Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Epilogue
318 Frances Pine such as "postcoldwar" or postcolonial (Verdery 2002). And it is worth noting that the neither title of the present volume, nor that of any individual chapter, refers to postsocialism. This conference, then, was about central eastern Europe in the late twentieth century certainly; but it was also about historical antecedents, about deeper roots extending into the socialist period and further back. Indeed history is a formative current running just below the surface in nearly all of the chapters, as well as being visible and specifically addressed in several (Torsello, Svašek, Muršič). So, perhaps it would be fair to say that from the title of the volume to the content of each contribution, the first major theme addressed is history, or its linked and equally complicated sibling, time and the problem of temporality. The next theme is space, and particularly the contested spaces where ethnic differences and other cultural markers of identity and difference are made explicit. From space, the focus of the volume shifts to movement itself, particularly migration from east to west. Here we are forcibly reminded that the Czech Republic is “the west” to the former Soviet Union’s east (Uherek and Plochová), while at the same time Slovakia (and no doubt the Czech Republic as well) is the east for Roma migrating to western Europe and North America (Weinerová). This focus of space and movement shows us clearly the politicisation of space and, referring back to the previous themes, its temporal nature. Places, like ethnic identities, are relationally defined; in other words, the political and cultural meanings ascribed to them are formed and reformed in relation to those of other, different places. This is an old point, which has long been made by anthropologists (see Barth 1969) but it has particular salience throughout contemporary eastern central Europe. Secondly, the political and cultural nature of specific, bounded places shifts not only over time, but also according to temporal context. Obviously, being Hungarian during the Hapsburg Empire meant something quite different from being an ethnic Hungarian in Czechoslovakia during the socialist period, and both of these something different again from
