Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Introduction
30 Davide Torsello and Melinda Pappová that contribute to hamper the smoothness of the transition (Hann 2002). One of the most natural escape routes for people experiencing postsocialism seems to be those ties that concretely bind individuals to their fellows providing avenues of solidarity, mutuality and trust. Personal and affinal ties constitute in most cases the ultimate resource on which people can count when the rapidity and pervasiveness of social change have deeply permeated even the most basic of the social units, the family, making precarious the bases for its subsistence and reproduction. The notion of social networks can be applied fruitfully to understand present problems and dilemmas in Central Eastern Europe by analysing networks as institutions “in movement" both in time and space and not as static patterns of interaction. There are two reasons for this. First, when people structure their answers and strategies to cope with the present they “read into their past” and draw useful lessons and experiences as they seek the best from their life. Second, the frequency and force of the geo-political transformations that have characterized this half of Europe in the course of the 20th century, has instilled in people a particular sense of “belonging" to a place, a region, a country or a group of countries. This sense is not comparable to that of any other social and cultural context and as such bears the complexity of its originality. By shedding lights on the meaning and function that human networks assume with regard to time and space it becomes possible to portray the postsocialist transformation as a dynamic and multi-faceted process and not simply as an evolutionary stage of human society from state socialism to market capitalism. The intention of this book is to provide an original contribution to the study of social networks and their span in time and space. The main argument arising from the collection of works is that the space(s) and time(s) in which social networks are constructed in postsocialist societies vary as actors adapt and face the instability of times. One way to understand the complexity of the postsocialist transformation is to consider the manner in which people perceive their
