State, kinship and urban transformations during and after housing nationalization (Bucharest, Romania, 1945--2004).

Abstract

How do kinship relations change when property transmission between generations in general, and of houses in particular, is prohibited by state policies? Using archival material, interviews and observation of restitution trials, I argue that the confiscation of housing by the socialist state in Romania in the 1950s had significant effects on the people involved. It led to a decrease in the intensity of relations with ancestors, a more pronounced geographical dispersion of kin groups, as well as the undermining of family autonomy in allocating resources. Restitution affects kinship relations in important ways, too. Framed as a genealogical practice through which relations between living and deceased relatives are redesigned, I suggest that post-1989 housing restitution leads to kinship solidarity, intense public discussions about who counts as kin, and also to ancestor worship. This study may illuminate similar cases of interaction between domestic groups and socialist states of Eastern Europe, refine the study of co-residence between kin and non-kin groups, as well as contribute to the study of houses as objects with moral properties. This study may also be relevant for urban historians and geographers as well for scholars who attempt to study the state in an ethnographic manner.