Eden in Your Backyard: Religious plurality, (return) migration, and the production and consumption of “natural” food in Bistrița-Năsăud county

The Sociology Research Seminar invites you to a wide-ranging presentation by Bridget Kelly-Vincz (University of Michigan), who uncovers the complexity of “natural” food production in a rural landscape of religious plurality and return migration. This will be followed by discussion moderated by Oana Mateescu (FSAS).

Date: November 14^th 2024, 18:00

Location: Room 405, FSAS Mărăști

Guest: Bridget Kelly-Vincz

Eden in Your Backyard: Religious plurality, (return) migration, and the production and consumption of “natural” food in Bistrița-Năsăud county

Drawing on my ongoing ethnographic and archival fieldwork in the village of Rebra and its diaspora in the “Plastic Sea” of greenhouses in Almeria, Spain, I present preliminary findings about the role of home gardens and their “bio” produce in rural Bistrița-Năsăud county. Working with migrants who have returned to the village, I analyze differing conceptions of “natural” food among Adventist, Pentecostal, and Orthodox gardeners concerned with optimizing the health of their bodies and families. I argue that work in home gardens and the fruit of that labor involve translations between economic, emotional, and ethical regimes of value closely connected to the value of agricultural labor in both local and global markets, the gentrification of “organic” produce, and transnational (Adventist) evangelical food and health industries. I suggest that attention to these agricultural and culinary remittances can offer insights into the motivations and allegiances of rural populations in contemporary Romania.

Bridget Kelly-Vincz is a PhD candidate in the department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. She holds a masters in Nationalism Studies from CEU (2020) and a bachelor’s in Anthropology and Romanian Studies from Indiana University (2016). She has just begun her second year of fieldwork in Bistrița-Năsăud county, where she studies food, (return) migration, and religious diversity in rural areas. Her work concerns the noneconomic reasons people choose to return home to emigration-heavy regions. She lives with her husband and two-year-old son on the border between the villages of Parva and Rebra in the foothills of the Munții Rodnei.