ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one seemingly small event in the overall process of privatization in a Transylvanian Romanian community subsequent to decollectivization. It discusses the division and distribution of jointly-worked, though privately held land from several local agricultural associations to local family households for their own private production. The chapter explores the act of land division conjured up a variety of key symbols and meanings and thus aroused many of the contradictory pressures in the communities present from before collectivization and left unresolved with privatization. Agricultural privatization and the related phenomenon of decollectivization are two of the most significant influences on rural East European communities. "Inside privatization" in Hirseni commune shows a range of differences between several associations that account for the divergent land division experience. The land parcel, locally termed "the upland meadow", was located on the village's southern perimeter on the road to the Carpathian Alps.
