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
Managing instability 67 run? If “amoral familism“ is dominant, how can collective action successfully be stimulated by democracy and implementation of institutional reforms? Does interpersonal mistrust not leave any space for the smooth functioning of institutions? If the state is mistrusted, who is in charge of bringing in innovation and development? The paper is structured in two parts. The fist part examines the issue of how people assign trust to certain institutions and social clusters in and outside the village sphere. A general view of trust is outlined with reference to quantitative data. The second part deals with the observation of practices. The family and the village constitute the three spheres in which social relations are articulated in the everyday world. The fieldwork on which this paper is based was conducted in Királyfa between May 2000 and September 2001. Királyfa is a village inhabited by 1533 persons, 83 percent of whom Hungarians and about 15 percent Slovaks (Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic 2001). The village is situated on the western bank of the Váh river in one of the most fertile regions of southwestern Slovakia (see Danter, Tóth, Liszka this volume). Trust in social institutions: a quantitative view After over one year of living in Királyfa1, intrigued by the fact that people’s actions often did not follow the cognitive criteria which shaped these, I recalled an Italian proverb: Tra il dire e il fare c'è di mezzo il mare (“Between the saying and doing there is the sea“). This suggested to me that understanding the social features of a community may be a process which goes much further than simply listening to people’s stories and opinions about their living reality in their everyday lives. For example, people’s open mistrust of the agricultural cooperative is not matched by their interactions with it. People resort to the cooperative in their everyday life, even when other solutions are possible. They choose to do so according to a series of motives which eventually lead them
