Tóth Ferenc szerk.: Fiatal Néprajzkutatók Országos Konferenciája. Makó, 1991. augusztus 26-28. A Makói Múzeum Füzetei 75. (Makó, 1993)

KUTATÁSI BESZÁMOLÓK - BORSOS BALÁZS: A kulturális ökológia és magyarországi lehetőségei

Stokiund, Bjame 1976 Ecological Sucession. Ethnologia Scandinavica. 84-99. Réfi Oszkó Magdolna 1987 A Rétköz gazdálkodása a XVIII-XIX. században. Kand. ért. Kézirat. ABSTRACT CULTURAL ECOLOGY AND ITS POTENTIALS IN HUNGARY Balázs Borsos The case of ecological anthropological studies serves as a good example for the aims and potentials of contemporary Hungarian ethnographic research. On the basis of Julian Steward's work in the 1930s, the theoretical and methodological foundations of ecological anthropology were chiefy laid by American researchers referring to modern environment and field-work. The 1970s-80s brought a golden age for this approach. In elaborating on historical anthropology through the perspective of ecology, however, some Scandinavian scientists took the lead. They chiefly relied on materials in archives and analyses of old maps. The American approach of research is impossible in present-day Hungary; the given communities and societies are more dependent on their social and cultural environments than on nature. In Hungarian research material, adjustment to nature can only be detected and analysed in relation to great periods of remaking nature in the past (e. g. works of river control), which, however, demands a historical approach. Due to my academic qualifications (degrees in geology, geography, and ethnography), I am more attracted to the American type of ecological anthropology analysis of contemporary phenomena. In Hungary, however, only historical ecology is possible; a methodology for which - since I do not hold a degree in history - I have less inclinations. The research in Bodrogköz (the region around the river Bodrog), which covers the period of the last century, is based on statistical data broken down according to settlements (a description of the country by András Vályi and Elek Fényes; a military survey from 1852-55; a field-survey from the 1880s; agricultural statistics from 1895; and the national census in 1900). On the basis of these statistics, it can be traced that field-growing of plants came into prominence and live-stock-breeding became intensified. Comparing these facts with demographic 113