Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Interaction, migration and change
Property, power, and emotions 253 4 As with “memory", "emotion" has wrongly been regarded as an interior process which takes place within individuals’ minds and bodies. Since the 1980s, anthropologists and some psychologists have stressed the social nature of memory and emotional dynamics. Brian Parkinson (1995: 169), for example, suggested that “the central function of many emotional states is social”. He further noted that "although [most psychological] theories may provide a relatively comprehensive analysis of individual emotion, they are still limited by their inattention to the social dimension which is crucial to many instances of emotion as it occurs during everyday life" (Parkinson 1995: 146). 5 The Sudeten German expulsion began as soon as the war ended, a few months before the signing of the Potsdam Agreement. The mass expulsions took almost two years to complete. During the first six months, a period also known as the "wild expulsion" (wilde Austreibung), tens of thousands were terrorised and brutally killed in a spirit of revenge (cf. Hamperl 1996; Stanëk 1991). 6 A comparison of the numbers of inhabitants before and after the Sudeten German expulsion demonstrates the extent to which the village was affected. At the time of their expulsion, over one thousand Sudeten Germans had lived in Vesnice. Today the village houses only about two hundred inhabitants, eighty percent less than before. 7 After the war, the Czechoslovak government invited Czechs and Slovaks who lived in Hungary, Romania, the Soviet Union, and other East European countries to resettle in the areas. The Ruthenians took the opportunity to move to Czechoslovakia lured by nationalist propaganda. 8 Being a Czech refugee who had left his home country for the Netherlands in 1948, my father had decided to buy a second home in his country of origin after the 1989 Velvet Revolution. 9 For a discussion of the distinction between the concepts of “remembered" and "re-experienced” emotions, see Svašek 2000b. 10 After the Cold War, politically-active Sudeten Germans had hoped that their demands would finally be met. They had taken their case to the American Senate and the European courts whose members both decided not to support the claim. 11 On the day of the annual service, the presence of the expellees in Vesnice was undeniable. Their shiny cars were parked all over the village (which consisted of one main road), and their voices could be heard as they walked from one end of the village to the
