Társadalomtörténeti múdszerek és forrástípusok. Salgótarján, 1986. szeptember 28-30. - Rendi társadalom, polgári társadalom 1. - Adatok, források és tanulmányok a Nógrád Megyei Levéltárból 15. (Salgótarján, 1987)

Angol nyelvi összefoglalók (English Summaries)

559 An inquiry into the spatial and settlements characteristics of society can begin only by analysing the society of one particular settlement in some depth. To quote Ferenc Erdei: "

The social structure of- a Hungarian city is at any---Tate a Gut through the whole of Hungarian society; it comprises pieces of the constituent strata of Hungarian society...shows more or less the structure of Hungarian society

". It is exactly the problem and character of the cities of the plain — much discussed in the sense of settlement geography, too — that speaks for the choice of a city of the plain, in this case, Debrecen, for a detailed social historical study. The terrain of the analysis of a city society is something that cannot be spoken of in the language of geography, although this does not mean that from now on we can do without the conceptions of settlement geography or the historical social geography. To cast aside these conceptions would be impractical if for no other reasons, than because of the fact that the living conditions of the inhabitants of a city are determined not only by the'given settlement itself, but influenced by the wider spatial relations as well. The structure of a settlement and the quality and structure of the central place functions that it provides its sphere of influence with, affect the dynamics and character of social statification and mobility, but on the other hand the latter is influenced by the services of others that the given settlement is making use of. So the varied effects and forms of the wider spatial relationships influence the life of the given (differentiated) city society. This is a peculiar duality: the changing social scope of movements, that the city may extend to its residents is determined on the one hand by its own functions and infrastructural establishments, on the other hand by the effects of the wider spatial relationships. The latter are at the same time or less specific to social strata. The different social groups move about in different "

spaces

" from the aspects of socialization, labourmarket position, scope and intensity of the commercialization of production. The author — following the examples of Daniel Berteaux and Isabelle Berteaux-Wiamme — aims at looking at the concrete workings of the given social relationships, trying to explore "

the consequences of such deep relations of structure on the daily activities of life, the pecul

i

ar conditions of life and" careers of people"

"! It is on the level of the individual that the economic, demographic, social and ideological forces and effects interact, and form not only the individual life stories, but the character and direction of the main social changes as well, through the mediation of the strata- and settlement-specific answers of the individuals and families. Thus it is not just to enliven the dry prose that the family- or individual life-stories need to be fitted into the frame of analysis exploring objective, functional relationships, but it serves to capture this peculiar duality of the working of society. Naturally, it is not the personality that should be grasped by tracking the family or individual careers, but those more general traits need to be stressed, that transcend the unrepeatable uniqueness of individual life, that is to say, those that carry and form social meaning. To legitimate this approach theoretically, the author turns again to the historical social geography, leaving sociological and social-historical sources aside. To quote Allen Pred: "

Since individual socialisation (or the formation of life-carreer) and institutional (social) reproduction intertwine dialectically, as social-integrative and system-integrative processes, interpenetrating one another

" — TE is this 4