Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Time and social networks
Destinies of the post-war colonists in the village of Trate 101 sión and colonisation; almost the entire population was replaced at least twice and the villagers faced modernisation and other radical economic changes as well. Trate was transformed from an almost entirely agricultural village into a typical village that represents the Slovene urbanrural continuum (on the term see Ravbar 1989). Last but not least, the village hosted the legendary Slovene alternative rock club and several local punk rock groups. The latter was in fact the reason of my interest in the village. The development of a local "scene” in such a village was a natural experiment reflecting general processes of "globalisation” in one particular location. Although I visited the village - and its famous youth/rock club - for the first time in the middle eighties I did fieldwork much later, in the post-socialist nineties. Can the localised fieldwork experience bring some new light to the specificity of post-socialism? Definitely, although my observations would hardly prove any substantial impact of the political change on the everyday life of the villagers, especially not with regard to younger villagers living their everyday life in the eternal present (these observations confirm the experiences of an observer of the Russian youth in the nineties - see Markovitz 2000). The only immediately recognisable breaks were connected to public life, beginning with the closing of the village club in 1994, employment problems and regressive changes in the Slovene ideoscape (on the term see Appadurai 1990) in general. I will describe them in more detail later. Naturally, there were other, more favourable changes as well, starting with basic political, individual freedoms and civil rights, improvement of the conditions of everyday life and individual living standard with availability of new commodities, equipment and materials. In contrast to the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, political and economic changes in Slovenia were neither rapid nor radical, but rather evolutionary and gradual. Transformation was slow and is even now not yet fully completed, especially concerning the privatisation of the banks, insurance companies and some major
