Dissuading the state: food security, peasant resistance and environmental concerns in rural Bulgaria

This article seeks to explore the responses of villagers from north-western Bulgaria to neoliberal policies promoted by the post-socialist state in rural areas. We show the two strategies people mobilise in order to defend their interests. A first method is the everyday peasant strategy of resistance: quiet, covered and unopened acts of defiance against the neoliberal policies concerning food acquisition and food production. A second method of reaction is the open protest organised against a newly established polluting enterprise, which is feared to threaten their livelihoods. In both cases villagers use historically formed transnational networks based on friendship and kinship.