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
100 Rajkó Muršič future in terms of a destiny determined by the past. If there were no socialist revolution, there would be no specific present in Eastern Europe. However, the future of this part of the world is in no way determined by its socialist experience. If we are trying to comprehend the turbulence of the recent period in this part of the world, we have to consider the specific ontology of the long-term, middle-term and short-term past. Their disjunctive “presence” is not only a matter of profound interpretations or the “actual” scope of their impact. In the public sphere, it is also the result of various kinds of analysis and comparison. The “real” events have happened in the past, but there is no single “objective” past in the present. We always have to deal with many historical interpretations derived from it. Furthermore, the past is itself plural: as much as it is experienced, it differs as much as different personal experiences. Every agency has his/her/its own past. If we use the term history as the overall category describing our past, we can easily miss unrecorded, unnoticed and solipsist experiential facets of everyday life and individual life (hi)stories, as well as historically unrecorded or forgotten remains of ancient times present in habitus. Although our perceptual apparatus (including senses of taste, see Bourdieu 1984) is shaped socially, perception is experienced individually. Therefore, it is not entirely solipsist (as early Wittgenstein has warned - see 1976). It is essentially individual. That is why it is sometimes good to individualise both, the past and history. Post-socialism is our reality, and we should neither simplify nor mystify it (I expressed my views on "transition” in Muršič 1999). The case I will present here is typical in some ways but atypical in others. The village of Trate, in which I have been doing fieldwork between 1993 and 1998, witnessed changes throughout the 20,h century. Between 1901 and 2001, the villagers lived in five different countries and experienced four different political systems (including Nazi occupation/annexation and Yugoslav socialism); they were involved in several waves of emigration, immigration, expul-
