Provides a comprehensive look at the social engineering process that ensued. This title examines how collectivization assaulted the foundations of rural life, transforming village communities that were organized around kinship and status hierarchies into segments of large bureaucratic organizations, forged by the language of "class warfare". "Scholars from a wide range of research areas and disciplines will cherish this book, but obviously those, who focus on Romania, the Balkans and communism will find it most valuable. Undoubtedly through the abundance of material gathered and analysed in the book, the interdisciplinary approach and the innovative methodology applied by Gail Gligman and Katherine Verdery make this work not only a powerful intellectual achievement, but indeed a landmark in the field of studies on communist regimes in Europe."---Rigels Halili, Anthropological Notebooks