Discourse of “peaceful community” in Political Complexity: Cross-border Cooperation and Hungarian Minority in Slovakia

Type: 
Seminar
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Speaker: 
Yuko Kambara
Building: 
Nador u. 9, Monument Building
Room: 
Gellner
Monday, August 21, 2017 - 3:00pm
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Date: 
Monday, August 21, 2017 - 3:00pm to 4:30pm

The main argument of this presentation concerns with the multi-ethnic communities under the complex political conditions of minority politics and the institutionalized cross-border cooperation. The presentation follows up the research conducted by Kambara during her one-year stay at CEU as well as her previous multi-sited research conducted in Southern Slovak cites, where the ethnic Hungarians are the majority since 2013. Even though the relationship between the Slovak majority and the Hungarian minority in Slovakia is seen as hostile, the local informants stated that the relationship among the multi-ethnic communities in that region is peaceful. In addition, the informants pointed out that the ethnic tensions are caused by the “politicians”, meaning those who are not part of their community (see paper 1 below). However, their actual daily life has been involved by both minority politics and cross-border cooperation which relates to regional development policy (see paper 2 below) and kin-state policy. The main findings of the research is that such ambiguous discourse of “peaceful community” sustains interethnic solidarity in ongoing community transformation by political actors, which regenerates or subdivides their imaginary community.

Encountering in Minority Politics: Reconfiguring the Other in Transforming Communities in Southern Slovakia (Download)

Hungarian "Minority" Networks and Borderland Community under Political Influences of the Slovak-Hungarian Cross-border Cooperation (Download)

Yuko KAMABARA has a PhD in cultural anthropology from University of Tokyo in Japan and teaches in University of Kitakyushu in Japan. Her research focuses on community transformation after the socialism in Slovakia. Since 2013, she has started new research on Hungarian minorities in Slovakia and Slovak-Hungarian cross-border cooperation from the perspective of political anthropology.