I referred briefly yesterday to the scandal which is currently gripping
Romania – that of ex-Presidential candidate Elena
Udrea. Anyone familiar with the writings
of Tom Gallagher would have evinced not an iota of surprise at the
revelations of greed and illegality. They loomed large in his most recent book
on the country - Romania
and the European Union – how the weak vanquished the strong which
had followed his 2005 book Theft
of a Nation itemising the kleptomania which has been a feature of the
country’s political class for centuries…..
Yesterday’s post used the phrase “consumerist amorality” of contemporary
Romania – the last word alluding to Edward Banfield’s study in the early 1950s
of a small town in southern Italy whose inhabitants displayed loyalty only to
the members of their nuclear family and who had absolutely no sense of social
responsibility for wider circles. The book (published in 1955) was called “The Moral
Basis of a Backward Society”
Banfield concluded that the
town's plight was rooted in the distrust, envy and suspicion displayed by its
inhabitants' relations with each other. Fellow citizens would refuse to help
one another, except where one's own personal material gain was at stake. Many
attempted to hinder their neighbours from attaining success, believing that
others' good fortune would inevitably harm their own interests. "Montegrano"'s
citizens viewed their village life as little more than a battleground.
Consequently, there prevailed social isolation and poverty—and an inability to
work together to solve common social problems, or even to pool common resources
and talents to build infrastructure or common economic concerns.
"Montegrano"'s inhabitants
were not unique nor inherently more impious than other people. But for quite a
few reasons: historical and cultural, they did not have what he termed
"social capital"—the habits, norms, attitudes and networks that
motivate folk to work for the common
good.
This stress on the nuclear
family over the interest of the citizenry, he called the ethos of ‘amoral
familism’. This he argued was probably created by the combination of certain
land-tenure conditions, a high mortality rate, and the absence of other
community building institutions.
Sixty years
later, Ronnie Smith profiled (in “City Compass
Guide Romania”) the ordinary Romanian in a similar way -
If you are fortunate enough
to drive in Bucharest you will witness what is probably the clearest evidence
of mass individualism in global human society. Romanian people, of all shapes,
sizes, social and educational backgrounds and income brackets will do things in
their cars that display a total disregard for sanity and other drivers.
Manoeuvres such as parking
in the middle of the street, u-turning on highways without any warning and
weaving between lanes in heavy traffic at 150 kilometres per hour are
commonplace and point to an extreme lack of concern for the safety or even the
simple existence of others.
The next time you are
waiting to get on a plane at Henri Coandă airport, take a little time to observe how queuing in an orderly
and effective manner is clearly regarded as an affront to the sovereignty of
the Romanian individual. Enjoy the spectacle of the pushing, shoving and
general intimidation that follows the arrival of the airport staff to supervise
boarding. Even while watching an international rugby test match you will only
occasionally see the same intense level of barely controlled aggression.
Outside of their core social networks Romanians closely follow the
rule stating that it is every man, woman and child for themselves. ……There is an opinion poll, published in early 2012, showing
that around 90 percent of the Romanian population regards almost all of their
compatriots as utterly untrustworthy and incompetent. At the same time 90
percent, possibly the same 90 percent, see themselves as being absolutely
beyond reproach. This is clearly an extreme response no matter how you view it
and provides evidence of an extraordinary and troubling imbalance within the
generality of Romania’s social relationships.
There is a well-known prayer
in Romania, which roughly goes: “Dear God, if my goat is so ill that it will
die, please make sure that my neighbour’s goat dies too.”
So what does this commonality suggest? The EU’s first Ambassador here
was Karen Fogg who gave every consultant who came here in the early 1990s (like
me) a summary of what can be seen as the follow-up to Banfield’s book – Robert
Putnam’s Making
Democracy Work – civic traditions in Italy (1993) which suggested that the
laggardly nature of southern Italian Regions was due entirely to this “amoral
familism”. Putnam made an even greater
play oF missing “social capital” – indeed spawned an incredible technocratic
literature on the concept and ideas on how it could be “engineered” to deal
with the new alienation of modern capitalism..
Romanian communism, of course, had almost 50 years to inculcate more
cooperative attitudes and behaviour – but the forced nature of “collective
farms”; the forced migration of villagers to urban areas to drive
industrialisation; and the scale of Securitate spying created a society where, paradoxically, even fewer could trusted anyone.
From 1990 the market became God; Reagan and Thatcher had glorified greed;
the state was bad; and television – which had been limited by Ceaucescu to 2
hours a day - the great good……As the commercial stations and journals spread,
the values of instant gratification became dominant. So we shouldn’t be
surprised that the average Romanian seems to behave in such an aggressive and
selfish if not amoral way………
Grancea’s article on “the
concept of freedom in Romania” may be a very bad translation but does
emphasise a crucial point – that the words foreign business men, consultants
and academics have brought to Romania do not resonate in people’s minds the way
we imagine them to…..They have in fact become simply another series of verbal weapons to use in the struggle for position..........
Almost 5
years ago I quoted this poem –
Smuggler
Watch him when he opens
His bulging words – justice
Fraternity, freedom, internationalism, peace,
peace, peace. Make it your custom
to pay no heed
to his frank look, his visa, his stamps
and signatures. Make it
your duty to spread out their contents
in a clear light
Nobody with such language
Has nothing to declare
Watch him when he opens
His bulging words – justice
Fraternity, freedom, internationalism, peace,
peace, peace. Make it your custom
to pay no heed
to his frank look, his visa, his stamps
and signatures. Make it
your duty to spread out their contents
in a clear light
Nobody with such language
Has nothing to declare
My E-book Mapping
Romania - notes on an unfinished journey tries, in various places, to deal
with some of these cultural aspects - particularly section 7.2 at page 31 and all
the annexes
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