Intricate Entanglements

The project aims at answering two main research questions: how did Romanian civil society in Transylvania and Hungary developed during late modernity (i.e., did it follow the stages identified by S.L. Hoffmann for Western Europe, and what particularities took shape during this process?), respectively how did such particularities influence the relation between civil society, the Romanian nation-building process, and the ideals of democratization gaining traction in the early 20th century? The research stems from a critical reassessment of the definition and historical mapping, for Transylvania, of what was usually defined as “civil society”, including both its institutionalized and non-institutionalized components. It will be followed by a view at the entanglements between the nation-building process and trans-ethnic associational cooperation, and even nationally-indifferent civic involvement (mostly ignored by previous scholars of the topic), and by a survey of the Romanian civic associations’ discourse and practices, with the goal of highlighting the relationship between civil society and the theory and practice of democracy. The research will also cover the 1920s, with the aim of identifying the metamorphoses that the change of regime in 1919 had on the configuration, discourse and practices of Romanian civil society, after it was no longer the civic expression of an ethnic minority, but an institutional complex largely allied with and supported by the Romanian state.