Ethnicity, Identity, and Branding in Postcommunist Romania
Authors: Dolea, A.E. and Suciu, A.
Editors: Roy, S.
Journal: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Communication
Publisher: Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.1332
Abstract:Among the Eastern European nations, Romania experienced one of the harshest forms of Communism that imposed an ethnically homogenous nation and gradually cut the nation off from the rest of the world. The violent revolution to overthrow the Communist regime in December 1989 was widely covered by the international news media and foreign correspondents who came to report from the ground: moving images of a backward, poor country, with disabled children abandoned in orphanages, made headlines at the time. They have shaped the first representations of post-communist Romania in the West, generating in turn outrage and heated debates within Romanian society over the negative stereotypical image of the nation thus projected to global audiences.
Competing discourses over what is representative for the Romanian nation and how it should be promoted abroad have been recurring since then in the institutional, media, commercial and cultural public spheres. Romania’s relationship with the West has been, and continues to be, discussed particularly along the lines of how ‘others’ (in the West) perceive and evaluate the nation. NATO and EU membership in 2004 and 2007 respectively have been constructed as symbolic victories, legitimizing the democratic transition of the nation, while its progress has constantly been evaluated in comparison with its neighbours. These have been part of nation-building efforts aimed at constructing a certain relation of difference between Romania and the other Eastern European post-communist nations. They have added to the ongoing self-reflective identity efforts that have also included facing and dealing with uncomfortable aspects in recent history, such as ethnic homogenization, discrimination and oppression of minorities – aspects that were hidden before and during Communism and have been marginally discussed after the fall of Communism.
These debates and competing discourses have influenced Romanians’ representations and perceptions of self, ‘others’, and their own recent history, amplifying their emotions of pride, inferiority complex, or shame at ‘belonging’ to this nation and this Balkan, or Eastern European, space. The negative image of Romania has often been discussed in terms of who is to blame for generating such negative representations. Initially, it was the Communists and the horrors of their regime. Then, it was the foreign media that, every now and then, subjected Romania to negative media campaigns. More recently, it has been the politicians, sometimes the West, the millions of Romanian migrants and, especially, the Roma migrants. Romania’s post-communist development has been constantly evaluated through the ‘eyes’ of the West and the imperative of a better nation branding has been turned into a dominant discourse. Since the fall of Ceausescu, Romania’s negative image that needs to be corrected, the tensions between Romanians' (self) representations and perceptions of ‘others’, and the constant identity negotiations after 45 years of harsh Communism have been intertwined public issues and are to date recurring in public debates.
This article maps out some of the major debates in post-communist Romanian society, drawing on nation branding critical scholarship (Aronczik, 2013; Kaneva, 2021), nationalism and media studies (Mihelj & Jiménez‐Martínez, 2021; Skey & Antonsich, 2017), and its discourse and rhetoric (Calhoun, 2017). It proposes a selection of widely mediatized moments and events in Romania’s recent history to expose the range of institutional, media, commercial and cultural discourses that have embedded the competing visions of Romanian ethnicity and nationhood since 1989. Without being exhaustive, or indeed connected, they have been selected because they are illustrative of the types of dominant discourses (in a Foucauldian sense), recurrent tensions and symbolic struggles between national identity and nation branding in Romanian society. Paradoxically, it is the need to better promote and brand post-communist Romania for “external consumption” that keeps reigniting these internal debates over what symbols and values truly capture the uniqueness of Romania and the traits of its people.
Central to these discourses are the relationships of Romanians with the Western ‘others’, as well as the relationships between Romanians themselves, especially in respect to certain categories of citizens, such as migrants and Roma, within and outside borders. A variety of perspectives formulated by state, media, commercial and cultural actors are discussed to showcase on the one hand the constant interest in these issues across society and on the other hand the fiery ongoing debate in post-communist Romania. The discourse about Romania’s brand and how Romanians are seen through the gaze of ‘others’ (i.e. European ‘others’) has been dominant and thus has influenced the political discourse, the media agenda and frames, the advertising strategies, and the cultural products. The same arguments, myths, symbols, stereotypes, as well as the same complexes, lamentations and hopes can be identified across all these distinct and competing discourses. However, attempts to impose THE nation brand, a marketized version of Romanian identity, have also ended up being contested because they were ultimately concealing alternative narratives of the nation (Kaneva & Popescu, 2011). The post-communist discursive power struggles reflect, in fact, latent identity tensions and contradictory visions of nationhood that date back to the nineteenth century. Having resurfaced after 1989, these have been reframed and recontextualized, continuing to generate controversies and multiple positions in the Romanian public sphere to date.
Source: Manual