Liszka József (szerk.): Az Etnológiai Központ Évkönyve 2000-2001 - Acta Ethnologica Danubiana 2-3. (Dunaszerdahely-Komárom, 2001)
1. Tanulmányok - Danglová, Ol'ga: Az etnicitás mint a lokális és regionális identitás összetevője
Acta Ethnologica Danubianu 2-3 (2000-2001), Komärom-Komárno The Borderland as a Complex of Material, Aesthetic and Symbolic Values OI’ga Danglová Today, questions of social, ethnic, religious and local identity are some of the most discussed in the social sciences. Their content is difficult to define, but in general it can be said that the basic meaning of identity is emotional or rational perception of the self in the framework of identification with a particular social, ethnic or religious community. This identification usually does not occur on the level of passive acceptance, but carries with it a value dimension, comparison of the self and one’s community with others, realization of one’s own or the other’s difference on the basis of membership of a group. The individual living in a certain community can have various group identities - he can simultaneously belong to ethnic, local, family, age, professional and religious groups. The group to which an individual belongs provides guidelines or instructions on how to solve or evaluate certain situations, and orients the individual (together with others) in social and partnership relations, in what is natural and unnatural, beautiful or ugly. Therefore, that which we call identity is really a product of collective self-definition. It is not given in advance, but is the result of the individual’s “struggle” for his own identity, of how the individual deals with the hierarchization of his identities, which he prioritizes, which he suppresses. At the same time, however, in the course of everyday life, expressions of group identity are often imperceptible, as if they are of little importance. They come to the surface in latent or manifest form especially in situations, in which identity becomes a vital problem for the individual. As far as concerns ethnic identity, this is one of the components of the social identity of the individual. It serves as a means of self-identification and is one of the building stones of the polyphonically structured composition of the thinking of the individual. Therefore, the phenomenon belongs to the social sphere of reality, and so it poses questions not only for sociologists, but also for ethnologists and ethnographers, who want to describe a certain community as a communication system. G.Csepely recognizes four types of communication, in the framework of which the identification of the individual on national lines occurs. Essentially, these types can also be applied to the case of ethnic identity. When determining these four types, attention is given to the time dimension, whether communication occurs diachronically, in the connection of present findings with findings from the past, or the directing of present findings towards the future. In the first case, it is a matter of a bridge between the past and present, in the second of sending a message to the future. The second distinguishing aspect is whether we are concerned with direct personal or indirect impersonal communication. With combination of the temporal and functional points of view, the following 85
