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
Traditional economic life 91 The long-term research project that I would like to present here aims to define the types of peasant farms that are characteristic of the northern part of the Danube Lowland. The inventor and leader of this ethnographic research project was in the beginning Magda Fehérváryné Nagy, ethnographic researcher of the Danube Museum in Komárno (Slovakia). The project’s realisation was also helped by the fact that until 1990, within the network of museums in Slovakia, the Danube Museum in Komárno had the official task of the methodological supervision over museums in Southwest Slovakia. A team of ethnographers and museum researchers of South-Slovakian museums, who co-operated closely together, was also a prerequisite for the successful realisation of the planned project. Several external researchers took part in the project in the course of the work. The aim of our research was to define the single themes belonging to the subject of traditional economic life and within this to describe characteristic work technologies and instruments. Researchers examined the situation typical for the first half of the 20"' century in selected peasant communities, which differed from each other in their character, while research focus was placed on the relation of production and consumption.4 Our survey started in 1987 and its first field site was Kolárovo5. The results were published in 1992 in an independent volume (Guta Hagyományos Gazdálkodása 1992). Kolárovo, a small rural town, lies at the junction of the Small-Danube and Váh rivers. It covers a vast land of which approximately one third lies on the southern side and two thirds on the northern side of the Small Danube. The development of peasant farms in Kolárovo was greatly influenced by the gradual increase of detached farmsteads (tanya in Hungarian). This process also had its effects on the land, which constituted the base of the peasant farms, on the work force and on draught animal force necessary for the cultivation, as well as on work instruments and placement of house sites in the village. Thus, in Kolárovo we found village farms, detached farmsteads and combined farms which in the examined period (i.e. the first half of the 20lh century) could be
