Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Aknowledgement
Social networks and social capital 19 ly operating), informal institutions such as social networks can provide some insulation from risk. This wholesale institutional transformation also affects the role and nature of informal institutions during the transition. Economic uncertainty is high during the initial phase of restructuring and the abolition of bureaucratic co-ordination temporarily increases transaction costs for market participants. Hence, there is a large scope for co-ordination of economic exchange through informal institutions, including enterprise networks or “informal social capital” (Rose, Mishler and Haerpfer 1994; Kolankiewicz 1996). Many of the studies of privatisation and transition to a market society emphasise that the form of capitalism to emerge in Eastern and Central Europe was constructed through the way in which existing networks and social relations were used to privatise and control resources (Smith and Pickles 1998). In other words, the transition is shaped through existing and adapted informal institutions such as social networks which are “path dependent" (Stark 1996). For these reasons, the transitions in Eastern Europe did not work in the way that economists’ models had predicted. It is already a well established fact that people in Eastern and Central Europe have very little trust in public institutions (apart from the Church). This is as much a product of their experiences of the transition from Communism as their experiences of Communism itself. Nor do they join associations and therefore enhance formal social capital (Wallace, Spannring and Haerfper 2000). Where people help one another it is not through formal organisations, such as the Red Cross, but rather through informal networks of self-help. The strength of these informal institutions and networks has helped to buffer people against some of the worst difficulties of the transition. However, evidence suggests that social networks are breaking down and people becoming more isolated in the market society, at the very time when they most need contacts to help them pull through or to consolidate their positions in the new social order.
