Abstracts - 2002. No.47-48.



Replika monologue: Szávai

The monologue of this issue is the narrative of a Hungarian visual arts teacher. István Szávai is a dedicated pedagogue, with critical views on the Hungarian educational system. While coping with his inability to change the whole system, he devotes himself to a highly empathic and ambitious method of teaching, thus providing the greatest freedom possible for the children under his care.



Brazil: the Cultural Construction of Hybrid Identity


The collection contains seven articles. The problem they share is that how can the mixture of races, formerly an object of shame and resentment, become the source of national pride and self-respect. Brazil represents a special case among the postcolonial states: the overwhelming majority of its citizens is of mixed blood. The first three texts offer a bird's eye view of Brazilian society in a historical perspective. The further articles study different symbolic dimensions of the cultural process known as hybridisation. The collection starts with an excerpt of Gilberto Freyre's introduction to his famous “Masters and Slaves". Freyre, a classic author of Brazilian sociology makes refined observations on social changes by analysing the structure of the manor house. Hervé Théry describes long-term societal processes of the twentieth century Brazil on the basis of macro-scale statistical indicators. By dealing with the nationalisation of traditional Indian lands, Joao Pacheco de Oliveira examines the delicate relation between the modern state and the native Indians. In his analysis concerning the re-interpretation of the national founding myth, Afrânio Raul Garcia utilises literary sources to show how mestizo identity is created as a source of positively distinguished national self-definition. Marion Aubrée writes on the re-evaluation of the concept of African identity in Brazilian culture. The last two articles concentrate on two major features that have a pivotal role in forging both the Brazilian self-identity and the image of Brazil in abroad. One of these key features is samba (in the article of Vassili Rivron), the other is football (by José Sergio Leite Lopes). These texts demonstrate that the identity-politics leading to the high esteem of hybridity are encouraged by the state as well.


Borders: Myths or Social Facts?


Donnan, Hastings and Thomas M. Wilson: Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State

Donnan and Wilson give a critical review of the anthropological literature on 'borders' and 'boundaries'. Some anthropologists are interested in social, others in cultural, and yet others in geo-political boundaries. The authors claim that these elements are not necessarily mutually exclusive.


József Böröcz: For a Sociology of Borders

States define and frame the empirical existence of modern societies, and drawing, maintaining, controlling and regulating borders is a key preoccupation of states. This essay interrogates some theoretical possibilities of an explicit sociology of borders, and the flows that cross them, as social facts. Referring to literatures on international migration, the political economy of global relations and postcolonial studies, it argues that borders unify two distinct institutional logics, introduced with the paired metaphors of the Door and the Bridge (borrowed from Simmel). The study examines formal and informal institutions of Door and Bridge in six types of crossborder flows: streams of people, commodities (including money and capital), direct physical coercion (and its threat), technologies, cultural content (including “information" as well as “high" and “low" culture) and ideas. An earlier version of the paper, entitled “The Door and the Bridge" is available in English in the author's online collection of works at http://borocz.net


Éva Kovács: Border-Myths and Local Identity-narratives near the Austrian–Hungarian Border

Using the biographical method the author examines different representations of the state border between Hungary and Austria. She argues that this is a special place for both commemoration and forgetting. Kovács offers an analysis of two border-narratives: one is about the soah, the other is about Hungarian refugees of 1956.


Yiannis Papadakis: Pyla: A Mixed Borderline Village Under UN Supervision in Cyprus

Pyla is a mixed village notorious throughout Cyprus. Paraphrasing Douglas' definition of dirt as matter out of place this is “a place out of place" in so far as it does not properly belong to either side and is thus regarded as 'polluting' and 'dangerous'. The village was, and still is, notorious in both sides as a site of smuggling and spying. Its inhabitants, both the Pyliotes (the Greek Cypriots) and the Pileliler (the Turkish Cypriots) were considered in both sides as morally and patriotically suspect. Its liminality marked it as a place of ambiguity and uncertainty. Social agents came into contact with a variety of other agents and institutions, linking the local with the translocal. It was reasonably taken for granted that in this place marked by conflicts and contestations all agents proceeded with their own hidden agendas in order to pursue their goals. This paper focuses on liminal sites and border areas, where such issues emerge in a more pronounced form.


Miklós Hadas: The Narcissism of “Libido Academica"

Pierre Bourdieu, one of the most important figure of modern sociology has written two texts entitled Male Domination, both of which are translated into Hungarian. The first appeared as an article in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales in 1990; the second was published as a little book in 1998. Male domination, argues Bourdieu in these texts, is not only a universal phenomenon but also the model of all type of domination. The book further radicalizes this position by stating that the unequal power relation between man and woman has basically not changed in modern societies. Miklós Hadas, the author of this review essay, compares the two publications and criticizes Bourdieu's argument. The French sociologist, writes Hadas, practically ignores the huge sociological literature on genders and rests content with referring only to his own earlier works. The reviewer also points out to several weaknesses of the Hungarian translation of Bourdieu's book.



E-way: Rights, Rules, and Regulations in Cyberspace

by László Fekete


From the start, the avant-garde of the new digital culture has regarded attempts by states, international political organizations and businesses to impose external restrictions on the World Wide Web with suspicion and disdain. After all, Web operations follow their own sets of written and unwritten rules, some dictated by its technological architecture, others founded in the nature of human communications, and have done so for years. There are, for example, TCP/IP protocols, which connect individual machines with local networks; domain names, which use both national and generic code; and charters on correct computer utilization and communication, as well. Cyberspace does not need to be operated by a “government" which, by virtue of the powers conferred upon it, might hold special jurisdiction over the virtual community. The rules of this communications universe naturally reflect the political culture and value systems of those who created it, along with the first few hundred thousand Net users. For anyone who has experienced the idiosyncratic discourse developed for and still applied to communication in cyberspace, the nature of these values is obvious. If we had to describe digital culture, we would most likely do so in terms of openness, decenteredness, interactivity, consensual rule, free choice of identity, non-locality, and a categorical rejection of authority, hierarchy and privilege. The creators of this culture maintain that these words mark a new horizon of knowledge, culture, human relations, and political action, while influential Internet theoreticians tend to see themselves, and cybersociety as a whole, as a forum expanding upon the political-philosophical tradition begun by libertarians such as Jefferson, Washington, Paine, Mill, Madison, de Tocqueville, Brandeis, Holmes, and others, amplifying their ideas and bringing them to fruition in cyberspace.




vissza