"Prototypes For Modern Living: Planning, Sociology and The Model Village in Inter-War Romania" - Raluca Mușat

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Prototypes for modern living: planning,

sociology and the model village in
inter-war Romania
a
Raluca Mușat
a
St Mary's University Twickenham, London
Published online: 23 Apr 2015.
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To cite this article: Raluca Mușat (2015) Prototypes for modern living: planning,
sociology and the model village in inter-war Romania, Social History, 40:2, 157-184, DOI:
10.1080/03071022.2015.1014177
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Social History, 2015
Vol. 40, No. 2, 157–184, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2015.1014177
Raluca Mus,at
Prototypes for modern living:

planning, sociology and the model
village in inter-war Romania
ABSTRACT: This article reassesses the concept of the ‘model village’ in the context
of inter-war debates about rural development in Romania and in Europe more widely
through the story of Dios,ti, a small locality in south-western Romania that was
reconstructed as a model village after a great fire in 1938. Imagined by Dimitrie Gusti,
the founding father of Romanian sociology, and realized under the auspices of the
authoritarian King Carol II, Dios,ti was the outcome of a longer process of imagining a
model of rural modernization for Romania that was tightly connected to and
influenced by international agendas of reforming and improving rural living
conditions. This project offers an opportunity to examine the interplay between the
local, national and international levels of rural modernization as they were shaped by
the disciplines of architecture, rural planning and sociology. Finally, the article also
engages with the concept of the model itself, asking how and why models of rural
living were used to produce or manage social change.
KEYWORDS: development; inter-war; model village; modernization; peasantry;

planning; Romania; sociology
On 1 April 1938, in the Romanian village of Dios,ti, a child accidentally set fire to a haystack.
The fire spread and, by the next morning, most of the village had burnt down. A week later,
much to the locals’ surprise, King Carol II, who had recently dissolved parliament,
establishing a personal dictatorship, visited Dios,ti and announced his plans to fund its
reconstruction as a model village.1 The national press reported the details of the visit: ‘an old
man whose house had burnt down fell to his knees shouting: “Long live our father, his
Majesty the King, our saviour!” Deeply moved, [His Majesty] promised he would turn
Dios,ti into a model village.’2 On visiting Dios,ti in June the same year, the sociologist
Dimitrie Gusti, who had been given the task of commissioning this project, told the press:
‘The reconstruction of this village represents the construction of New Romania.’3
Dios,ti is situated in the south-western Romanian province of Oltenia, about fifteen
kilometres from the nearest town of Caracal, capital of the Romanat,i country, two
hundred kilometres west of Bucharest and two hundred kilometres north of the Bulgarian
1Timpul [The Time ], 8 April 1938, 3. 3Timpul, 29 June 1938, 7.

2Curentul [Current Affairs ], 8 April 1938, 9.
q 2015 Taylor & Francis

158 Social History VOL. 40 : NO. 2
4
border. In the year of the fire, the village had approximately 1800 inhabitants occupying 335
households and owning 8126 pogoane (approximately 4000 hectares) of land.5 The
population was ethnically Romanian, apart from ten Roma, one Hungarian and one
German. In the 1930s, Dios,ti was a typical village on the Oltenian plain. This was one of
the country’s most important agricultural regions, renowned for its grain production since
the nineteenth century. The main occupation in the village was agriculture, wheat being the
main product cultivated in the village and sold in the nearby town of Caracal. Land
constituted the main economic asset of the locals, who had been free peasants (mos,neni) since
the establishment of the locality, except for a short period, during the time of Mihai Viteazul
(1593–1601). This long history of economic independence, combined with the richness of
the land itself, had contributed to the relative wealth of the Dios,teni, who, unlike peasants in
other parts of the Romanian countryside, had invested in agricultural machinery and
innovated their labour techniques.6 This increased the locals’ wealth and allowed many of
them to buy more land, and send their children to school and to town. By ascending the social
ladder, the sons of the Dios,teni created a solid network of connections that played an
important role in the transformation of Dios,ti into a model village in 1938. The village
had two schools and two churches, a fact that indicated the existence of a significant local
intellectual elite. This was also reflected in relatively high levels of literacy (around 80 per cent
for men, although only 50 per cent for women); the national average was 50–60 per cent.
The appearance of the village architecture before the fire reflected an ‘organic’ process of
modernization that consisted of the gradual replacement of the traditional semi-subterranean
houses (bordeie) with urban-influenced brick and wattle-and-daub houses.7 The fire of 1938
destroyed nearly half the houses and caused damage worth around 60 million lei.
The main project of rebuilding Dios,ti as a model village lasted only two years. During
this short time, the structure of the village was redesigned according to modern principles
of architecture, planning and sociology. The new section that was added to the existing
part of the village, which had not been damaged by the fire, consisted of a civic centre, a
new road with model houses and several other public buildings. The project was stalled
by the outbreak of the Second World War. Afterwards, the village lost its ‘model’ status
and its life took on a new direction during the communist and post-communist periods.
Today, walking along the elegant boulevard that connects the main road to the inter-
war civic centre, one is still seduced by a design in which a modern geometry of svelte
arches and sharp angles meets traditional elements such as wooden carved pillars and
4Recent work on Diosti includes Veselina

, lui in sat model’ [‘General report regarding the
Urucu, Dios,ti un sat din Caˆmpia Romanat,ilor current situation of the village of Dios,ti
[Dios,ti, a Village on the Romanian Plain ] (Romanat,i county) and regarding the
(Craiova, 2008) and A. Ciobanu, Monografia necessary works for its transformation into a
comunei Dios,ti [The Monograph of the Village of model village’] in Dios,tii. Pagini de Istorie VII B
Dios,ti ] (Dios,ti, 1973). In the village library, (Dios,ti, 1985), 419. For the demographic
there is also a collection of documents evolution of Dios,ti, see Urucu, Dios,ti un sat,
transcribed by the local historian Mihai op. cit., 49 – 60.
Bălăianu: M. Bălăianu, Dios,tii. Pagini de istorie 6M. Bălăianu, Diostii, op. cit., 177 –8.
,
[Dios,ti. Pages from History ] (Dios,ti, 1985). 7A bordei is a semi-subterranean building made
5
G. Focs,a, ‘Raport general asupra situat,iei of mud and covered with straw that survived in
actuale a satului Dios,ti (judet,ul Romanat,i) s,i Romania until the beginning of the twentieth
asupra lucrărilor necesare pentru transformarea century.
May 2015 Prototypes for modern living 159
impressive gates. The model section is only part of the village, contrasting with the older
side that remained untouched by the fire. Crossing from one side to the other is like
walking through time. In the old part, the architecture is mixed and the roads offer no
perspective, ending abruptly where the fields begin. The contrasts and contradictions still
visible in today’s Dios,ti speak to the short-lived nature of artificial models and a
widespread drive to integrate the countryside into modernity.
The importance of the rural world in wider processes of modernization is now widely
accepted.8 In the period between the two world wars, the interest in the countryside was
manifested both on a national level, especially in countries with significant peasant
populations, and on an international level, where social reformers exchanged ideas
about rural development in forums such as the League of Nations and the Rockefeller
Foundation.9 A consequence of this was the mushrooming of projects of rural
transformation, including model villages, in countries with very different social and
political contexts. The story of Dios,ti reveals many unexpected connections that place the
Romanian case in a much wider context, showing striking similarities with better known
cases of rural reconstruction elsewhere and the way international agendas were translated
at the local level.
From the late eighteenth century to the nineteenth century, model villages multiplied
across Europe, reflecting growing concerns to improve the living conditions of workers
and peasants and to counteract the disruptive effects of the Industrial Revolution.10 The
concept of the model village was a popular one, frequently displayed at world fairs and
exhibitions and publicized in specialized national and international forums of social
reform, affording its spread to many parts of the world.11 After the First World War,
many model villages were built in south-eastern Europe in particular, both as solutions to
8Some of the more recent discussions on this D. Mitrany, Marx against the Peasant: A Study in
are: J. Burchardt, ‘Editorial: Rurality, Social Dogmatism (London, 1951); H. Seton-
modernity and national identity between the Watson, Eastern Europe between the Wars 1918 –
wars’, Rural History, 21, 2 (2010), 143–50; 1941, 3rd edn (New York and London, 1962).
A. Ballantyne and G. Ince, ‘Rural and urban For recent accounts of the importance of the
millieux’ in A. Ballantyne (ed.), Rural and rural world to the inter-war vision of
Urban: Architecture between Two Cultures modernity, see I. Borowy, Coming to Terms
(Abingdon, 2010), 1 –28; J. C. Scott and with World Health (Frankfurt am Main, 2009);
N. Bhatt (eds), Agrarian Studies. Synthetic L. Murard, ‘Designs within disorder:
Work at the Cutting Edge (New Haven and international conferences on rural health care
London, 2001). The approach taken in this and the art of the local, 1931 –1939’ in S. G.
article is also inspired by S. C. Rogers, ‘Good Solomon, L. Murard and P. Zylberman (eds),
to think: the “peasant” in contemporary Shifting Boundaries of Public Health. Europe in the
France’, Anthropological Quarterly, 60, 2 (April Twentieth Century (Rochester, 2008), 141–74.
10
1987), 56 –83; T. Shanin, The Awkward Class: On model villages in Britain see G. Darley,
Political Sociology of Peasantry in a Developing Villages of Vision (London, 1975);
Society, Russia 1910 –1925 (Oxford, 1972); and M. Havinden, ‘The model village’ in G. E.
E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen (London, Mingay (ed.), The Victorian Countryside
1979). On Romania, see the introduction to (London, 1981), vol. II, 414–27.
A. Mungiu-Pippidi, A Tale of Two Villages: 11For a compendium of such villages, see
Coerced Modernization in the East European B. Meakin, Model Factories and Model Villages.
Countryside (Budapest, 2010). Ideal Conditions of Labour and Housing (London,
9On the importance of the ‘peasant question’ 1904).
after the First World War in eastern Europe, see
the extensive population transfers, and as part of state-building initiatives that often
involved the re-ordering and modernization of peasant societies. In international forums,
model villages were proposed as solutions to concerns about health, hygiene and housing,
especially in rural areas.12
This article looks at how model villages were used as tools for transforming rural life
and as prototypes of modernity. This is done through piecing together several moments
in the development of social scientific debates concerned with rural transformation in
Romania, following the idea of the model village as it moved from the domain of
architecture to that of sociology, and following its trajectory from research, to exhibition,
and to the construction site. My approach is inspired by Paul Rabinow’s analysis of
French modernity, where he described ‘the construction of norms and the search for
forms adequate to understand and to regulate what came to be known as modern
society’.13 In the inter-war period, the creation of a modern Romanian state involved the
attempt to integrate the peasantry into an expanded vision of society. Despite the
differences between the Romanian and the French cases, Rabinow’s theoretical stance
provides a useful starting point in analysing the roles played by architecture and sociology
as producers of ‘norms’ and ‘forms’ of rural living.14 Tracing the ideas behind the
building of Dios,ti, this article engages with the concept of the model itself, examining its
educational role, aesthetics and political function. This is therefore an attempt to
understand how and why models of rural living were used to produce or manage social
change.
RURAL TRANSFORMATIONS AND THE IDEA OF THE MODEL VILLAGE

AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR
With work starting just before the outbreak of the Second World War, the
reconstruction of Dios,ti was the outcome of a long series of debates, projects and plans for
rural transformation that began shortly after the 1918 Unification and continued
throughout the following decade.15 In Romania, as in most of eastern Europe, the end of
the First World War led to significant changes in the status of the peasantry, altering their
social, economic and political roles and their place in the debates about national state
modernization. The collapse of empires in the region and the formation of independent
states based on the principles of national self-determination made the economic mode of
production known as neo-serfdom untenable across most of the region. The Romanian
socialist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea coined the term neo-serfdom. According to
him, the late penetration of capitalism in less developed regions, like Romania, combined
with existing practices of exploitation, resulted in a re-enserfing of peasant labourers. The
cohabitation of old economic relations and malpractices with the demands of the
capitalist markets produced a new kind of neo-feudal social relations. Gherea’s term has
been widely used by historians to analyse the processes of economic, political and social
12Borowy, op. cit., 325 –9. 15The greater Romanian state was formed in
13
P. Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms 1918 through the unification of the ‘Old
of the Social Environment (Chicago, 1995), 9. Kingdom’ with the provinces of Transylvania,
14ibid., 9 –11. Bukovina and Bessarabia.
16
modernization in eastern Europe. In Romania, the end of neo-serfdom had widespread
consequences that led to a reconfiguration of all debates about state modernization. In the
political area, the main change was the demise of the Conservative Party (Partidul
Conservator) representing the landowners and the rise of the National Peasant Party
(Partidul Nat,ional T
, a˘ra˘nesc) as the new opponent of the existing Liberal Party (Partidul
Liberal).17 This was an important factor that made rural modernization a matter of
national importance, although it did not lead to a direct representation of the peasantry in
Romanian politics.18 In the early 1920s, two major legal reforms radically transformed
the situation of peasants in Romania: a major land redistribution sought to make the
peasant smallholders the basis of Romanian agriculture, while the new constitution gave,
for the first time, the entire male rural population the right to vote.19 Despite their
limited and problematic effects, these legal transformations set in motion a process of
social change that a new wave of reformers and scholars sought to inform and manage.
The importance of social reform was justified by the actual state of rural living
conditions. In lobbying for scientific knowledge to become a new basis for modern
governance, social reformers from a wide range of academic fields (such as sociology,
psychology, social medicine and urban planning) brought attention to peasant life as an
important area in need of intervention, highlighting such well-known ills of the
countryside as malnutrition, infant mortality, so-called social diseases (tuberculosis,
typhus, malaria, pellagra, syphilis) and poor living conditions.20 Alongside this
heightened awareness of peasant social problems came the argument that peasants lacked
not only the means for a better life, but also the practical knowledge necessary to
‘improve’ themselves and their environment. Embodying the idea that cultural change
was essential to any economic or political reform, model villages were first proposed as
pedagogical tools in solving the post-war rural housing problem.
Rural housing came to the attention of social reformers and state institutions as a result
of the destruction caused by the war, and the demographic transformations that followed
Romania’s territorial expansion and land reform. Architects proposed model houses as
‘ways of guiding the rural owner (gospodar) to build his house according to the rules of
hygiene and for a more comfortable life style’.21 Building ‘several model households in
each village designed to house a family of industrious locals’ would provide examples of
16C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Neoiobagia. Studiu Hitchins, op. cit.; D. Mitrany, The Land and
economic-sociologic al problemei noastre agrare the Peasant in Rumania: The War and Agrarian
[Neo-serfdom. Economic and Social Study on our Reform (1917 –21) (New Haven and London,
Agrarian Problem ] (Bucharest, 1910). 1930).
17K. Hitchins, Rumania: 1866 –1947 (Oxford, 20Founded in Iasi in 1919, the Association for
,
1994), chap. 10. For a recent overview of the Social Study and Reform (Asociat,ia pentru
inter-war political scene, see S. S, erban, Elite, Reforma˘ ,si S , tiint,a˘ Sociala˘), later renamed the
partide ,si spectrul politic ıˆn Romaˆnia interbelica˘ Romanian Social Institute (Institutul Social
[Elites, Parties and the Political Spectrum in Inter- Romaˆn) was an important social reform
war Romania ] (Bucharest, 2006). forum. Its main publication was Arhiva pentru
18
I. Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater reforma˘ ,si ,stiint,a˘ sociala˘ [The Archive fore Social
Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Science and Reform], published between 1919
Ethnic Struggle, 1918 –1930 (Cornell, 1995), 8. and 1943.
19 21
For an overview of these debates, see H. L. E. Prager, ‘Problema locuint,elor’ [‘The
Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an housing problem’], Arhiva pentru ,stiint,a˘ ,si
Agrarian State (Yale and London, 1951); reforma˘ sociala˘, III, nos 1 –4 (1921, 1922), 289.
good practice for other locals to imitate, becoming the stimuli for cultural change in the
countryside.22
The first state institution to tackle the problem of rural housing was the Ministry of
Agriculture (Ministerul Agriculturii ,si Domeniilor), in charge of enforcing the land reform
and managing the relocation of rural populations to new areas that required agricultural
workers, a process generally known as internal colonization.23 In 1919, the Ministry
commissioned a group of architects working in the newly founded Section for Rural
Engineering (Sect,ia Geniului Rural) to undertake a study of the vernacular styles of
architecture in the recently acquired territories as a first step in producing plans for future
rural settlements. This first serious systematic study of Romania’s architectural heritage
was important in creating prototypes for model villages. Moreover, it also contributed to
raising awareness of the transformations affecting the countryside and its built
environment. As the engineer Alexandru Nasta noted in the paper he presented at the
Romanian Social Institute conference ‘The Village and the City’ in 1927, housing
reflected the socio-economic transformations affecting peasants’ lives after the war:
Two major events have recently affected the life of our villages: the war and the
land reform. The war made our villagers aware of the lifestyles of all
Romanians and other nationalities inhabiting our country. New habits, new
needs . . . have awakened in their souls new desires, especially for a better and
more plentiful lifestyle. The agrarian reform, securing ownership of a plot of
land for almost all villagers has given them the material means necessary to
satisfy, at least in part, their new desires. A wave of optimism, based on a visible
improvement of their material state, has been unleashed and has enflamed the
soul of our peasantry. One of the symptoms of this state of affairs is the
mushrooming of thousands and thousands of new households across the entire
country. . . . The village is changing its appearance. It starts to despise its old
one, which suited it fine, and takes on a foreign appearance that does not fit it at
all.24
The hybridization of architectural styles and the adoption of ‘foreign’ models of housing
were seen not only as damaging to the aesthetics of the countryside, but also as
endangering the moral order of village life itself. ‘By transforming his house’, Nasta
noted, ‘the peasant will also be transforming a great part of his way of living, of thinking,
and of feeling.’25 Replacing such damaging models therefore became essential for
preserving both the cultural heritage and the moral order of rural communities. The
author applauded the Ministry of Agriculture’s plans for model villages as a means of
achieving progress for village life while remaining true to the ‘unique nature of
traditional village culture’.26 Nasta’s paper reinforced the belief that villagers needed
22
ibid., 289 –90. Realiza˘ri. Perspective [The Minister of Agriculture
23
N. Lascu, ‘L’éspace rural et l’architecture and Lands ] (Bucharest, 1937).
modèrne durant l’entre-deux-guerres’ in 24A. Nasta, ‘Satul Model (I)’ [‘The model
C. Popescu and I. Teodorescu (eds), Genius village (I)’], Arhiva pentru ,stiint,a˘ ,si reforma˘
loci: national et regional en architecture entre histoire sociala˘, VII, nos 1 –2 (1927), 58 –86.
et pratique (Bucharest, 2002), 168 –73; Ministerul 25ibid., 60.
Agriculturii ,si Domeniilor. Istoric. Organizare. 26ibid.

guidance from specialists in negotiating their entry into the modern world and that
cultural change had to be carefully managed to secure both the continuity of tradition and
the adaptation to modern standards of living.
This mixed agenda of change was best seen in the designs for model houses produced
and published by the architect Florea Stănculescu, a member of the study team mentioned
above, in a practical textbook intended to teach peasants how to build their own homes.27
Inspired by the vernacular, yet designed to fit the requirements of modern economical
and functional housing, these new architectural designs sought to convince locals to
protect and further replicate traditional aesthetics and to manage the transformation of
the rural built environment through planning and professional architectural design. This
study marked the beginning of Stănculescu’s important contribution to the establishment
of rural housing as a field of professional architecture. As Carmen Popescu argued, he was
also ‘perhaps the most successful in integrating lessons from folklore in the modernist
agenda’ prevalent in his time.28
BUILDING THE SOCIAL IDEAL: SOCIOLOGY AND THE MODEL VILLAGE

While architects and engineers started their discussions of social reform from the
perspective of the problem of rural housing, only later to discover the social and cultural
complexity of this issue, by the 1930s sociologists started to embrace the model village as a
holistic solution to the reform of peasant life. The main representative of this new
discipline in Romanian academia, Dimitrie Gusti, was a multi-talented character whose
great gift was in facilitating the exchange of ideas among different disciplines and
between the academic, political and public realms, seizing new ideas and weaving them
into his comprehensive vision of social reform.29
Gusti took Romanian sociology from the margins to the centre of intellectual life,
transforming it into an important source of knowledge about the rural world and into a
powerful vision of modernization. Gusti completed his doctoral studies at the University
of Leipzig, under Wilhelm Wundt, Karl Lamprecht and Karl Bücher’s supervision.
In this period, sociology was still a new and developing discipline in western Europe.
Gusti met or studied with some of its best-known representatives of the time, including
Emile Durkheim, with whom he studied in Paris for a year.30 In 1910, in the introductory
lecture to his course on the ‘History of Philosophy, Ethics and Sociology’, he presented
sociology as the ‘science of social reality’, able to produce an understanding of the present
27F. Stănculescu, Case ,si gospoda˘rii la ,tara˘ Political Traps of Inter-war Sociology. The Gusti
[Houses and Homesteads in the Countryside ] School between Carlism and Legionarism ]
(Bucharest, 1927). (Bucharest, 2012); and in English,
28 C. Popescu, ‘Rurality as a locus of V. Mihăilescu, ‘The Monographic School of
modernity: Romanian inter-war architecture’ Dimitrie Gusti. How is a “sociology of the
in Ballantyne, Rural and Urban, op. cit., 145–59, nation” possible?’, Ethnologia Balkanica, 2
here 154. (1998), 47 –55.
29On Gusti’s work and career, see D. Gusti, 30 O. Bădina, ‘Studiu introductiv’
Opere [Works ] (Bucharest, 1968); A. Momoc, [‘Introductory study’] in Dimitrie Gusti –
Capcanele politice ale sociologiei interbelice. S, coala Opere, vol. 1 (Bucharest, 1968), 5 –200.
Gustiana˘ ıˆntre Carlism ,si Legionarism [The
31
and a plan for future reform. At the end of the First World War, he joined forces with
other scholars interested in contributing their expertise to the building of the modern
state, becoming one of the founders of the Romanian Social Institute. Like many other
social reformers at the Institute, Gusti believed that Romania’s modernization depended,
to a large degree, on understanding its ‘social realities’, both urban and rural, and on the
improvement of the lives of its citizens. In the mid-1920s, at a time of great social ferment,
he engaged students and scholars from cognate disciplines in collective projects of field
research, known as ‘monographic expeditions’. The success of this direct study of rural
life led to the establishment of the Bucharest School of Sociology, a group formed by
Gusti and a few of his former students and collaborators.32 By the early 1930s the
activities and research of the School made rural issues a matter of public debate,
spotlighting the Romanian peasantry and its transformations.
Although Gusti first envisaged sociology’s role in social reform in the early 1920s, the
rise of what he called ‘sociologia militans’ (‘militant sociology’) occurred only later, as a
non-linear process that included the development of the discipline from research to
reformism, its dialogues and co-operation with other academic fields, involvement in the
representation of the rural world in an international arena and, last but not least, the new
socio-political context provided by King Carol II’s regime.33 The idea of the model village
grew out of these different roots and was shaped mainly by sociology’s exhibitions of rural
life and by the new project of ‘cultural work’ initiated by Gusti after his appointment in
1934 as director of the ‘Prince Carol’ Royal Cultural Foundation (Fundat,ia Culturala˘ Regala˘
‘Principele Carol’).34 Finally, the main catalyst in the practical realization of the sociological
model village was the exhibition on rural housing at the 1937 Paris World Fair organized
by the League of Nations Health Organization, to which Romania was invited to
participate. The exhibition was to reflect the current state of the countryside and to include
proposals for its improvement, in particular through plans for model villages.35 As Gusti
31 33
D. Gusti, Introducere ı̂n cursul de instoria Gusti, Sociologia militans, op. cit.; R. Mus,at
filosofiei greces,ti, etică s,i sociologie ‘“To Cure, Uplift and Ennoble the Village”:
[‘Introduction to the history of philosophy of Militant Sociology in the Romanian
Ancient Greece, ethics and sociology course’] in countryside, 1934–1938’, East European Politics
D. Gusti, Sociologia militans [Militant Sociology ] and Societies, 27, 3 (2013), 353 –75.
34
(Bucharest, 1946), 30 –47. D. Gusti, Les Fondations Culturelles Royales de
32On the Bucharest School of Sociology, see la Roumanie (Bucharest, 1937); Z. Rostás,
H. H. Stahl, S, coala monografiei sociologice ‘Fundat,ia Culturală Regală . . . sau mis,carea
[‘The School of Monographic Sociology’], echipelor regale student,es,ti voluntare’ [‘The
Arhiva pentru ,stiint,a˘ ,si reforma˘ sociala˘, XIV Royal Cultural Foundation or the voluntary
(1936), 1130 –65; H. H. Stahl, Amintiri ,si gaˆnduri student teams movement’] in Strada Latina˘ nr.8.
[Memories and Thoughts ] (Bucharest, 1981). For Monografis,ti ,si echipieri la/ Fundat,ia Culturala˘
a contemporary analysis of the School, see Regala˘ “Principele Carol” [Strada Latina˘ no. 8.
Z. Rostás, Atelierul Gustian [The Gustian Monographists and Team Members at the ‘Prince
Workshop ] (Bucharest, 2005); the 2011 special Carol’ Royal Cultural Foundation ] (Bucharest,
issue of the French review Les Etudes Sociales 2009), 11 –23.
35
dedicated to the Bucharest School of F. Bucă, ‘Raport asupra materialului existent
Sociology; and R. Mus,at ‘Sociologists and ı̂n legătură cu . . . locuint,a rurală. Propuneri ı̂n
the Transformation of the Peasantry in legătură cu expozit,ia’ [‘Report concerning the
Romania 1925 – 1940’ (Ph.D., University existing material relating to the rural dwelling’]
College London, 2011). (Bucharest, 1936). Florin Bucă was the architect
involved in the planning of Dios,ti.
and his collaborators were directly involved in the organization of this pavilion, they
responded to this invitation by projecting their own small-scale variant of a model village.
Since all these strands (exhibiting, activism and rural politics) met in the reconstruction of
Dios,ti, they will be described in more detail below.
Romanian sociologists became involved in collecting and exhibiting rural life from their
earliest field trips. These resulted not only in written reports, but also in a multitude of other
materials such as music, photographs, several films and many objects. Such exhibitions began
with two mini-displays of the materials collected in the trips to Fundul Moldovei (1928)
and Drăgus, (1929) arranged in the seminar rooms of the University of Bucharest. Helped by
Gusti’s prestige within international scholarly and cultural networks, these displays travelled
outside Romania to the Barcelona International Exhibition (1929) and the International
Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden (1930). These provided different wider contexts and
ways of seeing Romanian village interiors, both as part of an interest in local specificities, but
also as part of international concerns with health, hygiene and living standards.36
Following his appointment, in 1934, as director of the ‘Prince Carol’ Royal Cultural
Foundation, an institution funded directly by King Carol II for the promotion of culture
among the rural masses, Gusti was able to develop a second strand of his sociological system
by applying the idea of ‘militant sociology’ to the transformation of peasant life in
Romania.37 The Foundation’s projects of cultural work (1934–8) and the subsequent Social
Service programme (1938–9) sought to use the energy, knowledge and skills of university
students and of young professionals in ‘the great battle to cure, uplift and ennoble the
village’.38 In practice, this involved sending students from all professions seen as vital to
the improvement of peasant life (human and veterinary medicine, agronomy, physical
education, domestic science and theology) into the countryside to study local conditions and
help communities modernize certain aspects of their lives while preserving their customs and
traditions. The goal was to find a perfect balance between the old and the new, the traditional
and the modern, by preserving the old order of village life while improving its standards.
This shift in the focus of the sociological enterprise from research to activism was only
possible due to the king’s support and funding. After his peregrinations and his return as
king of Romania, Carol II proceeded to revitalize the Foundation he had set up in the
previous decade by appointing the competent and experienced social scientist and former
Minister of Education (1932 – 3) as their new director. Gusti seized this opportunity to put
his fully formed vision of rural reform into practice, drawing inspiration from the
experience of the monographic research teams and from the many similar initiatives in
other countries (including Yugoslavia, Turkey, Italy, Bulgaria and Austria).39 On the one
36 39
Stahl, ‘S, coala monografiei sociologice’, op. D. Gusti, ‘Politica culturii s,i statul cultural’
cit., 1150; ‘România la o expozit,ie de Igienă – [‘The politics of culture and the cultural state’]
Dresda, Boabe de graû, 1, 7 (September 1930), in Politica Culturii. 30 de prelegeri ,si comunica˘ri
439–41. organizate de Institutul Social Romaˆn [The Politics
37
Gusti, Sociologia militans, op. cit. For a detailed of Culture, 30 lectures and papers organized by the
account of the programme, see Mus,at ‘“To Romanian Social Institute ] (Bucharest, 1933),
Cure, Uplift” ’, op. cit. 473–86.
38 ˆ
Indruma˘tor al muncii culturale la sate: 1936
[Textbook for Cultural Work in the Village: 1936 ]
(Bucharest, 1936), 29.
hand, Gusti therefore offered the monarch a scientific and practical method to realize his
ambitions for rural modernization and, on the other, it responded to the monarch’s desire
to counter the rising influence of the fascist organization, the Legion of the Archangel
Michael, among villagers and the student population.40 Last but not least, the Royal
Student Teams, deployed to villages to ‘spread the royal message’, fitted the public image
the monarch wanted to project as the Maecenas of Romanian culture, as social
modernizer and, most importantly, as the ‘King of the Peasantry’.41
There was a great affinity between Carol II’s and Gusti’s visions for the ‘enlightenment
of the peasantry’, both incorporating a trust in the value of culture as a factor of social
transformation and a certain degree of paternalism. This was the ethos of the Foundation
set up by the then Prince Carol in 1922 that was designed to help the peasant masses
improve their standard of living and to widen their horizons by bringing ‘the light of
culture’ into the village. After becoming king in 1930, Carol revived his interest in the
modernization of rural Romania not only for the benefit of the masses, but also as a
political means for creating consent.42
Gusti’s ideas about cultural politics were understandably more complex, since he had a
vast knowledge and experience of many different initiatives of rural modernization in other
countries. His position sought to marry a self-help vision of social reform with a paternalistic
reliance on the elites as the main driving force behind modernization. This was similar to the
vision of the National Peasant Party, with whom Gusti had a clear affinity, although he was
never a member. His loose connection to a political party meant that Gusti could easily
work for an authoritarian regime just as well or even better than for a democratic one.43 For
Gusti, the peasants had a right to receive the benefits of modern civilization, whereas the
intellectuals had a duty to fulfil this right, by imparting their practical knowledge and skills
to the rural masses.44 This was the ultimate goal of the Social Service that made cultural
work compulsory for all university students and civil servants in Romania in 1938.
Zoltán Rostás has compared the relationship between Gusti and the king to that
‘between an enlightened monarch and an educated mandarin . . . based on personal trust,
not on rules and regulations’.45 This gave Gusti a great degree of freedom and unlimited
40
The best monograph on the activities of this sate : program de lucru s,i rezultate : ıˆntaîul an 1934
home-grown fascist organization is A. Heinen, [Royal Student Teams in the Villages: Work
Legiunea ‘Arhanghelul Mihai’ [The Legion of the Schedule and Results: The First Year, 1934 ]
Archangel Michael ] (Bucharest, 2006). Also see (Bucharest, 1934), 9 –10.
42
R. Cârstocea, ‘The Role of Anti-Semitism in The term ‘politics of consent’ was employed
the Ideology of the “Legion of the Archangel by Victoria De Grazia with reference to
Michael” (1927 – 1938)’ (Ph.D., University Mussolini’s rural politics. These had a
College London, 2011). For a clarification of considerable influence in Romania, which
the competition between the king and the was strengthening its cultural ties with Italy in
Legion, see Mus,at ‘“To Cure, Uplift”’, op. cit. this period. V. De Grazia, The Politics of Leisure:
41Carol II, ‘Cuvântarea Majestătii Sale Regale
, The Dopolavoro and the Organization of Workers’
t,inută la inaugurarea expozit,iei echipelor regale Spare Time in Fascist Italy, 1922 – 1939
student,es,ti, la 16 noiembrie 1934, ı̂n localul (Cambridge, 1981).
Fundat,iei Culturale “Principele Carol”’ [‘The 43Momoc, Capcanele politice, op. cit., 137–56.
speech of H.R.M. held for the inauguration of 44 D. Gusti, ‘Idei călăuzitoare’ [‘Guiding
the exhibition of the Royal Student Teams, at principles’] in Iˆndruma˘tor (Bucharest, 1936), 29.
the headquarters of the “Prince Carol” Royal 45Rostás, Atelierul Gustian, op. cit., 57.
Cultural Foundation’] in Echipe student,es,ti la

funding to implement his ideas, at the same time protecting him from the uncertainties of
the constantly changing political scene. A note in Carol’s diary referring to the proposed
Social Service Law revealed the trust he had in the professor’s vision: ‘If this [the Social
Service] succeeds, and it has to succeed, this will be the salvation of the villages and the
rebirth of Romania.’46
Cultural work turned the countryside into a site of intervention, formulating a ‘logic
of improvement’ according to which peasants and their culture were to be thoroughly
transformed.47 This new goal thinned down the sociological study of local communities
to lists of problems and solutions and to models of institutions, practices and behaviour
that could be offered as examples and reproduced further. The use of models became
central to the Royal Student Teams’ efforts to educate the rural masses. First, students
themselves were meant to act as models of action and conduct for the locals; second, they
were to encourage competition and to stimulate positive behaviour by designating
‘model’ institutions, such as schools or model village halls.48 Finally, the exhibitions
organized by the student teams at the end of each campaign publicized the project’s
results and predictions for the future through recognizable images and formulas. Various
types of physical exercise, work routines, cooking recipes, lists of books, and hygiene
practices which the specialists demonstrated and the locals had to replicate and adopt,
provided the goals of cultural work, indicating the effort to create model rural citizens.49
Alongside its educational and cultural roles, the project also continued the collection of
materials and objects from the countryside, displaying them on national and international
stages. For the creators of Dios,ti, these exhibitions put the final touch to the idea of the
model village. In 1935, the student teams were given the task of identifying houses and
objects for a permanent museum of village life that was to be erected in the newly
designed Park Herăstrău during the following year’s ‘Month of Bucharest’ (Luna
Bucures,tilor), a festival celebrating the Romanian capital. Inaugurated in May 1936, the
new open-air museum re-created a ‘real village’ in the heart of the city, including houses
and farmsteads from all of Romania’s historic regions.50 As Gusti explained, this was to
become ‘a school cultivating love for the village’ and, at the same time, a laboratory for
social reform.51 Plans to extend the Village Museum with a model village section,
launched later that year, reflected the ethos behind this institution which did not present
the village as a thing of the past, but as a present and future component of modern
Romanian culture and society. In the summer of 1936, Gusti called for the student
volunteers to start ‘collecting documents from the villages . . . where [they were]
46Carol al II lea, Iˆntre datorie ,si pasiune. Iˆnsemna˘ri 1937, in prezent,a M.S. Regelui Carol II. Catalog
zilnice, vol. 1 [Between Duty and Passion. Daily [The Third Exhibition of the Royal Student Teams
Notes, vol. 1] (Bucharest, 1995), 266. inaugurated Monday, 22 March 1937, in the
47I use Scott’s term ‘logic of improvement’ to Presence of H.M. King Carol II. Catalogue ]
refer to the set of ‘conscious, rational, and (Bucharest, n.d.).
50
scientific criteria’ of social engineering that For a recent history of the museum, see
social reformers sought to use in order to I. Godea, Gheorghe Focs,a (1903 – 1995)
manage the transformation of their societies. (Bucharest, 1997).
Scott, op. cit., 93. 51D. Gusti, ‘Muzeul Satului Românesc’ [‘The
48 ˆ
Indruma˘tor 1936, op. cit. Romanian village museum’], Sociologie
49Muzeul Satului Românesc, A III-a expozitie a
, Romaˆneasca˘, 1, 5 (May 1936), 1 –7.
echipelor regale student,es,ti inaugurata˘ luni 22 martie
working’. They were to ‘study and photograph the architecture of both the oldest and of
the newest house, as well as the materials used for them’ and afterwards to ‘make some
suggestions regarding what [they thought] both the individual and collective buildings in
the village should be like’.52 He also reminded students that:
The model village is . . . the village we all desire and for which we have all been
working and fighting for the last three years. The model village cannot be an
ideal of abstract perfection, it cannot be universally valid, and thus indifferent of
time and space. Instead, we are talking of a Romanian model village, of a
Romanian ideal village, in sociological and ethical terms.53
The model village was therefore both a national and a sociological project. As an
extension of a ‘social museum’, it represented a new way of conceptualizing the rural and
its transformation.54 Gusti’s phrase ‘social museum’ highlighted the difference between
the Bucharest museum and other open-air museums, and its close allegiance to the French
Museé Social, an institution set up by LePlay’s followers at the end of the nineteenth
century. Like this, the Bucharest Village Museum was a modern institution ‘vested with
an educational and civic mission’, where people would not see a display of curiosities, but
where they could instead learn about the reality they inhabited and how to improve it.55
The educational role of the museum was to be extended through the model village,
where the best and most representative houses, objects and people would serve as
‘authentic’ models for the aesthetic and moral improvement of local communities.
This vision of the rural as part of modernity as well as the means of expressing it was
not unique to Romania. The 1937 Paris World Fair showed this wider paradigm most
clearly. This was an important ‘celebration of rural life’ that ‘recast the image of the
French peasant for city dwellers and for farmers themselves’, showing the ‘modernizing
[French] farmer . . . proceeding courageously, patiently and methodically toward the
construction of a new world’.56 Model villages were present everywhere at the fair: from
the main French Rural Centre to Le Corbusier’s model farm and to the many plans at the
special Exhibition on Rural Housing organized by the League of Nations Health
Organization (LNHO) at Porte Maillot.57 The latter brought specialists from many
countries together to share ideas about the current state of the countryside and to discuss
plans for the improvement of rural living conditions and of housing more specifically.58
Co-ordinated by Gusti, the Romanian pavilions presented a vision of King Carol II’s
modern Romania that was greatly shaped by sociology.59 The pavilion at Porte Maillot
showed the results of the field trips undertaken by the Bucharest School of Sociology
52 Dimitrie Gusti, ‘Despre Muzeul “Satul 56 S. Peer, France on Display: Peasants,
Model Românesc”’ [‘On the museum of the Provincials, and Folklore in the 1937 Paris
“Romanian model village”’], Curierul Echipelor World’s Fair (New York, 1998), 134.
Student,es,ti, 2, 5 (August 1936), 1. 57Murard, ‘Designs within disorder’, op. cit.
53 58
ibid. Borowy, op. cit., 344 –6; Murard, ‘Designs
54
Gusti, ‘Muzeul Satului Românesc’, op. cit., within disorder’, op. cit.
59Laurentiu Vlad, Imagini ale identita˘ţii naţionale.
2 – 3. ,
55J. R. Horne, A Social Laboratory for Modern Romaˆnia ,si Expoziţiile Universale de la Paris,
France (Durham and London, 2002), 80. 1867 –1937 [Images of National Identity. Romania
and the Paris World Fairs, 1867 –1937 ] (Ias,i,
2007), 179–225.
alongside the achievements of the newer ‘cultural work’ project. The centrepiece of the
exhibition, though, was a maquette of the open-air Village Museum of Bucharest
featuring the projected model village, with planned housing organized around a civic
centre. This reflected the connection between the study of social reality, the collection and
exhibition of material culture, and finally the new drive towards rural planning,
education and cultural reform. The museum and the World Fair therefore offered a
reason, an infrastructure and a means to imagine the model village as a planned
community built as an exemplary vision of the future.
FROM PARIS TO DIOŞTI: THE POLITICS OF THE MODEL VILLAGE

Although planned and displayed in the School’s publications and at the 1937 Paris World
Fair, the building of the model village might not have happened without a political
context that brought together local and global concerns about rural development and
King Carol II’s authoritarian regime.
From the early 1930s, when the damaging effects of the world economic crisis were
felt in eastern Europe, Romania’s young system of parliamentary democracy began to
unravel. After his coronation in 1930, King Carol II played his part in this process by
constantly undermining the power and legitimacy of the mainstream political parties
(the Liberal Party and the National Peasant Party). The 1937 elections struck a fatal
blow against the democratic system. The elections, which revealed the alarming
popularity of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, compromised the major parties
and gave free hand for the king to dissolve parliament and to institute his personal
authoritarian regime.60
The new regime, which sought to replace ‘politicking’ with a rational, technocratic
and direct form of governance, was not only meant to restore social order, but also to
realize the monarch’s own vision of Romania’s future. This was reflected in an important
administrative reform and an even bolder programme of rural modernization. The
administrative reform not only re-organized the country’s territory into ten larger
regions (t,inuturi), but also introduced planning as a tool for governance, administration
and development. The new constitution, which abolished the multi-party system of
government, also sought to revitalize the link between royal power and the divine in the
eyes of the peasant majority.
In the immediate aftermath of King Carol’s takeover, propaganda aimed at the
peasantry increased. The weather that spring, when a widespread drought caused many
fires across the countryside, offered the monarch an opportunity to express a sudden
interest and generosity towards the countryside. The king visited many villages affected
by natural disasters, met his peasant subjects and distributed aid. Although it was one of
several villages to go up in flames in the early months of the royal dictatorship, it was
Dios,ti that received a royal visit in the wake of the fire. The event was recorded and
publicized as an act of divine mercy, whereas the idea of the building of a model village in
Dios,ti was presented as a ‘royal dream’. In fact, only a few days before the fire, the
60Heinen, op. cit.

Interior Minister Armand Călinescu had mentioned to the king that a model village could
be a useful tool in the new programme of pro-royal propaganda.
The regeneration of Dios,ti and its representation in the press showed the nature of
power that lay at its foundation, also placing it in a larger category of similar
development schemes planned or implemented in Romania and elsewhere. Like
Mussolini’s land reclamation scheme near Rome, the regeneration of Dios,ti represented
the intent to tame nature, thereby symbolizing the power of an enlightened modern
ruler.61 The Romanian project, however, was also meant to revive a traditional
relationship between the merciful monarch and his peasant subjects. Apart from its
ideological role, Dios,ti was part of a greater attempt to re-organize Romania’s territory
systematically, through urban and rural planning. The Planning Commission of the
Bucegi region, for example, also drew up several projects for model villages. However,
Dios,ti was different from other such projects because it was not the product of this law, as
it circumvented its Jiu (Olt) regional administration, to whom the area belonged, instead
being entrusted by the king directly to the Foundation. This exceptional status marked
Dios,ti as an accomplishment of militant sociology and of royal propaganda rather than of
the bureaucratization of rural planning. Although the Foundation was in charge of the
project, the Ministry of the Interior (Ministerul de Interne) provided the funding that
amounted to over 58 million lei, a high cost that aroused much criticism at the time.62
The reconstruction of Dios,ti started in 1938 and involved two main phases: the
research and planning of a new section of the village and its actual construction,
comprising a civic centre, a complex of ‘model houses’, and many other facilities meant
to improve the living standards of the entire village. Unlike the proposed extension of the
Village Museum, which was going to be built on cleared ground, the Dios,ti project
involved the reconstruction of an existing locality by adding a new ‘model’ quarter to the
part of the village that had survived the fire. The Royal Cultural Foundation was placed
in charge of this project and a team was created under the leadership of the cultural work
inspector Gheorghe Focs,a. Focs,a had worked with the Bucharest sociologists since 1930,
when he participated in one of their field expeditions. He had also published a few articles
on rural mentalities and spiritual life. From 1934 to 1942, he worked at the Foundation as
part of the cultural work project, first as team leader and later as inspector of the teams.
His role as co-ordinator of the reconstruction works at Dios,ti involved communicating
his findings to the team of architects, planners and engineers in Bucharest and supervising
the works on the ground.63 For Focs,a, the appointment came as a surprise, as he later
recalled:
[Gusti] called me, among that army of inspectors, all older than me, and said:
‘Go to Dios,ti, stay there two, three days or more, as long as you need, study the
possibility of making a model village there and come back with a report.’
61 62
On the Italian case, see F. Caprotti, G. Focs,a, Satul Model Dios,ti [The Model
‘Destructive creation: Fascist urban planning, Village Dios,ti ] (Bucharest, 1941), 26 –7.
63Godea, Gheorghe Focsa, op. cit.; G. Focsa and
architecture and the New Towns in the Pontine , ,
Marshes’, Journal of Historical Geography, 33 Z. Rostás, ‘“Noi, cu echipa s,i cu satul” [‘“We,
(2007), 651–79. the team and the village”’] – Gheorghe Focs,a’,
Strada Latina˘, 8 (2009), 24 –57.
I went, I stayed there, I met with the local community, I talked to them and got
an enthusiastic response, I took some notes, came back, typed a twenty-page
report and delivered it. The Professor read it, called me and said: ‘Now go and
do it!’ There was no way to say no, so I had to accept.64
His general report provided a diagnosis of the state of Dios,ti before the fire, also
explaining the reasons for turning it into a model village. According to Focs,a, Dios,ti had
a healthy community with people who maintained a good social rapport with each other
and believed in the value of education. Local history stood as proof of this: after a period
of serfdom, the village had bought its freedom in the seventeenth century. Its ‘boyar past’,
he noted, was still visible in ‘in its big urbanized houses, rich dependencies with new
agricultural tools and machinery’. However, despite its socio-economic situation, the
physical appearance, spatial organization of the village and living conditions of its
inhabitants were deemed inappropriate for the twentieth century. The old Dios,ti used to
lie horizontally at a distance from and parallel to the main regional road. The village was
made up of three main parallel roads with houses on either side, with very few narrow
pathways cutting across, useful only for two to three households. These arteries were
‘narrow and insufficient’ and the ‘the houses were placed at irregular distances from the
road’. Moreover, Focs,a saw the village as slightly disorderly, with houses that, apart from
the fifteen bordeie, had almost no authentic Oltenian architectural features.65 In
conclusion, although the village was relatively wealthy and had fairly high education
standards, its physical appearance required a structural re-organization. Focs,a believed
that the community could thrive and progress in a new, modernized and improved
environment, also setting an example for other neighbouring localities.
Focs,a’s report translated the idea of the model village according to Gusti’s sociological
theory and his ambition for a holistic and organic transformation of village life. Its role in
creating social order and harmony was also clearly stated:
In this perfect unit of social life [the model village], all aspects of human
existence and all the factors it depends on are in perfect harmony to improve life
itself, to strengthen its creative powers and ennoble its moral aspirations. . . .
The model village is a social unit equipped with all the institutions,
organizations, edifices and installations . . . which stimulate and deepen the
curiosity of the mind, defend and reinforce bodily health, develop physical
strength and human vital energy, ease and complement manual labour,
multiplying its fruits.66
In this, the sociological principles underlying the project were highly visible. Focs,a
described the model village as a ‘social unit’. This was also the main object of sociological
study in Gusti’s theoretical system which believed society was too large and vague to be
studied as a whole and therefore could only be approached through its self-contained sub-
divisions (village, town, nation, etc.).67 Villages constituted small-scale social units that
were studied by the sociological teams as ‘experiential wholes’, to use Talal Asad’s term,
64 67
Focs,a and Rostás, ‘G. Focs,a’, op. cit., 43. Mihăilescu, ‘The Monographic School’, 50 –
65ibid., 421. 1; Mus,at ‘“To Cure, Uplift”’, op. cit.
66ibid., 429.
68
from a great variety of disciplinary angles. The activist teams also replicated this
approach to social units, working in individual villages for several months and employing
a variety of professional angles to study and transform peasant life. As a new social unit,
constructed according to sociological rules derived from reality and carefully planned
according to the principles of health and hygiene, the model village was also an
‘experiential whole’, created to enlighten peasants as to their own future.
Education was key to this plan of social reform, as Focs,a pointed out later, in a book
published after the project was partially completed:
The model village appears as a didactic tool, necessary in guiding villages
towards superior forms of social life and in preparing the youth for the national
reconstruction work that has to start with our people’s most common form of
human organization: the village.69
The model village offered locals a way of learning through experience by fulfilling a
function akin to that of role models in the improvement of social groups, as the author
explained:
[To achieve] one’s own perfection, a model is necessary: the friend, the parent,
the primary school teacher . . . that is the person who is more than complete
morally, intellectually or in their will embodies the concrete and immediate
example for the life we aspire to.70
Following this idea, the author explained that ‘the only available way to guide social
transformations effectively is through more perfect and ideal forms’. The model village
offered locals such ‘a concrete social ideal’ to aspire to and was therefore meant ‘to have a
dynamic function in social life’. Furthermore, its educational mission was to give locals
access to universal principles that they could integrate into their lives. As Focs,a noted,
‘the true goal of education is to help the general elements of science and of universal
culture . . . to enter the soul’. Finally, building the model village was a social lesson in
itself.71 Its realization, which involved specialists but also young students and volunteers
working alongside locals, represented an example of social co-operation and solidarity
that could be further replicated in many other fields of action.
In order to transform Dios,ti into a model village, Focs,a and his collaborators sought to
re-organize village life around the norms and moral values contained in the principles of
cultural work.72 These included aspects from all four domains of cultural work (the body,
work, the mind and the soul), combining efforts to improve health and hygiene, make
work organization and practices more efficient, and provide for the educational and
spiritual needs of the community. As in cultural work, the drive towards modernization
was combined with the desire to preserve the social order and existing hierarchies. This
involved reinforcing the leading role of local intellectuals who were seen as the main
drivers of modernization within the community.73 These values found their
68 T. Asad, ‘Ethnographic representation, 71ibid., 63.

statistics and modern power’, Social Research, 72Iˆndruma˘tor 1936; Iˆndruma˘tor al muncii culturale
61, 1 (Spring 1994), 61. la sate: 1939 (Bucharest, 1939).
69Focsa, Satul model Diosti, op. cit., 57. 73Momoc, Capcanele politice, op. cit., 147.
, ,
70ibid., 59.
materialization both in the overall plan for Dios,ti and in the architectural or technical
details of individual buildings.
As a result of Focs,a’s diagnosis, the map of the village was totally redesigned, starting
with its public areas and moving deeper into its intimate spaces. The restructuring process
involved two main directions: the re-ordering of public life by means of a new civic
centre and new education and leisure facilities and the re-organization of private life
though new houses and outbuildings. The plans were realized by the Foundation’s
architectural team, including S, tefan Peterneli and the younger architect Florin Bucă who
signed many of the plans.
All the changes to the village’s infrastructure and public spaces showed the desire to
integrate it into Romanian economic and political life by connecting it physically to
the city and symbolically to the state and its institutions. To this end, the planners
added a new road that connected the old village to the main transport route, the
Bucharest – Craiova road, thus shortening the fifteen kilometres that separated it from the
nearest town of Caracal. The road entered the old village through a new civic centre that
linked the old and new sections of the village and re-oriented the entire locality around
what used to be one of its peripheries, expanding it across the field to meet the main road
(see Figure 1). The new road and the civic centre represented two important principles of
systematization in planning theory introduced by the 1938 administrative reform, as
other similar initiatives from the Bucegi region indicated.74
The civic centre was a miniature version of a modern town centre, in which
architectural forms articulated the relations of power between the citizens and the state or
local authorities. The new long straight street leading from the main road to the public
square opened a perspective on to this new pulsating heart of the village. This gateway
also placed old Dios,ti backstage, obscuring its eclectic architecture and irregular streets.
In the central square, at the core of village life and visible from all angles, stood the ca˘min
cultural, an imposing multi-functional building and the largest of all the public
institutions. Facing it, on either side towards the north stood the matching Village
Council and the gendarmerie (police station), much smaller in size. Flanking the ca˘min were
the new church to the east and the school to the south.75 The new church was in fact the
third one in this fairly small village, but was probably deemed necessary as part of the
blueprint for a civic centre. However, its place to one side of the ca˘min cultural symbolized
the subordination of religion in this holistic vision of a modern rural life. In contrast to
secular visions of modernity (such as in the Soviet Union or Turkey), this version sought
to rationalize religion and use it as a source of morality underpinning social order.76
Apart from the public buildings constructed around the main square, many of which
were new additions to rural life, the planners organized other spaces for the use of the
entire community. New squares were added in front of the two pre-existing churches and
a stadium was built near the school. Like the public buildings, these social spaces were
meant to encourage the locals to take up new leisure and cultural practices. In this way,
the planners sought to regulate and rationalize the community’s social activities by means
74 76
n.a., Un an de aplicare. See also Răut,ă op. cit., See Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation
43 –53. Building, op. cit., 103 –4.
75Focsa, ‘Raport general’, op. cit.
,
Figure 1. Plan of Dioști with the ‘model section’ indicating the new perpendicular street, with model
houses leading to the new civic centre and connecting to the old village in the south. Source: Romanian
National Archives (RNA), Fundațiile Culturale Regle – Centrala˘ (FCR-C), 21, 1939, 18.
of a new public space. The architecture and landscaping of the civic centre translated these
social ideals into physical form. As Focs,a stated:
Architecturally, [the buildings] would, on the one hand, have to meet their
practical goal in village life in an ideal way and allow the most rational and
systematic development of social activities and, on the other hand, give the
village a grand and monumental appearance. . . . Although in proportion and
harmony with the size of the village and the surrounding households, all these
public buildings should form an architectural ensemble in a unitary Romanian
style that should grow and inspire a feeling of their eternal service to the
village.77
The aesthetics of the public buildings, which integrated elements of vernacular
architecture like the pitched roof, the loggia and carved wooden pillars into modernist
shapes and volumes, reinforced the planner’s double agenda of preserving while
transforming peasant life.
As with its counterparts abroad, such as the British village hall, German and Austrian
Volksheim, the Turkish Halkevleri, the American rural civic centre and the French
maison pour tous, the ca˘min cultural had a key role in the modernization of the
77Focsa,
, ‘Raport general’, op. cit., 438.
Figure 2. Sketch of the house of culture (ca˘min cultural) in Dioști. Arh. Florin Bucă. Source: RNA,
FCR-C, 21, 1939, vol. III, 49.
countryside.78 The cultural work textbook proclaimed its goal to be that of ‘uniting the
entire community in order to awaken the village from its current lethargy and to recruit
all the villagers as workers towards their own cultural enlightenment’.79 With the
introduction of the Social Service in 1939, the project for the ca˘mine became even more
ambitious, aiming to found one in every Romanian village and town.80 Often housed in
new multifunctional buildings, these rural centres were designed to serve a wide range of
social, economic and cultural activities. Moreover, the architectural style of these new
buildings was meant to communicate the importance, progressive spirit and cultural
roots of this institution. Most of the projects for ca˘min culturale show a faith in a modern
functional style with traditional and classical additions.
The ca˘min cultural in Dios,ti was an imposing two-storey U-shaped building comprising
four main sections (see Figure 2). Occupying the front section of the ground floor was the
concert hall (sala de festivita˘t,i) where various community and cultural events were organized
(concerts, conferences, film showings). The east and west wings were designated
respectively for economic and health purposes. The first included two workshops, a kitchen
and bakery, a shop and storerooms. The second comprised showers with changing rooms, a
room for delousing, three doctors’ and nurses’ consultation rooms and a doctor’s office.
Finally, the first floor was devoted to the village’s museum and library. The building was
fifty metres long on each side, occupying a total area of about 3000–3300 square metres.81
In addition to the new civic centre and to other public facilities, the project included a
new quarter consisting of a long street with housing meant to accommodate the locals
78
Rabinow, French Modern, op. cit., 337–9. op. cit., 93; De Grazia, Politics of Leisure, op.
On the role of village halls in Britain, see cit., 69.
J. Burchardt, ‘Reconstructing the rural 79Iˆndruma˘tor 1939, 24.
80
community: village halls and the National Ca˘minul cultural. Iˆntocmire ,si funct,ionare [The
Council of Social Service, 1919 –39’, Rural House of Culture. Organization and Function ]
History, 10, 2 (October 1999), 193–216. The (Bucharest, 1939), 7.
81V. Urucu, ‘Satul-model Diosti după sase
same type of institution existed in Turkey, as , ,
the Halkevleri, and in Italy, as la casa del fascio. decenii’ [‘The model village Dios,ti after six
Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation Building, decades’], Revista romaˆna˘ de sociologie. Serie
noua˘, 9, 3 –4 (1998), 277.
whose households had been destroyed by fire. The model houses were meant to set higher
standards of living, also introducing a sense of aesthetic unity and order and, it was hoped,
a revived taste for the vernacular.
In his report, Focs,a criticized the old village for not having retained the traditional
traits specific to the region present in the old bordeie, although he thought these were no
longer appropriate for a modern lifestyle.82 From the second half of the nineteenth
century to the fire of 1938 the appearance of the village had been under continuous
transformation, marked by a shift from the bordei to newer types of housing. Serbian
migrant builders had brought the first brick houses to Dios,ti in the mid-nineteenth
century, introducing a new architectural style that copied the urban petty bourgeois
architecture of the nearby town of Caracal. After the Great War, a third type of house
appeared in the village, illustrating a new type of social mobility. Also inspired by urban
architecture, the wattle-and-daub house was better and more modern than the bordei, but
cheaper to make than the brick house, offering the best compromise for the less well off.
The planners responded to this situation by introducing a new design inspired by the
vernacular style specific to the mountain part of the Oltenia region. This contrasted with
the variety of architectural styles present in old Dios,ti, offering new houses that were
modern in their standardization, in the layout of the interior, and in the external annexes,
but revived a regional vernacular in their overall decoration.
The new quarter consisted of two rows of standardized detached houses with small
stylistic variations, similar in many ways to private and social housing projects in other
western European countries and elsewhere. The twenty-eight model houses that were
built by 1940 occupied generous plots (between 3000 and 3300 square metres), including a
front flower garden, a yard for outbuildings and another garden with a vegetable patch
and small orchard to the rear. The large plots and outbuildings meant that each household
was designed as an efficient agricultural unit.83
Despite their standardization, the design of the houses respected existing social
differences in the locality. The architects produced three categories of houses, with two
(type 1), three (type 2), and four bedrooms (type 3) respectively, a kitchen with a pantry
and a cellar. These were distributed to the locals according to social status (land owned),
family size, and value of the fire damage (see Figures 3 and 4). This showed that the
planners wanted to introduce new standards of health and hygiene for all villagers,
irrespective of their wealth, without changing the existing material differences between
villagers. All three options were variations of a square house with a pitched tile roof, a
porch ( prispa) on one or two sides of the house, and a cellar. Unlike the brick houses in old
Dios,ti, with their columns and friezes, ornamentation on the model houses was limited to
the carved timber columns supporting the porch and the arched doors of the cellar. These
restored a rustic appearance by their use of natural materials and traditional crafts. Inside,
the model houses proposed a simple and functional distribution of space, unlike either the
bordeie and the brick houses. They had between three and five almost equally sized main
rooms (a kitchen and bedrooms), with connecting doors (see Figures 5 and 6). As on the
82 83
Focs,a, ‘Raport general’, op. cit., 419–20. ‘Various architectural plans including plans
for the model village Dios,ti’, R.N.A, Fundat,iile
Culturale Regale – Centrala˘, 21 (1936), 39 – 49.
Figure 3. Sketch of a type 1 house. Source: RNA, FCR-C, 21, 1939, vol. II, 3.
outside, the interior was designed to remain functional for the traditional peasant lifestyle
and culture. In keeping with the communal use of the peasant living space, which was not
separated into different spheres of life, the same room being used for multiple activities
(cooking, sleeping, working), the planners did not allocate specific functions to any rooms
apart from the kitchen, designed as the main living space for the family. By providing a
generous number and size of rooms that allowed more privacy and space for each family
member, the planners sought to tackle the problem of rural overcrowding and associated
Figure 4. Interior of a type 1 house. Source: RNA, FCR-C, 21, 1939, vol. III, 131.
Figure 5. Sketch of a type 3 house. Source: RNA, FCR-C, 21, 1939, vol. II, 3.
Figure 6. Interior of a type 3 house. Source: RNA, FCR-C, 21, 1939, vol. III, 131.
health and hygiene issues. The design of the interior and the assignment of rooms
corresponded to international guidelines for rural housing, addressing issues shared across
Europe and following the health and hygiene agenda of the Foundation. The houses had
numerous windows, one or two stoves catering for all the rooms, terracotta floors in the
kitchen and wooden ones in the bedrooms, and outdoor hygienic toilets.84
84
M. M. Vignerot, European Conference on Rural
Life 1939. General Technical Documentation.
Rural Housing and Planning (Geneva, 1939).
The model housing of Dios,ti reflected the planners’ aspirations to transform village life
by modernizing, ordering and re-ruralizing the peasant home. The standardized regional
style based on traditional sources of inspiration was a response to the hybrid architectural
styles brought about by the unruly influences of modernity. It represented a clear attempt
to take control of the processes of change through modern reason and moral order.85
The planning of private space in the model houses was a statement about the importance
of the normal stable smallholding peasant family as the basis of the economic and social
ideal of the Romanian countryside in this period, and of private property as a source of
both individual pride and social solidarity and co-operation.
LAND, RESISTANCE AND CO-OPERATION

The aesthetic transformation and re-organization of space in Dios,ti required a
preliminary re-organization of land. Land was the defining feature of the peasant
economy and the most sensitive, and its re-allocation, necessary to create space for the
new street and civic centre, proved complex and difficult. The initial small-scale re-
allocation of land required the expropriation of some plots with generous compensation
and the re-housing of some locals from bordeie to new model houses.86 Although the
village elite had been consulted and had wholeheartedly agreed to the terms of the
reconstruction, many villagers remained sceptical and reluctant to co-operate with
the Foundation’s team. This turned to straightforward resistance when some were asked
to surrender their house or land on the promise of getting a new house that was yet to be
built.87 Focs,a and his collaborators had the difficult task of clearing the building site,
expropriating all remaining residents and then re-allocating the model houses to their
new owners. Focs,a recounted a telling example of the locals’ unpredictable reactions.
During the 1944 bombing of Bucharest, he took his wife and children and left the city for
Dios,ti, where he was hosted by one of the ‘model villagers’, a certain Iordan. Coming
from a poor background, this man had worked hard and acquired a small plot of land
where he had built a house for his family. He was then faced with the official demand to
exchange his possessions for a new model house and, despite some resistance, appeared to
be working hard on his new home. Yet, five years later, he confessed to Focs,a that
when he saw that they were going to take his land and his house and he had no
way out, he plotted with one of his fellows to kill the inspector of the
Foundation (i.e. Focs,a). He confessed his plan to his wife, who had been to
upper school for a few years and was thus more educated. She listened to him
and then asked: ‘Did this man come of his own accord?’ He said: ‘No, the
Foundation sent him, as he had an order from his Majesty.’ ‘Then I’ll tell you
what will happen. You will kill this one, you will go to jail and then another
one will come and continue building the village.’ And this confused him,
disarmed him, and he dropped his plans.88
85 87
G. Focs,a, ‘Dios,tii sat model II’, Ca˘minul Focs,a and Rostás, ‘G. Focs,a’, op. cit., 49.
Cultural, 6, 9 –10 –11 (November 1940), 120. 88ibid.
86M. Bălăianu, Diosti, op. cit., 404 –7.
This story shows the tensions between a peasant mindset and modern bureaucratic
mechanisms that were impossible to grasp and whose intrusion, even in a good cause,
was difficult for the rural community to handle. At the same time, it is representative of
the complex process of negotiation that characterized the entire project. Like most
rural development projects, or any others requiring legislation regarding property
(either seizure or redistribution of land), the success of the Dios,ti project depended on the
co-operation of the local community.
One of the ways in which the planners tried to overcome peasant resistance and get
their co-operation was to involve them in the building of the model houses.89 The
principles of this involvement were clearly stated by Focs,a:
building for the village but without the [villagers’ help], not using its latent
energy that it can only develop through action . . . would be a great error.
A constructive work programme, executed with difficulties and sacrifices from
all participant parties, is better even if it is imperfect and realized with a certain
delay. . . . This is the way in which great and real efforts have to be made in
the villages of Romania, directly in the field. No other method can accelerate
the rhythm of the villages for a systematic transformation towards social
progress.90
This showed an effort to marry self-help with philanthropy and social aid in an attempt to
reproduce the pride one takes in the product of one’s own work. In reality, the results
were mixed: some people overcame their distrust and co-operated in the building of the
model houses, their own and those of their neighbours. Others, especially those who had
not been affected by the fire, remained indifferent to the rebuilding of the village and
proved unwilling to change the way they worked their own land. As one commentator
lamented:
It is sad that those whose houses have burnt down are not helping out with the
building of their own houses. Apart from four people everybody else refuses to
help out. It is a strange situation. After having been given a house and
outbuildings with all the necessary comforts, the peasant cannot be bothered to
join in digging the foundations or to place a brick in the wall of the house he has
chosen for himself!91
These shortcomings showed the limits of this elite, state-driven initiative with two
contradictory aims: a fast, radical and therefore superficial transformation of the locality
and the inculcation of a spirit of self-help and co-operation among the local community.
The rationalization of landholdings, another important aim of the model village
planners, remained only a dream, as the Second World War brought the entire project to
a halt. In the past, Dios,ti had had a system of land tenure typical for most agricultural
free-peasants’ villages organized in parallel strips of land each descending from a common
ancestor (mos,). This had determined the organization of rural housing, with roads cutting
89 91
Focs,a, Satul Model Dios,ti, op. cit., 19 – 26. A. Bărcănescu, ‘La Dios,ti’ [‘In Dios,ti’] in Sate
90ibid., 21. ,si echipe [Villages and Teams ] (Bucharest, 1939),
20.
across these parallel strips, allowing each landowner to place his house on his strip. In the
period before the fire, the village had been greatly affected by the process of land
fragmentation, with the strips being further subdivided, creating a criss-cross of small
plots owned by different locals.92 The planners saw an irrational and inefficient
organization of plots and sought to amalgamate all individual plots and set up a co-
operative to undertake all agricultural labour.
The planners envisaged Dios,ti as the most advanced agricultural centre in the region,
equipped with all the machinery, tools and raw products necessary for the modernization
and rationalization of agriculture. This conformed to a vision for the future of the
Romanian peasant economy, echoed in discussions about rural development at the
League of Nations Health Organization, in which co-operation would revive agriculture
by consolidating landholdings and introducing progressive methods of production. This
sought to adapt the system of ownership and production to the demands of the market
economy.93 For various reasons the locals suspected and resented these initiatives and the
planners had neither the time nor the means to implement them in full.94 Although most
of the infrastructure and buildings planned for Dios,ti were completed between 1938 and
1940, the plans to amalgamate land plots were first postponed and later completely
abandoned due to the outbreak of the Second World War.
The problem of land in Dios,ti indicates the project’s priorities as well as its limitations.
The project offered a cultural and aesthetic vision in which agriculture, although
important, was only secondary. In Gusti’s ideas, for example, economic transformation
was subsumed under ‘the culture of work’; this implied that change had to happen freely
and slowly, with the co-operation of locals and under the guidance of experts. In Dios,ti,
as the project was suspended, this meant no change at all. This could reinforce the
argument made at the time by one important critic of model villages, Mihai Pop, who
saw them as an anachronism and a way to ‘oppose the natural course of things, of going
forward, by using a kind of illusory toys, just for the sake of preserving forms of village
life that we have grown to love out of an outdated and sometimes dangerous
romanticism’.95 Pop was one of Gusti’s collaborators and epigones, but he saw the
‘disaggregation’ of the old peasant way of life as a natural and unavoidable process.
He also saw the problem of land as the most urgent and model villages as ways to avoid
facing the processes of change that had already started to take shape inside village culture
– ‘the fragmentation of the small plots and the consolidation of large-scale property’.
Both were processes through which the rural world was adapting to the modern
economic system yet both, he thought, had serious social consequences of national
importance, which could not be solved ‘with palliative solutions’.96
92See Urucu, Dios,ti, op. cit., 65 –71. 95Mihai Pop, ‘Iluzia satului model’ [‘The
93 C. Constantin Ciulei, ‘Comasarea illusion of the model village’] in Vreau sa˘ fiu ,si
proprietăt,ilor agricole’ [‘The consolidation of eu revizuit. Publicistica din anii 1937 – 1940.
agricultural property’], Sociologie Romaˆneasca˘, Antologie de Zoltań Rosta´s [I also want to be
2, 2 –3 (1937), 102–5. revised. Journalism from 1937 –1940. Anthology by
94L. Popescu, ‘Pe santierele satului model
, Zoltań Rosta´s ] (Bucharest, 2010), 363 –6.
96
Dios,ti’ [‘On the building site of the model Pop, op. cit., 365–6.
village Dios,ti’] in Sate ,si echipe (Bucharest,
1939), 18 –19. Bărcănescu, op. cit., 53 –4.
CONCLUSIONS
In the introduction of his book Realist Vision, Peter Brooks asks: ‘Why do we take
pleasure in imitations and reproductions of things of our world? Why do we from
childhood like to play with toys that reproduce in miniature objects amid which we live?’
His answer is:
the pleasure human beings take in scale models . . . must have something to do
with the sense these provide of being able to play with and therefore to master
the real world. The scale model, the mode`le reduit as the French call it – allows us
to get both our fingers and our minds around objects otherwise alien and
imposing. Models give us a way to bind and to organize the complex and at
times overwhelming energies of the world around us.97
This argument is relevant for the story of the model village recounted above. The
production of models is an important step in the process of understanding the world.

Models, however, are not only miniatures of reality, but schematic visions of how reality
could be improved or transformed, ones that seem easy to copy and to replicate further.
However, the special nature of the model, unlike that of the plan, is that, apart from their
visible exterior, models need to be internalized in order to be reproduced. This is their
educational function, allowing their makers’ vision to be internalized by their consumers.
The idea of the model village in inter-war Romania represented the drive to
understand, organize and control the rural world that characterized this period
worldwide. For Romania, as for many other countries with significant rural populations,
the development of the countryside became a metonym for the modernization of the
whole of society.98 Caught between a desire to preserve traditional elements of peasant
culture and the desire to civilize, rationalize and standardize many aspects of peasant life,
modernization programmes reflected the fear of change and of its unruly effects, often
including interventions meant to keep the rural masses in their place while educating and
pacifying them.99
The tightly connected national and international networks of academic and social
reform and the international culture of exhibiting both objects and ideas shaped such
schemes, providing inspiration and allowing social reformers around the world to
improve their plans and models constantly. Such prototypes of modern living were
showcased at world fairs, where model villages were displayed on a global stage alongside
consumer goods and technological innovations but also alongside displays of exotic or
authentic culture from around the world. This integrates them into a vision of modernity
whose drive for transformation was caught between the desire to preserve and to change
the countryside, which, like the model, reflected both backwards and forwards.
Considered in their own right, model villages can be seen as attempts to intervene in the
reproduction of social and cultural patterns, hierarchies and ultimately of moral orders.100
97P. Brooks, Realist Vision (Yale, 2005), 1. 100P.Bourdieu, ‘Cultural reproduction’ in

98Rogers, ‘Good to think’, op. cit., 56 –7. Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change
99
B. Ching and G. Creed, Knowing your Place. (London, 1973), 71 – 112.
Rural Identity and Cultural Hierarchy (London,
1997).
Figure 7. The old pharmacy in Dioști in 2010. Source: photographed by the author.
Since models represent central motors behind changes in cultural practices, behaviour or
taste, the production or replacement of existing models with scientifically designed ones
was an important attempt to modify and steer processes of transformation in what was
seen to be the ‘right’ direction. As part of the wider discourse of rural development,
model villages can be read in several ways: as products of a new science of living, as
educational tools within a given social order and as products to be consumed on the stages
where ideas about development and modernization were displayed.
The later fate of Dios,ti provides a commentary on the short-lived nature of such
artificial models of living (see Figure 7). Forgotten by the state until the communist land
reform and collectivization process, which started in 1949, the village was later
reorganized according to another vision of modernity.101 The communist regime
requisitioned the land from rich peasants, persecuting and vilifying them as agents of
capitalism. Collectivization produced a much deeper social re-ordering of Dios,ti.
However, in the 1960s, as new social hierarchies emerged, the state revived and
completed some of the institutions and infrastructure of Dios,ti’s model village. The ca˘min
cultural and the school thrived in this period and the village was fully electrified.102
Moreover, although Dios,ti could never resume its role as a model village due to its tainted
past, the new regime developed other model villages as part of its own attempt to use
‘mimetic’ education to transform peasants into subjects of the state. Model kolhozes
(Soviet-style collective farms), like that of Sı̂ntana, were meant to convince people to join
101
For a recent comprehensive study of this Romanian Agriculture, 1949–1962 (Princeton,
process, see G. Kligman and K. Verdery, 2011).
102Urucu, Diosti, op. cit.
Peasants under Siege: The Collectivization of ,
103
the collective farms and to prove the viability of this new social form of organization.
Yet, after the collapse of communism, these were also abandoned, returning these
localities to their anonymous existence.
In the post-communist period, the memory of its past as a model village was partly
resurrected in Dios,ti as a source of local pride. However, the very different fates of the
village’s private and public buildings reflect new transformations in the countryside and
in society more widely. The houses, returned to the sons and daughters of the first owners
or sold to new ones, have survived in good condition, some adapted to their owners’
tastes and lifestyles, some renovated in keeping with their original aesthetics. However,
the public buildings have had a very different destiny. The only institutions that have
retained their original function are the school and the local council, the latter being
repaired in the summer of 2009. The other additions to village life (the stadium, the
veterinary clinic, the new church and the ca˘min cultural) have all either lost or changed
their intended function. Most strikingly, the latter is now a home for disabled children
from the entire region. Recently repainted bright yellow, while it is still physically at the
core of the village, its new function has turned it into a semi-carceral space, fenced off and
impenetrable to the local community, which does not interact with the children in care, a
fact that renders the building itself invisible. Thus, while the strange fate of the ca˘min
cultural speaks of the shallowness of models and of their perverse effects, the preservation
or renovation of the model houses by their new owners indicates the quality and even
success of their design.104
St Mary’s University Twickenham, London
103
Călin Goina, ‘Ce pot,i face azi nu lăsa pe 1962) [The Peasantry and the Power. The Process
mâine: cazul colhozului-model “Viat,a Nouă”, of Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture,
Sântana’ [‘Don’t leave for tomorrow what you 1949 –1962 ] (Ias,i, 2005), 368–93.
104
can do today: the case of the model kolhoz No potential conflict of interest was reported
Sântana’] in T , a˘ra˘nimea ,si Puterea. Procesul de by the author.
colectivizare al agriculturii Iˆn Romaˆnia (1949 –

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Prototypes for modern living:

KEYWORDS: development; inter-war; model village; modernization; peasantry;

1Timpul [The Time ], 8 April 1938, 3. 3Timpul, 29 June 1938, 7.

q 2015 Taylor & Francis

4Recent work on Diosti includes Veselina

RURAL TRANSFORMATIONS AND THE IDEA OF THE MODEL VILLAGE

Agriculturii ,si Domeniilor. Istoric. Organizare. 26ibid.

agenda’ prevalent in his time.28

BUILDING THE SOCIAL IDEAL: SOCIOLOGY AND THE MODEL VILLAGE

Cultural Foundation’] in Echipe student,es,ti la

52 Dimitrie Gusti, ‘Despre Muzeul “Satul 56 S. Peer, France on Display: Peasants,

FROM PARIS TO DIOŞTI: THE POLITICS OF THE MODEL VILLAGE

60Heinen, op. cit.

68 T. Asad, ‘Ethnographic representation, 71ibid., 63.

FCR-C, 21, 1939, vol. III, 49.

LAND, RESISTANCE AND CO-OPERATION

production of models is an important step in the process of understanding the world.

97P. Brooks, Realist Vision (Yale, 2005), 1. 100P.Bourdieu, ‘Cultural reproduction’ in

St Mary’s University Twickenham, London

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