mentioned community crises and crises of confidence in the context of the (ultimately unsuccessful) local collection and the (likewise unsuccessful) milk strike. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt as to the importance of communities. In the preceding paragraph, I described the household as an appropriate institution for absorbing shocks. In 2005, my native village of Șimonești/Siménfalva — and other villages in the Feernic/Nyikó Valley, from Lupeni/Farkaslaka to Rugănești/Rugonfalva — were hit by flooding. The unprecedented flash floods, caused by sudden heavy rainfall as well as deforestation, destroyed houses and farm buildings and swept away fodder and livestock. Sadly, human lives were also lost. Once the floods had receded, community solidarity was unprecedented: village inhabitants who had suffered little or no damage responded almost as one, helping to clear the debris, wash clothes, and prepare food. Help even came from neighboring villages. This is an almost classic case of community-level resilience (see Berkes – Ross 2013). Nor is it limited to Transylvanian or Szekler villages apparently, since there are examples of community cooperation elsewhere in the wake of natural disasters (Solnit 2009).²²

The world is, of course, becoming an increasingly complex place. And households and local communities are integral aspects of this increasing complexity. They would probably find it hard to do without the kind of products that are delivered by container ships, which can end up running aground, perhaps for days on end. It is also important to recognize the extent to which this kind of complexity contributes to vulnerability. The following question is worth raising once again: How many systems does a rural household and a local community depend on today, and in how many ways?²³ In the interests of sustainability, it may well be advisable to think in terms of globally less complex systems while simultaneously embracing the diversity and variability of local systems (Berkes et al. 2003:11), which may, on the one hand, prove less efficient,²⁴ or even redundant, while on the other hand generating greater resilience and self-sufficiency (Van Egmond 2014:207).

However, it is clear that local and non-local systems have become difficult to disentangle. They have become inextricably intertwined, with the external world becoming an inseparable part of local worlds. The use of resources has changed, and embeddedness in external worlds has become dominant. Perhaps recognizing the benefits of these external resources, and using them to their advantage wherever possible, is part of the local resilience of households and communities. In a world afflicted by polycrisis (or rather series of polycrises), this may also be an important skill.²⁵ The severe drought during the summer of 2022 also provided important lessons in this regard: in Șimonești/Siménfalva, it was acknowledged that many people would not have been able to manage without mains water when the wells dried up.²⁶ This underscores the importance of balance, resilience, and the combined use of local and non-local resources.

Interconnection itself has a history going back centuries, encompassing phenomena such as the entry of peasants into the market, military reorganization, and various social and economic reforms, which might be described using terms such as “modernization” and/or “advances.” As a result of interconnection, it is often difficult to determine where the local world ends and where the external world begins. However, we must not abandon this approach as an analytical tool, as without it, it would be difficult to discern state and market interventions in local worlds. For this reason, we must call attention to those processes that lead to households breaking off contact with their own environment and rejecting participation in the social networks that link them to the community.

The equilibrium between the local and the extra-local is important in several further respects. Individual households may have a greater degree of agency in relation to the local world than in relation to the non-local world. By their very nature, the state and the market pay no heed to local specificities. Extreme examples of this are what James Scott calls the high modernist attitude (Scott 1998). In many cases, special instruments are required to incorporate local peculiarities into decision making. Local levels are necessary for this very reason (Van Egmond 2014:105). It is one of the important features of this extraordinarily intricate system, a state of equilibrium in which huge inequalities have emerged at the expense of local worlds. Another important feature of it is the economy that has long since become, or is increasingly becoming, detached from society (culture and morality) (Polányi 2004 [1944]), especially its financial aspect, which has long ceased to be a catalyst for economic growth but has instead become an end in itself (Van Egmond 2014:1). Financial matters form an increasingly closed system that operates according to its own logic — and employs moralizing arguments to justify its actions (Graeber 2011:4). As a result, participation in this system is problematic, since it creates discourses that only a limited elite are able to use and reproduce.²⁷ Similarly problematic is the fact that neoliberal economic governance — in the interests of cost reduction — exploits the free labor of households or delegates its tasks to communities. To do so, it often enlists the (neoliberal) state that has withdrawn from its public functions. Thus, while I argue that the benefits of the global market, and the advantages provided by the framework of the nation-state, shape local worlds, their limits must also be taken into account, since control over local resources, while it is important to maintain, is increasingly being relegated to the background.

Conclusions

It is now a truism that the world has become globally interconnected. The stranding of the Ever Given, and the resulting supply crisis, illustrated the vulnerability of the global market as a result of its complexity. Furthermore, difficulties in global supply chains caused by the lockdowns imposed in response to the coronavirus pandemic highlight that this was not an isolated case. The present study has drawn a distinction between the local and the external world — a distinction of an explicitly analytical nature and purpose. It has described the local world in terms of everyday life and has identified two important institutions in the functioning of this local world: the household and the community. But it has also drawn attention to the fact that these local worlds — and, as a result, households and communities — are increasingly exposed to the impacts of the external world, and that these external worlds are becoming increasingly important in the terms of the exploitation of resources.

Why does this matter? The study argues that households and communities that were oriented towards self-sufficiency were able to adapt to the sum of resources from which they drew the energy that they ultimately needed to survive and to engage in socioeconomic, but also cultural reproduction. These resources were used in a sustainable and diverse way, with less reliance on uncontrollable external resources. Such households and communities thus maintained a degree of agency with respect to their resources. However, this agency was pushed aside by the waves of modernization and advances, and subaltern rurality came to dominate in the context of the state and the market. This means that both the ideologies that shaped expectations of the village, and the practices that connected the village to the outside world, have become externally driven. Local households and communities have been made dependent, their self-sufficiency eliminated, and their agency restricted.²⁸

Resilient behavior is characterized by the opening of new windows of opportunity in the wake of changes (Folke et al. 2010). However, the situation in Transylvanian villages is antithetical to this: windows are not opening but closing in terms of local adaptation at the household and community level, even though these communities find themselves in a fortunate position, in as much as some of their knowledge and practices are still accessible.

The problem with these external resources is not necessarily only that they originate from outside and are beyond the control of individuals/households and local communities, but also that they increase complexity. One of the defining characteristics of today's world is that we provide complex answers to complex global problems. While this is, on the one hand, understandable, it is also imperative to recognize its limitations: our capacity to solve the world's problems, and to do so by technological means, appears to be limited (Berkes et al. 2003:1). Technological responses to technological problems tend to generate further problems (Van Egmond 2014:13). The room for resources and solutions controlled by local worlds has been reduced, thus their vulnerability has increased. And this, in turn, increases complexity (and, implicitly, vulnerability). In the meantime, we have accumulated vast knowledge about a system that exploited local resources in a variety of ways, while at the same time being extremely simple — in material and technological terms — compared to the world of today. This may be particularly significant from the perspective of the non-linear dynamics discussed in the context of resilience. What insights can be gained from this? That is perhaps the most important question of all.

Árpád Töhötöm Szabó works as an associate professor at the Department of Hungarian Ethnography and Anthropology, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He teaches courses at BA and MA level related to his research interests. He has published three books in Hungarian, and articles by him have been published in Hungarian, English, and Romanian, in Romania and abroad. His research interests lie in the field of economic, social, and political anthropology. He has conducted research mostly in Transylvanian rural communities (but also in urban settings) in these areas, encompassing the topics of mutuality and reciprocity in economic and social life, interethnic relations and the ethnic background of economic activities, the changes and reconstruction of rurality, local ecological knowledge and agricultural restructuration, and the histories and narratives of socialism and postsocialism.