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
Race and social relations 269 the CCM program. Consequently, many African volunteers note that despite the discrimination they have faced in Moscow, they have found the relationships that they have forged through CCM soup kitchens a source of safety and comfort. Through the acts of trust and interaction that accompany daily encounters in the soup kitchen, CCM participants have created a unique community that bridges racial differences. Members of this community see each other as partners, friends, and even family; and they rely on each other for both economic security and social companionship. As a result, the CCM soup kitchens have evolved into a social group in which the focus has shifted from unequal relationships between volunteers and recipients toward a cohesive community founded on the coordination of a comprehensive system of durable and reliable social relations linking recipients, volunteers, and their respective extended exchange networks. More importantly, even as attitudes and practices directed at darkskinned persons continue to spread among certain subgroups of the population in Russia, within the CCM soup kitchens Africans and Russians, among others, can continue to come together and find a safe haven where they share a common sense of belonging and sentiment. Thus, in keeping with the logic of "friendship” as the model for exchange relations, recipients and volunteers alike have come to view their interactions with each other not exclusively in terms of the volunteer—recipient paradigm, but rather in terms of an equal partnership between members of a unified community. References Berdahl, D. (1999), Where the World Ended; Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland. Berkeley: University of California Press. Boym, S. (1994), Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bromley, Y. (ed) (1974), Soviet Ethnology and Anthropology Today. The Hague: Mouton.
