Cseri Miklós, Füzes Endre (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 20. (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 2007)

POZSONY FERENC: Az erdélyi magyar társadalom kutatásának eredményei

THE RESULTS OF RESEARCHING THE HUNGARIAN SOCIETY LIVING IN TRANSYLVANIA In the last eighty years the research of Hungarian society living in Romania was basically determined by the national political and power relations, the quality of expert-education, the formation, regression and development of an institutional background. The topics, terminology and research methodology of Transylvanian Hungarian social ethnography emerged relatively late, in the period between the two world wars. While different social studies developed quickly after World War I in Western-Europe, in the Eastern part of Europe, led by Stalin with totalitarian methods, these studies declined. The Romanian Communist Regime relieved temporarily its previously aggressive anti-minority policy only between the years 1968-1972. In the confines of this ideological incitement, sociology was restored into its original position, then its university education was allowed and the new empirical research was carried out. This was the time, when József Vencel was rehabilitated. Unfortunately, this ease was short, as in the year, following his Chinese visit in 1971, Ceausescu also announced his own ideological and cultural revolution in Romania. Therefore, the number of students, studying sociology was reduced, and then the education of this discipline was forbidden. While the Romanian totalitarian authority liquidated the sociological department totally till the late 1970s, it also made the publication of ethnographical volumes impossible. The Association of Social Ethnography of our Age, involving mainly arts students contributed to the education of a new research generation. It also advanced the birth and development of the anthropological work-group in Csíkszereda. After 1989, this was the generation who founded the János Kriza Ethnographical Society and actively participated both in the direction of education and research programs in the Department of Hungarian Ethnography and Anthropology and the professionalisation of Transylvanian Hungarian and Romanian ethnography. In Transylvania, the different social studies (e. g. anthropology, ethnography, sociology, historical anthropology etc.) were institutionalized after the events of 1989 in Romania and university departments, research centres emerged and remarkable publications were written in Hungarian, Romanian and foreign languages. These processes effectively contributed to specialization, division of labour and competitive spirit concerning research of society. In the 1990s, new, varied scientific institution system and research paradigm evolved in Transylvania, which developed close connections with the Hungarian scientific life and the Romanian too. However, in the last few decades, foreign researchers and institutions could join in the research of Transylvanian rural society actively.