Land: Distribution, Concentration, and Social Meanings

The analysis argues that the social history and meaning of landed property is far from a closed process, and makes the important point that land should be seen as an integral part of the human world, society and culture. As such, we need to map out the roles and meanings that land assumes in particular social situations. In this sense, the land is a kind of social actor, not an entity outside society, independent of it, behaving and changing in a certain sense. Thus, the study sees land as endowed with agency in relation to human society, a land that can be seen as elastic even in its physical extent, as the wrangling over restitution has shown. The first three parts of this paper will review the social meanings of land and the issue of land reform. The fourth part illustrates the evolution of these meanings through some concrete examples of Transylvanian rurality.