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
50 Árendás Zsuzsanna At the meso-level, Barth analyses community-making, organizing processes and subjects. The ethnic difference forms the basis of these activities and their actions, and organizations reproduce them. There are several theories to explain which social factors are the primary causes of ethnic separation. These are limited resources (human-ecological approaches), the hegemony of some social groups or some political elite striving for power. At the macro-level, global and state discourses form the category of identity. Social acceptance, integration and advance of an individual belonging to a given group are drawn between rights and prohibitions. Identity and memory: history or stories? Summarizing the ideas about identity and memory, one can state that they are not objects we think about, instead we think with them, and this provides an interpretive framework. Identity and memory are historic constructions and as such they get a concrete form, a physical appearance. Commemorations are also signs of any kind of consensus between individual and group- memory. The issue of memory became a “hot topic” in Central Europe after the change of political regimes. In these situations, alternative histories emerged and different groupmemories appeared on the grounds of a new civil sphere. The centralist absoluteness of memory and history became replaced by the plurality and multiplicity of approaches. At the same time, the new setting made necessary the reconciliation between different group-memories and identities, a constant recycling and rethinking in the society. Relationships Hird is a village 5 kilometres from Pécs, extending on both sides of the motorway to Budapest. Hird does not have independent local authorities and it belongs to the Pécs town administration. It has approximately 2,000 inhabitants, but the number is constantly increasing due to those new incom-
