Földessy Edina, Szűcs Alexandra, Wilhelm Gábor: Tabula 2/2 (Néprajzi Közlemények; Budapest, 1999)

KEMÉNYFI RÓBERT: Az etnikai tér és a nemzetállamiság eszméje

RÓBERT KEMÉNYFI The ethnic space and the idea of national state The author interprets the role of the ethnic space in the political thinking of the 19th and 20th centuries. The essay attempts to answer the following questions: I

. How and why does the ethnic space become part of the national mythology in nation-states? 2. What are the reasons for the rebirth of the ethnic space in nation-states? 3. What conceptional differences can be outlined between the Eastern and Western interpretations of the ethnic space? 4- Do the concepts "national minority" and "ethnicity" have spatial projections? 5. Can "ethnicity" be measured and spatially projected? The essay also presents the possible spatial processes of the minority ethnic areas by the state-border in a nation-state model. The dynamic analysis of ethnic spatial processes has recently appeared in today's ethno-geography and it also opened towards ethnology. The static ethnic space will be replaced by dynamic ethnic places. Through this change of attitude the dynamic social geography concerned with the issue of nationality is not striving for the propagation of the immobility (unmoveability) of ethnic space-structures and their historical continuity or for serving political decisions of separation. Instead, it is striving to analyze their effects and influences by the critical evaluation of the Past and the political dangers of the Present.