During the 1990s, Bulgarian villages experienced another major attempt at social engineering after the collectivization of agriculture under socialism: the process of privatization and land restitution, inspired by a combination of ‘traditionalist’ and neoliberal ideological principles championed by urban and global economic elites. However, the ways these policies were put into practice has raised important questions about their appropriateness, first of all because the local understanding of ‘property’ in the postsocialist context was far removed from what neoliberal architects of privatization had in mind, going beyond their understanding of it in terms of rights and obligations assumed by individual property owners. Because of this, a number of researchers have urged for the kind of ‘property analysis that invokes the total system of social, cultural, and political relations and inquires into, rather than assumes, the nature of property conceptions’ (Verdery 1999, 54; see also Hann 1993).

This chapter will deal with social practices in Bulgarian villages during the restitution of agricultural land, dominated by various cultural norms and values inherited both from the presocialist times and from the decades of collective farming. It deals with the ideological aspect and significance of privatization, seen as the ‘centrepiece of the transition’ in Bulgaria and other postsocialist states (Verdery 1999, 54). The restitution of land, which began during the early 1990s and was supported by Western financial organizations and advisors, brought to the surface discrepancies between the legal norms set by the restitution laws of the postsocialist years and the traditional inheritance practices.