‘Winners And Losers’: Lessons From The Romanian Transition To A Market Economy

This paper is about the consequences of the transition to a market economy upon the individuals’ understandings of themselves, the others and of the new capitalist ‘regime’ in the Romanian setting. For some, the new regime is a positive experience and its upholding morality a more enriching experience than anything before. We label these individuals, ‘the winners’ of the transition: most of them are the new entrepreneurs who hold not only the economic power but many of them hold political power. For other individuals, the new regime has very little to offer: its morality is perceived as dubious and its ‘creators’, the entrepreneurs and politicians are viewed as corrupted and individualistic. These are the socalled ‘losers’ of the transition. Before launching into the analysis of the data, consisting mainly of interview and participant observation material, we would like to map out the domain and trajectory of morality.