This dissertation explores the transformation of a small town in South East Transylvania, Sighisoara, historically defined through a strong German presence. Despite the small number of Germans remaining in the region after the massive migrations of the last decades, historical German privilege (made visible through and materialized in the long-lasting architecture) is reformulated and re-configured in the present precisely through processes connected to valuing and producing this built landscape as historical heritage. Claims for stakes in the development of the area become entangled with an interest in heritage preservation publicly performed by a diverse set of (mostly foreign) actors. By analyzing a failed development project, the gentrification of the historical citadel, transformations in public spaces, and NGO and historical preservation funding, I argue that Germanness offers a discursive space in which local desires for a developed West are able to articulate, productively, with Western nostalgias for a developmental do-over, as well as with fears for an endangered European heritage at the 'margins' of Western civilization. This dissertation contributes to the anthropology of post-socialist transformations in Eastern Europe by drawing attention to the relationship between ethnicity and participation in a global capitalism. It shows how a continuous, living engagement with the "outside," the "West," with consumer capitalism has been part of local quotidian subjectivities and understandings of the world, all mediated by desire and access to mobility and possibility. Understandings of people's current relationship with development, consumption, the idea and reality of capitalism cannot be disentangled from these continuities, and I argue for locating analysis precisely in these relationships. This dissertation also brings a critical native voice to the body of English language Eastern European anthropology. At the same time, it attempts to both build on and disrupt historical approaches to the region by forging analytical and substantive continuities with discipline-wide approaches to ethnicity, development, and heritage tourism. / text

Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Trajan conquered Dacia in 106 CE and encouraged one of the largest colonization efforts in the history of the Roman Empire. The new province was rich in natural resources. Immigrants from Dalmatia, Moesia, Noricum, Pannonia, Greece, Syria, Bithynia, Italy, indigenous Dacians, and soldiers from Legio XIII Gemina participated in the extraction of gold from the Apuseni Mountains. The inhabitants of mining settlements around Alburnus Maior and the administrative center Ampelum coexisted under Roman governance but continued to mark their identities in multicultural communities. At Alburnus Maior the presence of wage laborers with access to outside materials and ideas created the opportunity for miners to communicate identity through mediums that have survived. A series of wax tablet legal contracts, altars, and funerary monuments can be combined with recent archaeological data from settlements, burials, and the mines themselves to formulate the broad view necessary to examine the intricacies of group and self-expression. Through this evidence, Alburnus Maior offers a case study for how mobility and colonization in the ancient world could impact identity. Due to the pressures of coping within a multicultural community, miners formed settlements that were central to their daily lives and facilitated the embodiment of state, community, and personal identities. Identity changes over time and can simultaneously communicate several ideas that are hard to categorize. This study approaches this challenge by looking from macro to micro contexts that influenced several expressions of identity. Chapter 2 begins with a historical background that explores the expansion of the Roman Empire and considers how different experiences of conquest influenced the colonists who immigrated to Dacia. The circumstances that led to the massive colonization of Dacia are also considered. Chapter 3 describes how the mines at Alburnus Maior were exploited, who was present, and assesses the impact of state officials, legionaries, and elite entrepreneurs on the formation and expression of state identity through cult, law, and language. The formation of immigrant communities and the working conditions that permeated everyday life at the mines are then considered in the next chapter. Settlement, cult, and religious membership are evaluated for their role in creating and articulating community identities. Chapter 5 then analyzes the personal and sometimes private expression of identity that appears in commemoration, naming conventions, and burial. The three levels of state, community, and personal identities often overlap and collectively show that the hybridization of ideas from several cultures was central to how those at Alburnus Maior negotiated their identity in the Roman Empire.