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The New Challenges and Situation of an Ethnic Minority within a Local Community in the Light of Social Changes
151-177Views:79Our memory is largely shaped by the way we look at the peoples currently living within the Carpathian Basin. Once a well-known tobacco-growing village in Historic Hungary, Torda (also known as Torontáltorda in Hungarian) is now a dispersed settlement with a Hungarian ethnic majority located in the Banat region of Vojvodina, Serbia.
The shifting of national borders, the two World Wars, the events of the Yugoslav Wars and migratory movements have collectively changed and decimated the lives of Hungarians who had found themselves outside their motherland’s borders after the 1920s.
In spite of the decline in population, the emigration of young people, and the everyday struggles resulting from hard living conditions, this village in the Central Banat district could attract further socio-ethnographic interest. In the micro-communities of rural settlements, education and religion play a key role in creating social value, maintaining Hungarian culture in the area and forming a national, local sense of identity within the community. Commemorative rituals, local traditions and national holidays often cross each others’ paths and blend together through education and religion, highlighting the reality and cultural values of the community, as well as the array of connections between community life and ethnic culture. This study discusses Torda’s present in the light of social change and the process of cultural mapping, touching on the importance of the local cultural association in the community’s life. This study also explores the events of the past few decades that have left a deep imprint on the micro-community’s life in a cultural, social and ethnic sense.
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Imaginary and Real Bridges as Connecting Elements in Communal Relations?
209-232Views:14The meaning of bridges is often mentioned in town twinning and other international contacts. In general, this word has positive connotations, as bridges enable interaction and communication and ideally create close relationships. Bridges are usually referred to in a metaphorical sense, but in sometimes they are real structures, such as those dedicated to a specific partner or between two partner communities from different countries. While the significance of the former is symbolic, the latter also fulfill a function in the real sense. In a figurative sense, common elements of everyday life can also form a bridge and bring people together, such as customs, origins, sources of economic income, geographical location and historical experiences. Real bridges can not only connect people and cities, but also act as monuments that remind us of a relationship again and again. By describing selected examples of imaginary and real bridges, the article also addresses the following questions: Is the bridge metaphor mostly just an empty phrase? How are imaginary and real bridges perceived by the public? Are imaginary bridges (e.g. relevant activities, everyday cultural similarities) and physical bridges really connecting elements in European diversity? To what extent are they helpful in understanding the foreign? The article draws primarily on the author's many years of research into town twinning but also on a number of other bilateral relationships in the Central European context. Observations, surveys, media analyses and other research tools serve as sources.
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“We Came to a Village...”: Value Systems in a Changing World
71-98Views:91Although we experience an increasing level of cultural foreign experience in our time intensified by the pressure of migration and the development of information technologies, the conventional view of value systems still prevails in modern nations. Change in culture is a never-ending process, though. The persuasive power of stability and uniformity seems to decline in postmodernity transforming the role of nation states, as well. Peripheries and “partial truth” come into view. Value systems are also affected by these changes. Value systems are no longer cast from a single mold, but rather derive from a dynamically changing framework that is shaped by the dialogistic connection of the elements of the sociocultural realm, the central role of the subject’s interpretation and the positioned meaning of values. This paper attempts to describe the changes brought about by postmodernity through the everyday life of four families settled down in Hosszúhetény. After having embraced traditional values at a certain point in their life as a result of a conscious decision, families are compelled to reevaluate their former worldview. This process results in the revision of their identity, as well. In the end, they are trying to establish themselves through various representational practices in a village that has already been modernized. While trying to analyze the components of their value system, I define so-called correlations in the hope of realizing a more relevant understanding of the postmodern age.