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The Danger Is Everywhere! Discourse on Security in Post- Socialist Hungary Barbara A

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The Danger Is Everywhere! Discourse on Security in Post- Socialist Hungary Barbara A The Danger is Everywhere! Discourse on Security in Post- Socialist Hungary Barbara A. West, University of Rochester Even as I write this article, the event itself is beginning to fade from people's memories. However, it is already such a part of Szeged's public life that the event itself is becoming lost in the discourse that it prompted. The event is the murders, on the night of January 24, 1994, of the prominent Szeged pastry chef Bálint Z. Nagy, his wife and their two children, as they slept in their family home. The rumor mills have slowed their pace; the Délmagyarország, Szeged's most popular daily, has ceased carrying the story. However, the public discourse of fear and uncertainty that accompanied the weeks of news stories focusing on the event itself continue. This particular family's tragedy has brought into the open, or publicized, a discourse that had been the primary focus of private discourse in Szeged, Hungary for at least a year prior to the event. As a cultural anthropologist living in Szeged from January 1993 until July 1994, completing the research for my Ph.D. dissertation on personal networks, national identities and the discursive elements that hold them together, I spent much of my time analyzing the most obvious and mundane, at least to Hungarians, aspects of life in Szeged. I employed private interviews, the gathering of life histories, and a time-use survey; above all, I participated in the daily life of one of Hungary's larger cities and spoke at great length with its residents. In other words, I engaged in participant observation. Throughout my research I found that the one constant in Szeged, among women and men, pensioners and students, factory workers and intellectuals, is a burdensome concern with security. From my first moments in the city, when small actions and material symbols were speaking louder to me than words, up until the time of the murders, by which time language and speaking had taken a more central place in my relationships with Hungarians, the people of Szeged used every communicational mode and setting to introduce the concept of security. My first reaction to this phenomenon was to think, of course they're concerned, unemployment is high, inflation is even higher and the elimination of the paternal authority of the Kádár system has left Hungary with an economy in which individual initiative, luck and 21 connections provide the only access to security. There is no guaranteed employment or living wage system and people are afraid for their future, as well as that of their children and parents. However, the words and actions that kept coming into focus were not solely concerned with the economic sphere. Almost any discussion, whether it be concerned with holidays, families, friends, shopping or housing, gets tied up into a discourse on the risks of being Hungarian in the post socialist era. In the following article I focus on one symbolic and three discursive devices in which security is central to private intercourse in the setting of post-socialist Hungary. I will then show the ways in which the murders of Z. Nagy and his family have served as the catalyst for making this private subject an important element in public culture. I conclude with a brief examination of a more recent event in Hungary's post communist history, the elections of May 1994, and the ways in which the results reflect the issues that I address in the article. My introduction to the discourse on security in Szeged came not through words, specifically, but rather through a series of communicative actions and symbols, combined with my preliminary attempts at using the Hungarian language. Taken individually each of these events and symbols concerns only individual preference or a single occurrence, but when viewed together they help to illustrate the omnipresent and oftentimes unconscious ways in which security serves as the central discursive feature in private communication events in Szeged. During my first week in this city I stayed in a private room arranged for me by one of the local tourist offices. Having done extensive research on this kind of establishment in Great Britain, I felt very comfortable being shown my room, located next to the owner's combination living and sleeping room, and the toilet, located next to the woman's kitchen. What I was not prepared for was the key that hung from the lock of every single door in the apartment. In the door to my own room, to the kitchen, into her room, in all six of the closets and cupboards in the entrance hall, into every lock had been inserted a key, a key that remained there day and night. I was baffled. It was understandable that a single woman who allowed strangers and foreigners into her home on a daily basis would want to keep her own possessions under lock and key, but that didn't seem to be the point of these keys. They remained in the locks when she went out shopping or to sleep at night. If I had wanted access to her belongings all I would have had to do was turn the key and let myself in. No, the keys had some other purpose that I had yet to understand. 22 I soon forgot about the keys, however, in the excitement of finding my first permanent home in Szeged. My new landlady seemed very nice and eager to help me practice the language. As I was moving my belongings into my room she began showing me all the amenities she had to offer, describing them in the simplest way she knew how: a sturdy table at which to eat and do my work, shelf space, a gas heater with which I could control the temperature of my room, and, of course, a key to the room. I was relieved to learn this, being worried not so much by my landlady's curiosity but that of the two middle aged men who lived in the back rooms of the house. My relief, however, was short lived. In the next moment, after showing me how to use the key, she then showed me where in the hallway she wanted me to store it. So, I thought, I've been given this key and I have been warned to keep my room locked because of the men, but I am supposed to put it on a shelf right next to my door. where anyone in the house has access to it. I was apprehensive. However, she then proceeded to show me how to lock and unlock her own door, through which I had to pass to use our shared kitchen, and where to put the key when I was finished: on a shelf next to her door, in full view of everyone. Throughout my stay there I never could remember to use my own key and it remained on its shelf collecting dust, though I did dutifully lock up her room and stash the key next to the telephone every time I ventured through her always locked door. Neither one of us ever had any problems with these men, nor any other of the multitude of people who moved into and out of those back rooms, though with each new tenant I was warned to lock my door. I always wondered if she likewise warned them to keep their doors locked because of the American living in the front bedroom. Although these two examples focus on internal space, that is, within personal living space, locks and keys are an important line of defense in maintaining external security as well. One family with which I have become very well acquainted is terribly concerned that their front gate remain locked at all times. They cite the terrible crime and threat from outsiders that could reach them if their gate remained unlocked for even one minute. Yet this very same family keeps one of their front gate keys stored on a semi-permanent basis in the mailbox, so that they can reach into it from the outside and let themselves into the courtyard. Any of these criminal types who happened to see them reach into the box could easily have done the same. It made about as much sense to me as my landlady's insistence on locking her door. The apparent contradictions in these behaviors and attitudes, however, eventually began to come into focus as my language abilities grew and I was able to ask more questions. It is not 23 so much the objects themselves that are important but what they symbolize. The keys and the gates symbolize individual attempts to maintain the security Hungarians once felt in all areas of their lives. Possessing the ability to lock a door or cupboard provides the security of knowing that the owner of the key is in control. Related to the use of locks and keys to symbolize a striving for security, a striving that was admitted to be in vain when I pursued the reason for leaving keys either within the lock or within sight of it, is the discourse on crime and criminality that is a regular part of most private intercourse in post-socialist Hungary. Continually talking about crime has become one of the most common ways of expressing the overall insecurity that people feel in their lives right now. Upon our first meeting, the first questions that most people directed towards me concerned crime in America. Some people wanted to know if my experiences have been like the images of America they receive in shows like Miami Vice and Kojak, while others are convinced they know what life is like in America from their viewing of Charles Bronson movies.
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