Monica Vasile (Romania) is currently visiting fellow at the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys) at Humboldt University in Berlin, where she researches issues of environmental and economic anthropology. She was previously a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale).
The Role of Memory and Identity in the Obştea Forest Commons of Romania
In the Vrancea Mountains of Romania, the Eastern Carpathians, people in dozens of villages have used community-based institutions known as obştea to manage forest commons since the sixteenth century.1 The original sense of the word, coming from Slavonic, is “togetherness,” and it underlines the participatory essence of the institution.
August 4, 2017