Párhuzamos ruralitások. Gondolatok egy folyamatban lévő erdélyi vidékkutatásról és szatmári (rész)eredményeiről

The paper, through three case studies, presents preliminary results of an ongoing Transylvanian rural life research. Due to Romania’s accession to the European Union, socio-economic changes speeded up in the last decade in rural areas. By tackling questions of the resilience of rural communities, we endeavor to address problems related to local socioeconomic transition and point out new and traditional forms of rurality in order to identify peasant or post-peasant practices and mentalities. In order to provide an extensive comparison between rural areas, we chose microregions of dissimilar geographical and cultural settings: the Szamoshát border area, the villages surrounding Nagykároly/Carei, the metropolitan area of Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mureș, the valley of the Nyárád/Niraj river in Marosszék and the Hegyalja region of Udvarhelyszék. We focus on three aspects of rurality: 1. the cultural dimension: transitions in identity and tradition management, patrimonialization, and globalization; (2) the social dimension: changes in migration patterns and new strategies of creating social capital and networking capacity by utilizing new (occasionally virtual) means of communication; (3) the economic dimension: the transformation and modernization of farming and subsistence economy in view of increasing economic migration and project-based development programs. Our starting hypothesis is that the importance of tradition, formerly viewed as the main organizing principle of rural communities, is gradually diminishing