It is for the flower sellers in the 'Cosbuc' market in Bucharest (Romania) (Figure 1). She cooks .... and wars were waged between nation-states. At present ...
Development, 2010, 53(3), (410–415) r 2010 Society for International Development 1011-6370/10 www.sidint.org/development/
Local/Global Encounters
Learning from a Flower Market in Romania: Community, social fabric and the promise of economic prosperity
ALEXANDRU BALASESCU
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ABSTRACT Alexandru Balasescu proposes ways to counter the current economic crisis in a small community in Bucharest, Romania. Drawing on the experience of various actors in ‘La Bomba’ he suggests that a collaboration of NGOs, Big Businesses, Government and Universities may transform the social fabric into a more economically prosperous one. He exposes the multiple layers of development and economic crisis as he argues that the key to change is to build trust between different types of institutions and encourage entrepreneurial spirit in all of them.
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KEYWORDS Rroma people; neighbourhood; state; venture capitalism; privatization; citzenship
Livelihoods in ‘La Bomba’
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The woman in the photograph carries a plate with her lunch. Her name is Nuti and the meal is not for her child, nor for her elderly parents or relatives. Neither is it destined to some ritual exchange of food ^ frequent in some occasions in many parts of the world. It is for the flower sellers in the ‘Cosbuc’ market in Bucharest (Romania) (Figure 1). She cooks everyday in her own kitchen and in exchange for money she delivers the lunch for the men and women of the market. Nuti is not the only one doing it. Women from the families in the neighbourhood also sell home cooked food in order to supplement the household income. Their sons and daughters (more often daughters) deliver the food. Sometimes, at lunch or dinner time, one can see them carrying big trays with 4^5 plates filled usually with roasted chicken and potatoes cooked in different manners (fried, mashed, roasted, etc.). Most, but not all, of the families live below the poverty line and are of Rroma origins. When they are not busy delivering the food, the kids are playing in the street. They also learn music, photography, theatre, sowing and making movies at the community centre ‘La Bomba’ (‘At the Dive’) (Figure 2). Organized in an old bar owned by Magda (Figure 3) (another woman who also cooks for the florists) and her husband, run by two enthusiastic young women, the centre organizes workshops in which musicians, photographers or contemporary artists from Romania and abroad come Development (2010) 53(3), 410–415. doi:10.1057/dev.2010.58
Balasescu: Community and Social Fabric in Romania
Figure 4: Bellaggio and a Dutch truck
spirit of the street’s inhabitants. The ‘Initiative’, as it is called, brought together a series of activities of different NGOs under the same umbrella. These NGOs utilize the human resources of the neighbourhood and encourage social cohesion. Sometimes students also participate in the workshops. There are students of anthropology (foreigners or locals), bringing with them the distant gaze of their discipline. Some stay, but most leave having checked of the field visit on their curriculum agenda. Across the street of ‘La Bomba’, in an old warehouse, a new giant shop of home deco, Bellaggio, awaits clients from the newly formed middle and upper classes from Romania. Most of the time the place is empty. However, when visited, the clients may also walk to the market and buy flowers ^ which are imported from Holland and Turkey and transported in big trucks that usual discharge at night (Figure 4). The warehouse, a building that was part of the industrial patrimony of Bucharest, is renovated with no care for restoring it to its historic image. Not the same thing may be said about the ARK building, a redbrick warehouse in the area, that hosts a series of businesses in creative industries (publicity, architecture and urbanism) and that hosts in its courtyard the first certified ‘Slow Food’ market from this part of Europe, in which every weekend local producers sell their products. ARK also hosts a Contemporary Art Center (CIAC), an independent designer (Carla Szabo), and, from time to time, concerts from the international underground music world. 411
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Figure 1: Nuti with the lunch
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Figure 2: Entry La Bomba
Figure 3: Magda with a coffee in the La Bomba Center
and teach the children their craft. Exhibitions and performances are produced ^ the latest will travel to New York. However, the events take place first at the centre, reflecting the creative
Development 53(3): Local/Global Encounters
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All this is concentrated in a relatively small area, totalling less than 1ha. It seems a perfect place for a thriving economic cocktail, combining international business (flowers, architecture, publicity) and local interests, creativity, education institutions and willingness to use community human resources. Of course, if their interests would converge. But they do not always: Bellaggio is disturbed by the artistic activity and calls the police when there are concerts, under the guise that ‘La Bomba’ disturbs the public order. The detail is those who live in the area are the very persons who make the concert and not the Bellaggio employees who are leaving at 8 or 9 pm. The ARK building is present but cut off of the community. Their stakes are more ‘elitist’ and, although not visibly bothered by the presence of the Rroma locals and their cultural activities, they do not engage with them, not even when they make decisions of rearranging the public space in the neighbourhood (a small park was put in place in front of the flower market without consulting the people directly concerned and, ironically, neglected after. The two planted trees shrivelled up). This land is far from being undisputed. There are two more actors on the scene: venture capital and the Romanian state. Sixty years ago, the state expropriated the people living here and nationalized the houses, giving them for a small rent to disenfranchised people (mostly Rroma) whose kids are today the ‘actors’ in ‘La Bomba’. After the fall of the communism in 1989, the state gave the opportunity to the renters to buy the houses they were living in. At the end of the 1990s the same state gave a law allowing the pre-nationalization owners or their inheritors to claim their old properties from the state (and receive it back, or receive compensation if the property was not existent anymore). Chaos in property began. People who bought their houses from the state found themselves in legal processes between them and the inheritors of those who had their houses nationalized in the 1950s. A strange alliance was made between inheritors of those expropriated by the communist state and real estate big agents who 412 bought the legal rights of inheritance and started
legal actions against those who rented and/or bought from the state. The strategy of those agencies is to harness the inheritance rights of more persons in the same area in order to claim a big surface of land for development. This is the situation in which the woman in the photo (and her neighbours) finds herself. On the verge of being expropriated not by the state (that cunningly retreated from the dispute of which conditions it created) but by a real estate developer with foreign venture capital who bought legal rights of inheritance in 2006 (the moment in which it seemed that there is no limit to profit in the business). The local that hosts ‘La Bomba’ is in the same situation, the next event will be dedicated to the women who are threatened by expropriation: a fashion parade casting them as models. The real estate boom ended with the global economic crisis and with this crisis there is some hope for a more humane economy that restructures, as I write, the global financial markets (Figure 5).‘Piata de Flori’ (the Flower Market) ^ as the area is generically known around ‘La Bomba’ ^ seems to be a place of encounter for most of the major actors present and active now on the global market, those who are responsible of the development (or decaying) of neighbourhoods, cities, or geographic regions: the nation-state, the venture capital, the international business connected to local merchants, education/universities, local creative business, and men and women (mostly women) deploying their survival strategies. For those who visit the area, it is obvious that the mix
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Contestations
Figure 5: The Flower Market
Balasescu: Community and Social Fabric in Romania
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The situation described above is not unlike places in Asia or Africa where a variety of actors dispute among them the rich-in-resources land (and in which the people living there are all but forgotten). A major difference is that the only resource (except the neglected human one) is property and its speculative value. Once this vanished, the conflict stays but the intensity is lower since the stakes are ‘dormant’ until the next real estate boom. A paradoxical phenomenon shaped the moment of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s. In parallel with the apparition of the new post-colonial nation-states, on the global level the very importance of the state is questioned. New supra-statal formations appeared, and the new states sometimes seem to be powerless when facing the traditional ‘duties’ of a state ^ securing the welfare of its citizens. In fact, it was just the beginning of a long-term process of changing the constitutional order of the state.Welfare of the citizens lost ground in favour of ‘equal opportunities’ for each citizen. This tendency accentuated in the last 20 years, along with the crumbling of the communist block, the gain in strength of the European Union and the multinational expansion of both venture capital and politics.
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Histories of encounter
consequently the redefinition of a socio-economic entity on the basis of loyalty rather than the welfare of the nation (since the nation itself cannot provide welfare anymore). The porous border and the privatization of security within the state through private policing activities accompany these tendencies (in some places more than in others). Up to now the modern state had the monopoly of legitimate violence, and wars were waged between nation-states. At present, networks of interests and non-state actors are sometimes more important ideologically and even more economically powerful than (some) states. The state ^ the organism of which legitimacy was conferred by the public trust and that offered in exchange the public good ^ is in the process of changing its constitutional form in order to adapt to the new context. The non-state actors are either supra-statal political formations, or actors from the private sector (corporations or NGOs), legitimate or illegitimate (the latter being the networks of international criminality, trafficking or terrorism). Their interaction usually takes place in very specific areas (countries, oilfields or neighbourhoods) and has real consequences on human lives. The presence and activity of these actors reconfigure the political constitution of the state. Simultaneously, with the strategic retreat of the state from ex-public domains or geographic areas left to be administered by multinationals (health, education, social security or strategic mineral resources) a new kind of state emerges and start maturing: the ‘market-state’. Be they politico-economical conglomerates forming common markets such as EU, be they states that strategically reposition themselves from the referee place to that of a player on the global economic scene ^ either through sovereign funds or by acting almost like NGOs (Ferguson, 2007). On the other hand, the current economic crisis demanded action from states ^ but the individual action proved bankrupt, it seems that only supra-statal-concerted actions could bring some change, including changes in the redefinition of the rules on the market game. It could not be otherwise, seen the elusive character of global capital. 413
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of the actors do not make the match. Why is this happening? Is there a possible model that would enable the development through local participation and that would be perceived as profitable for all, despite divergent interests? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to take a brief look at the post-colonial and post-national order of things.
The politics of economic change Today’s new economies must be understood in this political context (that facilitates some actors and impairs others). Two important factors characterize the political globalization: the dissolution of the nation-state as main actor and political and administrative unity of the global order, without socio-political or military concurrent, and
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These transformations directly affect the relation between the state and its subject, the citizen. The role of the market-state in relation with its citizens seems to be that of offering equal opportunities in a context of general agreement to the economic and legal rules governing each of us (and not welfare, as was the case for the nation-state). In this context, one may talk about the apparition of the consumer-citizen with rights defined in the economicopolitical relations (and not socio-political). However, this type of state is young, frail, undefined and it comes on the background of previous, culturally entrenched or economically pre-existent inequalities. Far from advocating the fetishism of market economy I propose to take a look back at our ‘Flower Market’ to see what is really missing there for development, and what the actors involved seem to have not understood (or understood it too well).
when the flower sellers in ‘Piata Cosbuc’ will be forced to find another solutions for feeding and eventually would be pushed out by the gentrification tendency (they are mostly Rroma, too). With this scenario, in the long term, everybody loses. In fact, what we have there is a loose network of actors who could be potentially beneficial to each other. And one missing type of actor that could tighten the knit: the big producers of goods who are now passively waiting for the people living there now to be evacuated and miraculously replaced by the middle classes. But Nuti herself is also a consumer, and she works hard for the money she likes to spend (when I asked her how is she paid for the food, is there an exchange? She turned to me and said ‘Look at me! Do you think I need flowers? They go bad in two days, anywayy I need to make money to keep my family ^ and me and my husband we tried many things’). The entrepreneurial spirit is far from being absent. She will probably jump on any opportunity perceived. But there are not many, as those who could offer stay away. And the crisis will keep them away for a while, if this exposed logic (of miraculously appearing markets) will continue.
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Focusing on citizenship
Positioning the actors
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First of all, Nuti is a woman. And not any kind of woman, she is Rroma; and so are most of her neighbours. They live in a city and a country in which prejudice against Rroma is constitutive of the national identity. They also live in a traditional culture (which I am naming here Romania) with strong patriarchal values. Businesses such as ‘Bellaggio’ would be better off (they think) without having them around. In fact, the real estate speculators who count on evacuating the neighbourhood would ideally build the luxurious apartments and offices that ‘Bellaggio’ will subsequently furnish. Gated communities employing private security would keep the ex-inhabitants away, making place for the ‘real citizen-consumers’. ARK building, with their elitist creative businesses and food market for the newly formed middle classes would not show big signs of loss. Up to now they were not able to make any significant links with the ‘La Bomba’centre ^ exception Carla Szabo and CIAC. ‘La Bomba’ people will be those who lose both in short and long term, and with them Nuti, her family and her friends. It may also be that the Dutch and Turkish flower 414 producers will have a sign of receding market
Different scenarios Let us imagine a slightly different scenario: big industries or financial businesses do not wait for the middle classes to appear in the trail of real estate developers (build and they will come is not really working anymore). They enter the game now, by sustaining initiatives such as ‘La Bomba’, from which they may harness both new emerging talents and fill up their CSR box. Under the ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) umbrella many corporations engage in sponsorship activities with more or less social impact and longterm benefits. offering affordable credit to fund small business initiatives on the social fabric that already exists or imagining self-sustainable joint ventures with big services companies on the model of social business (Yunus andWeber, 2007) (the flower sellers need to eat, and so do the truck drivers coming there. They would probably like to have a place to
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References
A successful economy no longer means (it never did in fact) good theory, abstract concepts and a self-regulating magic mechanism. It is more about seeing and using the resources that are in place (human in the first place) in order to create its own consumers than about creating the ideal environment for the functioning of a mythical ‘free market economy’. Human action (out of which economy is born) is never free of determinants (environmental, cultural, individual). If ignored, sooner or later they will strike back. The principles of ‘Social Business’ set forth by Muhammad Yunus and the results of the Grameen^Danone joint venture to produce yoghurt for malnourished children in Bangladesh are a good way to start breaking the spiral of poverty generated by the misuse of human resources and neglect of the social fabric already in place (sometimes displayed as ‘obstacles’ for the ‘free market economy’).
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A concerted implication of the actors (NGOs, Big Businesses, Government and Universities) may transform the social fabric into an economically prosperous one. It is a quadruple helix that I propose (instead of the triple helix of Universities, industry and policymakers). In order for this model of collaboration to work, many obstacles have to be overcome, and building trust between these types of institutions is only one of them.
Conclusion
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eat, or to wash the truck and rest. For the moment the trucks stay parked overnight in the street); restoring the existing buildings (some of them in the industrial patrimony) used for cultural and creative initiatives that would reunite ‘La Bomba’and ARK; encouraging universities to engage with the community both practically teaching the kids (as the Theater Academy from Bucharest already does) or by training their own students in practical activities (including curriculum building for anthropologists).
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Ferguson, James (2007) Global Shadows. Africa in the neo-liberal world order, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Yunus, Muhammad and Karl Weber (2007) Creating aWorld without Poverty: Social business and the future of capitalism, NewYork, NY: PublicAffairs.
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