Beschreibung
“Westernisation” and the prospect of European integration have been formidable catalysts
for social and economic change in Eastern European countries since 1989. Full of promises
and expectations but lacking economic means and adequate structures, Romanian enterprises
have faced particularly difficult problems. Prompted by employees’ self-criticism, this book
explores the dynamics of work values in the service sector in Bucharest. Based on long term
ethnographic fieldwork, the study analyses the factors determining social and cultural change
at the local level, from the impact of Western ideologies and symbolic measures to concrete
organisational and economic constraints. Monica Heintz emphasizes the impact of the forced
pace of change, which caused social disorder and disrupted individual values. She challenges
the notion of a universal ethic of work and argues that what governs relationships between
employers, employees and clients in the Romanian context is simply an ethic of human
relations.
Monica Heintz (PhD 2002 Cambridge) is Lecturer in the Department of
Social Anthropology, University of Paris 10- Nanterre and a member of
the Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative, Nanterre.
She was previously a Research Fellow of the Max Planck Institute for
Social Anthropology in Halle. She has conducted long term fieldwork in
Romania and the Republic of Moldova.
