Getting by in Postsocialist Romania: Labor, the Body, and Working-Class Culture (review)

David Kideckel begins an early section of his book with a very short sentence: “Postsocialism hurts” (6). Revealed in the subsequent chapters is a litany of the ways in which it hurts individuals, families, communities, former work groups, and large sections of Romanian society. Based on detailed ethnographic industrial anthropology, Kideckel’s study seeks to understand the ways in which two groups of formerly relatively privileged workers—coal miners in the Jiu Valley and chemical workers of the F ăg ăraş region—experience this hurt. These workers act as, in the author’s telling phrase, “the canaries in the coal mine of postsocialism” (9). Their experience is symbolic of the “working over” of labor as part of the remaking of a former socialist state. Where once the worker was the embodiment of the workers’ state, now their bodies bear mute testament to the struggles to get by in a far harsher climate. This shift is played out against the background of emergent neoliberalism, where the value formally placed on production is replaced by value placed on consumption above all else. If Getting By were simply a descriptive account of lost industry and the erosion of related occupational identities, then this would be a good book, but what really elevates it is the way in which it combines detailed ethnography with conceptual ideas that shed new light on the social consequences of deindustrialization. The most important approach taken by the author is in his deployment of ideas of the body and embodiment in novel and interesting ways. Here the body is used as a lens through which to better understand the transition from socialism to capitalism. This reading moves from the individual bodies of broken workers up to the portrayal of the collective body of workers caught up in transition. As Kideckel explains: “Romanian culture has taught people that labor is more than work. An occupation (servici ) was thought to nourish the body and the spirit” (98). The loss of traditional forms of employment weakens the body both physically and emotionally, and represents a fascinating way of understanding work identity and meaning.

Getting By in Postsocialist Romania is then an impressive and thoughtful book, but its relevance for readers of this journal and for the wider audience of oral history may be more limited. While Kideckel has interviewed the subjects of his study, the use of interview material is more limited than some would perhaps like. Extensive use of direct quotations is made throughout the book and these passages represent more than cherry-picked reflections made to legitimize points. However, there is no real extended discussion of the methods deployed here, and the volume will certainly not directly contribute to the field of oral history methodology—but then that is neither its purpose nor intent. That said, Kideckel captures the complexity and contradiction of the transition to postsocialism in the voices and narratives of those bound up in change. Throughout the book, there is a narrative of loss and this has a number of interlinked aspects. There is mourning for the lost status of the occupations studied here—especially on the part of miners of the Jiu Valley. There is also a broader lament for the loss of a more general respect in society for manual work. Where once hard physical labor was recognized as essential and rewarded, now it is something to be looked down upon and marginalized. As such, the workers studied here are the embodiment of this peripheral group, stranded on the shores of neoliberalism by a now disappeared tide of socialism which will not return. The author uses the word “nostalgia” several times in the text without necessarily reflecting on either the complexity of the term or indeed the emotional pull of the past for these stranded workers. Kideckel at one point describes the way the rose-tinted view of the past prevents workers from negotiating and getting by in...