Noi culturi, noi antropologii - Humanitas

decentered ethnography as a better conceptual framework
for my research. The remainder of this paper discusses how
this framework shaped my research approach and helped
me to understand the environmental movement in Moldova.
Distinctions within the Community
As described above, a decentered ethnography of social
movements involves examining how different actors understand
the movement from within their own particular
context. Meeting with individuals and groups from many different
locations within the environmental community, and
considering how they approach projects and talk about certain
subjects, led me to recognize certain distinctions within
the community.
One indication of divisions within the environmental
community came during a discussion with the leader of an
NGO who had tried repeatedly to hold productive meetings
with the leaders of all of the environmental NGOs in
Chişinău. He complained that the leaders could not agree
about anything, so that it was impossible to create a sense
of cooperation between the groups. One reason for tension
between leaders certainly concerns the lack of funding for
environmental projects and resulting competition between
different groups, a common predicament for environmental
NGO in the region 374 . As my research progressed, however, I
discovered additional splits in the movement, which further
contributed to a lack of a coherent movement.
Russian/Romanian
As mentioned above, one split in the environmental NGO
community exists between those groups that speak Russian
and those that speak Romanian. As both a former part of
374. Barbara A. Cellarius, In the land of Orpheus: Rural livelihoods
and nature conservation in postsocialist Bulgaria, University of Wisconsin
Press, Madison, 2004.
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