Katherine Verdery’s Vanishing Hectare offers an astute analysis of land restitution and the introduction of property rights based on the experiences of a Transylvanian rural population in Romania. The book’s title alludes to the bleak conditions created by privatization processes that do not allow farmers to engage in effective farming, either because they lack the productive means or as a consequence of the manipulations of managing elites. Building on three decades of research in the village of Vlaicu, Verdery shows how anthropology can contribute to an understanding of the (post)socialist transformation of “property.” Her analysis shows how and why property, land, in particular, is not solely a material thing that can yield productive results if correctly (re)distributed to private hands—as envisaged by international organizations such as the IMF and World Bank. Although global transformation and reorganization inaugurated similar processes of privatization in the capitalist world, the introduction of the very principle of private property through decollectivization and restitution is specific to the postsocialist context. Verdery first analyzes the property regime of socialism and its patterns of appropriation and distribution. Then she lays out the changes that followed by exploring complex relationships among international organizations, national policy makers, local elites, collective farm members, and state and private organizations such as fertilizer companies and court commissions.

Central to Verdery’s analysis are the concepts of “property,” “value,” and “risk.” She argues that property is not a universal concept but, rather, one that is historically and politically specific. This insight helps her unmask how Western ideological assumptions about property inform the expectations of international actors—yet at the same time lead them to ignore the necessary conditions of property ownership that allow people to use it productively. In her judgment, property is “a cultural system, an organization of power, and sets of social relations” (p. 48), all of which operate together in social processes. “Value” informs the process of property appropriation and becomes an important component of her analysis. In showing how the value of land differs in presocialist, socialist, and postsocialist contexts, she makes clear that value is a function of context. Finding a value in land is difficult if not all the necessary conditions of production are in place (p. 31). It follows that creating property rights does not necessarily create effective ownership. External factors influence effective ownership and in some cases people “centralize” risk in themselves to maximize their control over production. Although it is the least explored conceptual component in Verdery’s work, the notion of “risk” complements the overall framework. Risk here is about the ability to adjust to conditions of instability and the unpredictability of global and governmental forces; it is about managing certain elements of production.

After establishing how access to resources was organized under socialism—how, for example, the members and president of a collective farm would benefit from the use of the collective product and how political hierarchies resulted in the underpayment of those at the lowest ranks, ultimately prompting them to leave for better-paying industrial jobs—Verdery explores the events and conditions of decollectivization. She describes the implementation of new legislation and regulations as well as codes of conduct imposed by international organizations. She discusses their interpretation, the resistance to them, and the actions of those affected while incorporating the cultural values by which people operate. Numerous cases convey the experiences of members of the local landholders’ association that replaced the collective farm in Vlaicu—a process that she has witnessed firsthand over the past ten years. The significance of the values attached to land, labor, and kinship ties and the ways in which these values have differed among the generations are carefully documented. Decollectivization brought a new set of social matrices; the instability of government policies and the villagers’ lack of preparedness for the changing conditions of market and government forces has created a stratum of society in which ownership has not necessarily improved on the lot of the landless farmer.

The Vanishing Hectare embraces an anthropology of land and agriculture, ideology and power, and postsocialism, as well as knowledge of global neoliberal politics, to make a powerful argument. The book should find a wide readership among social scientists.