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

types of communication aimed at national themes appear. In our view, they may also be

applied to distinguishing the communication channels of ethnic orientation:- Diachronic - impersonal (availability is not limited, for example literature, painting)- Diachronic - personal (availability is limited to certain persons, for example by means of letters, albums, amateur photography)- Synchronic - impersonal (availability is not limited, for example, listening to music, attending theatrical performances)- Synchronic - personal (availability is limited to certain persons, for example conversation, folklore group activities)

(Csepely 1989, 11-12).

Hont as a borderland

I should now like to approach the main theme of the conference - the frontier region as an ethnological problem. As an example, I chose part of the Slovak-Hungarian ethnic border, consisting of the territory of the former County of Hont. This historical administrative territory, with an area of about 2,600 km^, contains about 180 towns and village, which became part of Czechoslovakia after the break up of Austria-Hungary, except for 18 communities assigned to Hungary. It is a contact territory, where different ethnic groups - Slovak and Hungarian and members of different churches - Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists - lived side by side for a long time. Around 1985,1 started research on decorative traditions, mainly in connection with folk costume. In this way, I also came to the problem of local ethnic and religious identity. The results were presented in cartographic form and published in the Ethnographic Atlas of Slovakia (Danglová 1990, 89).

In the case of Hont, it is possible to speak of a pluralist borderland. In his monograph on Hont, János Manga spoke of its “varied ethnographic composition” (Manga 1968), still reflected in a rich mosaic of local and regional styles in the first half of the 20th century. The strong regionalism appearing in the socio- cultural picture of Hont was preserved as a result of its slower transition from a closed patriarchal society to an open rationally organized bourgeois industrial society. (Kocka 1988, 21-63) Weakly developed industry, the decline of the previously flourishing mining of precious metals from the second half of the 19th century, the predominance of small peasant farms, which did not allow the modernization of equipment and methods besides the 41 large estates with more than 1000 kat. jutár and 188 larger farms with 100-1000 kat. jutár of land, were all factors contributing to this territory remaining half way between modernization and traditionalism. Among the categories of social identity in the rural environment of Hont, strong emphasis was placed on local and regional identity, expressing the greater importance of relations to the narrower local community, rather than towards the wider community of the country or state. This was also because a significant part of the population lived continuously from generation to generation in the same place. This was the origin of a certain kind of caution, suspicion and even antipathy towards the “strange” or “foreign” and difficulties with acceptance of different traditions and practices. The same also applied to artistic activities, visual and aesthetic customs, which clearly reflected the community with which they were connected. Within the locality or region, communication occurred on the basis of a particular complex of material, aesthetic and symbolic values, which formed the common language of the decorative style in housing, dress and other areas, and was handed down as part of the local or regional cultural heritage.

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