Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Interaction, migration and change
Property, power, and emotions 231 It is not surprising that property-related discourses are often highly emotional. “Having” and “being” are dialectically related processes, and human beings actively relate to their social and material surroundings to create a sense of individual and social self. Consequently, various forms of real or imagined ownership can be central to processes of self-perception. Daniel Miller (1987: 121), who introduced the concept of “personal property" as an alternative to the more narrow, legalistic term of “private property", noted that “personal property assumes a genuinely self-productive relationship between persons and things”. This paper argues that personal and collective ownership must be regarded as two-way processes in which “being” and “having” are closely interconnected, and in which subjects and objects are mutually constitutive. Objects of real or imagined ownership may become emotionally-loaded signifiers of personal and collective identities. The management of real or imagined property is often an inherent feature of identity politics. In this context, “management” must be understood as a wide category of different forms of subject-object involvement which may range from the down-to-earth practicalities of financial management to wishful imagination and wild fantasy. The analysis looks at the various ways in which different social actors in a small village in the district of Tachov have used emotional subject-object discourses to construct images of self, and to justify specific property-related behaviour. It demonstrates that emotions, as powerful discourses and narrative performances, and as social forces which motivate action, have played an important role in the shaping and perception of ownership relations. The village - which I shall call “Vesnice” - is regarded as a social arena in which different actors have been involved in struggles for property and the right to use public space. The main interest groups are firstly, former Sudeten German inhabitants who were expelled from the village to Germany after the Second World War and who have visited their home village on an annual basis. Secondly, the social democratic mayor and his supporters, and thirdly, a Dutch entrepreneur
