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MIDWIFING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN POST- COMMUNIST ROMANIA

Article · July 2020

DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-4213

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MIDWIFING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN POST-
COMMUNIST ROMANIA
Cătălin Augustin Stoica

The following pages contain a sketch of the profile of the late Vintilă Mihăilescu. Like other
authors invited to honor his memory, I too, will rely on personal encounters with him.
Therefore, the views I will present in the following pages are by default subjective, capturing
only partially Vintilă’s complex personality. At the same time, I will attempt to place the
person I knew in the larger context of Romania’s post-communist academic life. In doing so,
I begin by offering readers unfamiliar with Romania a few contextual elements, which,
hopefully, will help me shape Vintilă’s profile better.
Undoubtedly, for many, Vintilă was the native public face of anthropology in post-
1990 Romania. Yet, the branch of anthropology he came to represent (i.e., socio-cultural
anthropology) was virtually non-existent during communism. In Romania in the late 1940s,
psychology, sociology, and anthropology (as it was practiced back then) were branded
“bourgeois sciences” and banned from academia. Some of the pre–World War II social
scientists were marginalized and imprisoned. Following the ideological relaxation of the mid-
1960s, sociology and psychology programs were reinstituted in public universities and
Vintilă did his undergraduate studies in psychology during this brief period of intellectual
liberalization. In the late 1970s, however, Ceaușescu again banned sociology, political
science, and psychology from academia. Sociology and political science courses with a
strong Marxist flavor continued to be taught sporadically within other university departments,
but the only degree-granting program in sociology was at the Ștefan Gheorghiu Communist
Party Academy.
Anthropology had an even more dire fate than sociology during communism. The pre-
World War II Institute of Anthropology, established under the auspices of the University of
Medicine, was dismantled in 1944. Afterwards, it resurfaced in different forms (either as a
research group or as a center for anthropology) and was usually placed under the umbrella of
different institutes for medical studies. As such, most of the studies undertaken by this center
in its various reincarnations focused on biological anthropology and only sporadically on
cultural anthropology. Studies that vaguely resembled Western cultural anthropology were
conducted by researchers (mostly, historians and philologists) affiliated with various
institutes of ethnography and folklore. Preoccupied with differences in traditions, rituals, and
dialects among various areas, such studies often had nationalistic tones and were animated by
protochronist ideas. Heavily promoted by the Ceaușescu’s regime, “protochronism” (“first in
time”) was an ideological current, whose adherents sought to show that Western ideas and
discoveries – from communism to the airplane – were in fact, Romanian in origin (see on this
point Verdery's excellent study 1995). In any case, according to foreign scholars who
conducted fieldwork during communism, Western-style cultural anthropology did not exist in
Ceaușescu’s Romania (Cole 1984; Verdery 2018; see also, Anăstăsoaie, Fosztó, and Rațiu
2018). Notably, in the 1970s until 1990, cultural anthropology studies about Romania were
conducted mainly by Western visiting scholars.
Some of the first words uttered on live tv by the anti-Ceaușescu protesters who took
over the Romanian State Television on December 22, 1989 were: “We need sociologists to
help us organize things in this country!” Social scientists (sociologists, in particular) rapidly
achieved public fame and power. Sociology, psychology, and political sciences programs
were reinstituted in Romanian universities under the leadership of sociologists, psychologists,
and political scientists, who had allegedly been marginalized by the communist regime.

1
 I met Vintilă in the early 1990s, while I was an undergraduate student in sociology at
the University of Bucharest. At that time, some of my colleagues were talking about a “hip”
or a “cool” guy, who was teaching in the Department of Psychology but was rather inclined
towards sociology and anthropology. To begin with, his bearded, jeans-wearing, hippie-look
made him stand out among other professors. (His funky vests and flowery shirts also deserve
special mention.) He had established an independent research center called “The Social
Observatory” and, during summer vacations, he was organizing fieldwork trips for students
willing to go native in Godforsaken villages or in derelict, deindustrialized, and poverty-
stricken cities throughout Romania. I did not know what was he actually doing during these
fieldwork trips but his students were speaking highly (if not religiously) of him. In fact, the
fascination with him earned his students the nickname “Vintilă’s Witnesses” – a nickname
that, obviously, circulated only among his group’s outsiders, like myself.
Through some fortunate circumstances, Vintilă invited me to present a research
project at the second annual conference of the Romanian Society for Cultural Anthropology,
which he co-founded. The conference was held in the center of the country (Transylvania)
and traveling to and from this event gave me the opportunity to see with my own eyes
whether this professor was as cool as some claimed he was. And so he was. After
that conference, we grew close and I began to understand some of the reasons why he was so
loved by his advisees, even though I never became a “member” of his “Witnesses” group.
First, in contrast to other Romanian academics of his generation, Vintilă was a down-to-earth
and open person. With his gracious wife Ana, he would organize parties for his students at
their home – something that was non-professorial by local “academic distancing” standards
and therefore awesome.
Second, he always seemed to have time for his students and conversations usually
took place in fairly unconventional settings, over a coffee or a drink, at some beer garden or
in a hip bar. Students would bring to the table not only their academic issues but also their
personal troubles
Third, he had a remarkable patience. He was able to listen for hours to fairly
preposterous, vaguely formulated, and/or outright aberrant research ideas coming out of his
students’ mouths. And, to my total bewilderment as a chance witness to few such discussions
between him and his students, he would do this with a straight face. His comments were non-
judgmental and always generously encouraging (again, to my astonishment). Retrospectively,
I think that his heroic patience was due to his curiosity about people and the desire to learn
about new things. During these conversations, Vintilă would also cast his net, fishing for
bright minds, fresh ideas, and news about current trends among his younger interlocutors.1 I
came to realize that his curiosity was the real engine behind his dedication to anthropology
and his efforts to organize, over the years, tens of fieldwork sessions for his students. These
sessions not only familiarized students with the nuts and bolts of doing fieldwork but they
also instilled in them the same inquisitiveness and passion that animated him over the years.
Fourth, in contrast to other people from his “generation,” Vintilă did not seem to have
power ambitions. As I mentioned previously, in the early 1990, some local social scientists
rapidly achieved positions of power in the new government or in institutions of higher
education. Vintilă, however, was not among these new powerful academics of the day, even

1
Following such a discussion, Vintilă learnt about a new trend among Facebook users: online vigils.
Impressed, intrigued, and somewhat amused by this phenomenon, he analyzed it in one of his
vignettes published by the weekly “Dilema Veche” (“The Old Dilemma”). In a sad, ironic twist, at the
time of his death, Romania was in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic and funeral ceremonies
could only be attended by a maximum of six people. Tens of other people, however, attended the
online vigil organized on Facebook by his students and friends, who posted photos of lit candles at the
moment when he was being laid to rest.

2
though, as far as I know, he did possess the symbolic capital to claim such positions of
authority in the new regime. Actually, he seemed rather amused by the post-communist
grandstanding of some of his peers, whom he knew intimately from before 1989. Also,
“authority” was something that Vintilă liked to mock and playfully undermine, especially
when dealing with arriviste colleagues who were power tripping post-1990.
After graduating from the University of Bucharest in 1996, I went to the Central
European University for a Master-degree and subsequently to Stanford University for my
Ph.D. During my eight years of absence from Romania, I stayed in touch with him mostly
indirectly, through some friends who were former students of him. Every now and then, when
I was visiting Romania, our paths crossed. Things in the country were changing at more rapid
pace than in the early 1990s and so was Vintilă’s career. He had moved from the Department
of Psychology at the University of Bucharest to the Department of Sociology, within the
same university. His popularity among students, his irreverence towards authority, his
independent stance and his non-conformism brought him into conflict more rigid and
powerful colleagues in the Department of Sociology as well. He eventually left the University
of Bucharest for the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration
(SNSPA), where he co-founded the Sociology Department and the first Masters Degree
program in the country in (cultural) Anthropology.
During all this time, he continued to do what he knew and loved best: teaching new
generations of students and initiating them in what he believed to be the amazing world of
doing fieldwork. Vintilă – a city boy from a well-to-do, reputed family of academics –
seemed fascinated with the rural world, with all its traditions, superstitions, and – at times --
odd ways of life. A bon viveur who always fancied a glass of “țuică” (a homemade plum
brandy), a peasant-style lamb steak or a fish soup prepared by locals from the Danube Delta,
Vintilă, however, did not glorify “tradition.” He deemed “tradition” something that was
“invented” in the sense of Hobsbawm (1992). Furthermore, in a pure anthropological
tradition, he was interested in the clash between (communist and post-communist)
modernization processes and “traditional” practices and mindsets. Thus, he would
persistently search for the unintended effects of the decoupling processes between new and
old institutional forms. Such effects were more visible in rural parts of the country but he
found and analyzed them in urban settings as well (see, on this point, his works on urban
ethnographies and his collaboration with architects and urban planners). While doing
fieldwork, he was constantly looking for that “thing” or that ideal “punch line” that would
capture, cautionary and humorously, the essence of such decoupling effects.2
By the early 2000s, many students from the first two generations of his “Witnesses”
had gone to continue their studies at different universities in Europe and the US, with notable
results. While informally, Vintilă was well known and appreciated by students and academics
throughout the country, his association with the intellectual weekly “Dilema” (“The
Dilemma” subsequently, “Dilema Veche” [“The Old Dilemma”]) made him famous among
the large public. Specifically, since 1998 until his untimely death, this magazine would host
his weekly articles in which he would analyze various (current) issues and controversies from

2
A study he was coordinating in the early 1990s in a village in Southern Romania also dealt with the
topic of housing aspirations. At that time (and even now), most rural households did not have indoor
toilets. One of Vintilă’s respondents vehemently rejected the idea of building himself an indoor toilet
in the near future. Intrigued by the answer, Vintilă asked “Why not?” The villager’s answer was:
“Why would I want to build myself an indoor toilet? To shit inside my own house?!” This was the
type of punch line that Vintilă was constantly searching for and which, in this case, summarized the
fact that all modernizing efforts imposed from above are doomed to fail when local meanings clash
with those formulated even by the most well-intended meliorists. (Personal communication to the
author.)

3
a socio-anthropological perspective. The background title of his section was “Socio hai-hui”
– a Romanian word-play that approximately means “Socio-wanderings.” It was through this
weekly section that Vintilă brought sociology and anthropology to the masses, so to speak.
Written in an accessible language without, however, vulgarizing matters, Vintilă’s vignettes
challenged many classist, racist, and ethno-national stereotypes, which were widespread
among the country’s highly educated, pretentious upper-middle class, which also formed the
bulk of Dilema Veche’s readership.
In mid-2000, Vintilă became the Manager of the Romanian Peasant Museum (RPM).
Prior to his tenure, from what I recall, the museum was somewhat inert and fixated on the
conservation of an idealized image of the “Romanian peasant,” seasoned with nationalistic
and Christian-Orthodox flavors. The bulk of its occasional visitors consisted of children on
school trips and several foreigners, who visited the museum out of curiosity or to take shelter
from the burning sun of Bucharest’s summers. Vintilă re-shaped the museum significantly, by
hiring young and passionate researches (some of whom were his former students and/or had
also studied abroad) and instilling a new life to an otherwise comatose institution. More
important, he opened the Museum to the large public. Some of the adjacent, unused spaces of
the museum were transformed into places where people could meet for various activities,
from watching movies, to jazz or rock concerts to book launch events to intellectual debates.
Under his leadership, the RPM became a hip place to meet and hang out, a place as hip as his
affable General Manager.
As his fame rose, Vintilă also attracted the attention of the local corporate world, who
would ask for his professional advice on organizational and marketing strategies or would
invite him to give speeches to employees. A good storyteller with insightful, memorable
punch lines, and with a non-conventional look among corporate suits, Vintilă charmed
audiences. Admittedly, some of the people in the corporate audience probably perceived him
as yet another motivational speaker or personal development coach. Vintilă did not seem to
mind this misperception as long as he was given the opportunity to “preach” about the
anthropological gaze and challenge his listeners’ stereotypes and preconceptions.
In 2005, when I returned to Romania, Vintilă was one of the few people who lent me
a helping hand. Having a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University did not mean much in
the eyes of the local academic world. Instead of minimal welcoming gestures, my Stanford
degree did not sit well with some people, especially those from my own generation, who had
to craft their careers in Romania through politicking and playing nice to the senior professors
who, like in the old days of communism, were still calling the shots in many parts of the local
academia. Thanks to his recruiting efforts, I eventually became an assistant professor of
sociology at SNSPA, in the Department of Sociology, having Vintilă as my “boss.” (i.e.,
Head of the Department). Along with him, other colleagues, and hundreds of students, I
participated in numerous research projects that were enthusiastically initiated by him, such as
the “Social Mapping of Bucharest.”
During the years spent as his colleague, we fought together several battles against
political maneuverings and against absurdist bureaucratic regulations. For instance, in the
mid-2000s, a narrow-minded Minister of Education, a chemist by training with little
understanding of everything else, at the advice of some scientometrists, decided that a major
criterion for Romanian academics’ career advancement will be represented by the number of
articles published in ISI indexed periodicals. By then Vintilă was already a full professor but
he deemed this decision ludicrous. As he half-jokingly noted, if he were up for promotion
again, he would not have been able to meet these new standards. Despite his impressive
publication record in Romania and abroad (in France, in particular, which refused to play the
Thomson Reuters’ game), he did not have at that time any articles published in ISI indexed
journals. Yet, his and others’ protests vis a vis this standard fell on deaf years and the

4
 
quantophrenia-afflicted people from the Ministry of Education and from the hard sciences
managed to impose their views on all other disciplines. Overall, as Vintilă became more and
more visible to and appreciated by the large public, his influence within the upper academic
fora became to diminish. Seemingly, 25 years after the collapse of communism, meritocracy
had been trumped again by politics. As Vintilă was totally appalled by the idea of having a
political patron or to align himself with a political party, his independent opinions on the
higher education system were treated somewhat condescendingly by politically well-
connected colleagues or administrators.
During the last ten years or so, Vintilă changed. Although he remained dedicated to
students and continued to organize fieldwork sessions, he started to allocate more and more
of his time to his editorial projects. He would publish or coordinate various volumes
feverishly, at an amazing pace of one book per year. His works sold well, especially those
that dealt with public anthropology, in the style of his articles from “Dilema Veche.” Seeing
him so absorbed in his writing efforts, a good friend commented that he acts as if he is
preparing his own posterity. To us, this was odd because, in our eyes, Vintilă was still young
and somewhat immortal. Why would a person like him prepare for posterity? There was still
wine to drink, fieldwork trips to take, stuff to discuss, and life to enjoy. Posterity?!
Unfortunately, along with other contributors to this issue, I am now in the difficult
position of talking about Vintilă in the past tense and discuss about his legacy. First of all,
obviously, there are his books and articles. On this aspect of his legacy, I think that his works
will stand the test of time aided by Vintilă’s playful, accessible writing style, and his
unmatched, insightful descriptions.
Second, through his efforts and writings, Vintilă had a crucial contribution to the birth
and institutionalization of cultural anthropology in Romania. While an Institute of
Anthropology does function under the umbrella of the Romanian Academy, its existence,
scientific production, and research activities remain obscure. Moreover, this institute was
uninvolved in the struggles for establishing anthropology-degree programs in the local higher
education system, even though it did possess the symbolic weight to do so.
Along the lines of Michael Burrawoy’s (2005) calls for a public sociology, Vintilă
believed that anthropology too should not remain confined to academic ivory towers. In his
view, anthropology had to provide answers to the challenging questions raised by the current,
rapid global transformations. And such answers had to be formulated in a non-academic,
widely accessible language. Accordingly, through his writings, he sought to bring
anthropology to the attention of the large public. Against this backdrop, one could say that
Vintilă almost single-handedly put cultural anthropology on the local academic map and
popularized it among wider audiences. True enough, in his efforts, Vintilă has been aided by
younger academics, who had studied anthropology abroad and returned to Romania. But all
of Vintilă “helpers,” so to speak, had been previously associated with him in one way or
another, either as students/advisees or as collaborators. Thus, without denying other notable
contributions, Vintilă’s energy and public persona were crucial for the reconstruction the
Romanian cultural anthropology post-1990.
Finally, Vintilă’s most important legacy, in my opinion, is represented by the
generations of students he enthusiastically nurtured to professional maturity. Many of them
now teach anthropology or conduct anthropological research in various public and private
institutions, in Romania or abroad. For quite a few people I personally know, meeting Vintilă
was a life-changing event, which literally saved their then-seemingly hopeless careers, and
helped them find their calling. Over the years, some of his former students parted ways with
him and a few did so ungraciously – a bitter fact about which Vintilă would rarely and only
privately complain. Yet, most of his former students and friends remained unwaveringly loyal
and grateful to him. His former students’ and friends’ love of and dedication to him was

5
 
 especially visible on several recent occasions. One such occasion was when Vintilă, stricken
by illness, needed a rapid blood transfusion. Another occasion was when Vintilă needed
money for an expensive yet necessary bone marrow transplant, which could not have been
done in Romania. On both occasions, his friends and former students mobilized rapidly and
massively in his support. The French judge who was supposed to rule on the legality of the
bone marrow transplant asked from where did Vintilă get the huge sum for this procedure
(i.e., over 250,000 Euros). When Vintilă’s son, Mihai, replied that the funds came from
donations from over 4,000 people, former students, friends, colleagues, anonymous fans of
his, and several institutions, the judge was impressed and said that such a gesture would not
have been possible in France (Mihăilescu 2019). Yet, I add, this massive mobilization was
possible not because Romanians are more generous than the French but because the person in
question was Vintilă.

Bibliographical references

Anăstăsoaie, Viorel M., László Fosztó, and Iuliu Rațiu, eds., 2018, Studia Sociologia Special
Issue: Fieldwork in Socialist Romania: The Umass Romanian Research Group, Vol. 63, no 2,
Cluj, Babeș-Bolayi University.

Burawoy, Michael, 2005, For Public Sociology, American Sociological Review, 70, 1: 4-28.

Cole, John W., 1984, Notes on Anthropology in Romania, in Economy, Society and Culture
in Contemporary Romania, John W. Cole, editor, Department of Anthropology Research
Reports Series, Amherst, The University of Massachusetts, Department of Anthropology:
xiii-xx.

Hobsbawm, Eric, 1992 [1983], Introduction: Inventing Traditions, in The Invention of

Tradition, Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, editors, Canto Classics, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press: 1-14.

Mihăilescu, Vintilă, 2019, Facebook Post, https://www.facebook.com/Vintila-Mihailescu-

115060988525486, accessed on May 20, 2020

Verdery, Katherine, 1995, National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics
in Ceausescu’s Romania, Berkeley, University of California Press.

———, 2018, My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File, Durham, Duke
University Press Books.

Note about the author:

Cătălin Augustin Stoica is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of
Sociology, Faculty of Political Sciences, National University for Political Studies and Public
Administration (SNSPA – Bucharest, Romania). With the late Vintilă Mihăilescu, he co-
edited the volume “The Winter of Our Discontent: The Romanian Protests of January-
February, 2012” (in Romanian, Paideia Publishing House).

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