REVITALISING THE COUNTRYSIDE? ETHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON COUNTER-URBANISATION AND RURAL TRANSFORMATION IN BULGARIA

The depopulation of rural areas in Bulgaria is a complex and long-lasting process that began in the mid-20th century. The sizable internal population movements from rural to urban areas in Bulgaria during the communist era led to rapid urbanisation. This was as the result of forced collectivisation and industrialisation. Further rural depopulation was exacerbated by mass emigration abroad in the first two decades of the post-communist transition. This led to a serious deterioration in the demographic, economic, social, and cultural characteristics of rural areas. However, in the last decade, although the general trend of decreasing rural population (and the country’s population in general) has been maintained, the number of movements from rural to urban areas has been smaller than those in the opposite direction. These movements include both returnees to their ancestral villages and new settlers buying rural property. The newcomers also include Bulgarian citizens who have returned from living and working abroad, as well as foreigners who have chosen to settle in Bulgarian villages. The paper aims to provide an overview of the research work on counter-urbanisation in the country that has been carried out by a research team from the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Institute and Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences since 2018. The conceptual framework of the research will be presented. Aiming to investigate the forms and mechanisms of social, cultural, and economic interaction between rural newcomers themselves and with local residents, and how this affects rural transformation, we integrate ethnography with approaches from other disciplines such as social geography, rural sociology, human ecology, policy studies, etc. Key research questions that we address include: What attitudes and prerequisites do locals and newcomers have towards each other? How are different cultural perceptions reconciled in rural settings? How are different knowledge and habits transferred and assimilated? To what extent are compromises made in a diversifying rural environment? What are the potential sources of conflict and what are the strategies for resolving them? How the practices and activities of each group affect the rural landscape and shape the ways in which existing local environments, assets and resources are used.