<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This essay considers how transportation and mobility model the character of Romanian-American interaction during fieldwork from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Transportation in socialist Romania was a register of modernization and regime legitimation as well as an absolute threat to that legitimation. Official suspicions of movement and political concern about transportation translated into differentially restricting, policing, and limiting availability of transportation. In contrast anthropological fieldwork is predicated on movement while Western culture also claimed free mobility as a cultural good. These different teleologies provoked diverse disjunctures in my interactions with Romanians. While I engaged with Romanians naively, my travelling together with people either gave them cover for resistance or provoked their fear of political exposure. Sharing transportation resources with Romanians encouraged others’ concerns about my alleged political bias or was used to affirm socialist superiority. In other words, transportation during socialism was never neutral, but freighted politically and culturally confrontational.</p></abstract>

This essay considers how transportation and mobility model the character of Romanian-American interaction during fieldwork from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Transportation in socialist Romania was a register of modernization and regime legitimation as well as an absolute threat to that legitimation. Official suspicions of movement and political concern about transportation translated into differentially restricting, policing, and limiting availability of transportation. In contrast anthropological fieldwork is predicated on movement while Western culture also claimed free mobility as a cultural good. These different teleologies provoked diverse disjunctures in my interactions with Romanians. While I engaged with Romanians naively, my travelling together with people either gave them cover for resistance or provoked their fear of political exposure. Sharing transportation resources with Romanians encouraged others’ concerns about my alleged political bias or was used to affirm socialist superiority. In other words, transportation during socialism was never neutral, but freighted politically and culturally confrontational.

’Did You Arrive by Train or by Ship?:’ Transportation as Politics and Metaphor in Fieldwork in Socialist Romania

Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

This essay considers how transportation and mobility model the character of Romanian-American interaction during fieldwork from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s....

’Did You Arrive by Train or by Ship?:’ Transportation as Politics and Metaphor in Fieldwork in Socialist Romania

Publié en ligne: 14 févr. 2019

Pages: 29 - 48

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/subbs-2018-0010

Mots clés
transportation, fieldwork, Cold War, socialism, mobility, UMass Romanian Research Group

© 2018 David A. Kideckel, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

’Did You Arrive by Train or by Ship?:’ Transportation as Politics and Metaphor in Fieldwork in Socialist Romania

Publié en ligne: 14 févr. 2019

Pages: 29 - 48

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/subbs-2018-0010

Mots cléstransportation, fieldwork, Cold War, socialism, mobility, UMass Romanian Research Group

© 2018 David A. Kideckel, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Mots clés
transportation, fieldwork, Cold War, socialism, mobility, UMass Romanian Research Group