Projects / Programmes
Protected Areas along the Slovenian-Hungarian Border:
Challenges of Cooperation and Sustainable Development
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.04.00 |
Humanities |
Ethnology |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| S220 |
Social sciences |
Cultural anthropology, ethnology |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 5.04 |
Social Sciences |
Sociology |
protected areas, borders, heritage, sustainable development, livelihood strategies, EU, Slovenia, Hungary, Nature Park Goričko, National Park Örszég
Researchers (13)
Organisations (3)
Abstract
The proposed project is designed as a collaborative, comparative cross‐border research project on the role of recently created protected areas – Goričko Nature Park and Őrség National Park ‐ on either side of the Slovenian‐Hungarian border. Both protected areas encompass regions that were purportedly “forgotten” by progress - on the margins - but are now considered idyllic landscapes with rich cultural history and high level of biodiversity, which have the potential to operate as centers for regional sustainable development. The bilateral team will ethnographically explore the significance of the two parks built along a radically shifting border, one that, with the countries’ accession to the European Union (2004) and incorporation in the Schengen Area, has become more open than ever before.
The goal of the proposed project is to carry out a collaborative ethnographic study of the social life of the Goričko and Őrség parks as an integrated area positioned across the Slovenian and Hungarian border and of the ways in which the existing borders inform daily life. The study is to be carried out against the backdrop of the region’s specific economic, cultural, historical and political circumstances as well as its shifting boundaries. Completing the study will involve realizing the four main research objectives:
1. Carry out an ethnographically based historical analysis of the border area with attention to the role of the shifting border in defining the social and demographic landscape in terms of changing state systems, ethnic/minority communities, cross-border ties, migration practices, strategies of resource management, and livelihood strategies. This will include an outline of the history of parks as well as the similarities and differences in their formal status, their organization, their management of natural and cultural heritage, and their relationships to stakeholders living in or near the parks (including other developmental organizations).
2. Ethnographically analyze cultural and natural heritage regimes, practices, uses, and perceptions, including existing economic, social and symbolic practices and phenomena – both traditional (including agriculture, crafts) and contemporary (sustainable tourism, branding). This study will examine the role and impacts of newly mapped borders while taking into account the significant changes that have affected the border (transition process, EU integration, the Schengen zone).
3. Identify and map out existing sets of social actors in the border area defined by the two protected areas (social actors, institutions, organizations, enterprises). This includes as well an institutional analysis of the parks’ regimes of administration and of the common interests, values, and practices among actors – both at the national and cross-border level – that could potentially enhance interactions and collaborations. This will also include examining areas of communication (practices of conflicts and dialogue) among park actors (local, regional, national, cross-border, supranational) and identifying the similarities and differences between the situations on either side of the border.
4. Analyze center-periphery dynamics in the border area. This involves examining and assessing the effects of boundary movements and changes in border permeability on the positioning of the borderlands in relative terms - particularly in terms of center and periphery. We consider the production of peripherality and centrality to be mutually constitutive social processes involving local and extra-local social and institutional actors. Upon sketching out a rough historical overview of shifting borders and constructions of peripherality, the project focuses on the ways that changes in the post-Cold-War area, particularly European integration, has reconfigured relationships between centers and peripheries.
Significance for science
The proposed project will provide a multi-dimensional, in-depth analysis of daily life and practices in the protected areas located along the Slovenian-Hungarian border that serves as a laboratory for new insights into the study of borderlands, protected areas, and sustainable development – all issues that are particularly relevant in this day and age. An important added value of the study lies in its integral approach at numerous levels. First, the project is designed to examine the parks along the border as a single area, to be studied by a joint, interdisciplinary research team that will together carry out the proposed study. Second, the proposed analysis implements an integrated approach to examine protected areas based on the concept of the Anthropocene, which helps transcend the modernist opposition between nature and culture and to grasp more effectively the complex, mutually constitutive relationship among all actors (both human and non-human). This will be done by employing a variety of research methodologies in a complementary manner, from political ecology and biodiversity to historical analysis, ethnography, network analysis, and ethnographic film. Furthermore, the study is meant to integrate both top-down and bottom-up approaches in exploring the project’s research questions, which will enable researchers to address existing knowledge gaps about example daily life and practices in the area and about the impacts of shifting border regimes, including, for example, current and in-depth knowledge about the local practice and use of heritage, local ecological knowledge and land management practices. These knowledge gaps are linked in particular to resident actors in the peripheral border areas who for the most part are written out of existing analyses. Instead, the proposed project intends to to approach local actors as active agents as opposed to peripheral passive actors, including them as well in the production of knowledge and the dissemination of project findings. In addition to contributing to existing research in a number of fields, the project also is designed to have an applied dimension and will employ project findings to address the current challenges facing residents in the borderland region.
Significance for the country
The findings of the proposed research are not only meant to contribute to strengthening existing scientific understandings, filling knowledge gaps and drafting new approaches to the understanding the border region for scientific communities. These findings are to be disseminated more broadly through ethnographic films and exhibitions, meetings with local communities, and sustainable development guidelines. They are also meant to be relevant for those social and institutional actors working towards sustainable development strategies, new forms of cross-border cooperation along the Slovenian-Hungarian border as well as forms of heritage management, be it cultural or natural heritage, including regional and national institutions (ministries, Slovenian Development Agency, nongovernmental organizations, cultural/ethnic minority associations, schools). The project will be able to provide significant comparative data for the administration of both protected areas, who are the institutions most directly involved in cross-border cooperation and who can capitalize most effectively on insights gained from either side of the border. Findings about good practices among local actors on either side of the border will be most beneficial and relevant in the agriculture and tourism sectors as well as the emergent small enterprises that strive to make a livelihood on development or promoting the region's sustainable development.
Most important scientific results
Interim report,
final report
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Interim report,
final report
