Rural Families and Households in Post-Socialist Transition: Serbian Experience¹

Abstract

Rural families and households make a basic framework for understanding the rural way of life. is relation is especially interesting under the recent and di cult post-socialist transition in places such as Serbia. Previous research has shown that the transition and its bene ts are not distributed equally. is has induced social and economic disparities, at the expense of the social attractiveness of rural areas. ese disparities have in uenced characteristics of Serbian rural families and households, their survival strategies and their roles in the reproduction of the rural way of life. We started research with three assumptions: a) depopulation of Serbian rural areas continues under the post-socialist transition, b) transitional risks produce partial retraditionalization of Serbian rural family relationships, and c) characteristics of Serbian regions a ect characteristics of rural families and households. e analysis con rmed rural depopulation. In the decade 2002-2011, there was the most signi cant decline ever in the number of Serbian rural families.is signi ed the negative impact of transition on rural areas. Besides this, the research con rmed that contemporary Serbian rural families and households still 36have some traditional features (multiple generations, relics of the role of head of the traditional rural family) which enable them to cope with transitional risks. A third nding proved that characteristics of Serbian rural families and households depend on regional characteristics. Within the regions that are more socially attractive and where the risks of social exclusion are lower, retraditionalization of rural families is less noticeable. It can be concluded that contemporary Serbian rural families and households survive throughout transition periods depending on their characteristics, but also characteristics of their social environment. Stronger social magnetism of a region is manifested in stronger rural social vitality. at is re ected in stronger modernization of rural families and households.

From State-Socialist Ambitions of Romanian Rural Indutrialisation to Post-Socialist Rural Deindutrialisation: Two Case Studies From Romania

“…In addition, rural depopulation remained an important feature for all rural Romanian sites, as was the case for all of the Eastern and Central European Countries (see Čikić and Petrović 2015). These translated from national to local levels of rural communities.…”

“…In actual fact, industrialisation was argued as a process of industrial growth, increasing the factory system and the manufacturing industries in 'countries or regions where people are engaged mainly in agricultural activities' (Clark 1998: 201). This was the case for Romanian rural settlements that encountered significant transformation under the former state-socialist system, closely related to the former state-socialist forms of industrial production and to their associated policies of industrial diffusion to rural areas (Groza, Ianoş and Pătroescu 2005;Ianoş 2005;Şandru and Aur 2009 Under the post-socialist umbrella of new capitalism and economic globalisation, when the benefits of transition had been unequally distributed (Čikić and Petrović 2015), deindustrialisation as 'one of the most striking features of the transition to advanced capitalism' rapidly appeared with a 'sustained decline in industrial, especially manufacturing, activity' (Pacione 2009, p. 302, 676;see also Norton 2004). It was characterised by important employment losses in local manufacturing and in its related economic activities (Kaplan, Wheeler and Holloway 2009, p. 93).…”

“…Their analyses mostly approached the post-socialist urban identity formation on different socio-spatial scales: local, regional, national and international (see Stanilov 2007;Kideckel 2008). Furthermore, difficult backgrounds of post-socialist transition with uneven spatial benefits were the driving forces behind the social and economic disparities (Čikić and Petrović 2015) of rural areas. Against such a background, the rural sites remained marginalised (Cloke, Crang and Goodwin 2014) and occupied a second-tier position in the current scientific debates concerning the post-socialist social and economic transformation.…”

The Contemporary Situation and Preferences of the Ukrainian Rural Family

“…The peasant family strategies (the preparedness to take a risk of independent entrepreneurship) in post-Soviet countries were investigated by Wegren (2008). Čikić and Petrović (2015) admit some re-traditional trends among Serbian rural families as a strategy for coping with increasing uncertainty in the transitional period.…”