European and Regional Studies Vol. 14, 2018 by Acta Universitatis Sapientiae

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae The scientific journal of Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) publishes original papers and surveys in several areas of sciences written in English. Information about each series can be found at http://www.acta.sapientia.ro. Editor-in-Chief László DÁVID ldavid@ms.sapientia.ro Zoltán KÁSA Laura NISTOR

Main Editorial Board András KELEMEN

Ágnes PETHŐ Emőd VERESS

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae European and Regional Studies Executive Editor Miklós BAKK (Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Romania) bakk.miklos@kv.sapientia.ro Guest Editor Ferenc HÖRCHER (National University of Public Service, Budapest, Hungary) Editorial Board Gabriel ANDREESCU (National School of Political and Administrative Studies Bucharest, Romania) József BAYER (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary) Zoltán BERÉNYI (University of Debrecen, Hungary) Barna BODÓ (Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Romania) Magdalena DEMBINSKA (Université de Montréal, Canada) Vasile DOCEA (West University, Timişoara, Romania) András A. GERGELY (Institute of Political Science, Budapest, Hungary) László GULYÁS (University of Szeged, Hungary) Radu LUPESCU (Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Romania) Christoph PAN (Volksgruppen Institut, Bozen, Italy) Erzsébet SZALAYNÉ SÁNDOR (University of Pécs, Hungary) István SZILÁGYI (University of Pécs, Hungary) Márton TONK (Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Romania)

Sapientia University

Scientia Publishing House

ISSN 2066-639X http://www.acta.sapientia.ro

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae

European and Regional Studies Volume 14, 2018

Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania Scientia Publishing House

Contents Modern Capitals and Historical Peripheries Verita SRIRATANA ‘...and Miraculously Post-Modern Became Ost-Modern’: How On or About 1910 and 1924 Karel Čapek Helped to Add and Strike off the ‘P’ . . . . . . . . . . 7 Béla MESTER Ruralization of the (Urbane) Concept of Sensus Communis in a 19th-century Hungarian Philosophical Controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Borbála JÁSZ Architectural Theory and Analytic Philosophy in the Interwar Period . . . . 41 Minorities, Linguistic Regimes Roberta MEDDA-WINDISCHER Migration in Sub-State Territories with Historical-Linguistic Minorities: Main Challenges and New Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Kinga MACSÓ The ‘Roma Question’ in Slovakia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Nation Branding Árpád Ferenc PAPP-VÁRY A Successful Example of Complex Country Branding: The ‘E-Estonia’ Positioning Concept and Its Relation to the Presidency of the Council of the EU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Book Review Lili GOMBOR Spatiality and Sociality. Viktor Berger: Térré szőtt társadalmiság. A tér kategóriája a szociológiaelméletekben [Sociality Woven into Space. The Category of Space in Sociological Theories] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Conference Ferenc TÖRÖK Challenges, Conflicts, and Opportunities. 100 Years of State- and Nationhood in Central and Eastern Europe. International Conference at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Modern Capitals and Historical Peripheries

Acta Univ. Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies, 14 (2018) 7–22

DOI: 10.2478/auseur-2018-0008

‘...and Miraculously Post-Modern Became Ost-Modern’: How On or About 1910 and 1924 Karel Čapek Helped to Add and Strike off the ‘P’1 Verita SRIRATANA

PhD, Assistant Professor Chulalongkorn University, Department of English, Faculty of Arts e-mail: verita.s@chula.ac.th Abstract. Virginia Woolf and Karel Čapek produced direct responses to the British Empire Exhibition in the forms of – in Woolf’s case – a scathing essay entitled ‘Thunder at Wembley’ and – in Čapek’s case – a (P)OstModernist travelogue later published as part of ‘Letters from England’ translated into English in 1925 and banned by the Nazis as well as the Communists. This research paper juxtaposes modernity in Central Europe with its ‘Other’ – that in Western Europe – by exploring Woolf and Čapek’s durée réelle between 1910 and 1924. It offers an analysis of Karel Čapek’s (P)OstModern legacies, placing Prague right on the modernist centre stage. The sociopolitical contribution of Central European regional modernism in Čapek’s work is increasingly vital to the contemporary Europe of Brexit and refugee and migrant crises, and beyond. Keywords: Virginia Woolf, Karel Čapek, British Empire Exhibition, modernism, postcolonialism

This research paper would not have been possible without the support of the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, in the form of Grant for Presentation of Research Abroad, which enabled me to present a rough draft of this paper at Modern Capitals and Historical Peripheries: Central Europe from the Perspective of Contested Modernities International Conference at the Institute of Philosophy, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, on 20–21 October 2017. I dedicate this paper to all students in my 2202350 Selected Topics in English Literature – Consumable Modernisms: Food, Drinks, and Merchandise in Modernist Literature class of 2018.

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Introduction: On or About 1910 and 1924 in London and in Prague In an unsent letter dated 10 November 1989 to his muse, April Gifford, an American scholar of Czech studies who had lovingly been given the nickname of ‘Dubenka’ (‘Duben’ means ‘oak month’, or ‘April’ in the Czech language) (Konrád 2014), Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) recounts his meeting with Susan Sontag (1933–2004) in New York, where they ‘played a kind of literary ping-pong together’ (Hrabal 2014: 83). The rule of this game was for each of them to take turns saying ‘the names of writers and artists from the East’ (ibid.). It went on and on, with the annunciation of the names of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), Franz Kafka (1883–1924), and Philip Roth (1933–2018), among many others (Hrabal 2014: 83–84). This led to the revelation that the momentous changes which shaped and propelled the aesthetic and intellectual movement known as modernism, as well as its continuation/aftermath, did not take place in the context and metropolises of Western Europe but rather in those of Central and Eastern Europe. Hrabal’s intellectual duel with Sontag ended with a poignant conclusion: ‘And we rejoiced that, indeed, all you had to do was strike off the P, and miraculously Post-Modern became Ost-Modern… Then I clasped my head and exclaimed, But [sic] we totally forgot that other Ost-Modern… Andy Warhol…’ (Hrabal 2014: 84). I propose in this paper that, in the pantheon of the names pronounced and consecrated in the OstModern match between two great minds, Karel Čapek (1890–1938) deserves his place as one of the first writers who helped to add and strike off the ‘P’ in ‘POstmodernism’. He did so as early as ‘on or about’ 1910 and 1924, to appropriate the (in)famous (anti-)manifesto posited by Virginia Woolf (1882–1941): ‘on or about December 1910 human character changed’ (Woolf 2009a: 38), widely discussed among scholars of High Modernism. However, Woolf’s ‘on or about’ (anti-)maxim was not articulated in the year 1910 but in the year 1924 in a piece with the title of ‘Character in Fiction’ published in the July issue of The Criterion, a journal edited by Hrabal’s literary idol, T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), and in the subsequent piece with the title of ‘Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown’ published on 30 October 1924 by the Hogarth Press as the first number within the first Hogarth Essays series, which ran from 1924 to 1926. Hence, 1924 can also be regarded as an important modernist year. Though Čapek and Woolf never sat down to a conversation in the way that Hrabal and Sontag did, their paths nevertheless crossed not only ‘on or about’ 1924, but also ‘at and around’ such unexpected place as the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, the largest ‘theme park’ ever constructed in the history of Imperial spectacle. Among the visitors at the event, which had been meticulously planned to promote the British Empire’s image and boost Britain’s economy, were 42-yearold Virginia and 34-year-old Karel. Both writers produced criticisms of and direct

‘...and Miraculously Post-Modern Became Ost-Modern’...

responses to the exhibition in the forms of – in Woolf’s case – a scathing essay entitled ‘Thunder at Wembley’, which has now become the quintessential work of postcolonial modernism, and – in Čapek’s case – a (P)OstModernist travelogue later published as part of ‘Letters from England’ [Anglické listy, in Czech], which would be translated into English in 1925 and banned by the Nazis as well as the Communists. This paper juxtaposes modernity in Central Europe with its ‘Other’ – that in Western Europe – by exploring Woolf and Čapek’s durée réelle between 1910 and 1924. It offers an analysis of Čapek’s (P)Ost-Modern legacies, placing Prague right on the modernist centre stage. 1910 was a significant year for Anglophone modernists (or ‘West-Moderns’, if you will), mainly because of Virginia Woolf’s landmark quotation. For Terry Eagleton, Woolf’s statement marks a transitional stage in the (re)conceptualization of selfhood: ‘One might claim that with modernism it was not so much that human character changed, but that the form of historical selfhood traditionally known as “character” gave way to that rather more elusive phenomenon known as the subject’ (Eagleton 2014: 86). Woolf’s (anti)manifesto is the kind which also manifests itself in the process of becoming. If a manifesto is based on and is meant to propagate absolutism and essentialism, (post)modernism – with its multiplicity and diversity – seeks to disrupt, dismantle, and ‘(re)make it [manifesto] new’.2 The reinvention of selfhood not as a flat monolithic ‘self’ but, rather, as one of the performative characters or subjectivities transpires in an event in 1910, which may or may not – but still worthy to note – inspire the playful ‘on or about’ quotation: The Dreadnought Hoax, a prank which took place on 7 February 1910 and where Virginia Stephen and her group of friends, disguised as Abyssinian royals, successfully fooled the Royal Navy into giving them a tour on the battleship HMS Dreadnought. The fake identities and audacious performativity intended to topple the nationalist and militarist ideologies promoted by the British Navy may have formed Woolf’s view of a human character transformed and in flux. Another 1910 event, which was equally ground-breaking, in terms of a ‘culture-quake’, was an exhibition entitled ‘Manet and the Post-Impressionists’ held by Woolf’s friend, Roger Fry (1866–1934), at London’s Grafton Galleries. The exhibition introduced the Anglophone art world to the work of Van Gogh (1853–1890), Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), and Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), among many others. The reception was a disaster. The exhibition’s secretary, Desmond MacCarthy (1877–1952), commented: ‘Kind people called him [Roger Fry] mad, and reminded others that his wife was in an asylum. The majority declared him to be a subverter of morals and art, and a blatant self-advertiser….’ (MacCarthty 2

I have appropriated this term from Ezra Pound’s dictum ‘make it new’ (Pound 1935): ‘”Make it new”, Ezra Pound proclaimed. In this revolution, words were set free from syntax, notes from traditional harmonies and colour and line from perspective. Dramatic works became musical and music became visual, and writings became sculptural’ (Make It New 2003).

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1995: 78). Nevertheless, both Roger Fry and Virginia Woolf, who wrote ‘how serious a matter it is when the tools of one generation are useless for the next’ (Woolf 2009: 48), perceived this exhibition to be the modern tool or technology of their own generation. To understand how Karel Čapek helped to create and ‘strike off the P’ (Hrabal 2014: 84) in ‘postmodernism’, one would need to travel to Prague, then still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on or about 1910. In the Central European capital of cubism, the utopian vision of a modern independent nation, later materialized into the post-war establishment of the democratic state of Czechoslovakia in 1918, was described by Bohumil Kubišta (1884–1918), a Czech painter and art critic deemed one of the founders of Czech modern painting, as follows: ‘It is a lie and a simple falsehood for anyone to claim that the modern age is fragmented and disunified, that it does not have a firm spiritual foundation, that it is unstable and volatile, and that modern man does not have solid ground on which to base his worldview’ (Kubišta 1992: 90). Guillaume Apollinaire’s 1914 remarks published in The Paris Journal that ‘the Czechs have moved to the forefront of the modernist movement [‘les Tchèques ont pris la tête de Mouvement Moderne’] (Apollinaire 1996: 83) reveal that cubism thrived in Prague. The pinnacle of avant-gardism in Czechoslovak art can be seen in the largest exhibition of cubist art in Prague, the ‘[Survey of] Modern Arts [Moderní umění]’ exhibition, held at the Mánes Exhibition Hall in February 1914. This exhibition, of which the motivation renders it the counterpart the Post-Impressionist Exhibition in London, was organized by Alexandre Mercereau (1884–1945), a French Symbolist poet, in collaboration with the Čapek brothers: Josef and Karel. Josef Čapek (1887–1945), a painter and writer, was the person who invented the word ‘robot’,3 and his younger brother Karel, the better-known writer, introduced this word to the public through his 1920 play entitled RUR, which stands for ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’. As on or about 1910 was a significant modernist duration, on or about 1924 was also momentous. As mentioned earlier, Virginia Woolf’s 1910 quotation was originally published not in the year 1910 but in the year 1924, as part of a piece called ‘Character in Fiction’ in The Criterion and republished as an essay entitled ‘Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown’ and published by the Hogarth Press. In the life and writing of Karel Čapek on or about 1924, he would also experience a particular change in human character during his trip to Britain and, particularly, during his visit to his intended destination and main purpose of his travels: the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley.

According to Darko Suvin, in Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, ‘robot’ comes from the word ‘robota, meaning ‘drudgery’ with strong feudal connotations of the serf’s compulsory work on the master’s property –’ (Suvin 1979: 270).

‘...and Miraculously Post-Modern Became Ost-Modern’...

The Roaring Thunder at an Overgrown Bazaar: Woolf, Čapek, and Wembley In this section, I shall offer a juxtaposition of modernity in Central Europe and its ‘Other’ – that in Western Europe – through textual analysis of the review pieces written by two writers who visited the same exhibition: one writing from the seat of a waning empire and the other writing as a traveller from a young nation, Europe’s periphery, which had just emerged from the shadow of imperialist Austro-Hungarian rule. Čapek’s acute awareness of his status and position as an outsider looking into the (re)presentation of the British Empire is resonant in the following passage: ‘Bear me homeward, Flying Scotsman, splendid hundredand-fifty-ton locomotive; carry me across the seas, O white and glittering ship; there will I sit down on the rough field-edge where the wild thyme grows, and I will close my eyes, for I am of peasant blood and have been somewhat disturbed by what I have seen’ (Čapek 1945: 66). Positioning himself as a writer ‘of peasant blood’ (Čapek 1945: 66) who observes the carefully planned and constructed large-scale propaganda project of the British Empire renders a sense of irony belonging to a visitor who is concerned and upset with the illusion of the Empire and the labouring people which it subsumes. I shall return to this point in my textual analysis. As mentioned in this article’s introduction, the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley was the largest ‘theme park’ ever constructed to promote the glory of the British Empire. The exhibition was ceremoniously inaugurated by King George V on 23 April, the auspicious St George’s Day. This symbolic gesture was a tiny part of the event’s meticulous planning and large-scale propaganda which aimed at boosting the British Empire’s image. The irony is remarkable. The year 1924 appeared, only in theory, to be the zenith of the British Empire. While it is true that Britain had been on the victorious side of the First World War and had been granted a number of German and Turkish colonies by the League of Nations to govern, British political and economic power had nevertheless been weakened by the four-year atrocities of war. Many postcolonial literary scholars have analysed the exhibition as a cultural event, marked by its ideological purpose of instilling as well as promoting British colonial and nationalist ideologies. However, this was not the whole picture. One must not overlook the mercantile and commercial aspects of an event which cost £12 million to put on and attracted 27 million visitors. The exhibition was located in Wembley, then a suburb of metropolitan London. A map of the exhibition site published for visitors shows the names of the main attractions such as the Palace of Arts, the Palace of Industry, the Palace of Engineering, an amusement park, the British Empire Stadium, separate pavilions for each colony such as India, Burma, Hong Kong, Canada, and Australia, among others. All the important sites at the British Empire Exhibition were linked by a

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railway called ‘never-stop’ (Knight–Sabey 1984: 17). The ‘never-stop’ railway was described in a caption to the photograph of two types of train juxtaposed as follows: ‘The “never-stop” system (above) means no waiting at stations; the train slows down to less than two miles an hour. There are no drivers or conductors. Below, the old steam style’ (Knight–Sabey 1984: 17). The organizers even hired ‘natives’ or ‘native-looking’ people as ‘mascots’ to walk around the venues. This insistent verisimilitude can be seen reflected in the following passage extracted from the advertisement narrative in the ‘British Empire Exhibition 1924 Promotional Map’: ‘In a single day he will be able to learn more geography than a year of hard study would teach him’ (British Empire Exhibition 2016). Placing emphasis on the educational purposes and benefit of the British Empire Exhibition, the advertisement serves as a twentieth-century example of Jean Baudrillard’s notion that ethnology is ‘freed from its object, will no longer be circumscribed as an objective science but is applied to all living things and becomes invisible, like an omnipresent fourth dimension, that of the simulacrum’ (Baudrillard 2001: 1737–1738). The British Empire Exhibition is not an exhibition in the literal sense. Rather, it is the proto-ultimate simulacrum, a representation which strives not only to ‘mask or pervert a basic reality’ (simulacrum 2001: 353) of the British Empire but also to create ‘an illusion of absolute reality’ (hyperreality 2001: 192) to the point of ‘almost becoming’ a hyperreality. The ‘almost becoming’ in my statement is significant as the British Empire Exhibition has not reached the stage of ultimate simulacrum like Disneyland, a theme park based on the ‘real unreal’ or the ‘unreal real’, which does not pretend to be real and does not need to abide by the rules of verisimilitude: ‘The Disneyland imaginary is neither true nor false; it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real’ (Baudrillard 2001: 1741). Apart from the overt agenda of museumization of the British Empire, the British Empire Exhibition’s organizers stress in many publications and speeches that the gamut of the exhibition is industry and commerce. Accordingly, an advertisement from the ‘Manchester Guardian Commercial’ (Empire Number) published on 16 October 1924 promotes mainly the Palace of Industry, a significant venue for trade. The Palace of Industry is described as ‘the shop window for the whole Empire’ (Manchester Guardian Commercial 1924: 9). Such mercantile and commercial incentives can be found in the Foreword to the ‘Manchester Guardian Commercial’ (Empire Number), written by James Henry Thomas, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, who served under Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald: ‘It [the British Empire Exhibition] has been the shop window for the whole Empire, and the merchants within the Empire as well as the merchants without the Empire have had an opportunity of seeing the best that the “Store” possesses’ (Manchester Guardian Commercial 1924: 9). Karel Čapek was born in Malé Svatoňovice, near the Krkonoše mountain range located in the north of present-day Czech Republic, in the year 1890. As a writer,

‘...and Miraculously Post-Modern Became Ost-Modern’...

he is known as editor of two significant Czechoslovak newspapers, ‘Národní listy’ and ‘Lidové noviny’. He was the author of several satirical plays and novels, for example, RUR (1920), ‘The Absolute at Large’ (1922) and ‘War with the Newts’ (1937), which propel audience and readers to reflect on themselves and human society. From the time of the Declaration of Independence of the Czechoslovak Nation by Its Provisional Government [Prohlášení nezávislosti československého národa zatímní vládou československou] and the Treaty of Versailles, which helped to establish Czechoslovakia as an independent political entity after the First World War, Čapek collaborated closely with the Czechoslovak government and helped to culturally promote his young country’s image to the world. His close and sustained friendship with President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850– 1937) took the form of weekly meetings every Friday evening in a house in Prague which he shared with his brother, Josef. As Hitler’s influence grew, Čapek’s distress increased. The Munich Agreement of 1938 drove Čapek to depression. He was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature but to no avail (Křivánek 2016: 57–58). Slanderous campaigns against him were organized by the right-wing press. As a result, he sank into depression and his lungs, always weak, became inflamed. On Christmas Day in 1938, nine months before the outbreak of the Second World War, Karel Čapek died of pneumonia. After the Nazi invasion of Prague, which was less than three months after his death, the Nazis, unaware that Čapek had died, came to his house with a warrant for his arrest. Josef Čapek was arrested and later perished in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. The same fate would have awaited Karel had he been alive. The durée réelle, or particular section, of Karel Čapek’s short, tragic yet eventful life, which is the focus of this research paper, is 1924. In May 1924, Čapek went to London for the PEN Congress, and on that occasion he travelled throughout the country from southern England through Wales to Scotland (Křivánek 2016: 32–33). He stayed with his friend Otakar Vočadlo (1895–1974), who worked as Associate Professor of Czech studies at the Institute of Slavic Studies at the University of London in the years 1922–1928. Vočadlo helped to arrange meetings between Čapek and leading British writers, among whom were H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, and G. K. Chesterton (Křivánek 2016: 30–31). Čapek stayed with Vočadlo and his family in Surbiton, Surrey, for some time. He would, after this trip, initiate the foundation of the Czechoslovak PEN Club, a branch of the International PEN Club founded in 1921 in London. He would also become the Czechoslovak PEN club’s chairperson. Čapek’s visit to England was planned towards the end of 1923 though the specific confirmation of his trip came in February 1924. Apart from the PEN club affairs, one would have thought that Čapek’s visit to England was a result of the success of a theatrical production of RUR in April 1923 at St Martin’s Theatre, London. However, it was his wish to visit the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, which actually propelled Karel

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Čapek to make the trip to London (Vočadlo 1995: 39). The legacy of his visit is an essay entitled ‘The Biggest Samples Fair; or, The British Empire Exhibition’ (Čapek 1945: 62), published in ‘Lidové Noviny’ and later compiled with other essays in the form of ‘Letters from England’. Here, I subscribe to Ivona Misterova’s argument made in her article entitled ‘Letters from England: Views on London and Londoners by Karel Capek, the Czech “Gentleman Stroller of London Streets”’ that Čapek did not write a traditional travelogue. Rather, he wrote a series of personal and critical reviews of the British Empire Exhibition and of other places, which reflect his position as a writer from the periphery of empires [British Empire and the spectre of Austro-Hungarian Empire] as well as the ‘other’ side of Europe: ‘For Capek, an objective medium that simply interpreted what he saw was not a priority preferring instead to create a subjectively colorful interpretation unique in its point of view, resilience, and certain level of irony’ (Misterova 2010). Anglophone readers might be more familiar with Virginia Woolf’s critical review, reflecting her position as a writer writing from the centre of power, which was given the astounding title of ‘Thunder at Wembley’. In this satirical piece, Woolf construes a fictional thunderstorm which dismantles the British Empire Exhibition, along with the imperialist discourse it propagates: ‘Dust swirls down the avenues, hisses and hurries like erected cobras round the corners. Pagodas are dissolving in dust. Ferro-concrete is fallible. Colonies are perishing and dispersing in a spray of inconceivable beauty and terror which some malignant power illuminates’ (Woolf 2009b: 171). Woolf seems to assert in her writing that no matter how wellchoreographed the British Empire Exhibition was or claimed it was, one could never escape the inevitable truth that this gigantic imperialist and mercantile propaganda would sooner or later fail as the British Empire itself would soon be dismantled: ‘The Empire is perishing; the bands are playing; the Exhibition is in ruins’ (Woolf 2009: 171). Though Karel Čapek does not imagine climatic catastrophe of any kind in his writing, his review similarly puts forward satirical descriptions of the vulnerability of pomp and ceremony, as well as heroism, which sustain imperialism: ‘I even had the luck to behold a statue of the Prince of Wales, made of Canadian butter, and it filled me with regret that the majority of London monuments are not also made of butter’ (Čapek 1945: 63). If one subscribes to Mike Featherstone, who proposes that postmodernism entails ‘the effacement of the boundary between art and every life; the collapse of the hierarchical distinction between high and mass/popular culture;… parody, pastiche, irony, playfulness and the celebration of the surface “depthlessness” or culture’ (Featherstone 1988: 203), then Čapek’s comments reflect such postmodernist playful tendency to ridicule the discourses behind the rectification of statues and monuments as markers of history and high culture. His comments, an ironic celebration of butter(y) statues/monuments, anticipate the likes of Jean Baudrillard, who states that images of god, or statues of heroes, have ‘murderous capacity’ (Baudrillard

‘...and Miraculously Post-Modern Became Ost-Modern’...

2001: 1735) in that they can be ‘murderers of the real’ (Baudrillard 2001: 1735). Statues carry illusive meaning which represents aesthetic values to the point that vandalizing them is barbaric. Here, Čapek invites us to imagine the decay of statues and monuments in London in the image of melting ‘butter statues/ monuments’, a metaphor for oppressive social discourses and ideologies which, in the crumbling order of heroism and Empire, are equally ‘buttery’ and prone to dissolution. In this case, the hyperreal, or the narrative of the glorification of history and prominent figures, which has become ‘all too real’, such as the Prince of Wales statue in the Canadian pavilion, consists of the monarchist as well as colonial and imperialist discourses. Čapek stretches the limit of modernity by inviting us to ask the following question: Could it be that the simulacrum which many worship and perceive as the hyperreality of imperial glory is as slippery and meltable as butter? Buttery statues, as well as their buttery meanings, are not the only items at the exhibition and beyond which Čapek deconstructs in his writing. His description of the throats and dried ears of the gentlemen and ladies who visited the exhibition serve, in its reversal of the ‘gaze’, to subvert the purpose of the exposition of goods from the colonial peripheries (Čapek 1945: 63). He dehumanizes the gazing and gaping participants of the British Empire Exhibition in the same way that the imperial discourses seek to dehumanize the colonized subjects and reduce them to mere commodities. Čapek goes as far as undermining the museumization function of the British Empire Exhibition and reducing the vast expanse of the exhibition to mere ‘commercial cornucopia’ (Čapek 1945: 63) and even ‘overgrown bazaar’ (Čapek 1945: 64). His scathing remarks form a stark contrast to the grandiosity reflected in the exact wordings on the British Empire Exhibition promotional materials, which give the impression that this exposition of goods from the colonial territories offers an educational experience where visitors are able to study the conditions of life lived in the colonies and to accumulate cartographic information of the world: ‘In a single day he will be able to learn more geography than a year of hard study would teach him’ (British Empire Exhibition 2016). In Čapek’s essay, the grandiosity of the ‘grand tour’ is reduced to only a ‘regular tour’ through a vast and gigantic marketplace. The scale of the British Empire Exhibition is acknowledged and accentuated by Čapek, reflecting his ‘powerlessness’ not only as a thorough reviewer of the event but also as an outsider or observer who does not share with the British people their heritage of the British Empire. He seems to be in awe more with the expanse of the goods ‘fair’ (Čapek 1945: 64) than with the glory of the British Empire, of which presentation and ardent promotion were carefully staged and staunchly supported.

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Karel Čapek – The OstModern and The PostModern If one subscribes to Fredric Jameson’s argument that postmodernism is ‘the effacement in it of some key boundaries or separations, most notably the erosion of the older distinction between high culture and so-called mass or popular culture’ (Jameson 1998: 2), one probably subscribes to the notion that postmodernism resists totalization, particularly with regard to the authority to speak for the ‘other’. Karel Čapek’s views and writing anticipate thinkers like Linda Hutcheon who in The ‘Politics of Postmodernism’ not only examines the postmodernist radical tendency to question and challenge modernity’s authoritative representation of ‘the other’, particularly society’s minority, but also analyses postmodernism’s dangerous tendency to ghettoize or valorize marginality and peripheries – which she sees as no different from the traditional form of domination: ‘The ex-centric “other” itself may have different (and less complicitous) modes of representation and may therefore require different methods of study’ (Hutcheon 2002: 36). Čapek was, again, ahead of his time. For Čapek, the British Empire Exhibition, as well as the imperialist worldview it propagates, reduces the human being into an abstraction inferior to the industry, commodity, and technology put on display at the exhibition. By exposing the British Empire and its 1924 exhibition project’s disregard for the ‘invisible’, albeit imaginatively ‘coloured’ (Čapek 1945: 69), hands of labour from the colonies which made and (up)held the exhibited merchandises, Čapek’s satirical comments anticipate the likes of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who developed the concept of ‘epistemic violence’ – the systematic ‘othering’ through the sanitization and race and history, repackaged in this British Empire Exhibition as carried out for the love of knowledge and fellow humankind. Spivak wrote: ‘Until very recently, the clearest available example of such epistemic violence was the remotely orchestrated, far-flung, and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject as Other’ (Spivak 2001: 2197). On the surface, Čapek may seem to contribute to the ‘persistent constitution of the [colonized] Other as the [colonial] Self’s shadow’ (Spivak 2001: 2197). However, what does this make of him and his subject position as a ‘colonial colonized’, or a ‘colonized colonial’? The labels ‘self’ and ‘other’ are rendered porous when he brings in his OstModern narrative, propelling the readers to see that he, too, can be complicit in the silencing of anonymous labourers of the Empire as well as integral to ‘the terrible silence of the four hundred millions’ (Čapek 1945: 70). Thus, Karel Čapek ends his essay with a (P)Ostmodern juxtaposition, that is, if one agrees with Featherstone, who propounds that ‘postmodernism is perceived as a heightening of the adversarial tendencies of modernism with desire, the instinctual, and pleasure unleashed to carry the logic of modernism to its furthest reaches…, exacerbating the structural tensions of society and disjunction of the realism’ (Featherstone 1988: 203–204). Čapek compares and contrasts the British Empire

‘...and Miraculously Post-Modern Became Ost-Modern’...

Exhibition at Wembley with his childhood town in Czechoslovakia, formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: I should like to be tiny, and to stand once more in old Prouza’s shop at Upice, to stare, goggle-eyed, at the black gingerbread, the pepper, the ginger, the vanilla and the laurel leaves, and to think to myself that these are all the treasures of the world and the scents of Arabia and all the spices of distant lands, to be amazed, to sniff and then to run off and read a novel by Jules Verne about strange, distant and rare regions. For I, foolish soul, used to have quite a wrong idea of them. (Čapek 1945: 71–72) By stating that he would rather return to Upice, to his childhood space and days when he knew nothing about such huge bazaar which sustains and peddles depthless imperialist fetish, Čapek satirizes the exhibition’s pretentious claim to reality of, as well as the condition of life in, the colonial countries. Reading Jules Verne’s adventure novels – he seems to claim – is more nourishing to the imagination and less oppressive to the silenced lives exploited by the rhetoric of the Empire than unquestioningly subscribing to and propagating the myth of the British Empire. If his essay can be read as a cautionary tale against the dangers of epistemic violence, Čapek can be regarded as the child in ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’, Hans Christian Andersen’s famous story, who not only points out but also laughs at the invisible cloak which the new Emperor of liberalism and humanism pretends he does not notice. The Central European experience, permeating throughout Čapek’s writing, produces an impact beyond his strong patriotism, which Misterova has already pointed out: ‘Capek’s analogies and contrasts between foreign and domestic are not limited only to landscape and scenery or places close to his heart, as he also empathetically puts himself in the place of his countrymen’. I nevertheless argue that, apart from ‘his countrymen’ (Misterova 2010), Čapek sympathetically puts himself in the place of the diverse ‘other’.4 This ‘other’ is not an exoticized entity but, rather, a ‘strategically essentialized’5 concept, as Čapek also acknowledges how he can only touch the surface of the ‘spirit of the four hundred million’ (Čapek 4

Similarly, in ‘Thunder at Wembley’, Virginia Woolf also puts herself in the position of the other, a thrush. She provides a bird’s eye view of the disruptive presence of a silent anonymous individual whose real day-to-day existence points towards the artificiality and absurdity of the British Empire Exhibition: ‘And then some woman in the row of red-brick villas outside the grounds comes out and wrings a dish-cloth in her backyard. All this the Duke of Devonshire should have prevented’ (2009b: 170). ‘Strategic essentialism’, a term introduced by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, means that experience of a social category can be defined and essentialized as long as one is consciously aware that any given fixed entity is only strategical for recognizing the differences within a social category for the sake of political mobilization (see: Strategic Essentialism. In: Ritzer, George–Ryan, Michael J. (eds), The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing. 2011: 193).

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1945: 70) subalterns missing from the British Empire Exhibition. In other words, the Central European experience contributes to the (P)OstModernist project which aims to defamiliarize received notions and undermine the authority of grand narratives: ‘Perhaps he [Čapek] suggests his country is more beautiful because of its smallness. … Smallness is spiritual health. This was the lesson Britain failed to learn when it cast off empire but retained the illusion that it was still a great power’ (Carey 2010: xv). How Karel Čapek, the OstModern and the PostModern, ventures to ‘carry the logic of modernism to its furthest reaches’ (Featherstone 1988: 203), a phrase which, I argue, can also be translated into ‘carry the logic of imperialism as well as consumerism to their furthest reaches’, through his subject position as the Central European other, can be seen in his comments on modernity and technology in his review of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. The following passage can be read as an articulation of the prevailing concern that technology cleanses the world from the human condition: ‘Beside you, Flying Scotsman, what would that blind beggar look like who sold me matches today? He was blind and corroded with scabies; he was a very bad and impaired machine; in fact, he was only a man’ (Čapek 1945: 67). It might be worth reading and understanding Čapek’s views through Hannah Arendt’s ‘The Human Condition’, where she categorizes the three fundamental activities of human life: labour, work, and action: ‘The vita activa, human life in so far as it is actively engaged in doing something, is always rooted in a world of men and of manmade things which it never leaves or altogether transcends’ (Arendt 1998: 22). For Arendt, the desire to escape labour through technology has ironically created a society devoted exclusively to labouring. It is this obsession with the routine work and comfort that undermines humans’ capacity to appreciate life in the knowledge that all humans will eventually die, thus limiting their political action. Life conditioned by labour reflects humanity as animal laborans: ‘The activity of labor does not need the presence of other, though a being laboring in complete solitude would not be human but an animal laborans in the word’s most literal significance’ (Arendt 1998: 22). Life conditioned by work reflects humanity as homo faber: ‘The work of our hands, as distinguished from the labor of our bodies – homo faber who makes and literally “works upon” as distinguished from the animal laborans which labors and “mixes with” – fabricates the sheer unending variety of things whose sum total constitutes the human artifice’ (Arendt 1998: 136). Life conditioned by action reflects humanity as zoon politikon: ‘Action, in so far as it engages in founding and preserving political bodies, creates the condition for remembrance, that is, for history’ (Arendt 1998: 8–9). Human beings labouring to leave lasting work for tomorrow, work which will inspire action, indeed, should always be the ruin of propaganda projects like the British Exhibition, which thrive on the fetish of materials and on the eradication of the human condition, human being’s imperfection and mortality included.

‘...and Miraculously Post-Modern Became Ost-Modern’...

Conclusions: Socio-Political Contribution of Central European Regional Modernism As this comparative paper has shown, reading Virginia Woolf’s review of the British Empire Exhibition alongside Karel Čapek’s description of the same venue and event, as well as comparing and contrasting these two writers’ critiques on the British Empire, has led readers towards a reassessment of the notions of centre and periphery. If Western Europe, which mainly entails anglophone, francophone, and germanophone intellectual and aesthetic heritage and movements, has become emblematic of, to the extent of being synonymous to, Modernism, I argue that the voice, presence, and socio-political contribution of a Central European writer like Čapek help to challenge Western Eurocentric notions of modernism. Čapek puts into question what – to appropriate the term from Scott Herring in ‘Regional Modernism: A Reintroduction’ – I regard as Western European ‘metronormativity’ (Herring 2009: 2), or the tendency to conflate modernism with Western European capital cities and thereby reduce modernism’s multiplicity, particularly in terms of spatial and historical contexts, to only urban settings in Western Europe. Transcending while paradoxically embracing the boundaries of nation and empire, Čapek gives articulation to a nation emerging from the shadows of its colonial past located in a region which, at first glance, seems ‘far from the maddening’ radar of British colonization, imperialist projects, and propagandist ventures as reflected in the British Empire Exhibition. Yet, Čapek makes clear that his emerging nation in such an off-theradar region has ironically been an integral part of imperialism when he puts himself in close proximity with the silenced labour from the British colonies – Spivak’s subaltern, who, deprived of access to the ‘capital’ (in its literal sense of capital city and in terms of Pierre Bourdieu’s economic, cultural, and social capital), cannot speak. By specifically referring to his own hometown in a small country located in a forgotten region in his writing, it can be read that Čapek avoids ‘speaking for’ the anonymous hands which built empires and thereby goes beyond the overgeneralization of colonized experience which Spivak challenges. Like the thunder which Woolf construes, Čapek’s sincere prose propels readers to look beyond the façades of exhibition pavilions, beyond the ‘spoils’ of the empire, beyond the racially imagined bodies which unjustly toiled and see in all clarity – regardless of the particular and different lives we live across time and space – the shared plight of humanity at the mercy of greed, exploitation, and extermination. Such is, I propound, the socio-political contribution of Central European regional modernism in Čapek’s work, which is not only valid but also increasingly vital to the contemporary Europe of Brexit and refugee & migrant crises, and beyond. On or About 2019, Bohumil Hrabal and Susan Sontag would have also agreed.

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References In Czech APOLLINAIRE, Guillaume. 1996. Paris Journal (6 March 1914). Cited In: Slavík, Jaroslav–Opelík, Jiří (eds), Josef Čapek. Prague: Torst. KONRÁD, Daniel. 2014. Lituji, že jsem se nevrátila, říká Hrabalova múza Dubenka. aktualne.cz. (28.3.2014). https://magazin.aktualne.cz/kultura/literatura/litujize-jsem-se-nevratila-rika-hrabalova-muza-dubenka/r~b8a5fae0b66611e387f20 02590604f2e/. KŘIVÁNEK, Vladimír. 2016. Svědomí Slova: Český PEN Klub v Proměnach Doby. Praha: České centrum Mezinárodního PEN klubu. KUBIŠTA, Bohumil. 1992. O duchové podstatě moderní doby. In: Padrta, Jiří (ed.), Osma a Skupina výtvarných umělců, 1907–1917: Teorie, Kritika, Polemika. Prague: Odeon. [English translation from Ort, Thomas. 2013. Art and Life in Modernist Prague. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan]. VOČADLO, Otakar. 1995. Anglické listy Karla Čapka. Prague: Jan.

In English ARENDT, Hannah. 1998. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Margaret Canovan (intro.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. BAUDRILLARD, Jean. 2001. From The Precession of Simulacra. In: Leitch, Vincent B. et alia (eds), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. London–New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 1732–1741. BRITISH EMPIRE EXHIBITION. 2016 [1924]. http://www.brightontoymuseum. co.uk. 13 April 2016. http://www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/ Category:British_Empire_Exhibition_(1924). ČAPEK, Karel. 1945. The Biggest Samples Fair, or The British Empire Exhibition. In: Čapek, Karel: Letters from England. Paul Selver (transl.). Frome & London: Butler and Tanner Ltd. 62–72. CAREY, John. 2010. Preface. In: Čapek, Karel. Believe in People: The Essential Karel Čapek. Šárka Tobrmanová-Kühnová (transl.). London: Faber and Faber. xi–xxxi. EAGLETON, Terry. 2014. Vicissitudes of ‘Character’. In: Minow-Pinkney, Makiko. (ed.), Virginia Woolf and December 1910: Studies in Rhetoric and Context. Grosmont: Illuminati Books. 83–89. FEATHERSTONE, Mike. 1988. In Pursuit of the Postmodern: An Introduction. In: Featherstone, Mike. Theory, Culture & Society. Vol. 5. London–Newbury Park–Beverly Hills–New Delhi: Sage. 195–215.

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HERRING, Scott. 2009. Regional Modernism: A Reintroduction. MFS Modern Fiction Studies 55(1 – Spring). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1–10. HRABAL, Bohumil. 2014. Total Fears: Selected Letters to Dubenka. James Naughton (transl.). Prague: Twisted Spoon Press. HUTCHEON, Linda. 2002. The Politics of Postmodernism. 2nd ed. London–New York: Routledge. HYPERREALITY. 2001. In: Macey, David. Dictionary of Critical Theory. Penguin Reference. London: Penguin Books. 192–193. JAMESON, Fredric. 1998. Postmodernism and Consumer Society. In: Jameson, Frederic. The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998. London: Verso 1–20. KNIGHT, Donald R.–Sabey, Alan D. 1984. Lion Roars at Wembley: British Empire Exhibition, 1924–25. London: Barnard & Westwood Limited. MACCARTHY, Desmond. 1995. The Post-Impressionist Exhibition of 1910. In: Rosenbaum, S. P. (ed.), The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs and Commentary. Revised ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 74–78. MAKE IT NEW: The Rise of Modernism Exhibition at Ransom Center Opens Oct. 21. 2003. Harry Ransom Center. The University of Texas at Austin. http:// www.hrc.utexas.edu/press/releases/2003/nr100903modernism.html. MANCHESTER GUARDIAN Commercial. 1924. Empire Number – II. Thursday 16 October 1924. MISTEROVA, Ivona. 2010. Letters from England: Views on London and Londoners by Karel Capek, the Czech ‘Gentleman Stroller of London Streets’. Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London 8(2 – September). Online at: http://www.literarylondon.org/london-journal/ september2010/misterova.html. ORT, Thomas. 2013. Art and Life in Modernist Prague. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. POUND, Ezra. 1935. Make It New: Essays by Ezra Pound. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. RITZER, George–RYAN, Michael J. (eds). 2011. The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing. SIMULACRUM. 2001. In: Macey, David. Dictionary of Critical Theory. Penguin Reference. London: Penguin Books. SPIVAK, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2001. From a Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Chapter 3. History [Can the Subaltern Speak?]. In: Leitch, Vincent B. et alia. (eds), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. London–New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2197–2208. SUVIN, Darko. 1979. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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WOOLF, Virginia. 2009a. Character in Fiction. In: Woolf, Virginia. Virginia Woolf: Selected Essays. David Bradshaw (ed. with introd.). Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 37–54. 2009b. Thunder at Wembley. In: Woolf, Virginia. Virginia Woolf: Selected Essays. David Bradshaw (ed. with introd.). Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 169–171.

Acta Univ. Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies, 14 (2018) 23–40

DOI: 10.2478/auseur-2018-0009

Ruralization of the (Urbane) Concept of Sensus Communis in a 19th-century Hungarian Philosophical Controversy Béla MESTER

Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Philosophy e-mail: mester.bela@btk.mta.hu Abstract. The topic of the present article is the destruction of the common sense tradition linked to the urbanity of philosophy, which had deep roots both in the European and Hungarian traditions. This destruction was based on Hegelian ideas by János Erdélyi as an argument of the greatest philosophical controversy of the Hungarian philosophical life in the 1850s. In Erdélyi’s argumentation, the turn from the supposed urbanity to the supposed rurality of the common sense has a fundamental role. The idea of the rurality of the common sense has an influence on the Hungarian intellectual history of the next centuries, as well. Keywords: common sense, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Gusztáv Szontagh, János Erdélyi, János Hetényi

Introduction It is highly rare that someone formulates their concept of philosophy and their own philosophical programme against the common sense, as an opposite of it, as János Erdélyi does it in his ‘The Present of the Inland Philosophy’: I would be happy if it were explained what is the advantage to recommend to the […] Hungarian people something what does not need to learn, just to know based on the common sense,. Oh, my dear common sense! […] The common sense can easily be compatible with superstition, ignorance, stagnancy, all the moral and material wrong […]. Contrary, for all great things, which were for the progress of the humankind, there are deep, serious, secure and sublime marks of the thought. (Erdélyi 1981: 43)1 1

The same in the original Hungarian text: „Nagy örömemre szolgálna ezek után, ha

Béla MESTER

Erdélyi’s discussion paper was published at first as a series of periodical articles in 1856 and then as a separate volume in the following year, as well. Its interpretations in the cultural memory of the Hungarian philosophy are essentially identical; Erdélyi’s writing is a turning point from the dilettante idea of the national philosophy to a professional philosophy in accordance with the international trends. It is an inevitable fact that Erdélyi’s work was a constant reference for highly different philosophers with a single common feature, the defence of a differently formulated concept of the professional philosophy from differently constructed enemies. One of the first examples is Károly Böhm’s editorial preface for the first issue of the ‘Hungarian Philosophical Review’ published in 1882. His main problem is the relationship of philosophy and practice and the rights of theory formulated as a contrast to practice. He did not refer to Erdélyi in a concrete manner – it is not a treatise, just a short preface without references and bibliography –, but he repeated Erdélyi’s critique of Hetényi and Szontagh: A mind engaged with the questions of the practical life can fail when making judgements on the practical utility of abstract doctrines. In our culture, Hetényi and Szontagh overestimated the practice when they stated the impracticality of the idealistic ‘Sophie-style’ knowledge, against the Hegelians. It is true that philosophy was never directly practical, did not teach anybody directly to create steam ships, telegraphs, or other new inventions. But such practical things do not represent the whole of practical life. All of them are just instruments for achieving a much more sublime and practical end […]. This practical end is the ideal disposition of the human life; we can achieve it with the different tools of the practice; and philosophy teaches to understand it, to argument for it, and to explain it consciously. (Aigner–Böhm 2017: 260; originally published in 1882)2

kimagyaráztatnék; mi elsőbbséggel jár az, ha […] a magyar […] népnek […] egyre az ajánltatik, mit tanulni nem kell, hanem csak tudni – a józan ész szerint? Édes józan eszem! […] De mindamellett nem terem-e meg igen könnyen a józan ésszel a babona, tudatlanság, tespedés, minden erkölcsi és anyagi rossz […]? Ellenben minden nagy dolgon, mely az emberiséget elővitte, a gondolkodás mély és komoly, nyugodt és fenséges nyomai látszanak.” In the following, I will quote the Hungarian sources in my English translation, with the original Hungarian text in the footnotes. In Hungarian: „Mert a gyakorlati élet kérdéseivel elfoglalt elme könnyen tévedhet, mikor e l v o n t tanok életrevalóságáról ítélni készül. Nálunk pedig Hetényi és Szontagh nagyon is a gyakorlat malmára hajtották a vizet, mikor Hegel követőivel szemben az ilyen idealisztikus >>Zsófi-féle<< ismeret impraktikus voltát hirdették. Közvetlenül gyakorlati, az igaz, a filozófia nem volt soha; nem tanított meg közvetlenül senkit vasutak, gőzhajók, távírók s egyéb új találmányok megalkotására. Azonban az i l y e n gyakorlati dolgok még nem teszik az e g é s z gyakorlati életet. Mindezek csak e s z k ö z ö k egy sokkal magasztosabb gyakorlati cél elérésére […]. Az emberi életnek ideálszerű berendezése, ez a gyakorlati cél; erre szolgálnak a gyakorlat változatos eszközei, s e célt megérteni, indokolni, öntudatosan kifejteni, erre csak a filozófia tanít.”

Ruralization of the (Urbane) Concept of Sensus Communis...

In the following century, Gyula Kornis talks about the triumph of ‘pure logicism’ in Europe over the ‘philosophy of Dollar’ of the American technological civilization: [Erdélyi] as a real Hegelian, defends German idealism and the theoretical character of philosophy with a satirical enthusiasm against the Szontaghs’ attack. The first conscious attack of logicism against phychologism appeared in this polemic, for the first time in the history of Hungarian thought; it was incarnated in the one-sided practical character of the Hungarian harmonistic philosophy, by a modern term, in the form of pragmatism. Szontagh clearly formulates the theory of the truth of pragmatism. […] If he had anticipated that this theory of truth would be born in America, half a century later, he would have recommended the technical home of the philosophy of Dollar for the Hungarians as an ideal. […] It has never been thought at such a low level about philosophy in our culture; Hegel’s Hungarian disciple reflected to it by these words. (Kornis 1944: 35)3 Surprisingly, the evaluation of Erdélyi’s writings did not change in the Marxist historiography of philosophy; however, it was formulated at first against Kornis: [Szontagh’s philosophy] was a reactionary, agnostic philosophy, a mixture of the Kantianism and Humeanism […] Szontagh was the first Hungarian neo-Kantian […], the ancestor of the paulers and kornises.4 (Heller 1952: 411–412)5 There is no place here for a detailed analysis of the interpretations appeared in the professional historiography of Hungarian philosophy. We must mention Endre Kiss’s approach to Erdélyi’s concept of the common sense, connected to the everyday usage of language and its conservatism (Kiss 1984). However, 3

4 5

In Hungarian: „[Erdélyi] mint vérbeli hegeliánus, szatirikus hévvel védi meg Szontaghék támadásával szemben a német idealizmust s ezzel a filozófia teoretikus jellegét. E polémiában tűnik elénk a magyar gondolkodás történetében a logizmus első tudatos támadása a pszichologizmus ellen, mely a magyar egyezményes rendszer egyoldalúan gyakorlati, életrevaló jellegében, mai műszóval élve, a pragmatizmus formáját öltötte fel. Szontagh ugyanis egész világosan megformulázza a pragmatizmus igazságelméletét […]. S mintha már megsejtette volna, hogy ez a pragmatista igazságteória félszázad múlva Amerikában fog megszületni: már ekkor a dollárfilozófia technikai hazáját állítja oda a magyarnak eszményképül. […] Sohasem gondolkoztak – fakad ki ennek hallatára Hegel magyar tanítványa – még oly alacsonyan nálunk a bölcsészet dolgában.” It was a common rhetorical element in this epoch to type in minuscule the initial letter of a family name used in plural, for expressing a pejorative opinion of a criticized person. In Hungarian: „[Szontagh filozófiája] reakciós, agnosztikus filozófia volt: a kantianizmus és a humeianizmus keveréke […] Szontagh az első magyar újkantianus […], a paulerek és kornisok őse.”

Béla MESTER

Erdélyi’s philosophy of language is truly one of the most important parts of his œuvre, which was touched upon in my previous publications, as well; I have chosen another topic for the present article. In the following, I will describe at first Erdélyi’s chain of ideas about the common sense, after which the possible reason of his position against the common sense will be problematized. For an answer, the function of the development of a modern concept of the common sense must be outlined under conditions of the changing structure of the philosophical communication in modernity in the European philosophy in general and especially in Hungarian philosophy. In the end, the consequences of the neglected concept of the common sense in Erdélyi’s thought and in the intellectual life of the next generations will be outlined.

Erdélyi’s Critique of the Philosophy of His Age Erdélyi has identified the disadvantages of the thought of his opponents in their three main biases in the formulations of the requirements of the Hungarian philosophy; they are the needed usefulness, popular language, and (Hungarian) nationality of the philosophical works, formulated by his opponents, János Hetényi and Gusztáv Szontagh, based on a concept of the common sense. All of these three features were considered by him as contradictory to professional philosophy. Actually, at the very beginning of his chain of ideas, it becomes clear that he does not defend professional philosophy in general but the positions of a particular system. At the end of his writing, it will be evident that it is identical with the Hegelianism interpreted by him. At first, he opposes the epistemological approach of the foundations of philosophy, without a direct reference to Kant but clearly against the Kantian critique of the reason: The endeavour of the philosophers who always think about what we can know and what we cannot; it is to mark the borders of the knowledge. (Erdélyi 1981: 28)6 From this basis, he suddenly derives the critique of a topic of the Hungarian philosophical discourse of his age: It was anticipated that this and this philosophy fits the Hungarian mind; it can and must receive such and such quantity from it; it is equivalent with the statement that the cultivation of philosophy beyond the established 6

In Hungarian: „Legalább ide megy ki azok igyekezete, kik bölcselkedvén, örökké azon törik fejüket: mit lehet tudni, mit nem; s erőnek erejével ki akarnák jelölni, hogy meddig terjedjen a tudás határa.”

Ruralization of the (Urbane) Concept of Sensus Communis...

borders is a sin committed against the nation and the common sense. (Erdélyi 1981: 28)7 Consequently, by his ideas, both the approaches of philosophy in its focus of the questions of what I can know as a human and what I can know as a Hungarian are wrong. He uses the concepts of reason, spirit, and idea as opposites of the common sense, which is not possible for the philosophical practice because it is not a useful tool for achieving the Hegelian dialectic: The idea […] contains all the singularities and opposites […] as stating and negating elements because it is the way of becoming. This point is the top of speculation where all the things are opposites or syntheses of the opposites. A purely distinctive thinking, frozen in its distinctions will never achieve these heights. Consequently, the common culture, the so-called common sense realizes ‘inconsequence’ in its greatest men in every country but does not care about higher correspondences. (Erdélyi 1981: 34)8 The requirement of usefulness appeared for him as the rejection of the aim of the pure scientific knowledge for the advantages of practicality. After discussing this topic, his next target is the popular language of philosophy as a false requirement: All sciences, other conscious human activities and crafts must be learnt; philosophy is the sole exception. Everybody wants to learn it less and less but know it more and more, based on a birth right marked by the common sense. (Erdélyi 1981: 35)9 The aim of popular language was an evidence for him that their opponents had given up the norm of the well-defined academic vocabulary of philosophy. By his argumentation, his opponents do not yet feel the need of a precise terminology 7

In Hungarian: „már előre kimondatott, hogy a magyar elmének ez s ez bölcsészet való, s ennyit vagy annyit bír el és kell elbírnia műveléséből; mintha mondatnék, hogy a kiszabott mértéken túl bölcselkedni aztán nemzet és józan ész elleni vétség.” In Hungarian: »A[…]z eszm[ében …] különösségek, ellentétek sőt ellenmondatok megvannak […] mint […] állító és tagadó elemek, mert ez az útja a létesülésnek. És e ponton igazán az elmélődés (speculatio) magasságain vesszük magunkat észre, hol minden csupa ellenmondás, vagyis ellenmondások egysége. E magasságra a pusztán csak különböztető, és különbözéseiben megfagyó gondolkodás soha de soha fel nem jut. Azért volt, van és lesz, hogy a közrendű műveltség, az úgynevezett józan ész, miképp nálunk úgy másoknál is, rendesen „inconsequentiákat” vesz észre legnagyobb embereiben; de a felsőbb egybefüggést nem is keresi.« In Hungarian: „Minden tudománynak vagy bármely célzatos emberi munkásságnak, minő avagy csak a mesteremberek foglalkozása is, megadatik, hogy tanulni kell. Csak a bölcsészet e részben kivétel; mert mennél kevésbé tanultatik, annál jobban akar tudatni, és ezt valami születési jognál fogva követeli magának, mégpedig a józan ész nevében boldog, boldogtalan.”

Béla MESTER

because of their low-level philosophical practice that can be managed without professional terminology: I can see that people are afraid of the idealism concerning language and the common sense. They defend language against science. I believe that on the level of the development where our popular philosophers are they do not need a precise terminology to explain their thoughts, and they can be satisfied by the service of the common language. (Erdélyi 1981: 36)10 The critique of the third bias, the idea of nationality in philosophy is connected to his Hegelian way of thinking, as well. He can connect literature and arts as emotional phenomena to the nation, disregarding the concept of Weltliteratur and connect philosophy to the whole of humanity, disregarding the fragmentation of its empirical audience by language borders, based on the Hegelian concepts of reason and spirit. In his argumentation, a Hegelian vision of the end of the history of philosophy has a special importance. However, the objects of the reason and spirit were always universal, but all the history of philosophy was needed for the explicit universality in the history. By his argumentation, there were particular philosophical cultures, but in his own age it is the epoch when their possibility ended: The spring days of the eclectic philosophy and the particularities of national philosophies, such as the English or Scottish common sense, the French Enlightenment, and the German subjectivity, disappeared. A new floor has been finished in the building of science; we should inhabit and reinforce it for going further. (Erdélyi 1981: 96) […] In this part, the German spirit has the triumph. (Erdélyi 1981: 95)11 By his self-image, the task of his generation is to eliminate the remained local particularities of philosophy for achieving the Hegelian ending point in the thought of every civilized nation, amongst them the Hungarians.

In Hungarian: „Különösen valami aggodalmas félelmet látok az idealizmustóli óvakodásokban nyelvre, józan észre nézve. A tudománytól féltik a nyelvet. Elhiszem, hogy azon fokáig a haladásnak, meddig a mi keletben levő bölcsészeink feljutottak, nincs szükség a gondolat megjelölése végett szabatos nyelvre, s meg lehet elégedni a közbeszéd szolgálatával.” In Hungarian: „elvirultak a váladékos (eklektikus) bölcsészet tavaszi napjai; szinte késői dolgok a nemzeti bölcsészet ferdén látott alakulásai: az angol vagy a skót közérzék, a francia felvilágosodás, a német alanyiság részszerintiségei. A tudomány épületén egy új emelet van készen; ezt kell meglaknunk, megerősítnünk, hogy tovább léphessünk. […] E részben a német szellemet illeti a dicsőség.”

Ruralization of the (Urbane) Concept of Sensus Communis...

Common Sense as a Rural and Conservative Phenomenon in Erdélyi’s Theory There is a special significance of the supposed rurality of the common sense in the argumentation of Erdélyi. At first, he summarizes that all obstacles of the professional philosophy are based on the common sense: “all these superstitions are cultivated and taught in the name of the common sense” (Erdélyi 1981: 55).12 After the numerous pejorative references to the common sense, he must formulate his own common sense concept. In this formulation, he identifies at first the common sense with the conservatism of the everyday thinking, both in the public life and philosophy: The common sense wants always the perfected; it cannot be renewed. The spirit, on the contrary, always follows its own way, makes the progress of the world. […] Because the common sense always wants the perfected, it consequently insists on the perfect truths which were established in a philosophical or political school long time ago for eternity. (Erdélyi 1981: 57)13 It is interesting that Erdélyi’s examples of the innovation against the conservatism of the common sense come from the fields of the sciences, economy, and the linguistic reform, as well. (The lack of social and political reforms is probably the consequence of the calculation with the possibilities of the publication, under conditions of the censorship in the age of neo-absolutism.) The counter-concepts of the conservative common sense and the progressive spirit, formulated above, have been fulfilled by concrete content in here: What was the role of the common sense? By the evidence of the history of the spirit that the innovators, such as Galilei as scientist, Széchenyi as economist, or Kazinczy as linguist, are usually the ones who receive the first critique on the part of common sense. (Erdélyi 1981: 57)14

12 13

In Hungarian: „mindez előítéletek a józan ész nevében tanítatnak, ápoltatnak”. In Hungarian: „Így az józan ész mindig a bevégzettet akarja, vitatja; újjá megeredni, megújhodni már nincs módjában. Ellenben a szellem mind a mellett folytatja a maga útját, viszi elő a világot […]. És mert a józan ész mindig a bevégzettet akarja, örömest ragaszkodik a kész igazságokhoz, melyeket valamely bölcsészeti vagy politikai felekezet valaha elvekké tett, mintegy örökig tartó érvényességgel felruházott.” In Hungarian: „Elvégre tehát miben látjuk szerepelni a józan észt? Az eszme története úgy tartja, hogy az újítók, akár Galilei, mint természetbúvár, akár Széchenyi, mint államgazdász, akár Kazinczy, mint nyelvész lett légyen az, rendszerint a józan észtől kapják az első ellenmondást.”

Béla MESTER

Erdélyi has formulated a non-communicative concept of the common sense. There is no social communication, just standard biases against the progressive initiatives: The common sense can easily be compatible with superstition, ignorance, stagnancy, all the moral and material wrong […] Contrary, for all great things, which were for the progress of the humankind, there are deep, serious, secure and sublime marks of the thought. (Erdélyi 1981: 43)15 Their main types are the ignorance and malignancy toward modern technology, such as the railway network, and toward the institutions of the established Enlightenment, mainly the system of public education. By the last example of Erdélyi, a rural housewife was against the school education of her daughter because a literate girl could could write letter for her lover, as an adult; and this idea against women’s education is based on a common sense judgement: Recently, we care more about things than persons; improvement of sheep and cattle was more important than the improvement of humans; it was said that educated humans could feel more deeply their troubles. Country women have prohibited the education of their daughters for literacy because a literate girl could send letter for her lover. (Erdélyi 1981: 56)16 With these words, Erdélyi eliminated the urbanity of this programme, disregarded Hetényi’s ideas of the urbanity of the common-sense-based national philosophy for creating a non-communicative concept of the common sense. As Hetényi wrote; ‘a national culture must come from the cities as law comes from Zion’ (Hetényi 1841: 239).17 Gábor Kovács has recently problematized the origin of the Hungarian expression of the ‘peasant’s common sense’ [józan paraszti ész] based on his previous analysis of the national characterology of Huizinga (Kovács 2015). Huizinga has identified the Dutch and the burgher characters with patriotic pride, and urbane common sense is given high importance in his description. The concept of common sense was usually connected with urbanity in all epochs of intellectual history; rurality of the common sense seems to be a Hungarian speciality. By my 15

In Hungarian: „De mindamellett nem terem-e meg igen könnyen a józan ésszel a babona, tudatlanság, tespedés, minden erkölcsi és anyagi rossz […]? Ellenben minden nagy dolgon, mely az emberiséget elővitte, a gondolkodás mély és komoly, nyugodt és fenséges nyomai látszanak.” In Hungarian: „Még nem régen is több gond volt nálunk a dologra, mint a személyekre; juh, marhanemesítés hamarább lett közteendővé, mint az ember nemesítése és mondatott, hogy a nevelt ember csak jobban fogná érezni bajait. A falusi asszony pedig azért nem hagyá írásra taníttatni leányát, hogy levelet fog küldeni szeretőjének.” In Hungarian: „a városokból kell kimenni a nemzeti miveltségnek, mint Sionból a törvénynek.”

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opinion, this Hungarian idea has its roots in Erdélyi’s thought; the opposition of the conservative, rural common sense and the spirit of the progressive urbane civilization are essential. According to Erdélyi’s ideas, this rural common sense has a negative role in history, but the critics of modernity in the 20th century could use the pattern established by him against urbanity, for the ideas of an agrarian populism, as well.

The Tradition of Sensus Communis in the History of Philosophy according to Erdélyi’s Interpretation The consequence of Erdélyi’s above detailed ideas about the common sense was that he does not regard the concept of common sense as a philosophical term and that he regards the ones who take common sense seriously as dilettantes, based on these ideas. His opinion is more complex; by his argumentation, the core of the problem is the appearance of common sense in philosophy: the theory of the common sense was ruined by the philosophers when they made from it more than it was possible, and they attributed to it more than it can satisfy (Erdélyi 1981: 55).18 At this point, we need to make his opinion clear about the significance of the tradition of the common sense in the history of philosophy. He has reduced its role for the common sense school of the Scottish Enlightenment, neglecting the 17th-century British ancestors and the antique sources: in philosophy, the common sense appeared one hundred years ago in Scotland in a short but effective role (Erdélyi 1981: 57).19 This Scottish reference is enough for his controversy with Gusztáv Szontagh, who regularly refers to the same Scotsmen and supports his strategy of creating a negative image of the philosophical tradition of the common sense as an irrelevant, local, historically antiquated trend. He closed the historical overview with the following words: The philosophy of common sense emerged and declined suddenly. After Hume, who was sceptical about empirical experiences and offered a novelty 18 19

In Hungarian: „a józan ész elméletét elrontották a bölcsészek, midőn többet csináltak belőle, mint ami; többet fogtak rá, mint amennyi tőle telik.” In Hungarian: „Bölcsészetben a józan ész rövid, de hatékony szerepléssel mutatkozott a skótoknál ezelőtt száz esztendővel.”

Béla MESTER for the progress of philosophy, we cannot speak about English philosophy from a point of view of the history of philosophy. […] Both the Scottish school and Kant appeared after and against Hume; the Scottish philosophy remained a local phenomenon, but the Kantian philosophy occupied the world. (Erdélyi 1981: 59–60)20

At the same time, the significant cultural influence of the opposed Scottish school on the Continent was also clear for him. It can be considered as superficial, but it is essentially urbane and far from the rurality in its every feature: In Scottish philosophy […], the internal source of our cognition was well and nicely elaborated, concerning the moral […], mainly by Scotsmen but by French and German authors also. A lot of manuals of the common courtesies have their roots in here and have enwreathed the world as a liana. Philosophers explained the topics of the ‘etiquette and convenance [common courtesies in French]’ […] It was called practice, art of beauty life […]. (Erdélyi 1981: 59)21 Erdélyi here excludes the whole of any educational, cultural, and social programme of modernity, based on a concept of common sense, from philosophy. One of his opponents, János Hetényi, refers to the same programme in a work authored by him (Hetényi 1841). Erdélyi’s note that the criticized literature focussed on the beauty of life instead of philosophical problems has directly referred to the central concept of the philosophy of his deceased opponent, Hetényi, kalobiotismus, from the Greek kalos (beauty) and bios (life). It is conspicuous that the referred programme, based on common sense, is urbane and reformatory; consequently, its description is contrary to the above analysed characterization of common sense as a rural and conservative phenomenon. The most conspicuous from this point of view is the relationship of common sense and literacy. In an above quoted locus, Erdélyi offers the example of a rural housewife who was against the school education of her daughter because a literate girl could write letters for her lover, as an adult; and this idea against women’s education is based on a common sense judgement in Erdélyi’s interpretation. Later, in the 20

In Hungarian: „A közös érzelem vagy közrendű értelem bölcsészete amint hamar felkapott, úgy hamar is letűnt, s Hume óta, ki a tapasztalást megkétlette, s ezáltal lényeges mozzanatot hoza elő a bölcsészeti haladásban, angol bölcsészetről, tudománytörténeti szempontból, mai nap már nem lehet beszélni. […] Mind a skótok, mind Kant Hume után és ellen keltek föl, de a skótok bölcselkedése helyszerű maradt, míg a kanti észjárás elfoglalta a világot.” In Hungarian: »A skót bölcsészetben […] belső forrása isméreteinknek […] jótékonyan, szépen dolgoztatott fel morálra leginkább ugyan magok a skótok, de franciák s németek által is. Az a sok illendőségtan mind itt veszi gyökerét, s befutá a világot, mint valami folyondár növény. Bölcsészek dolgozák az „etiqette, convenance” rejtelmeit […]. Ezt aztán […] mondák […] gyakorlatnak, életszépítő mesterségnek […].«

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last quotation, he refers to an educational programme based on the same common sense, with intrinsic elements about the development of communicational skills, amongst them, the polite correspondence, usually in different languages, mainly offered for women. At the end of his analysis, Erdélyi described common sense philosophy as a failed programme: Seemingly, the philosophy based on common sense, which was considered as unitary, will cure the wound of scepticism. They hoped for the harmony of life and philosophy, and it had followers. A kind of reality for empiricism has appeared in it; the content could be cleared and increased. But the progress of philosophy skipped the doctrine of the common sense because it is mere obscurity. (Erdélyi 1981: 58)22 A constant motive of Erdélyi’s historical analysis of common sense philosophy is an aversion towards the understanding of the human powers of the Scottish Enlightenment, where moral and aesthetic judgements are mixed with the processes of thinking, and the whole of the cognition is embedded in the human practice. He preferred to maintain a realm of pure rationality free from both the empirical cognition and human practice. His opponent, Gusztáv Szontagh, clearly formulates the contrary opinion: ‘a philosopher does not think purely for the sake of thinking; on the contrary: a human is thinking and investigates the truth for the right acting’ (Szontagh 1857: 217).23 We can easily understand Erdélyi’s aversion: the acceptance of an epistemology and anthropology based on the sensus communis could immediately destroy the dichotomy of the common sense, on the one hand, and the thought, spirit, idea, and reason, on the other. This dichotomy is maintainable if all the emotional content and social context is linked to the common sense, and the concepts of thought (spirit, idea, and reason) remains in the sphere of a context-free, emotionally neutral pure rationality. He could regard the arts and literature as parts of the national cultures and philosophy, as an affair of the universal humankind in the above mentioned loci, based on this dichotomy.

In Hungarian: „Úgy látszott, hogy az egységesnek hitt közös érzelmen alapuló bölcsészet összeforrasztja ismét azt a sebet, mely a skepticizmus által üttetett a tudományon. Az élet s bölcsészet kibékülése váraték tőle; s voltak is követői. Benne valami realitás mutatkozott volna az empírizmus számára; tehát tisztult és növekedett volna a tartalom; mindamellett a bölcsészeti fejlődés átugrá a közös érzelem vagy józan ész tanát, mert ez csupa bizonytalanság.” In Hungarian: „a bölcselkedő nem gondolkodik pusztán hogy gondolkodjék, sőt inkább az ember gondolkodik és keresi az igazságot, hogy helyesen cselekedhessék.”

Béla MESTER

Hegelian Sources of Erdélyi’s Critique of the Common Sense The above detailed writing was the first serious work of Erdélyi, formulated clearly by the Hegelian ideas; it is explicit in the argumentation against the philosophical concept of common sense, as well. In Hegel’s first significant philosophical writing entitled ‘The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy’, published at first in 1802, Hegel identified theoretical thinking with speculation, as a counterpart of common sense, in the chapter entitled ‘Relation of Speculation to Common Sense’: For this reason, speculation understands sound intellect [gesunde Menschenverstand] well enough, but the sound intellect [gesunde Menschenverstand] cannot understand what speculation is doing. […] Common sense [gesunde Menschenverstand] cannot understand speculation; and what is more, it must come to hate speculation when it has experience of it; and, unless it is in the state of perfect indifference that security confers, it is bound to detest and persecute it. (Hegel 1977b: 99–100) Hegel’s writing includes not only the hierarchy of speculation and common sense but the reason of the conservatism of common sense, as well: In particular, ordinary common sense [gemeine Menschenverstand] is bound to see nothing but nullification in those philosophical systems that satisfy the demand for the conscious identity by suspending dichotomy in such a way that one of the opposites is raised to be the absolute and the other nullified. This is particularly offensive if the culture of the time has already fixed one of the opposites otherwise. […] Common sense [gesunde Menschenverstand] is stubborn; it stubbornly believes itself secure in the force of its inertia, believes the non-conscious secure in its primordial gravity and opposition to consciousness; believes matter secure against the difference that light brings into it just in order to reconstruct the difference into a new synthesis at a higher level. (Hegel 1977b: 101–102) Later, in 1807, in the preface of his early masterpiece, entitled ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’, he discusses the concept of insight as a result of the theoretical thinking and the concept of edification connected with the emotional approach as opposites in the description of the actual state of the self-conscious Spirit. The endeavour for the edification is incarnated by his opinion partly in the theory of Romanticism of his age, partly in the German Populärphilosophie, and partly in the enthusiasm of religious pietism:

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[A]t the stage which self-conscious Spirit has presently reached […] now demands from philosophy, not so much knowledge of what it is, as the recovery through its agency of that lost sense of solid and substantial being. Philosophy is to meet this need, not by opening up the fast-locked nature of substance, and raising this to self-consciousness, not by bringing consciousness out of its chaos back to an order based on thought, nor to the simplicity of the Notion, but rather by running together what thought has put asunder, by suppressing the differentiations of the Notion and restoring the feeling of essential being: in short, by providing edification rather than insight. The ‘beautiful’, the ‘holy’, the ‘eternal’, ‘religion’, and ‘love’ are the bait required to arouse the desire to bite; not the Notion, but ecstasy, not the cold march of necessity in the thing itself, but the ferment of enthusiasm, these are supposed to be what sustains and continually extends the wealth of substance. (Hegel 1977a: 4–5) It is verisimilar that Hegel’s ideas formulated in the above quotation had an influence on Erdélyi’s statements on the one-sidedness of the emotively connected common sense as an opposite of the theory; however, Erdélyi usually did not refer to concrete Hegelian loci. This lack of references is probably part of his philosophical opinions: Hegel for him was not a philosophical writer but the actual zenith of the philosophical thought; consequently, his opinions were mentioned as parts of the universal truth, obligatory for everyone, with just a general remark that this truth was discovered and perfectly formulated by Hegel. Hegel discussed the role and the character of common sense in details, especially in the subchapter entitled ‘Reason as Lawgiver’ (Hegel 1977a: 252–256), where he describes that common sense leads us to a contradiction of terms during the formulation of the moral law. The relationship of common sense and theoretical thinking is the same in this special case as what was described earlier in general. Erdélyi’s loci about the inclination of common sense for the moral judgement and the theoretical insufficiency of these judgements are in accordance with the referred loci of Hegel’s work. Hegel later, in the introduction of his ‘Lectures on the History of Philosophy’, in the subchapter entitled ‘Philosophy Proper Distinguished from Popular Philosophy’ (Hegel 1892: 92–94), extended the concept of Populärphilosophie from a concrete German philosophical group to a universal phenomenon of history from Cicero through Pascal to the religious mystical thinkers. The only common element of these highly different authors is a kind of common sense connected with moral sense in Hegel’s opinion: But the drawback that attaches to this Philosophy is that the ultimate appeal even in modern times is made to the fact that men are constituted

Béla MESTER such as they are by nature, and with this Cicero is very free. Here the moral instinct comes into question, only under the name of feeling […]. Feeling is first of all laid hold of, then comes reasoning from what is given, but in these we can appeal to what is immediate only. Independent thought is certainly here advanced; the content too is taken from the self; but we must just as necessarily exclude this mode of thinking from Philosophy. (Hegel 1892: 93)

As we have seen above, Erdélyi has later evaluated the role of common sense in general and the role of the philosophical schools operating with the concept of common sense in the history of philosophy, using these Hegelian ideas. Erdélyi’s well-known metaphor about the building of science is also rooted in Hegel’s texts. The German philosopher has formulated his ideas in the preface of his Phenomenology of Spirit this way: Besides, it is not difficult to see that ours is a birth-time and a period of transition to a new era. Spirit has broken with the world it has hitherto inhabited and imagined, and is of a mind to submerge it in the past, and in the labour of its own transformation. […] dissolving bit by bit the structure of its previous world, […] Just as little as a building is finished when its foundation has been laid, so little is the achieved Notion of the whole the whole itself. (Hegel 1977a: 6–7) Hegel speaks here about a ‘transition to a new era’; several decades later, after the detailed explication of Hegel’s system of philosophy – and Hegel’s death –, the completion of the renovation has appeared in Erdélyi’s vision, and he follows Hegel’s architectural metaphor this way: ‘a new floor has been finished in the building of science; we should inhabit and reinforce it for going further’ (Erdélyi 1981: 96).24 By an overview of Erdélyi’s work, it is clear that he has incorporated with Hegel’s loci several elements of the German discourse of the previous generation into the Hungarian situation of his age. Amongst Hegel’s targets, German pietism, enthusiastic theories of the art philosophy in the circles of sentimentalism and romanticism, and the followers of Kant and Fichte did not have a significant importance in the Hungarian intellectual life of the 1850s as they had in the German discourse a generation ago. The only common element could be the identification of the last representatives of the German Populärphilosophie as the opponents of Hegel with the representatives of Hungarian harmonistic philosophy, Hetényi and Szontagh, as the opponents of Erdélyi. Erdélyi followed this path, as we 24

In Hungarian: „a tudomány épületén egy új emelet van készen; ezt kell meglaknunk, megerősítnünk, hogy tovább léphessünk”.

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have seen above in the case of the identification of ideas incarnating Hetényi’s kalobiotismus with the opinions formulated in the continental manuals of education, based on the Scottish common sense tradition. This identification is false because the philosophies of his opponents, especially in Szontagh’s case, are the representatives of the post-Kantian philosophical epoch and offered an interesting complex of the elements of the Kantian and Scottish common sense philosophies. Erdélyi’s position is characterized by a special form of asynchrony. He was a participant of the Hungarian philosophical life in the Reform Era, as well; but he was silent in the late 1830s and early 1840s, when a controversy regarding the Hegelian philosophy was in the focus of Hungarian philosophical life, with the participation of Szontagh as the protagonist on the anti-Hegelian side, and re-discovered Hegel in the following period when Hegel was not frequently read in European intellectual life. He never reflected on Hetényi’s or Szontagh’s works when they were published, but he offered a retrospective evaluation of their œuvre. This asynchrony is the root of Erdélyi’s misinterpretation of his opponents’ philosophy; they never spoke about popular language but a clear Hungarian terminology; instead of a national particularism of philosophy, they searched the position of philosophy in the process of cultural nation building. One of the most important differences between their opinions about the essence of philosophy was included in his last debate with Gusztáv Szontagh. Erdélyi’s thought is characterized by the dichotomy of speculative thinking and human practice; in Szontagh’s ideas, all forms of theory are always embedded in human activity, in individual and societal practice, while all distinctions between vita activa and contemplativa are false. A triumph of either of them over the other one cannot be achieved following the method used by Erdélyi, evaluating each other as a non-philosophical system of ideas. We can see that this asynchrony of Erdélyi’s reflection is the main cause of his anachronistic judgements and misinterpretations. There was not any sign of his controversy with Szontagh before; it is symptomatic that in his memoirs written several years before their debate Szontagh mentioned Erdélyi’s name just in a single locus, as a source of an anecdote from Erdélyi’s alma mater, the College of Sárospatak (Szontagh 2017: 152). Under conditions of his misinterpretations based on the asynchrony of his work, a question has emerged; how have his ideas become a standard opinion in the Hungarian cultural tradition concerning the description of philosophy of his opponents and the relationship of common sense and theoretical thought in general. This problem is linked with the history of the canonization process of Erdélyi’s œuvre amongst the 19th-century classics of Hungarian culture.

Béla MESTER

The Role of the Concept of Common Sense in the Modern Programme of Public Philosophy The concept of common sense (sensus communis) has another, more essential role in modern philosophy than the above mentioned ones, concerning the reformulation of self-identity and the role of philosophy under conditions of the changed structure of scholars’ public sphere. Consequently, Erdélyi’s re-interpretation of the role of common sense has a significant influence in the Hungarian tradition on the self-identification of philosophy. This communicational turn was twofold; it was linguistically a change from Latin to the national languages and in the institutional background a turn from the old-fashioned disputes at the universities to the scenery of the modern open realm dominated by the press and periodicals. This process is characterized by the extension and fragmentation of the audience at the same time; the large domestic audiences of philosophy will be separated from one another because of their native vernaculars. (For a recent analysis of a Hungarian aspect of this communicational turn, see Mester 2018.) The idea of the link between the urban culture and philosophy is as ancient as Cicero’s Tusculanae disputationes; as he has formulated it: ‘Socrates was the first who brought down philosophy from the heavens, placed it in cities, introduced it into families, and obliged it to examine into life and morals, and good and evil’ (Cicero 1877: 166; my italics). This topic of urbane philosophy has been connected with the term of sensus communis in Cicero’s œuvre. This stoic term, Latinized by Cicero, had a new position as common sense in early modernity, since Shaftesbury’s masterpiece, when the new phenomenon of public philosophy emerged as an answer to the turn of the structure of the European philosophical communication. The usage of the term common sense went always hand by hand with the considerations of the possibilities of the public philosophy in the period of the Scottish Enlightenment and the German Populärphilosophie. In the intellectual movements of EastCentral Europe, this idea was combined with other German interpretations of the turn of the structure of the public sphere, included in the Kantian twin terms of philosophia in sensu scholastico and philosophia in sensu cosmopolitico and Herder’s description of the historically changing structure and concept of publicum. (Erdélyi has distanced himself from them, as well; he was against Kant’s critique of reason based on Hegelian ideas, and Herder’s ideas about the national character represented for him a sub-philosophical level of culture.) In the Hungarian philosophical life, this problem has emerged as the paradox of philosophia in sensu cosmopolitico cultivated in Hungarian. The solution was a programme of a public philosophy as a continuous theoretical critique of Hungarian arts, literature, politics, economy, and society, as part of the collective

Ruralization of the (Urbane) Concept of Sensus Communis...

development of common sense, based on the programme of politeness and refinement known from the Scottish Enlightenment. These ideas have appeared in the works of the authors of the Hungarian Harmonistic philosophy, Hetényi and Szontagh; especially Hetényi’s works on the history of the Hungarian cities and Szontagh’s programme for the development of the Hungarian philosophy were clear representatives of these ideas.

Conclusions The target of the above discussed common sense tradition was re-positioning philosophy within a new public realm. In the Hungarian case, the programme was to put philosophy cultivated in Hungarian into the new system of the socalled national sciences and to have a theoretical interpretation and conscious design of this process. In other words, national philosophy as a special version of modern public philosophies in the 19th-century East-Central Europe has adapted to the system of the new modern national culture and wanted to fulfil the role of the philosophical interpreter of this new type of political community called nation and the designer of this community at the same time. By this system of ideas, from the cultural, political, economic, scientific, and artistic development of a country, a theoretical reflection appeared in the open sphere and based on common sense, which can create a national community and a national culture, connected with the development of the actual level of the concrete appearances of common sense, as well. The clearest and the most radical manifestation of this approach to philosophy and science, linked closely to common life, is the decision of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) in March 1848 that the HAS expresses its acknowledgment for the people of the city of Pest because the people have enforced the liberty of the press, what is a fundamental requirement of any scientific or cultural activity. After the military defeat of the revolution, this conception, which was connected to the rule of the public opinion and the nation, could not be easily upheld. Erdélyi’s above detailed work was published at this time and in this context. His target was the concept of national philosophy, but he destroyed the philosophical concept of nation and made difficult the theoretical analysis of the political community, for ages, despite the fact that it had had a long and wellestablished tradition.

Béla MESTER

References AIGNER, Lajos–BÖHM, Károly. 2017. Bevezető a Magyar Philosophiai Szemléhez. In: Cieger, A.–Varga B. (eds), Tudomány és művészet a magyar nemzetépítés szolgálatában. Szöveggyűjtemény. Budapest: BTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Történettudományi Intézet. 256–266. CICERO, Marcus Tullius. 1877. Tusculan Disputations; also, Treatises on the Nature of the Gods, and on the Commonwealth. Transl. by Yonge, Charles Duke. New York: Harper & Brothers. ERDÉLYI, János. 1981. A hazai bölcsészet jelene. In: Erdélyi, János (ed.), Filozófiai és esztétikai írások. Notes by T. Erdélyi, Ilona–Horkay, László. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 25–102, 912–924. HEGEL, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1977a. Phenomenology of Spirit. Transl. by Miller, Arnold V. Oxford–New York–Toronto–Melbourne: Oxford University Press. 1977b. The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy. Transl. by Harris, Henry Silton.–Cerf, Walter. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1892. Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Transl. by Haldane, Elisabeth S. Vol. 1. London: Kegan Paul–Trench–Tübner & Co. HELLER, Ágnes. 1952. Erdélyi János. Filozófiai Évkönyv 1: 403–476. HETÉNYI, János. 1841. Honi városaink befolyásáról nemzetünk kifejlődésére és csinosbulására. Budán: Magyar Kir. Egyetem. KISS, Endre. 1984. A magyar filozófia fő irányai a szabadságharc bukásától a kiegyezésig. Magyar Filozófiai Szemle 28(1–2): 26–69. KORNIS, Gyula. 1944 [1926]. A magyar filozófia fejlődése és az Akadémia. In: Kornis, Gyula (ed.), Magyar filozófusok. 2nd ed. Budapest: Franklin-Társulat. 6–65. KOVÁCS, Gábor. 2015. A volgai lovas esete az orosz medvével, a gall kakassal és az angol buldoggal. Nemzetkarakterológia és modernitás. Liget 28(8): 95–109. MESTER, Béla. 2018. Emergence of Public Philosophy in the East-Central European Urban(e) Cultures: A Hungarian Case. Filosofija Sociologija / Philosophy Sociology 29(1): 52–60. SZONTAGH, Gusztáv. 1857. Magyar Philosophia. Viszonzás Erdélyi János Munkájára: „A hazai bölcsészet jelene”. Új Magyar Muzeum Series 7, 1(4–5): 215–240. 2017. Emlékezések életemből. Ed. by Mester, Béla. Budapest: MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont, Filozófiai Intézet–Gondolat Kiadó.

Acta Univ. Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies, 14 (2018) 41–53

DOI: 10.2478/auseur-2018-0010

Architectural Theory and Analytic Philosophy in the Interwar Period1 Borbála JÁSZ

Hungarian Academy of Sciences Institute of Philosophy, H-1094 Budapest, Tóth Kálmán u. 4. e-mail: jasz.borbala@btk.mta.hu Abstract. The basis of the connection between analytic philosophy and architecture theory was developed in the interwar period. The results of analytic philosophy – especially the neo-positivism of Vienna Circle – and modern, functionalist architecture theory were utilized in an interdisciplinary approach. The comparison was based on language puzzles, science-based building processes, the method of justification and verification, and designing an artificial language in order to express the theoretical (philosophical) and the practical (architectural) approach as well. The functionality was based on the modern way of architectural thinking that relied on the results of Carnapian neo-positivism. Interpreting modern architecture is possible by referring to the keywords of logical positivism: empiricism, logic, verification, unity of language, and science. In my paper, I first list the bases of the comparison between the philosophy of the Vienna Circle and the architecture theory of the interwar period – the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier. In the 2nd and 3rd sections, I show the dialectical succession between form and function. After that, I discuss the aesthetic verification of the turn of the century and the scientific justification of the interwar period. I focus on the interwar period with the positivist approach and the theory of the ‘new architecture’. I emphasize the importance of the language of science and the machine paradigm – in contrast to historicism. Keywords: analytic philosophy, facadism, Le Corbusier, modern architecture, Vienna Circle

This research was supported by the ÚNKP-17-3-III-BME-284 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities. The paper was supported by the Hungarian–Lithuanian joint project ‘Conception of Creative City within Central Europe: Historical Images and Empirical Indices’ carried out within the framework of a bilateral agreement between the Hungarian and Lithuanian Academies of Sciences.

Borbála JÁSZ

1. Introduction: Analytic Philosophy and Modern Architecture After WWI, in the 1920s, a common intellectual, scientific worldview developed that influenced thinking as a whole in Europe. Due to these common roots, similarity may appear at several points between architecture and philosophy. The manifesto or proclamation was the characteristic medium of the era. Among the manifestos, we can find Le Corbusier’s ‘Toward an Architecture’ (TA, in French: Vers une architecture, original edition in 1923) and Rudolf Carnap’s ‘The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle’ (in German: Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung: Der Wiener Kreis, original edition in 1929), both of which reacted to the problems of society with the intention of developing solutions. Considering questions of ethics in modern architecture, we can see the problems of methodology and verification and the interpretation of the concepts of good and bad. The issue of lies gains special importance in this context as a consequence of the moral dimension. Thinking about lies in architecture requires a common framework, and it reinforces the need for verification that is based on the method of natural sciences and laboratory tests. The issue of lies is articulated as a metaphysical question in philosophy and as styles in architecture. The solution in both philosophy and architecture is to be developed with the help of a unified language together with a clarification of the concept of language. Compliance with the criteria of verification is also necessary for accounting for lies in language and architecture. In modern architecture, we can distinguish several understandings of science based on the method of verification. One approach is that of Le Corbusier’s. In his TA, he unveils his thoughts about lies, verification, and language in addition to the five points of modern architecture. In Le Corbusier’s writings on the aesthetics of the machine, the house, and the revolution, there are also those points in which the connections between architecture and science appear. In the plans and the theoretic works of Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus, a common science-based architectural approach may be observed. This so-called classical modern style of the interwar period would be a dominant reference point for generations of architects. In my paper, I argue that analysing the philosophy of logical positivism in the 1920s is necessary for understanding the architectural tendencies after WWI and WWII. After the modernist era, the forms of ancient architecture appeared again for the second time in Central and Eastern Europe; first, in historicism and second in socialist realism in the 1950s. After socialist realism, the historical form language that is strongly associated with the Marxian worldview, a new way of architectural thinking emerged in the 1960s with a characteristic social responsibility which includes a fight against individualism. Anti-individualistic thinking was based on a scientific method of planning mega-

Architectural Theory and Analytic Philosophy in the Interwar Period

structures. We need to analyse the grounds for science-based planning and also the implementation of the model of house factories and house blocks. Le Corbusier worked out the basic unit of these huge structures: the Domino structural plan. Dom-ino primarily refers to domino games but also to the Wittgensteinian language game (the dual nature of language. The duality of linguistic signs suggests that interpretable words are composed of meaningless sounds and letters.). Le Corbusier’s approach can also be understood in terms of the analytic philosophy of the Vienne Circle (VC): (1) the planning method of the house blocks is based on science, and (2) these new house blocks need to form a calculable, perspicuous, and transparent system as well. Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse was the prototype of the mechanic (or machinized) city, which operates in a regular order for inhabitants and provides a built environment for them. This is called the first machine age, and we can observe lots of similarities between the machinized city of the interwar period and the late modern house block systems after WW2. The programmatic example of the ideal block house was planned by Le Corbusier: the Unité d’habitation. This work opened the door for the style of new brutalism that resulted in the functional and objective socialist house blocks. The scientific calculations of rooms in a house were based on the methods of usage.

2. Aesthetical Verification in Architecture at the Turn of the 19th–20th Centuries One of the focal points of architecture in the 1920s is the issue of the house. The way of understanding the concept of lifestyle in the age of historicism is an important antecedent in the analysis of the problems arising in connection to that. In the 19th century, the layout of a bourgeois house and the flats in it were formed on the basis of the basic principles of representation. In such houses, the spaces of economic (practical) importance were given less or no emphasis at all. The external appearance of these buildings evoked the images of Renaissance and Baroque palaces. At the end of the 19th century, a change took place in the form of the architecture. From this point on, secession replaced the historical style of historicism. The traditions of historicism survived in an architectural framework of completely renewed motifs but with practically unaltered house layouts and functions. The styles at the turn of the century (from the Belgian-French Art Nouveau, the German Jugendstil, or the Austrian Secession to the Hungarian Turn of the Century) preferred a dynamic, ornament-based shaping as a form of criticism of the academic style of historicism. However, they only changed the ornamentation of the building, while the layout remained unchanged. The historical perception was questioned as

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early as in the 1890s. Adolf Loos, Otto Wagner, and Hermann Muthesius were the three most influential architectural ideologists of the era. Against the total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) of secession at the turn of the century, Loos laid down his critical remarks in his parabola entitled ‘The Poor Little Rich Man’ in 1900. In his ‘Ornament and Crime’ (Ornament und Verbrechen, originally published in 1913) in 1908, he turned against the aesthetic principles of the Vienna Secession. Loos’s most important argument against the use of ornamentation was prodigality, the uselessness of the labour force and the material, leading to the craftsmen’s slavery, which he explicitly called a crime. He criticized the use of ornaments on both ethical and aesthetic levels (Loos 1997). Loos pointed out the mendacity of the architecture of historicism in ‘Potemkin Village’ (in Russian: Потёмкинские деревни, originally published in 1898): ‘Whenever I stroll along the Ring, I always feel as if a Potemkin had wanted to make somebody believe he had been transported into a city of aristocrats’ (Loos 1898: 153–154). It is about a change which indicated dissociation from the forefront architecture of historicism and secession, and introduced an artistic-architectural style the main regulating forces of which were spaces and functions. It is important to see that Loos criticized both historicism and secession. In ‘Potemkin Village’, he presented his objections against the representative architecture of historicism. Thus, Loos presents the criticism of the criticism of individualism and arbitrariness of secession that turned against historicism (Frampton 1985: 119–121). Loos also regards culture as a continuity where the creation of a model is an important aspect. In contrast with the Gesamtkunstwerk, he preferred anonymous designing. The notion of the anonymous designer complements the criticism of historicism, given that Loos, Peter Behrens, the master of Art Nouveau, Henry van de Velde, and Le Corbusier themselves were autodidact architects. This background may be important if we want to consider the criticism against traditional architecture by these architects. Loos’ architectural and theoretical work is a significant reflection on the problems of the culture (described by Friedrich Nietzsche at the end of the 19th century), and he also offered an attempt to solve them. It is interesting, however, that this kind of architectural and theoretical activity was not an isolated phenomenon, but it took place almost simultaneously everywhere in Europe.

3. Scientific Justification in the Architecture of the 1920s After WWI, the development of scientific technology indicates such a complexity that it appears in both arts and architecture and also transforms the notion of crime to the issue of lies. In the architectural schools operating at the time, including the Bauhaus, the response to the fundamental changes was to initiate

Architectural Theory and Analytic Philosophy in the Interwar Period

a revolutionary movement with the intention to improve society. Lie as such became a problem to be solved because it hid the real issues of the era. Tension, as a result of the emptiness of the old values, demanded reforms; the new needs could not unfold as there was no appropriate constructed environment. The demand for reforms manifested in the attempt to remedy the determinism in the environment by its transformation, and by transforming the environment changes appeared in lifestyle, too. The new materials (iron, glass, and later on steel), the structures, and the desire to fulfil the demands came to the forefront, and a modern, unified material culture and style of an era began to develop, the most important features of which were cosmopolitism and scientific objectivity. In the architecture of the 1920s, there were several approaches, depending on the scientific procedure they followed. There is a major difference between the architectural worldview of Le Corbusier and that of the functionalist Bauhaus. In the Bauhaus school led by Hannes Meyer, Carnap’s direct influence dominated by virtue of bringing scientific criteria to the fore while denying the reason for the existence (raison d’etre) of the aesthetic aspect at the base of architecture (Galison 1990). In the architecture of Le Corbusier, a similar scientific-technological view appears in a way that automatism and operationalism influence the architect as well. Scientific criteria determine the engineer’s view dominated by mass production and industry. This requires the development of scientific criteria with the help of which current answers of general validity can be provided. Thus, the activity of an architect becomes similar to that of a scientist, working in a technological laboratory in a way that the method of verification originates from the quantitative methods of natural sciences (Le Corbusier 1927: 17). At the beginning of the book entitled TA, Le Corbusier contrasts architecture with the engineer’s aesthetics; the latter one is to hold the truth by virtue of its analysing method. The architect creates a world, relying on the laws of nature (Moos 2009: 59). His task is to find the line of force and the directional vectors of a form on the basis of pure geometry. It is the engineer who is creating the means of our era in the spirit of thrift, sanity, sturdiness, usefulness, morality, and harmony (Mallgrave 2005: 256). Therefore, the artistic products, the satisfaction of visual desires, and the questions of emotional phenomena do no longer constitute the standard. It becomes increasingly necessary to arrange primary forms originating from cubism, the dominant contemporary genre of painting, and to apply simple mass production and town planning based on it (Le Corbusier 1927: 33). The major difference between Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus is that while Meyer, the 2nd leader of the Bauhaus School, rejects all forms of aesthetics, Le Corbusier attempts to unite engineering and artistic approaches since, in his opinion, an architect is pursuing artistic activities. All this resulted in a sharp disagreement with Meyer, under whose leadership the demand for scientific

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approach became increasingly strong in the Bauhaus. In his answer to Meyer’s criticism, Le Corbusier writes as follows: Today amongst the avant garde of the Neue Sachlichkeit, one killed two words: Baukunst (Architecture) and Kunst (Art). One has replaced them by Bauen (to built) and Leben (to live) <…>. Today, where mechanization brings us a gigantic production, architecture is above all in the battleship, as in the conduct of war or in the shape of the pen, or in a telephone. Architecture is a phenomenon of creation, according to an arrangement. Whoever determines the arrangement, determines the composition. (Frampton 1985: 210–211) From Le Corbusier’s reaction, we can see that in his opinion science-based architecture is present in all spheres of life, and, at the same time, it carries an aesthetic value as well. Mass production made it possible to create an order, and later from this order a composition bearing features of graphic art.

4. Language of Science and Architecture of the First Machine Age Le Corbusier’s TA, a selection of essays edited jointly with Paul Dermeé and published in L’Esprit Nouveau, has to be interpreted in its scientific-social context (Mallgrave 2005: 255). The structure of the book is rather problematic due to the way it was compiled. The two most significant interpretations are attributed to Christine Boyer and Reyner Banham. Let us turn to their ideas now. The main issue is how an architect should shape a house so that it can be like any other machine, like the ones designed for transport, such as an automobile, a plane, and an ocean liner. Boyer emphasizes Loos’s exemplary role, since we know that Le Corbusier read two of Loos’s significant essays entitled ‘Ornament and Crime’ and ‘On Architecture’ (in French: Ornement et crime, Sur l’architecture, originally published in 1908), which had a great impact on him (Banham 1960: 347). In his theory of the machine age, Le Corbusier further improved the criticism of Loos against modernism, according to which modern ornamentation no longer included ornaments but pure forms and structure, and thus we can speak of the aesthetics of the engineer based on scientific criteria. Furthermore, there are various interpretations of the architectural revolution; Boyer points out that Le Corbusier’s interpretation of the revolution is taking place on three levels: industrial, social, and moral (Boyer 2011: 535). Boyer enriched the research with a new aspect since he also analysed what writing meant for Le Corbusier. By writing, as a way of thinking, the work of an architect may be compared to that of

Architectural Theory and Analytic Philosophy in the Interwar Period

a scientist working in a laboratory. A scientist who carries out research, justifies her methodology, and finally fits the findings into their system of thinking. The other important commentator is the English architectural historian, Banham. He divides Le Corbusier’s TA into academic and mechanistic units in his book entitled ‘Theory and Design in the First Machine Age’ (original edition in 1960). The academic part focuses on the elementary geometrical forms, whereas in the second, mechanistic part he lays the foundations for Le Corbusier’s problem of moral attitude. This is the part where he discusses the aesthetics of the engineer, the automobile and the plane as well as architecture and revolution. I will also discuss this part since this is where the issue of lie and truth may be best understood. The focal point of the work is the aesthetic and moral demand by which one can restore social order by relying on the means of architecture (Banham 1960: 223). Le Corbusier regarded architecture as an artistic activity, but the basis for this idea needs to be revealed and described. Most interpretations ignore that architecture is an art form with its own traditions, and not merely a science (Watkin 2001: 12). According to Le Corbusier, the engineer and the artist need to work together, and this argument is explained in his TA (1927: 17). Looking for the bases is carried out in two directions. One major aspect is that an architect has to be able to satisfy social and mass demands. The other aspect is that the appropriate formal bases have to be in his possession. It was the role of fine arts to provide these bases, as we know that Le Corbusier himself painted in the genre of cubism; painting played a constant role in his architecture. The pure geometric forms, the structure behind the visible will be the means with which Le Corbusier reveals the timelessness of the relationship between contemporary architecture and antiquity – thus, we arrive at the analysis of the role of language. In order to define the task of architecture, we need another important component: the clarification of the language of architecture. In Le Corbusier’s opinion, it is the American engineers (not the American architects) who can develop a pure, geometry-based architecture: ‘Architecture has nothing to do with styles” (Le Corbusier 1923: 37). The form of expression in architecture, i.e. the language of architecture, can be found with the help of volume and surface, which are determined by a plan. These elementary forms are the most beautiful forms since they enjoy social consensus – everybody agrees that they are clear and free from contradictions. In TA, they are symbolized with the designs of grain elevators and barns. Going further, however, we can once again arrive at the apotheosis of anonymous architecture (Vigato 2013: 35). The ideas of getting rid of ornamentation and returning to geometry originate in fine art. In painting, a similar trend may be witnessed; the effort to show structure behind the perceptible. It may also be due to Le Corbusier’s painting practice that he considers the process that takes place in painting, resulting in

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the appearance of the style of Cubism (the reduction to basic geometric forms), as the task of architecture (Le Corbusier 1927: 41). Here we can witness the working of purist machine aesthetics; the priority of the architect is the fulfilment of the empirically defined functionalist demands and the use of abstract elements that affect the senses and nourish the mind (Banham 1960: 229–230). Regarding the language issue, similarities can be observed between the philosophical methods of Le Corbusier and the VC. For Le Corbusier, the language problem appears in the definition of the engineer’s aesthetics and in the task and method of architecture. The clarification or reduction of the language means a kind of demand for universality, which the architect satisfies with the introduction of a military language as an artificial language. Its most important task is to clearly identify the concepts it uses. A similar process can be observed from the philosophical perspective. Le Corbusier connected science and language, indicating that it is primarily the role of the language and then that of the science to create the constructions (e.g. flat, house, city, etc.) of our concepts. Truth can never be achieved. It merely remains a belief, just as the purpose of our words is ungraspable by language. The philosophers of the VC, especially Carnap (2003) and Schlick, demanded that the truth of a statement needed to comply with certain linguistics and the conditions of verifiability together with being well-formed in linguistic-logical terms. All this can be achieved by reducing the linguistic phrases to empirical phrases. Since the concept of language is ambivalent, the traps of natural languages can be avoided by expressing the statement of sciences in an artificial language of logic (Richardson 1988: 199–201). Therefore, in the case of both architecture and philosophy, an artificial language is needed by which the truth of our statements can be revealed in an objective way.

5. House Machine as the Principle of To-Morrow’s City Le Corbusier used the automobile to indicate the creation of the aesthetics of the machine age in the most descriptive way. With the cessation of decorum, a new idea will control contemporary architecture and system of thought: it is called machinism (Le Corbusier 1927: 117–119). The problem of a house should be approached as that of an automobile, which bears the norm of standardization (Mallgrave 2005: 258). The automobile is the top achievement of the engineer’s aesthetics, the direct Le Corbusier-type analogy of which is the Maison Citrohan, in whose name it refers to the car brand: Citroen. In Le Corbusier’s opinion, the plan of Maison Citrohan accurately defines the criteria of a modern house. The name hides a language puzzle. Using a car brand name, he indicates that the house needs to be as standardized as an automobile. The house that is regarded as a tool has to fight

Architectural Theory and Analytic Philosophy in the Interwar Period

against the old house concept because the old concept of house used space in an inappropriate way. An automobile or a ship cabin should be the template for a house in both the planning and the building process. Thus, this type of house is made up of units of floor-space, the so-called objet-tableau. They have to rely on the means of technical and industrial development, by virtue of which outdated ways of thinking can also be changed. According to Le Corbusier, it is no longer the ornamentation but the proportions that carry the beauty, which is present in all parts of the building that is shaped by modules (Le Corbusier 1927: 219). The formation of the norms later had great importance in Le Corbusier’s theory since they are the ones that architecture can actually affect and that are created by means of logic and analysis. However, there are two other components of norms, as well: the economic and social necessity (Le Corbusier 1927: 135–138). Social architecture itself is not yet the means by which changes in social classes may be achieved. The architect has to pay attention to the fact that although social representation is no longer an objective, the institution of servitude has not disappeared, and thus it must be taken into account in the planning. The architect is especially proud of the solutions where the economical arrangement of space ‘is accompanied with the hygienic aspects and the placing of the personnel (service quarters) does not violate their human dignity’ (Le Corbusier 1927: 117–119). Rejecting ornamentation becomes a symbol of a pure mind. This is embodied in Le Corbusier’s machine paradigm, which expresses an era when the foundations of the ideal of an ornamentation-free architecture had to be laid down (Frampton 1985: 123–126). The house, or, more precisely, the villa, is the basic unit in the Le Corbusier-type modern architecture. The direction of development proceeds from smaller to greater, from interior to exterior, thus starting from the house and its furniture, fixtures, and fittings. The cell-like construction plays an important role in Le Corbusier’s town planning as well, which attempts to solve the most pressing issue, the housing problem. Otto Neurath’s work also belongs here, who – as a member of the VC – gave lectures in the Bauhaus as well (Dahms 2004). The common issue is to solve the problem of urbanism and to construct the city built from flats as the smallest units. Neurath wanted to present solutions for people with poor housing conditions by analysing the social aspects of town planning (Vossoughian 2011). A more detailed explanation of the machine paradigm can be found in the 3rd chapter of Le Corbusier’s ‘The City of To-morrow and Its Planning’ (original edition in 1929). The spread of machines in great numbers induces moral changes. Ships, automobiles, and planes do not only change the aesthetics, but they also change the rhythm of life. The industrial development and the mass influx of materials replace manual production methods (Le Corbusier 1987: 31). To summarize, Le Corbusier’s reaction to the development of scientific

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techniques in architecture is analogous to the scientific concept of the VC. The machine-induced changes in the science of construction are of revolutionary significance since Le Corbusier’s famous ‘five points of architecture’ (regarded as the basic principles of contemporary architecture) are based on them (Le Corbusier, Jeanneret 1926).

6. Against Historicism In order to reveal the relationship between architecture and revolution, we have to examine the moral level of interpretation, mentioned by Boyer as well. Le Corbusier’s TA begins as follows: ‘A question of morality. Lying is intolerable. We perish by lying’ (Le Corbusier 1927: 13). This statement can be understood in two ways: 1) as the radical criticism of the style of historicism, demonstrating that Le Corbusier regards styles as morally wrong, in terms of being lies; 2) the second reading in a figurative sense refers to the house and its reforms. The house as the most fundamental means for human life needs to be a replaceable item of personal use. The architect discovers an ethical momentum in the act of disposing the old item and replacing it with a new one (Le Corbusier 1927: 18). This criticism may also be observed in the philosophy of positivism of the era. The connection between ethics and truth appears similarly in Moritz Schlick’s work (1939). It is exactly this ethical momentum of cognition that leads us to the issue raised by Le Corbusier at the end of his book TA, in the chapter ‘Architecture or Revolution’ (in French: Architecture et revolution, original edition in 1922). The revolution takes place on two levels: ethical and architectural. Therefore, the main question of the modern era is both an ethical and a formal question. The problem of using historical forms has to be solved, and the choice between styles is yet to be decided (In welchem Style sollen wir bauen? (In what style must we build?)), together with some related new issues (Hübsch 1828). Le Corbusier developed a technical-social reference system, the starting point of which was an anonymous or industrial architecture with social and ethical characteristics. Scientific rationality, with which Le Corbusier’s architecture can be defined, means the transfer of technology into architecture and urbanism (Düchs 2013). In the chapter called ‘Architecture or Revolution’, Le Corbusier speaks about the family module and the mechanism of a family. The family may be considered as the unit of society, whereas the flat is that of architecture. According to Le Corbusier, our ‘old machine’, in which we live, needs to be replaced with the new machine because the role of the house is to comply with the needs of its inhabitants, and it has to be the scene where the individual reproduces themselves. Therefore, we need a house where all this is guaranteed, and it may

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become possible with the help of architectural means. Houses have to be seen as machines as they produce and reproduce; their task is to fulfil the needs of individuals and the society. Revolution thus means no chaos; it symbolizes the solution to a crisis (Le Corbusier 1927: 254–255). I think that we may discover similarities between the criterion of compliance with the needs in architecture and the criterion of verification of the VC. Le Corbusier attains universal statements through the artificial language that he creates, and it can be understood as the parallel of the definition of the truth of verificationists. This can be observed in the reduction process used in both cases. The essence of the reduction is recirculation to basic units – without any decorations and stylistic elements, which do not show the structure. Le Corbusier declares that hiding the structure is equal to a lie. Thus, from the lies that styles imply – through reduction –, a language of elementary forms is born, and its truth can be examined. Architecture is in disarray, according to Le Corbusier, but there are substantive laws available from classical geometry. The process of mechanization that he favoured does not follow these laws directly but redefines them and creates harmony between classical laws and mechanization. Therefore, ‘toward an architecture’ means that we should rediscover again what is old in the new (Le Corbusier 1927). The scientific doctrine of the era that influenced philosophy and architecture helps us understand aesthetics and find answers to the question what creates beauty in the machine paradigm. Therefore, our means is the clarified language, applying raw elements (e.g. cube, sphere, cone, etc.) and the basic laws of nature. Architecture has two missions: one is social and the other moral. With the application of a standard that is free from ornamentation and based on geometrical shapes, Le Corbusier attempted to comply with the modern demand of thriftiness. So far, our question about rationality and scientific criteria has been concerned with aesthetical and ethical aspects, but now it is extended to new social-economic aspects. Another characteristic feature of this kind of architecture is the inspiration by graphic arts. This is because plasticity – a characteristic of cubism as a visual phenomenon – is accompanied by new technical processes in architecture. Modern architecture is not ornamented; therefore, it is neither crime nor lie but the carrier of rationality by means of linguistic reduction, through correctness and justification. After the Khrushchevian architectural turn (1954), new trends arose inevitably in city planning as well, and the 2nd machine age starts with the return and copy of modern elements of Le Corbusier’s architecture theory and practice. The new ‘from the helicopter’ style of planning method fulfils the dream of Le Corbusier. Scientifically planned house blocks, prefabricated settlements were built, which were based on the same positivist approach that influenced architecture in the interwar period.

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7. Conclusions In this paper, I analysed the similarities between analytic philosophy and architecture theory in the interwar period. The basis of this comparison was that the theoretical tools of analytic philosophy – especially the neo-positivism of Vienna Circle – and architecture theory were utilized in an interdisciplinary approach. Relevant elements of the comparison were as follows: science-based building method both in the case of architecture and philosophical theories, language puzzles that show the dual nature of language, the need for justification and verification, designing an artificial language to describe the new professional tasks, and fighting against historicism both in architecture and scientific thinking. In addition to this, I examined the form language as the central concern of architecture philosophy. Analysing these elements is especially useful for understanding the architectural developments in the interwar period, the so-called ‘classical modernism’, and also for interpreting the theoretical works of Le Corbusier, the Bauhaus, and their followers. Their method was based on the idea that planning and building need to be reduced to the basic unit, which would be the main element of the new architectural form language. Only a limited number of architectural rules need to be added to these elements – such as in the case of language in logical positivism. After the brief Socialist Realist Gap due to the Khrushchevian architectural turn in 1954, the building of settlements continued by the same method as during the interwar period in Central and Eastern Europe.

References BANHAM, Reyner. 1960. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. London: The Architectural Press. BOYER, M. Christine. 2011. Le Corbusier, Homme de Lettres. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. CARNAP, Rudolf. 2003. The Logical Structure of the World and Pseudoproblems in Philosophy. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court. DAHMS, Hans-Joachim. 2004. Neue Sachlichkeit in the Architecture and Philosophy of the 1920s. In: AWODEY, Steve–KLEIN, Carsten (eds), Carnap Brought Home: The View from Jena. Series: Full Circle: Publications of the Archive of Scientific Philosophy Hillman Library, University of Pittsburgh. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court. 357–376. DÜCHS, Martin. 2013. Truth or Revolution: Scrutinizing the Interaction between Morality and Architecture with the Eyes of a Moral Philosopher. In: Duyan, E.–Öztürken, C. (eds), Interactions in the History of Architecture: Proceedings

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of the International Conference on History of Architecture (ARCHHIST’12). May 2012, Istanbul, Turkey. 275–284. FRAMPTON, Kenneth. 1985. Modern Architecture: A Critical History. London: Thames and Hudson. GALISON, Peter. 1990. Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism, Critical Inquiry 16(4): 709–752. HÜBSCH, Hermann. 1828. In welchem Style sollen wir Bauen? Karlsruhe: Müller [online], [cited on: 30 January 2018]. Available from: http://www.cloudcuckoo.net/openarchive/Autoren/Huebsch/Huebsch1828.htm. JOSEPHSON, Paul R. 2010. Would Trotzky Wear a Bluetooth? Technological Utopianism under Socialism, 1917–1989. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. LE CORBUSIER. 1987. The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1927. Towards a New Architecture. London: The Architectural Press. LE CORBUSIER/JEANNERET, Pierre. 1926. Five Points towards a New Architecture. Art Humanities Primary Source Reading 52 [online] [cited on: 28 February 2018]. Available from: http://www.learn.columbia.edu/courses/ arch20/pdf/art_hum_reading_52.pdf. LOOS, Adolf. 1997. Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press. 1898. Die Potemkinsche Stadt, Ver Sacrum 7: 153–156. MALLGRAVE, Harry Francis. 2005. Modern Architectural Theory: A Historical Survey, 1673–1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MOOS, Stanislaus von. 2009. Le Corbusier: Elements of a Synthesis. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. RICHARDSON, Alan W. 1988. Carnap’s Construction of the World: The Aufbau and the Emergence of Logical Empiricism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. SCHLICK, Moritz. 1939. Problems of Ethics. New York: Prentice Hall, Incorporated. VIGATO, Jean Claude. 2013. Between Progress and Tradition. The Regionalist Debate in France. In: Meganck, Leen–Van Santvoort, Linda–De Maeyer, Jan (eds), Regionalism and Modernity: Architecture in Western Europe, 1914–1940. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 15–38. VOSSOUGHIAN, Nader. 2011. Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers. WATKIN, David. 2001. Morality & Architecture Revisited. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Minorities, Linguistic Regimes

Acta Univ. Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies, 14 (2018) 57–70

DOI: 10.2478/auseur-2018-0011

Migration in Sub-State Territories with Historical-Linguistic Minorities: Main Challenges and New Perspectives1 Roberta MEDDA-WINDISCHER

PhD, LL.M., European Academy of Bolzano/Bozen (EURAC) Institute for Minority Rights (IMR) e-mail: roberta.medda@eurac.edu Abstract. Migration is an important reality for many sub-national autonomous territories where traditional-historical groups (so-called ‘old minorities’) live such as Flanders, Catalonia, South Tyrol, Scotland, Basque Country, and Quebec. Some of these territories have attracted migrants for decades, while others have only recently experienced significant migration inflow. The presence of old minorities brings complexities to the management of migration issues. Indeed, it is acknowledged that the relationship between ‘old’ communities and the ‘new’ minority groups originating from migration (so-called ‘new minorities’) can be rather complicated. On the one hand, interests and needs of historical groups can be in contrast with those of the migrant population. On the other hand, the presence of new minorities can interfere with the relationship between the old minorities and the majority groups at the state level and also with the relationship between old minorities and the central state as well as with the policies enacted to protect the diversity of traditional groups and the way old minorities understand and define themselves. The present lecture analyses whether it is possible to reconcile the claims of historical minorities and of new groups originating from migration and whether policies that accommodate traditional minorities and migrants are allies in the pursuit of a pluralist and tolerant society. Keywords: migration, sub-state territories, historical-linguistic minorities, regional citizenship, participation

Introduction Diversity governance and fair management of migration are challenging and complex matters that are at the forefront of the current political and public debate in almost all European countries. This is largely due to the increasing 1

This paper draws from previously published volumes, in particular Medda-Windischer– Popelier (2016) and Medda-Windischer–Carlà (2015).

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number of peoples – especially migrants and asylum seekers – with distinctive identities in terms of language, culture, or religion, who have settled in Europe in urban as well as in more peripheral and rural contexts, with varying degrees of permanence. Their reasons are partly political and humanitarian, partly as a result of differing economic situations and the freedom of movement that growing economic integration within Europe entails (Eurostat 2018, UNHCR 2017). Migration and diversity are also increasingly important realities for many sub-state territories, such as Catalonia, South Tyrol, Scotland, Flanders, Basque Country, and Quebec, where traditional-historical groups (the so-called ‘old minorities’ or sub-state nations’) live.2 Some of these territories have attracted migrants for decades, while others have only recently experienced significant migration inflow. In sub-state territories, the presence of old minorities adds complexities to the management of migration issues. Indeed, it is acknowledged that the relation between ‘old’ communities and ‘new’ minority groups originating from migration (the so-called ‘new minorities’)3 can be rather complicated. On the one hand, interests and needs of historical groups can be in contrast with those of the migrant population. On the other hand, the presence of new minorities can interfere with the relationship between old minorities and majority groups at state level and also between old minorities and the central state as well as with policies enacted to protect the diversity of traditional groups and the way old minorities understand and define themselves. In the past, the subject of the relationship between old communities and new minorities has been largely neglected by scholars. With few exceptions, minority and multicultural issues have been studied separately from the point of view of historical groups or migrant communities, focusing on the relationship between each of these two categories and the dominant state and highlighting differences 2

In this paper, the terms ‘old minorities’, ‘traditional-historical minorities’, or ‘sub-state nations’ refer to communities whose members have a distinct language, culture, or religion, as compared to the rest of the population. Many have become minorities through the redrawing of international borders, having seen the sovereignty of their territories shift from one country to another. In other cases, they are ethnic groups that have not achieved statehood on their own for various reasons and that have now become part of a larger country (or several countries). In many, but not all cases, their co-ethnics may be numerically or politically dominant in another state, which they therefore regard as their ‘external national homeland’ or kin-state (Medda-Windischer 2017). These communities are groupings of people at the sub-state level, ranging from officially recognized to self-proclaimed groups and from communities based on fictitious constructions and narratives to ‘imagined communities’ resulting from the ‘social construction of reality’ – following the classic Andersonian definition of national communities (Anderson 1983, Marko 2017). The term ‘new minorities’ refers to groups formed by the decision of individuals and families to leave their original homeland and emigrate to another country, generally for economic and sometimes also for political reasons. Thus, they consist of migrants and refugees and their descendants who live, on a more than transitional basis, in a country different from that of their origin (Medda-Windischer 2010).

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between the claims of old minorities, who carry on nation-building projects, and migrant communities, who are expected to integrate into the dominant society (Kymlicka 1995). When these two perspectives were combined, it has often been to sustain the so-called ‘threat hypothesis’, namely the belief that historical groups frequently perceive large-scale migration as a danger and harbour defensive and exclusionary attitudes towards migrants due to their ethnocentric understanding of identities or due to the fear that migrants will eventually integrate into the central state culture, further outnumbering the old minorities (id. 2001: 278–279, Jeram–Adam 2013, Medda-Windischer–Carlà 2015, Medda-Windischer–Popelier 2016, Jeram–van der Zwet–Wisthaler 2015).4 In the last decade, scholars have started to look more deeply into the relationship between old and new minorities (Medda-Windischer 2009). The ‘threat hypothesis’ has been opposed since various ethno-national groups actually manifest inclusive approaches to migration. In fact, scholars argue that attitudes expressed by old minorities towards migrants follow similar dynamics to those expressed by majority groups at the central state level (Carens 1995, Kymlicka 2001: 293, Schmid–Schlenker 2013). Tensions between old and new minorities are not inescapable. Scholars have argued that these tensions can be avoided if traditional groups are given extended competence over migration issues (Kymlicka 2001).5 Indeed, control over migration is considered crucial to the capacity of old minorities to protect and maintain their identity and culture (Carens 1995). Yet, it has also been pointed out that the overlapping of national and local competences can bring disadvantages and incoherent policies and even threaten the development of multicultural and inclusive policies (Loobuyuk–Jacobs 2009: 114; Bousetta 2009: 97, 100–101). Alternatively, tensions can be reduced when old minorities develop policies to include the migrant population in their nation-building process (Zapata-Barrero 2005: 8). In this regard, scholars have also set criteria and provided suggestions on how old communities should deal with migration and how they can develop 4 5

An exception to the ‘threat hypothesis’ was Shafir’s (1995) pioneering work comparing migrant accommodation policies in Catalonia, the Basque Countries, Latvia, and Estonia. Extending competence over migration to old minorities so that they can maintain their identity raises the vexing but still unresolved question of whether minority rights have an individual or collective dimension. For the former, the minority group itself is the beneficiary of the protection to be afforded, while for the latter the beneficiaries are the individual members of the group. A third position uses the formula of individual rights ‘collectively exercised’ and represents a via media between the rights of individuals and full collective rights. In the current debate on the individual or collective dimension of minority rights, a pragmatic position holds that as human experience is such that human beings possess both individual and social dimensions, there is no dichotomy between individual or collective dimension and therefore no need to choose. As Marko (1997: 87) puts it: ‘These two forms of rights not only can, but even must be used cumulatively when organising equality on the basis of difference.’ Ultimately, the real issue is whether the groups that human beings form are free and whether members of those groups are able to live in dignity, including with regard to maintenance and the development of their identity.

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an inclusive approach to the migrant population. In particular, I argued elsewhere that international minority rights standards, primarily the UN Declaration on Minorities and the CoE Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities, should be extended to all minority groups, including those stemming from migration (Medda-Windischer 2009). Zapata-Barrero (2009b: 17) maintains that the approach to the migration of ethno-national communities should observe liberal and democratic principles so as not to detract from the legitimacy of the ethno-national desire to manage the matter itself. Instead, Kymlicka (2001) seems to argue that limited deviations from liberal practices favour the development of open forms of identity and the accommodation of migrant diversity. Further analyses, including more case studies and different methods,6 have shown the variety and complexity of relationships between old and new minorities. In some cases, the presence of old groups seems to hinder the process of inclusion of the migrant population because when confronted with competing nation-building projects migrants often remain less attached to the old communities in the hosting society (Banting–Soroka 2012: 156–176). At the same time, migration is an essential issue for old minorities, parties, and their local governments for several reasons. On the one hand, migration can be a tool to criticize the central state for failing to protect the interests of old minorities (Hepburn 2009: 529). On the other, migration triggers important social, cultural, and political consequences, forcing old minorities to re-conceptualize and redefine their self-understanding and identity as well as to rethink the basis of their self-governments. In some cases, the presence of migrants can even encourage old minorities to switch from exclusive ethnic identities to multicultural attitudes in order to win their alliance (Piche 2002). The main research question raised in this paper is to understand the factors influencing in sub-state territories a cosmopolitan, open, and inclusive approach towards migration in contrast to an exclusionary and defensive approach. This main question entails other related questions, namely which new challenges and prospects migration raises in sub-state territories. By relying on the analysis of previous literature and empirical studies conducted on the topic, the paper is structured in two sections. The first section investigates the clusters of factors influencing the approaches displayed by old minorities towards migration by looking at the actors and dynamics involved and by exploring the approaches on migration in sub-state territories beyond the so-called ‘threat hypothesis’. This section reveals that migration in sub-state territories is not characterized by one single, unified approach; on the contrary, 6

The most studied cases are Quebec, Belgium and its territorial entities, Catalonia and Basque Countries in Spain, and Scotland. The methodology employed has extended from normative and theoretical reflections to empirical research based on qualitative comparative studies and sociological surveys (Schmid–Schlenker 2013, Banting–Soroka 2012, Jeram 2012).

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sub-state nations display multiple and diversified approaches towards migration similar to nation-states. The second section analyses the nature of the new challenges that migration poses in sub-state territories as well as new prospects for the development of a pluralistic approach more conducive to social cohesion. The paper concludes with some final considerations and future directions.

Cluster of Factors Influencing the Relationship Migration/Sub-State Nations The clusters of factors that explain the positioning of old minorities towards migration relate to demography, history, the economy, linguistic and cultural barriers, party landscape and electoral system as well as policy control over immigration (Hepburn 2014: 52–57, Shafir 1995, Medda-Windischer–Carlà 2015, Medda-Windischer–Popelier 2016, Jeram–van der Zwet–Wisthaler 2015). Some of these factors are locally rooted. These include concern about cultural reproduction linked to demographic trends, in particular a demographic decline and a low level of immigration (as compared to the national average), the historical context and the experiences with internal migration, the condition of the local economy and labour market, party ideology, local party competition, the strength of extreme right parties, the degree of local party polarization, the characteristics of nationbuilding narratives, old minorities’ experience with processes of modernization, the type of national identity that characterizes them, the importance traditional groups ascribe to specific cultural elements, such as language, in the definition of their identity, and the extent of sub-national autonomous government powers (Hepburn 2011, Jeram–Adam 2013, Shafir 1995, Medda-Windischer–Carlà 2015, Medda-Windischer–Popelier 2016, Jeram–van der Zwet–Wisthaler 2015). Besides these local factors, variables at national and international levels also play a role. Ethno-national approaches to migration also develop as a reaction to national migration policies and as attempts to distinguish the culture and values of the old minority and to present them as more open and inclusive than those of the dominant majority. It is also necessary to consider how the relationship between the traditional community and the central nation-state evolves as this may modify old minorities’ approach to migration and their definition of the ‘collectivity’ and of who belongs to it (Juteau 2005, Gagnon 2009, Jeram 2012). Finally, relationships between old and new minorities are also linked to the vision that the former have of the European integration process, which can become a tool to frame local migration policies and demand local control of migration issues (Hepburn 2014, Zapata-Barrero 2009a). An important factor explaining the approach of old minorities towards migration is the linguistic factor. The hypothesis that immigration is viewed positively by

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old minorities ‘if immigrants make efforts to learn the regional minority language and negatively if immigrants speak/adopt the majority language of the state rather than the minority language of the region’ (Hepburn 2014: 54) is particularly relevant to situations in which minority protection claims are based on language or culture and in which national identity coincides with linguistic identity. However, even if sub-state territories are constituted on the basis of language, it is feared that immigrants will be more likely to adopt the language of the majority state (Medda-Windischer 2016, Hepburn–Zapata-Barrero 2014: 7). The growing importance of English as a lingua franca is a further risk to language policy in substate territories: the justification for coercive language policies based on the need for social cohesion loses force if migrants can easily communicate in another language (Medda-Windischer 2016, Van Parjis 2012: 39, Marko–Medda-Windischer 2018). There are sub-state territories where the integration of migrants – particularly through language policies – can be seen as functional and instrumental to (minority) nation-building strategy. In these contexts, integration policies are often not the result of real openness towards inclusive processes. Conversely, in other regional contexts where the minority languages have a strong status and prestige as linked to economic opportunities and prospects for upward social mobility, ‘old’ communities are less concerned with the promotion of minority languages that are already perceived by migrants as very important. In these cases, old minorities manifest less ‘anxieties’ over the integration of migrants as being a ‘threat’ to the status or prestige of the minority languages (MeddaWindischer–Carlà 2015, Medda-Windischer–Popelier 2016). Stances towards migration may also differ according to the backgrounds of new minorities, particularly with regard to whether they have originated from kin-states. If a specific new minority group already shares important features of the regional identity, members of that group could be expected to integrate more quickly into the sub-national society and to identify with claims of autonomy. In Canada, Québec has made efforts to attract immigrants from French-speaking countries or with Latin backgrounds in order to raise the relative proportion of francophone people in the entire population (Gagnon–Sanjaume-Calvet 2016). In South Tyrol, the pro-independence party Süd-Tiroler Freiheit favours a policy aimed at recruiting immigrants from countries with a similar linguistic and cultural German background (Carlà 2015). In contrast, other new minority groups may experience greater difficulty identifying with the sensitivities of the subnational society (e.g. due to language problems). The Basque case reveals the fear that immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries might be more inclined to identify with the majority Spanish culture (Ruiz Balzola 2016). In concluding this section, it can be said that it is not possible to identify a general and homogeneous approach displayed by old minorities towards migration: attitudes change between regions and, over time, following local,

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national, and international dynamics. Furthermore, old minorities, like any social grouping, are not monolithic entities, but present a variety of specific aspects, and their attitude to migration is not an exception in this respect.

New Challenges and Prospects for Old Minorities in the Face of Migration What, then, is the nature of the challenges that old minorities face due to migration waves? In other terms, how migration impacts and in which areas are sub-state nations compelled to react? And more importantly, what are the prospects for an inclusive and open approach towards diversity and migration? Firstly, migration compels old minorities to (1) reconstruct sub-state or other national identity in order to embrace a plural society. Secondly, related to this situation, they are compelled to (2) conceptualize sub-state citizenship along the line of the concept of ‘regional citizenship’ due to supranational and decentralization trends. Thirdly, they are also prompted to (3) develop policies towards further participation and equality in diversity as bases for maintaining and furthering social cohesion.

1. The Reconstruction of Sub-National Identity Old minorities need to construct sub-national identities in order to legitimize claims to special policies based on distinctiveness. In this regard, migration compels old minorities to rethink the construction of sub-national identity along the line of a dynamic concept. The chief difficulty for old minorities resides in the harmonization of ethnic nationalism with a more cosmopolitan approach. This poses less of a problem for contexts in which systems established to protect old minorities are based on territory rather than blood, language, or descent, as in the Scottish case. In contrast, while ethnicity-based nationalism offers a strong narrative that justifies claims to minority protection, it is likely either to develop strained relations with immigration or to become entangled in the definition of ethnicity. For instance, in South Tyrol, ethnic nationalism has grown from historic roots, resulting in independence movements that tend to adopt an antagonistic or even xenophobic attitude towards immigration (Carlà 2015, Medda-Windischer–Carlá 2018). In turn, the Basque case unravels the struggle with the definition of sub-national identity and describes the evolution of identity markers from descent through language and political affiliation to territory (Ruiz Balzola 2016). However, the traditional delineation of two types of identity discourse – one described as cosmopolitan or civic, the other as ethnic homogeneous – has been

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referred to as a ‘false dichotomy’ (Yack 1996, Brubaker 1998, Shafir 1995: 17). There is in fact a tendency to overcome the alleged dichotomy between the socalled cosmopolitan-civic identity based on common values and/or common territory and ethnic identity based on blood, language, and descent. This is considered a false dichotomy because in reality the concept of identity is multiple and dynamic. Ultimately – and without bringing forward subtle differences between ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘interculturalism’ (Meer–Modood 2011) –, a plural society induces old minorities to rethink sub-national identities, and ethnic nationalism, by harmonizing ethnic identity with a more cosmopolitan approach as to include migrants with different backgrounds. For example, in Catalonia, ethnic nationalism based on language as the major identity marker is combined with a policy encouraging new minorities to use the Catalonian language in the public space (Medda-Windischer–Carlà 2015).

2. The Conceptualization of Regional/Sub-State Citizenship While distinguishing themselves from the society at large through a concept of sub-national identity, sub-state communities are also forced to ‘construct a concept of citizenship based on legitimate and inclusive markers of belonging’ (ZapataBarrero 2009b: 33, Medda-Windischer–Kössler 2017). This is due to two parallel trends: transnational and supranational trends and decentralization processes. Legal constraints related to conferring rights and obligations largely follow from transnational and supranational sources. Fundamental rights, as inserted in European and international conventions, entitle migrants to equal personal, cultural, and religious rights as well as civil, social, and participatory rights. Along this line, the European Union has developed the concept of ‘civic citizenship’, based on the idea of considering the residence requirement as a criterion for gradually aligning the rights and duties of individuals with a migration background – including their access to goods, services, and instruments of civic participation – with those of the citizens of the country in which they live, improving their status towards equal opportunities and equal treatment (Piccoli 2017, Bellamy– Castiglione–Santoro 2004, Shaw 2007). Parallel to this supranational trend empowering migrants through recognition of rights and freedoms, there is also a decentralization trend that invests substate entities with the power to grant rights, especially social and political rights, to their residents, including migrants. The decentralization of competences to sub-national authorities in such areas as social welfare, labour market, housing, and language use has made it conceivable to think of such notions as residencebased, regional citizenship for third-country nationals. Particularly relevant in this regard is the extent to which rights – following the classical Marshallian

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conception of civil, social, and political rights – have been decentralized and how participation and belonging have been rescaled at the sub-national level (Marshall 1950, Hepburn 2010, Medda-Windischer–Kössler 2017, Maas 2013). This rescaling and the resulting regional autonomy prepared the ground for ‘regional citizenship’ because it made subnational entities one among multiple territorial points of reference for the exercise of rights (e.g. to social benefits, healthcare, education, or housing), for participation in political and social life, and for developing a sense of belonging.

3. Participation and Equality in Diversity An additional challenge that migration raises in sub-national territories is the issue of participation and equality as bases to maintain and strengthen social cohesion. Old minorities are thus faced with the challenge to adopt policies aimed at providing migrants with opportunities to learn the minority language(s) and supporting the participation of migrants in various spheres of life (social, economic, cultural, and political dimensions). In this respect, it is crucial to stress that opportunities should not be easily converted into obligations. A preference for a ‘persuasion and argument’ model over a ‘sanction and force’ model is in fact to be supported (Jeram–van der Zwet–Wisthaler 2015, Baycan 2016). In Belgium, for instance, rigid language regimes established to protect the Dutch language against francophone linguistic dominance risk being perceived as obstacles to a polyethnic society (Medda-Windischer–Popelier 2016b). In this regard, the Basque case is peculiar in that the Basque language is perceived as a means of social integration even though it is a minority language even within Basque territory (Ruiz Balzola 2016). Intimately linked to participation and opportunities, it has to be emphasized that diversity policies may not be sufficient per se to ensure equal concern, respect for all, and, above all, social cohesion, even though they are necessary conditions. The impoverishment and alienation of the immigrant youth, especially migrants of second and third generation, require also adequate antidiscrimination and equality policies. Policies and strategies designed to redress the unequal position of minorities and to combat formal and substantial forms of discrimination are just as essential as diversity policies. This may also include an open approach towards migrants’ languages not perceived as obstacles or threat to the knowledge of official languages but as important instruments for maintaining and strengthening their self-esteem and as tools for exchange and dialogue with the rest of the population.

Roberta MEDDA-WINDISCHER

Concluding Remarks Among old and new minorities, there are great variations in terms of situations, actors, and dynamics. Each community has its own history, specific demographic trends, economic and political settings, specific markers of identity, relationship with the rest of the population and central state, and specific autonomous competences. This paper has analysed clusters of factors influencing approaches displayed by old minorities towards migration as well as new challenges and prospects raised by migration in sub-state territories inhabited by traditional, historical groups. For developing an inclusive and open approach towards new diversities brought by most recent migration flows, considering the multiple factors and multifarious contexts, what is crucial is, on the one hand, active and creative policies, in contrast to mere laissez-faire approaches, to be adopted and effectively implemented, while, on the other hand, the political and social willingness, expressed by decision makers, the political élite, and the society at large, to consider diversity and different groups as integral part of society – the “collectivity” and who belongs to it – so that migrants are perceived as allies rather than enemies or ‘guests’. This approach is not without difficulties. It is based on a vision of society in which different communities should interact with each other in a spirit of equality and openness, creating a rich, plural, and tolerant society. The process is thus burdensome for both parties. Minorities must learn to negotiate often in an unfamiliar or even hostile environment where their minority statuses make them vulnerable to marginalization and segregation. The majority group, on the other hand, must cope with diversity in its schools, workplaces, housing, public spaces, and neighbourhoods and must display tolerance and broadness. The vision is not easy to realize and has its own problems. Some groups might not be open and experimental and others might jealously guard their inherited identities. At the heart of any successful model lies, in the end, a sincere willingness on both sides – majority and minority – for continuous interaction, mutual adjustments, and accommodation.

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HEPBURN, Eve–ZAPATA-BARRERO, Ricard. 2014. Introduction: Immigration Policies in Multilevel States. In: Hepburn, Eve, Zapata-Barrero, Ricard (eds), The Politics of Immigration in Multilevel States. London: Palgrave MacMillan. 3–18. JERAM, Sanjay. 2012. Immigrants and the Basque Nation: Diversity as a New Marker of Identity. Ethnic and Racial Studies 36(11): 1770–1788. JERAM, Sanjay–ADAM, Ilke. (2013). Immigration in Multinational Settings: The Basque Country and Flanders in Comparative Perspective. Paper presented at the ASN World Convention. New York: Columbia University. JERAM, Sanjay–VAN DER ZWET, Arno–WISTHALER, Verena. 2015. Friends or Foes? Migrants and Sub-State Nationalists in Europe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42(8): 1229–1241. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. JUTEAU, Danielle. 2005. Inmigración, Ciudadanía y Autogobierno: Québec en perspectiva, Documentos CIDOB, Migraciones (6): 1–35. KYMLICKA, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Theory of Liberal Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001. Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship. New York: Oxford University Press. LOOBUYCK, Patrick–JACOBS, Dirk. 2009. Self-government, Immigration and Integration in Flanders: Political Opportunities, Tensions and Challenges. In: Zapata-Barrero, Ricard (ed.), Immigration and Self-Government of Minority Nations. Brussels: Peter Lang. 103–121. MAAS, Willem. 2013. Varieties of Multilevel Citizenship. In: Maas, Willem (ed.), Multilevel Citizenship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1–21. MARKO, Joseph. 1997. Equality and Difference: Political and Legal Aspects of Ethnic Group Relations. In: Matscher, Franz (ed.), Vienna International Encounter on Some Current Issues Regarding the Situation of National Minorities. Kehl, Strasbourg, Arlington: N. P. Engel Verlag. 67–97. 2018 (forthcoming). Multiple Diversity Governance through Law? Political Theory, Ideology and Norm Contestation in European Context: An Interdisciplinary Approach. MARKO, Joseph–MEDDA-WINDISCHER, Roberta. 2018. Language Rights and Duties for New Minorities: Integration through Diversity Governance. In: Ulasiuk, Iryna–Hadirca, Laurentiu–Romans, William (eds), Language Policy and Conflict Prevention. Leiden: Brill-Nijhoff. 251–284. MARSHALL, Thomas. H. 1950. Citizenship and Social Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MEDDA-WINDISCHER, Roberta. 2009. Old and New Minorities: Reconciling Diversity and Cohesion. A Human Rights Model for Minority Integration. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

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2010. Changing Paradigms in the Traditional Dichotomy of Old and New Minorities. In: Henrard, Kristin. (ed.), Double Standards Pertaining to Minority Protection. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. 195–218. 2017. Integration of New and Old Minorities: Beyond a Janus-faced Perspective. European Yearbook on Minority Issues 14(1): 1–36. MEDDA-WINDISCHER, Roberta–CARLÀ, Andrea (eds). 2015. Migration and Autonomous Territories: The Case of South Tyrol and Catalonia. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. 2018. Multilevel Governance of Migration: Conflicts among Levels of Governance in the South Tyrol Case. In: Lacroix, Thomas–Desille, Amandine (eds), International Migrations and Local Governance: A Global Perspective. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 57–75. MEDDA-WINDISCHER, Roberta–KÖSSLER, Karl. 2017. Introduction. Regional Citizenship: A Tool for the Inclusion of New Minorities in Subnational Entities? European Yearbook of Minority Issues 13(1): 61–78. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. MEDDA-WINDISCHER, Roberta–POPELIER, Patricia (eds). 2016a. ProIndependence Movements and Immigration: Discourse, Policy and Practice. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. 2016b. Introduction: The Interrelationship between Independence Movements and Migration in the Frame of the Alleged Dichotomy between Old and New Minorities. In: Medda-Windischer, Roberta–Popelier, Patricia (eds), Proindependence Movements and Immigration: Discourse, Policy and Practice. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. 1–29. MEER, Nasar–MODOOD, Tariq. 2011. How Does Interculturalism Contrast with Multiculturalism? Journal of Intercultural Studies 33(2): 175–196. Abingdonon-Thames: Routledge. PICCOLI, Lorenzo. 2017. Structuring Regional Citizenship: Historical Continuity and Contemporary Salience? European Yearbook of Minority Issues 13(1): 130–150. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. PICHÉ, Victor. 2002. Immigration, Diversity and Ethnic Relations in Quebec. Canadian Ethnic Studies 34(3): 5–23. RUIZ BALZOLA, Andrea. 2016. Migration and Diversity in the Discourse of Basque Diversity. In: Medda-Windischer, Roberta–Popelier, Patricia (eds), Proindependence Movements and Immigration: Discourse, Policy and Practice. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. 118–133. SCHMID, Samuel David–SCHLENKER, Andrea. 2013. The MigrationCosmopolitan Nexus. A Multilevel Analysis of Cosmopolitan Attitudes in the Context of Migration Regimes in Europe. Paper prepared for the ISA Annual Convention, San Francisco, 3–6 April 2013.

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SHAFIR, Gershon. 1995. Immigrants and Nationalists: Ethnic Conflict and Accommodation in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Latvia and Estonia. New York: State University of New York Press. SHAW, Jo. 2007. The Transformation of Citizenship in the European Union: Electoral Rights and the Restructuring of Political Space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UNHCR. 2017. Global Appeal 2016–2017. Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/ ga16/index.xml. VAN PARJIS, Philippe. 2012. On Linguistic Territoriality and Belgium’s Linguistic Future. In: Popelier, Patricia–Sinardet, Dave–Velaers, Jan–Cantillon, Bea (eds), België, quo vadis? Antwerpen-Cambridge: Intersentia. 35–60. YACK, Bernard. 1996. The Myth of the Civic Nation. Critical Review 10 (2): 193– 211. ZAPATA-BARRERO, Ricard. 2005. Prólogo. Multinacionalidad y la immigración: premisas para un debate en España. In: Juteau, Danielle. Inmigración, Ciudadanía y Autogobierno: Québec en perspectiva. Documentos CIDOB, Migraciones 6. 2009a. Building a Public Philosophy on Immigration in Catalonia. In: ZapataBarrero, Ricard (ed.), Immigration and Self-government of Minority Nations. Brussels: Peter Lang. 125–162. 2009b. Setting a Research Agenda on the Interaction between Cultural Demands of Immigrants and Minority Nations. In: Zapata-Barrero, Ricard (ed.), Immigration and Self-government of Minority Nations, Brussels: Peter Lang. 13–38.

Acta Univ. Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies, 14 (2018) 71–83

DOI: 10.2478/auseur-2018-0012

The ‘Roma Question’ in Slovakia Kinga MACSÓ

University of Pécs PhD student, Interdisciplinary Doctoral School e-mail: kingamacso13@hotmail.com Abstract. Slovakia belongs to those states with a high number of Romani in terms of population – of the population of about 5.3 million, 480 to 520 thousand people have Romani origin. In Slovakia, only since 1999 have the Gypsies been able to call themselves Roma. In the 1991, 2001, and 2011 censuses, the Romani could decide on their affiliation, they could be considered Roma citizens, but only a few people made use of this right. Only 25% of the Roma ethnic group called themselves Roma, while the majority referred to themselves as Slovakian or Hungarian; so, these demographic data do not reflect reality. The so-called ‘Atlas’-es show a more significantly accurate picture. The creators of these worked together with the local social workers who knew the local Roma communities well in the given settlements. Approximately half of the Romani living in Slovakia were able to change socially to some extent and adapt to the society’s majority. The rest of the Roma minority live isolated in some parts of the city, on the edge of the city, or in the nearby. These communities are characterized by social and ethnic isolation, which may be different in some specific cases. According to different indicators, they are divided into segregated, separated, integrated focused, and integrated scattered groups. Since the year 2003, the state has introduced various social reforms. Local governments have also joined the state-initiated reforms. They create various special projects for their own Roma communities in order to help their advancement. Keywords: Gypsies, Slovakia, Gypsy population

In Europe, there are about 7 million Roma1 people who do not belong anywhere, have no state of their own, and therefore live scattered in other states (Prónai 2006: 364). They differ from the majority population not only in their appearance but also mainly with their distinctive culture and language. It is an ethnic group that inherits their own history and spiritual culture by word of mouth, and their 1

I use the Roma and Gypsy expressions alternately, as a synonym for each other. The expression Roma has been used since the First Roma World Congress because some have used the Gypsy name in a pejorative sense.

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way of life reflects specific signs – they are the Gypsies, or Romani. They see themselves as discriminated, ostracized, and living on the periphery of society. Despite the fact that the Gypsies have been living in Europe for quite a few centuries, their history is almost unknown. After a while, Gypsies living in nomadic groups more or less integrated and became part of more European nations, but most of them isolated themselves in societies and did not adapt to the lifestyle and development of the host nation. Differences in their lifestyles, their specific and often illegitimate ways of their sustainment in many cases drove the gypsies to the edge of society, and so their resettlement and assimilation into local societies often took place via anti-Gypsy actions and instructions from above. Throughout Europe, this has been accomplished drastically. The Indian origin of the Romani today is a scientifically and generally accepted fact (Fraser 1996: 27–30). Until the 3rd–10th centuries, Gypsy groups moved westward from North-India in smaller and larger migration groups (Nečas 1998: 20). They already lived in the Balkans in the 12th and 13th centuries, and practically on one of today’s migration routes, which they also used back at that time, reached continuously to the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary and further to Central and Western Europe. On the basis of some contradictory historical sources, the first Gypsies arrived to the territory of today’s Slovakia in 1219. According to other sources, by the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century, they had already lived on the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary.2 The first written evidence is often referred to as the report by Iglo’s Judge János Kunch (Spiská Nová Ves) from 1322. The two Slovakian historians, Jurová (1998) and Marek (2006), are sceptical about this. According to the latter historian, the first Gypsies settled in 1328 on the territory of today’s Slovakia. In the 15th century, their existence on the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary is a proven fact.3 In 1417, they arrived in a massive migration wave to the Great Plains. In the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire was expanding to the Balkans, and thus the living conditions in the country were deteriorating; therefore, a big wave of migration started westward (Marek 2006: 258). In a huge wave of migration, they arrived to the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, and this migration wave hit the western countries (Horváthová 1962: 210–225, Fraser 2002: 341). In Western Europe, however, the living conditions were quite different from those of the agrarian Kingdom of Hungary. The industry and trade was at a higher level, the operation of the guilds were better controlled, and they did not allow strangers among them (Tkáčová 2002: 31–42). Thus, Gypsies had to seek other life opportunities. Their professions, fortune telling, music, dancing, animal training, and occasional 2 3

Their existence in the territory of the Hungarian Kingdom, according to some Hungarian historians, is proved by censuses of place names (Jurová 2002: 19–30). Sigismund Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary, donated imperial passports to the leaders of the gypsy caravans.

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thefts demanded a nomadic lifestyle; so, they could not approach the local population and rapidly became undesirable elements. During the second half of the 15th century, the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire and the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in Central Europe also contributed to the poor situation of the Gypsies. According to some anthropologists, the nomadic migration of the Gypsies and the expansion of the Turks often converged, and in many places Gypsies were regarded as spies of the Turks. This negative situation culminated in the 16th–17th centuries, when Gypsies were classified as illegal elements in many countries (Hancock 2001: 165).4 In the Hungarian Kingdom, the situation of the Gypsy population was much more favourable (Horváthová 1964). This is evidenced by several historical sources. According to historical sources, several Gypsy groups settled in Spiš and on the area of Bártfa (Bardejov). The credibility of the source comes from the fact that in the feudal society of the time nobody could settle on the owner’s land without the permission thereof (Jurová 2002b: 53–67). It is assumed that their skill in craftsmanship greatly contributed to this. In the richer regions, they stayed for a relatively long period of time, but we cannot interpret the term settling period as permanent habitation in the real sense of the word, rather a fluctuation in an area for a few years. Their occupation and lifestyle were passed down from generation to generation, wherefore in some areas there was a surplus supply of some occupational groups, and so these communities were separated from wandering groups and looked for other ways of living in the nearby counties and districts. In the 16th century, a number of handicraft industries also reflected that the presence of Gypsies was accepted and desirable in the contemporary society (Jurová 2002b: 53–67). According to historical sources, several groups from Western Europe returned to the area of the Hungarian Kingdom because they tried to escape from the consequences of anti-Romani laws. The number of wandering, tent Gypsies was growing steadily in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, and finally security measures were introduced here as well, which had been strengthened by the end of the 17th century. After driving the Turks out, when the wars were over, the population decreased in the area of the country, making the number of inhabitants the highest value in the country. Mary Theresa and Joseph II’s enlightened ideas were reflected in the judgment of the Gypsy people. They wanted to achieve the full assimilation of nomadic and seminomadic Roma populations (Tkáčová 2002: 31–41). The complex measures introduced between 1760 and 1780 reflected this. The Gypsy population was to be involved in the economic life besides the resettlement. According to Samuel Augustini (ab Hortis) – who was one of the pioneers of the contemporary Gypsy research –, as a result of the actions of the enlightened rulers, the Romani would 4

In 1427, the Gypsies were excommunicated by the bishop of Paris, and in 1548, in Augsburg, it was decided that whoever killed a gypsy would face no consequences (Dávidová 1995: 237).

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be totally assimilated within a few years, and their own traditions and customs, and later their language would be known only from the books (Tkáčová 2002: 31–41). According to the regulations, the Gypsies living a migrant lifestyle had to settle down, and they were not authorized to keep and trade with horses. They were not allowed to wear their own clothing and had to wear the garments of the majority of the society’s population. They were obliged to relocate their children to farming families for re-education. Children in compulsory school were obliged to go to school and learn some kind of occupation. They were banned from using their own language and could not give a Gypsy name to their children. Endogamous marriages were also prohibited. The settled Gypsies were obliged to abide by their village magistrate, and not by their voivode. Voivodship as a function was abolished (Mann 2001: 54). Despite the great effort, the complex measures failed. One of the many reasons for this was that most of the nobility did not want the Gypsies to be resettled in their territory. They only employed those about whom they were convinced that were useful to them. The attitude of the whole nobility to the Viennese actions was distrustful. So, it was very difficult to integrate them into real life. Most of the decrees were withdrawn after Joseph II died in 1790. Nonetheless, some groups with the leadership of the voivode settled in one of the counties. The majority of the Gypsy settlements were built in the 18th century (Jurová 2002a: 19–23). Some measures were introduced at a later stage, mainly concerning tent Gypsies, but not many things changed. Until the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, there were no major changes in the Gypsy population. From after the establishment of Czechoslovakia until 1927, regarding the tent Gypsies, Law No 14015/1887 of the Ministry of the Interior of Vienna was in force. The repression of the law contributed to the fact that the Gypsies got to the edge of society (Kollárová 2002: 43–52). Only in 1927 was a new law (no 117/1927) on Gypsies passed. It was about the caravan Gypsies, who were defined by law as persons who were living a wandering, vagabond life in ‘the Gypsy style’ (Gecelovský 1992: 79–87). This not quite unambiguous definition of the population helped the responsible authorities to intervene in the lives of the settled Gypsies as well. Thus, the entire Gypsy population was stigmatized as an antisocial element (Nečas 1981: 155). In the second half of the 20th century, the media’s inflated cases of the alleged ‘Gypsy cannibalism’ also contributed to sharpening the conflicts (Kollárová 2002: 61–69). During World War II, the Gypsies got into a very extreme position. The first Anti-Gypsy Order came out in 1939 (Kollárová 2002: 61–69). The district notary offices had to review the right of residence for each of the Gypsies, that is, whether the person in the village had permanent address, and if they did not, they were deported. In addition, the regulation prohibited trading with horses – such permits were withdrawn from everyone. In some counties, trading with

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all sort of animals was banned (Nečas 1981: 100–155). A new constitutional act came into force in September 1939, which divided the population into two groups. The state employees belonged in one group while the foreign elements into the other one. Only those in the first group counted as subjects with full rights – this law was clearly against the Jews. From the Roma point of view, there were two possibilities in the first case: ‘If a person has a regular citizen life, having a permanent residence and occupation in the settlement and, through his education and political conviction he has reached the standard citizen degree, he can become a member of the Slovak national society’ (Nečas 1981: 50). In the other case: ‘If he is not adequate or only partially adequate to the above said (e.g. communicates with others in the Gypsy language) – so, he is morally and politically dubious –, he cannot belong to the Slovak nation’ (Nečas 1981: 50). In June 1940, the Ministry of the Interior issued a regulation defining the term ‘gypsy’. According to Article 9 of Law No 130/1940, we understand the term Gypsy as a person belonging to the Gypsy race, whose two parents are tent Gypsies or who has settled down but avoids work (Some 1981: 45–55). In January 1940, the Defence Act came out, which prohibited the Gypsies and Jews from joining the armed forces. According to the decree issued in 1941, all the permits for migration were withdrawn; who had such a permit had to settle down within eight days in their own village or in a village where he had stayed for a longer period of time up to that moment. They were under police supervision and could not leave the village but with the written permission of the police. The regulation also applied to settled Gypsies. In case a Roma family lived near the main road or the vicinal road, they had to move away from their place of residence and move to a new place assigned to them, separated from the others. In the villages, if more than three Gypsy families lived, the district office nominated a Voivode, who was responsible for reporting to the village leader whether these norms and customs were observed (Nečas 1981: 65–75). Anti-Gypsy measures were taken in the work field (Janas 2008: 123–133). It was compulsory to move and work in the camps. The aim of the camps was to separate those who were not adequate to the majority for political, racial, and moral reasons. The main elements were the Gypsies (Kollárová 2002: 33). The designated committees arbitrarily decided who was antisocial and who was not, which gypsies had to be separated and which did not. The idea of a labour camp in the Slovak Republic was to solve the Roma question, which would probably have meant the deportation of all Gypsies to concentration camps. In 1944, after the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising, the Slovakian state was occupied by the German army, and in some settlements they burned and massacred the inhabitants of the Gypsy settlements (Mann 2002: 49). During the existence of the Slovak state, all Anti-Gypsy regulations had the same basic principle – despite defining who is considered a migrant individual or someone who avoids work –, which concerned the whole Gypsy nation. These

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regulations still have consequences – they have broken all links between Gypsies and non-Gypsies, and they made them even more isolated within the society and lowered their ethical standards. They took away their traditional living space and their opportunities (Jurová 1993: 138). The reason why the Gypsy question did not reach the ‘final solution’ was that they were poor and had few economic relations with the local population. For a deported Jew, the Nazi Germany paid 500 German marks to the Slovakian state (Hubenák 2008: 22–41), but there could be no question that the Gypsies would have had a similar fate. In the first years after the war, relations with the Gypsy ethnic group developed in two directions. In the first case, it was a social aid approach: the Gypsies were considered to be victims of the war who had to be helped by the state. They could get the flats of the deported Germans and got food ration stamps (Matlovič 2005: 22). According to the other direction, they had to be excluded from the socio-economic system, the Gypsies had to be discriminated and persecuted. The President’s Law No 89/1945 on the mobilization of workforce and Law No 52/1935, which deals with black trade, stepped in against begging, vagrancy, etc. and thus increased the number of anti-Gypsy movements. Law No 105/1945 was about labour camps, and Law No 89/1946 forced antisocial workers into labour camps, which mainly meant the Gypsies (Jurová 2002b: 53–77). When the communists came to power, for the time being, the Gypsy question took the back seat, except for the 1950s, when the Gypsy community became legally equal with the population of Czechoslovakia. All the other decrees concerning the Gypsies were abolished with a single blow. Two kinds of views developed on the Roma issue: according to one of them, gypsies must be accepted as a nationality and their situation redressed within that. By the 1950s, the attitude had been formed that they were also nationalities. But at that point it was obvious that this would not be accepted in general. The other view was that the underdevelopment of the Gypsies had to be solved by the state in a social and paternalistic way (Šebesta 2003b: 11–31). In addition to the two views, a utopian idea emerged that an area should be designated within the state where the entire Roma population would be relocated (Jurová 2002b: 79). Despite the state-subsidized effort, the situation of the Roma had become worse in reality. They took away their original livelihoods, abolished their rights to play music, their private business licences were withdrawn (craftsmanship), and they could not work in agriculture for private farmers because of the rapid collectivization of the countryside. Hence, the Gypsies lost the last remnant of their specific lifestyle (Šebesta 2003a: 45–50). All this led to the fact that the Gypsy population was only able to work in industrial sectors requiring strong physical labour, as unskilled labourers. Moreover, in those cases where the Gypsies tried to solve their housing problems by themselves, they were rejected because the leaders of the villages

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did not want them to settle down. As a result of the violent ghettoization, they were isolated, and Gypsy colonies were created, which meant that they had little possibilities to be integrated into the majority society. In 1952, according to the guidelines of the Ministry of the Interior, the solution to the Gypsy question was seen in the total assimilation, which would have led to the abolition of their underdevelopment lifestyle (Jurová 2009: 45–50). According to the state’s policy, Gypsies live in such living conditions because they have been exploited, and if they were given work, housing, and education, everything would change (Pavelčiková 2004: 183). This solution, however, meant a great economic burden and an ideological problem for the socialist state. The Communist Party sharply rejected the solution of the problems by ethnic means. According to them, Gypsies could not be considered as a separate nationality but as part of the population that was socially and culturally underdeveloped and with a specific lifestyle. They rejected the introduction of literary Gypsy language in the schools visited by Gypsies because they believed it would have led to further isolation, hindered their re-education, and only strengthened their old primitive Gypsy lifestyle (Jurová 2002a: 30–35). The main ideological trend was the centrally directed full assimilation of the Gypsies. Based on the Soviet pattern, Law No 74/1958 was adopted, which completely eliminated the wandering lifestyle. On the other hand, it became clear that this law could not be realized because the state was not able to afford so much housing and so many jobs, they had no financial cover. The main problem was that the state wanted to solve all the problems quickly and immediately, but there were no suitable circumstances (Šebesta 2003a: 45–50). In the 60s, several plans were developed to solve the issue. One of these was the ‘plan of deportation and dispersal’. The worst conditions were in the East Slovakian district. According to the state order, 3,823 family supporters should have been granted a job outside the perimeter, which would have removed around 14,000 people from the district (Haišman 1999: 137–183). In 1965, according to the central control, the previous decrees were unsuccessful because too many Gypsies lived in Eastern Slovakia; so, according to the new solution plan, they ought to have been systematically removed from the district and scattered in areas where fewer people lived. According to Law No 502/1965, the new plan had three basic points: a) to eliminate Roma colonies, hovels and solve the housing issue, b) to insure school attendance for Gypsy children and education of the youth, and c) to employ male workers for employment (Jurová 2002b: 53–77). The plan should have been implemented on two levels: a) the Roma population should have been relocated to Slovak districts and boroughs and b) the Slovakian Roma population should have been relocated to the Czech districts in a coordinated manner. In reality, this would have meant exchanging people between these two countries. For the West Slovakian Roma, the Central and South Czech district was designated, and they had to go to Southern Moravia

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from the Central Slovakian district and move from the East Slovakian district to North Moravia and the Eastern Czech district. No people were located in the North Czech and West Czech districts because the Roma population was high in those districts. According to the Central Committee’s plan, by 1970, 611 Gypsy colonies from Slovakia (1,027 Roma settlers) would have been wound up. So, in the Czech Republic, 2,177 families would have been resettled, which meant about 14,000 people. In the Slovakian districts and boroughs, about 10,000 families would have been dispersed, representing 63,000 people. In reality, this ‘effort’ showed just how each national committee5 wanted to get rid of its own Gypsies. This plan was not implemented directly, it was only recommended to the leaders of each district. That is why the whole plan collapsed as indirectly none of the authorities could agree (Pavelčíková 2004: 1–183). In spite of the financial support, in 1967–68, it had already been apparent that the plan was gradually collapsing and becoming more and more unsuccessful. In the 1970s, the Czech Republic withdrew this plan of assimilation, two years later followed by the Slovak Republic. In total, between 1966 and 1971, 4,750 hovels were wound up and 24,000 Gypsies were relocated. They failed to accomplish the plan both quantitatively and qualitatively. It was unsuccessful in a qualitative way because the Gypsy population could not be re-educated according to the socialist social image (Jurová 1993). This kind of assimilation of the Gypsies was condemned from the second it started (Vašečka 2001: 453–457). Decisive factors, such as different identities, a strong community consciousness of the Gypsies, or a completely different cultural environment, were not even taken into account. Ethnic attitudes were completely ignored. This method did not help the displaced ones and had a negative impact on the communities that stayed at home (Víšek 1999: 174–184). The other plan was the ‘general social and cultural integration’ plan. This plan was adopted in the Czech Republic under Law No 231/1972 and in the Slovak Republic under Law No 94/1972 – in reality, it ended in 1989. The central part of the plan was the following: to employ working Gypsies, to oblige Roma youth to study, to re-educate adults, to solve the problem of permanent residency, and to reduce crime. According to state authorities, Gypsies were uncultured, and this plan had to eliminate this fact. During the implementation of the programme, in reality, new schools and kindergartens, the improvement of classroom facilities, and re-training centres had to be provided. Gypsy children were given financial support to go to kindergarten, to Gypsy students for meals; they were provided subsidies for clothing and free summer camps (for Roma students). The state allocated large sums to improve the new housing conditions. They bought their huts for them, gave them new flats and furniture. All these were not received by the non-Roma population. As a passive crowd, the Gypsy population was offered an enormous social support. All this deepened the conflicts between Gypsy and 5

The leaders of the villages and towns.

The ‘Roma Question’ in Slovakia

non-Gypsy inhabitants. This plan was in place for nearly 20 years; in every fiveyear plan, the number of hovels and camps to be wound up was marked and also how many gypsies were to be educated and how many Roma men were needed to be employed. These plans were repeated in cycles, but they were constantly failing due to the limitations of financial resources (Víšek 1999: 184–218). The change of regime in 1989 hit the Gypsy population in Slovakia unprepared and drifted them economically and socially to the edge of society (Radičová 2002: 79–92). Nevertheless, for the first time, it was possible to integrate this ethnic group properly; while preserving their own cultural characteristics, they could minimize the problems facing a dominant society during the process. An organization called ‘Romská občianská iniciatíva’6 (ROI) was formed, which gathered mainly the intellectuals. However, only the name Roma was used as a ‘nationality’ for the 1991 census; before that, they had been registered as a ‘social group’. At the same time, the district commissions thoughtlessly abolished the network that had been dealing with the Roma question that far and dismissed those workers who provided communication between the state authorities and the Gypsies. An adequate institutional system was not created. Before Czechoslovakia disintegrated, Slovakia had accepted the government’s actions concerning the Gypsies. First of all, the Romani had to be accepted and recognized as a nationality, and, secondly, they wanted to avoid special institutions to deal with the Roma question and wished to join the general social system that deals with every citizen (Tokár–Lamačková 2003: 187–202). The new system provided a greater control over everyone as the representatives of the minorities also participated in it. During the 1992–98 period, not much attention was paid to the Roma issue. During this period, the problems of ethnic minorities and ethnic groups ended up in the crossfire of harsh political debates. Several politicians made comments in an extreme way as, for example, that the Gypsies should not be considered as citizens (Šebesta 2003a: 66–73). During this period, the solutions were severe sanctions, discrimination, and isolation. For example, in the case of a crime committed by Roma, the procedure was much more rigorous than if they had been committed by a non-Gypsy citizen. There were voices that birth control should also be provided by law. The contemporary social policy of the state was more likely to exacerbate the problems of the Roma society and did not help real integration (Kotvanová–Szép 2003: 33–44). This lack of respect for human rights and minority rights led Slovakia to be considered not to meet the Copenhagen criteria, and so they were not accepted into the European Union (Alner 1999: 311–327). The consequence of this, however, was that the Roma problem was rediscovered. By 1999, 230 Roma organizations had been operating in the country, and their representatives were Romani as well. After the changes, a strong linguistic group was working on the development of an integrated Roma 6

Roma Civil Initiative.

Kinga MACSÓ

language based on the Eastern Slovak dialect. The language was also taught at the University of Charles. The Romany language became formally a standard language in 2008, and textbooks and dictionaries appeared in this language.7 Besides, the Roma issue was a priority, and specific goals were set such as raising Roma living conditions to the Slovak average level, improving the status of their education, or adopting the Roma language (Jurásková 2002: 60–66). Thus, in 1999, the government issued a draft resolution to solve the problems of the Gypsy national minority. In the first phase, according to the content of the document, there were more political arguments than real proposals for the solution. There was no concrete proposal in the social sphere regarding the solution for housing problems and elimination of unemployment (Vašečka 2002: 364–400). It was rather an operational plan than a whole of actual proposals. The second phase gave a little more concrete, detailed description of the role of the various institutions and activists on the national, district, borough, and local levels (Matlovič 2005: 79–90). This had been the most detailed and best-developed plan on this topic since 1989. In the following two years, an action plan was devised to terminate discrimination, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and all forms of intolerance. Various programmes were prepared on the form in which the government could communicate with the Roma minority, a complex programme was created for the development of Roma colonies, for the responsibilities of social and field activists, and they also created a national action plan to solve unemployment. During this time, some important laws were introduced. These laws were mainly related to the minorities and punished racist manifestations against them harder. On 1 July 2000, a social law was inaugurated and social benefits were reduced, the purpose of which was to encourage Romani to work. According to the main idea, unemployment benefits were disbursed only for two years; after two years, the benefit was halved (Alner 1999: 49–69). The Gypsies’ attitude towards work was so far negative as for them it was not worth working if the unemployment benefit was barely less than the minimum wage. The first Dzurinda government, between 1998 and 2002, set up a number of institutions that dealt with the solution of the Roma question (Lamačková–Tokár 2002: 187–202). In 1998, a state institution (Úrad splnomocnenca vlády SR na riešenie problemov rómskej menšiny) was specifically opened to solve the Roma problem, through whose intercession Gypsies became a minority, which was modified to community status in 2001 (Úrad splnomocnenca vlády SR pre rómske komunity) (Jurásková 2002: 91–118). The period between 1998 and 2002 can be considered as outstanding in terms of the Roma issue. After Slovakia had been admitted to the European Union, the Roma issue was gradually off the agenda (Šrámková 2006: 55–60). In 2003, however, during the second Dzurinda government, some constructive measures were taken, some projects were elaborated, and the main idea was to integrate 7

The dictionary was compiled by Milena Hübschmennová.

The ‘Roma Question’ in Slovakia

the Roma community from a multicultural perspective. Social integration, such as unemployment, education, health, or housing problems, needs to be solved on a political basis (Jurásková–Kriglerová–Rybová 2003). This programme includes, for example, the zero grade introduced for Roma children and the Roma Assistant Programme (Šrámková 2006: 51). The main obstacle in Slovakia was the limitation of financial possibilities for resolving the Roma issue. The amount allocated from the budget for this matter was too small to start this programme with good perspectives. Financial support from the European Union’s PHARE was a great help. The EU provided further support from the social fund and the region’s development fund. Slovakia’s attitude towards the international, intergovernmental project is not effective enough for the developments of the 2005–2015 period. The Hungarian minority self-government system is unique in Europe and can represent the interests of the Roma much more effectively from the local to national level. In the other countries, including Slovakia, the Roma minority has only civil society organizations. In Slovakia, the National Strategy Group developed a basic draft plan for marginalized Roma communities for the period between 2007 and 2013. This mainly aimed at solving social problems. The main areas of education, social inclusion, health, and economic growth involving competitiveness were discussed. The Slovak state wants to solve the integration of the Romani between 2014 and 2020. State officials assigned three regional areas: Banska Bystrica, Prešov, and Kosice. The proper persons of the Ministry of Bratislava, the representatives of the state administration, the leaders of the non-governmental Roma organizations, and the academic authorities make the right decisions for the so-called ‘Roma problem’. Their strategy is aimed at three target groups: for the Roma as a national minority, the Roma communes, and the marginalized Roma communes. Many socalled integration programmes are not integration in reality. The Roma minority does not need a mother tongue to be able to integrate because it is not required from them. But it would still be important to develop a vernacular culture for their own benefit, and this should start out from them.

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References ALNER, Juraj. 1999. Integračné procesy na Slovensku. In: Ivantyšyn, Michal (ed.), Slovensko 1998–1999. Bratislava: IVO. FRASER, Angus. 2002. Cikáni. Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové Noviny. GECELOVSKÝ, Vladimír. 1992. Právne normy týkajúce sa Rómov a ich aplikácia v Gemeri (1918–1938). In: Mann, A. B. (ed.), Neznámi Rómovia. Bratislava: Ister Science Press. HAIŠMAN, Tomáš. 1999. Romové v Československu v letech 1945–1967. Vývoj institucionálního zájmu a jeho dopady. In: ROMOVÉ v České republice (1945– 1998). Praha: Socioklub. HANCOCK, Ian. 2001. Země utrpení. Dějiny otroctví a pronásledování Romů. Praha: Signeta. HUBENÁK, Ladislav. 2008. Právne normy a ich praktický dosah v slovenskom štáte. In: Majkútová, Anna (ed.), Fenomén holokaustu: zborník z medzinárodnej vedecko-odbornej konferencie konanej dňa 27–28. marca 2008 pod záštitou predsedu vlády SR pre vedomostnú spoločnosť, európske záležitosti, ľudské práva a menšiny Dušana Čaploviča. Bratislava: Ševt: Úrad vlády SR. 22–39. JANAS, Karol. 2008. Utrpenie slovenských Rómov. In: Majkútová, Anna (ed.), Fenomén holokaustu: zborník z medzinárodnej vedecko-odbornej konferencie konanej dňa 27–28. marca 2008 pod záštitou predsedu vlády SR pre vedomostnú spoločnosť, európske záležitosti, ľudské práva a menšiny Dušana Čaploviča. Bratislava: Ševt: Úrad vlády SR. 131–146. JURÁSKOVÁ, Martina–KRIGLEROVÁ, Elena–RYBOVÁ, Jana. 2004. Atlas rómskych komunít na Slovensku 2004. Bratislava: S.P.A.C.E. JUROVÁ, Anna. 1993. Vývoj rómskej problematiky na Slovensku po roku 1945. Bratislava: Goldpress Publishers. 1996. Rómska problematika 1945–1967. Studijní materiály výzkumného projektu Československo 1945–1967. Dokumenty. 19. Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR. 2002a. Od odchodu z pravlasti po prvé asimilačné opatrenia. In: Vašečka, Michal (ed.), Čačipen pal o roma. Súhrnná správa o Rómoch na Slovensku. Bratislava: IVO, 19–39. 2002b. Rómovia v období od roku 1945 po november 1989. In: Vašečka, Michal (ed.), Čačipen pal o roma. Súhrnná správa o Rómoch na Slovensku. Bratislava: IVO. 53–77. KOLLÁROVÁ, Zuzanna. 2002. Rómovia v období I. ČSR, II. ČSR a Slovenského štátu. In: Vašečka, Michal (ed.), Čačipen pal o roma. Súhrnná správa o Rómoch na Slovensku. Bratislava: IVO. 43–52. KOTVANOVÁ, Alena–SZÉP, Attila. 2003. Najnovšie koncepcie politiky vlády SR vo vzťahu k riešeniu problémov rómskych komunít (1998–2002). In:

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Kotvanová, Alena (ed.), Vládna politika a Rómovia 1948–2002. Bratislava: Slovenský Inštitút Medzinárodných Študií. 1–59. LAMAČKOVÁ, Adriana–TOKÁR, Adrian. 2002. Legislatívny a inštitucionálny rámec riešenia rómskej problematiky. In: Vašečka, Imrich (ed.), Čačipen pal o roma. Súhrnná správa o Rómoch na Slovensku. Bratislava: IVO. 187–201. MANN, Arne B. 2000. Rómsky dejepis. Bratislava: Kalligram. MAREK, Miloš. 2006. Cudzie etniká na stredovekom Slovensku. Martin: Matica slovenská. MATLOVIČ, René. 2005. Geografia Slovenska so zreteľom na rómsku minoritu. Prešov: Prešovská univerzita v Prešove. NEČAS, Ctibor. 1981. Nad osudem českých a slovenských Cikánů v letech 1939– 1945. Brno: Univerzita J. E. Purkyně v Brně. 1998. Romové v České republice včera a dnes. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého. PAVELČÍKOVÁ, Nina. 2004. Romové v českých zemích v letech 1945–1989. Praha: Sešity Úřadu dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu. PRÓNAI, Csaba (ed.). 2006. Cigány világok Európában. Budapest: Nyitott Könyvműhely. RADIČOVÁ, Iveta. 2002. Rómovia na prahu transformácie. In: Vašečka, Michal (ed.), Čačpien pal o roma. Súhrnná správa o Rómoch na Slovensku. Bratislava: IVO. 213–247. ŠEBESTA, Michal. 2003a. Formovanie politiky štátu vo vzťahu k Rómom v prvých rokoch samostatnej Slovenskej republiky (1993–1998). In: Kotvanová, Alena (ed.), Vládna politika a Rómovia 1948–2002. Bratislava: Slovenský Inštitút Medzinárodných Študií. 45–50. 2003b. Rómovia pod patronátom socialistického štátu (1948–1989). In: Kotvanová, Alena (ed.), Vládna politika a Rómovia 1948–2002. Bratislava: Slovenský Inštitút Medzinárodných Študií. 11–31. TKÁČOVÁ, Anna. 2002. Rómovia v období od vlády Márie Terézie po vznik I. ČSR. In: Vašečka, Michal (ed.), Čačipen pal o roma. Súhrnná správa o Rómoch na Slovensku. Bratislava: IVO. 31–42. TOKÁR, Adrián–LAMAČKOVÁ, Adriana. 2002. Legislatívny a inštitucionálny rámec riešenia rómskej problematiky. In: Vašečka, Imrich (ed.), Čačipen pal o roma. Súhrnná správa o Rómoch na Slovensku. Bratislava: IVO. 187–201. VAŠEČKA, Imrich. 2001. Migrácia Rómov zo Slovenska do krajín EÚ – príčiny a podnety. Sociológia 33(5): 457–471. 2002. Problematika migrácie Rómov zo Slovenska. In: Vašečka, Michal (ed.), Čačapien pal o roma. Súhrnná správa o Rómoch na Slovensku. Bratislava: IVO. 364–378. VÍŠEK, Petr. 1999. Program integrace – řešení problematiky romských obyvatel v období 1970 až 1989. In: ROMOVÉ v České republice. Prague: Socioklub. 54–91.

Nation Branding

Acta Univ. Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies, 14 (2018) 87–115

DOI: 10.2478/auseur-2018-0013

A Successful Example of Complex Country Branding: The ‘E-Estonia’ Positioning Concept and Its Relation to the Presidency of the Council of the EU1 Árpád Ferenc PAPP-VÁRY

Dr habil., Budapest Metropolitan University Faculty of Business, Communication and Tourism Department of Tourism and Marketing e-mail: apappvary@metropolitan.hu Abstract. Estonia held the presidency of the Council of the European Union for six months from 1 July to 31 December 2017. This was a great opportunity to strengthen and shape the country image, also known as the country brand. They do have something to build on: there have been very few countries in recent years and decades where country branding was so conscious. It was a brave choice: in the early 2000s, they decided that they would become E-Estonia. This is not just a means to communicate but also involves policies and tangible developments regarding electronics, IT, and brand new technologies in order to build the most advanced digital society of Europe and the world. But how did this appear during the EU Presidency and how are Estonian citizens involved in branding? This rather lengthy case study explores the concept as a good practice, also setting an example for other countries. Keywords: country brand, positioning, e-government, Estonia, case study

1. Introduction: The Significance of Country Branding In the past two decades, country image centres and country brand councils have been created in Europe and all over the world. Their task is the same everywhere: to position the country, distinguish it from ‘competitors’, create a uniform brand strategy, and, in a sense, coordinate the various messages about the country. 1

The publication was created in the framework of the Development of Public Services and Public Administration Operative Program, within the ‘Competitiveness in Public Service’ („Versenyképesség a közszolgálatban”) subproject of Budapest Metropolitan University with the support of the KÖFOP-2.1.2.-VEKOP-15 ‘Public Service Development for the Establishment of Good Governance’ („A jó kormányzást megalapozó közszolgálat-fejlesztés”) project coordinated by the National University of Public Service.

Árpád Ferenc PAPP-VÁRY

Several sources state that Simon Anholt was the first one who put the concepts of ‘nation branding’ and ‘country branding’ on paper in 1996, when, according to his own account, he was getting bored with spending his life making already rich companies a little bit richer (Anholt 2011, Feinberg–Zhao 2011, Subramanian 2017, Rendon 2003). Therefore, Anholt, having been engaged in the marketing of multinational companies (e.g. Coca-Cola or Nescafé), decided to start a completely new venture: to specialize in country branding. It does not mean that the theory or practice of country branding had been an overlooked topic before 1996, but its name was different at the time. In 1993, a textbook on place marketing was published, which also dealt with countries: ‘Marketing Places: Attracting Investment, Industry, and Tourism to Cities, States and Nations’, whose most important author was no one else than Philip Kotler, ‘the Pope of Marketing’. However, if we take a broader perspective, national identity had always been mentioned in political geography, international relations, political science, cultural anthropology, social psychology, political philosophy, international law, sociology, and historical science (Treanor 1997; Dinnie 2002, 2008). Rather interestingly, marketing academics had not devoted their attention to country brands but to brands from specific countries, that is, the ‘country of origin effect’. For example, Papadopoulos and Heslop (2002) counted 766 significant CoOeffect publications from the previous 50 years but also pointed out that there had not been appropriate surveys on the image of individual countries. The great breakthrough was achieved by the ‘Journal of Brand Management’, which devoted a special issue to ‘nation branding’ in 2002 (see Anholt 2002) with the publications of renowned authors such as Philip Kotler, David Gertner, Nicolas Papadopoulos, Louise Heslop, Wally Olins, Fiona Gilmore, and Creenagh Lodge. In November 2004, a separate academic journal named ‘Place Branding’ was launched – today, it is called ‘Place Branding and Public Diplomacy’. Several books followed: Simon Anholt wrote three books, ‘Brand New Justice’ (2005), ‘Competitive Identity’ (2007), and ‘Brand America’ (2004) co-written with Jeremy Hildreth. In 2008, a more ‘academic’ book was published, titled ‘Nation Branding’ and edited by Keith Dinnie. The field has also developed dynamically ever since, and books focusing on Central and Eastern Europe have also been published, for example ‘Branding Post-Communist Nations: Marketizing National Identities in the “New” Europe’ edited by Nadia Kaneva (2014). Going back to a basic question: Why do we need country branding or nation branding anyway? Mostly because: Nowadays nations are in fierce competition with each other in several fields, including investments, export, and tourism. This is a new phenomenon. In the course of history, tourism has not been of great importance, investments

A Successful Example of Complex Country Branding: The ‘E-Estonia’...

have been limited to a relative narrow range of companies, and the export has covered generally only those national products which have been transported for a long time to the traditionally formed markets. Globalisation has reshaped the rules of the game here as well – Olins says (2004: 176) Yes, the struggle of countries is much more multifaceted than it was about 100 years ago. Meanwhile, the number of countries significantly increased, and – from an economic point of view – we can say that an increasing number of competitors appeared in the market. While the United Nations had 51 member states in 1945, their number is 193 today (http://www.un.org/en/sections/aboutun/overview/index.html 2018). If we do not only mention the increase in the number of countries but also consider that: – democracy is gaining ground worldwide, which makes the work of governments more transparent; – the role of international media is increasing, which also increases transparency: people are better-informed than ever; – travel costs are decreasing, while purchasing power is increasing; – investment in other countries is becoming easier, and several activities can be ‘outsourced’; – specific products may come from any country worldwide; – the demand for ‘brains’, the most qualified workforce, is increasing; moreover, countries are also competing for students; – certain international organizations provide resources for states that are in need and ‘lobby’ appropriately; – mass media, telecommunications, and Internet created the global village: we may receive a lot of information about a place immediately with a Google search; – therefore, borders disappear in a sense; the expressions ‘foreign country’ and ‘foreigner’ lose their meaning; everything is like visiting our neighbours in the neighbourhood, then it becomes clear that this is a new world (Papp-Váry 2009). We can also say that there is a new era in the competition of nations. Although military clashes are still common in certain regions of the world, in most places, warfare is not carried on through traditional weapons but tools of marketing (van Ham 2002). The battlefield is nothing else than the mind of consumers (Ries–Trout 1997). This is the scene where each country tries to gain dominance and occupy as much area as possible because this means tourists, investors, and more consumers purchasing the products of the country. Following Professor Nye (2003, 2005), Anholt and Hildreth (2004), Plavsak (2004), Vicente (2004), and Anholt (2005) call countries with a brand a ‘soft power’ as opposed to the previously established, revulsive ‘hard power’, which is based on authority, military, and violence.

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Therefore, it is no accident that countries take over well-established global corporate strategies, because 51 of the 100 strongest economies in the world are not countries but companies (Lindsay 2000, Wint–Wells 2000, Kyriacou– Cromwell 2001, Gilmore 2002). This is why they start to use country marketing and country branding.

2. Dimensions of Country Brands One of the difficulties of country branding is that country brands themselves are much more complicated than traditional product or service brands and involve much more dimensions (Kádár 2013, Benedek 2016). Several approaches have been developed to model this, and the most important one of these is the Nation Brand Hexagon concept and the related Nation Brands Index by Simon Anholt (Anholt-GfK Roper 2016, Anholt-Ipsos Nation Brands Index 2018). The Nation Brand Index measures the power and appeal of each country’s ‘brand image’ by examining six dimensions of national competence. Together, these dimensions make up the Nation Brand Hexagon: – Exports: The ‘country of origin effect’ – whether knowing where the product is made increases or decreases people’s likelihood of purchasing it, whether a country has particular strengths in science and technology and whether it has creative energy. Perceived associations with particular industries round out that country’s image in this space. – Governance: Incorporates the perceived competence and honesty of the government, respect for citizens’ rights and fair treatment as well as global behaviour in the areas of international peace and security, environmental protection and world poverty reduction. Respondents also select one adjective that best describes the government in each country. – Culture: Perceptions of a country’s heritage, its contemporary cultural ‘vibes’ from music, films, art and literature as well as excellence in sports. Various cultural activities are presented to gauge their strongest images of a country’s cultural ‘product’. – People: The general assessment of people’s friendliness measured by whether respondents would feel welcome when visiting the country. Additionally, the appeal of the people on a personal level – whether respondents want to have a close friend from that country – as well as human resources on a professional level, that is, how willing respondents would be to hire a well-qualified person from that country. Respondents select adjectives describing the predominant images they have of the people in each country. – Tourism: Tourism appeal in three major areas: natural beauty, historic buildings and monuments, and vibrant city life and urban attractions. Tourism

A Successful Example of Complex Country Branding: The ‘E-Estonia’...

potential: how likely they would visit a country if money is no object and adjectives representing the likely experience. – Immigration and Investment: A country’s power to attract talent and capital measured not only by whether people would consider studying, working, and living in that country but also by the country’s economic prosperity, equal opportunity, and ultimately the perception that it is a place with a high quality of life. The country’s economic and business conditions – whether stagnant, declining, developing, or forward-thinking. Table 1. Dimensions of country brands and their measurement based on Simon Anholt’s ‘Nation Brand Hexagon’ model and ‘Nation Brand Index’ ranking Exports Science and Technology Buy products Creative Place Governance Competent and Honest Rights and Fairness Peace and Security Environment Poverty Culture Sport Cultural Heritage Contemporary Culture People Welcoming Close friend Employability Tourism Visit if Money were No Object Natural Beauty Historic Buildings Vibrant City Immigration and Investment Work and Live Quality of Life Educational Qualifications Invest in Business Equality in Society Source: Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index 2016, Anholt-Ipsos Nation Brands Index 2018

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One of the greatest questions of country branding is if a specific country can find a central idea that can be used to distinguish itself or, in a marketing sense, if it can position itself in a way that it does not only affect one dimension from the list above but all of them. This is also a challenge because in most countries different organizations are responsible for each item: for example, the tourism agency of a specific country is responsible for the encouragement of tourism, ministries and cultural institutes are responsible for culture, investments are fostered by an investment promotion organization, export is managed by yet another apparatus, and governance is run by the government or the leader of the country. In several cases, the activities of specific organizations and their communications are not coordinated, thus weakening the uniform country image and the activity shaping it, a.k.a. country branding. This is why various kinds of country image centres and country brand councils have been created in many countries in Europe and all over the world in the past two decades. However, most of these efforts to create coordinating bodies have proved unsuccessful because they could not find a real, unique distinguishing position or were not brave enough to follow the path they had chosen in the long run. Branding is not only about communications but also about actions and, in the case of country branding, about a national strategy behind these actions, a political concept (of foreign and internal policy) in a broad sense.

3. Positioning: How Can We Distinguish Our Country? Positioning is perhaps the most frequently mentioned idea in connection with branding, and its point is to define in what way the brand is unique among others. Many people think that this means a definition of qualities different from rivals, but the real aim of positioning is to create a situation where the brand has no rival, it is the ‘only one’ – as the relevant chapter of the book A márkanév ereje (“The Power of Brand Names”) points out (Papp-Váry 2013). In order to achieve this, brands must affect the ideas in consumers’ minds first. As the subtitle of the book ‘Positioning’ by Ries and Trout says, it is ‘The Battle for Your Mind’. Ries and Trout explained significant ideas such as (1997: 29.): ‘To succeed in our over-communicated society, a company must create a “position” in the prospect’s mind. A position that takes into consideration not only its own strength and weaknesses, but those of its competitors as well.’ The adaptation of this idea for places and, in this case, countries, means that positioning greatly depends on the following aspects: 1) What is the strength or what are the strengths of the specific country? 2) What do ‘customers’ need? What is the sensible advantage for tourists, investors, and other stakeholders – including locals?

A Successful Example of Complex Country Branding: The ‘E-Estonia’...

3) What is the positioning of competitors, that is, other countries? What do they communicate as their competitive advantage? (Our country must be different or, at least, say something different.) 4) What macrotrends can be seen and which are the ones that define what is required for success in the upcoming years or decades? Good positioning can be characterized by the following attributes (Papp-Váry 2011): 1) It distinguishes: Many countries fall in the trap that they look at what others do and copy them. This is the so-called ‘me too’ way of thinking, although one has to be different: this is the way a country can become a focus of attention, increase the number of tourists and investors, raise media interest, and feed the pride of local people. Countries must find some unique and specific attraction that other countries do not have or at least do not communicate. Research has proved that several thousands of messages are received by an average person in our overcommunicated society every day; so, there is no chance to stand out if you are not original. 2) It is relevant: That is, it is interesting for people – tourists, investors, and locals. Well-defined positioning also helps to communicate and clarify the aims and efforts of the state. 3) It is true: There must be facts behind positioning, and they must be based on existing capabilities and values agreed on by the majority of the country’s citizens. If we say something that is not true, it will kick back because, as the famous advertising guru, Bill Bernbach, said: ‘nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising’ (Levenson 1998). There must not be a gap between promise and experience, and communications must not divorce from reality. At the same time, you also have to use it as smartly as possible. As the slogan of the McCannErickson advertising agency says, ‘Truth well told’. This must be our guideline. 4) It is concrete: The definition of a specific example of positioning always involves some kind of narrowing: we must choose a specific thing, be the best in that field, and communicate it. In the long run, less is more. 5) It is motivating: It affects the mind and the heart at the same time, creates positive emotions, and people want to be involved in it. Therefore, logic and creativity are equally necessary to find it. 6) It is strategic: It is something that may affect the operation of the whole country, not just its communication. It can be adopted to each function of a country. It shows the way for the country in the long run. It may also appear consistently on each tool. 7) It is restrictive: Positioning is always restriction. We must define what the specific country is, and what it is not. We should say less, and it should be short and simple. 8) It is an experience. Something that makes us feel: Wow! Yeah! Haha! (Sas 2018)

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The process of positioning is actually very similar to Michelangelo’s words on his own statues, stating that he just quarried the stone and realized what had always been included in it. Therefore, we are often surprised to see an example of good positioning: ‘Why didn’t we think of that before?’ Countries can be positioned or distinguished from various aspects, including: – characteristic architecture; – unique sights; – natural environment; – weather, climate; – history; – legend, myth; – location; – culture; – event; – national cuisine, food; – wine or other alcoholic beverages; – people; – celebrities; – night life; – sport; – scientific achievement; – design; – industry, characteristic products, etc. As it can be seen, most of these are related to the touristic sights of the country. However, tourism is not the only thing that can serve as the basis for country positioning. The most important point is that positioning should be as specific as possible, something that ‘competitor’ countries do not mention in their self-descriptions, and use an argument that is important for the ‘customers’: the stakeholders of the country. In connection with the previous chapter, we may also mention that the more of these six nation brand aspects are covered by positioning in a specific case, the more effective it can be. According to the famous American brand expert, Jack Trout (2004), marketing is nothing else than a ‘coherent strategic direction’. If the positioning is good, then all middle-term and long-term plans must follow from it logically.

A Successful Example of Complex Country Branding: The ‘E-Estonia’...

4. Unique Country Positioning: Estonia Having Become ‘E-Stonia’ Let us see the case of Estonia in the light of the abovementioned theoretical approach. Estonia is one of the smallest countries in the world and Europe considering its territory, although it is not as small as many people would think: its area of 45,226 km2 is bigger than Slovenia, the Netherlands, Denmark, or Switzerland. At the same time, its population is only 1.3 million in total, wherefore its population density is 4 times smaller than the average of the European Union. It is also important to note that although the territory has a long historical past, independent Estonia was born only at the end of World War I: in 2018, Estonia celebrates the 100th anniversary of the declaration of its independence, just like Finland. However, the country has spent almost half of its hundred years under Soviet occupation, as part of the Soviet Union. One result of that is the fact that about 25% of the population is Russian. Given the above, it is not surprising that the country had to face challenges that were similar to those experienced in other Baltic states. As the head of the country image centre of Latvia, a neighbouring country, Ojars Kalnins explained (see Papp-Váry 2005) that the country branding process had three stages in the case of Baltic states. In the early 1990s, they had to be introduced to the world: ‘we are here’. Then they had to demonstrate that their nation is just as normal as others: ‘we are normal’. In the case of Estonia, this also meant that they suggested they were the ‘top students’ of the European Union. The third phase could only take place when they were already discussing what characteristics distinguished the country from others. This was (and is) the era of ‘we are special’. Table 2. The three phases of country branding in the case of the Baltic States after the collapse of the Soviet Union Phase Message Meaning Period 1 ‘We are here!’ ‘Introduction’ to Right after the collapse Europe and the world of socialism, reclaiming independence/democracy 2 ‘We are normal!’ The nation is just Before joining the as normal as other European Union and other nations international institutions such as NATO 3 ‘We are special!’ Unique positioning of After joining the European the country Union Source: based on Papp-Váry 2005: 8–11

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In the case of Estonia, the first significant brand-building steps were taken in 2001, when an Estonian participant won the Eurovision Song Contest, and Estonia became the host country in the next year. Estonia was the first former Soviet member state to organize the Eurovision contest, and its significance is well demonstrated by the fact that it became the topic of PhD theses, and a book was also published about it with the title ‘The Modern Fairy Tale: Nation Branding, National Identity and the Eurovision Song Contest in Estonia’ (Jordan 2014). In connection with the Eurovision Song Contest, the Estonian organization promoting investments, called Enterprise Estonia, published a tender, which was won by British consulting company Interbrand. Regarding the aims (and effects) of organizing the Eurovision Song Contest, the tender material of the company emphasized that their aim was to help Estonia overcome the ‘accident of history’ that had placed the country in the East, rather than the West in the minds of its interlocutors. However, Interbrand’s task was far more than country branding in connection with the song contest. The aim was to create a complex branding programme that would promote investments, attract tourists, and stimulate export. The programme was also supposed to be connected to their accession to NATO and the EU. In the framework of the project, they conducted extensive research involving 1,400 interviews. Their findings served as the basis of their brand essence, a pure and unifying idea intended to rally Estonian citizens to its cause and convey a coherent, consistent, and controlled message abroad (Aronczyk 2013). The brand essence selected was ‘Positively Transforming’, a phrase that straddled both the recovery of a buried past and the adoption of transition reforms. As the brand book created by Interbrand pointed out, this can be explained with five narratives: – Fresh Perspective; – Radical, Reforming, and Transforming Attitude; – Nordic Temperament and Environment; – Resourceful Self-Starter by Nature; – European Society. It is peculiar that although the country slogan was also ‘Positively Transforming’, the logo featured ‘Welcome to Estonia’, which is, to be honest, less distinguishing. This might have been the reason of a controversy: while the client (Enterprise Estonia), the government, and – not surprisingly – Interbrand, the consulting company itself, considered the project as highly successful, the media and the majority of the citizens asked: ‘Did they spend our money on this?’ They received especially negative feedback regarding the choice of the consulting company: why was a British firm selected instead of an Estonian one? Therefore, the campaign ended as quickly as it started, which may also be attributed to the fact that there was a change of government in 2002.

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However, it can be considered a successful effort that some of the narratives mentioned above have ‘gone through’, especially ‘A European Society’ symbolizing the ‘return’ to Europe and separation from the former Soviet Union, and ‘A Nordic Temperament and Environment’, which played a similar role. The success of these two narratives may also be attributed to the fact that Estonia’s leading politicians, Prime Minister Mart Laar and President of the Republic Lennart Meri had been emphasizing those ideas for several years. The creative elaboration of northern-ness appeared in the Interbrand material as ‘Nordic with a twist’, but Estonian companies and citizens started to think (and feel) of themselves more Northern than Baltic without any twist (Jordan 2014). This was all very similar to events that took place in Finland several decades ago: originally, the area was also considered a Baltic country in geography books but was repositioned as part of Scandinavia, not the Baltics (see the 2004 study by Papp-Váry on the case of Finland).

5. The E-stonia Vision Becoming a Mission Interestingly, the starting point of the latter stage in Estonia was a discussion of a possibility to change the name of the country. What happened in 1994 was that a ferry named Estonia sank on the way between the Estonian capital, Tallinn, and the Swedish capital, Stockholm. The tragedy claimed the lives of 852 people, and there are still several conflicting stories on the sinking of the ferry to its watery grave. Some say that it was a revenge of the soldiers of the former Soviet ‘empire’, who had to leave Estonia forever in 1994, and therefore they placed explosives on the ship. A film starring Donald Sutherland was also produced on the story later on – it was titled ‘Estonia’ (aired in some countries with the title ‘Baltic storm’). As a result of the occurring events, Estonian leaders were seriously considering to replace the name Estonia with Estland, hoping that foreigners would not associate this German-sounding name with the ferry accident and at the same time aiming to bring the country closer to the similar sounding Finland (PappVáry 2016, Szondi 2007). Then the ‘Baltic storm’ subsided, and the name Estonia remained. At least for a while. In the early 2000s, another idea to change the name of the country arose: Estonia should become E-stonia! The starting point was that the government realized that Estonia only had forests, timber industry, and some machinery industry, but the latter was not too competitive. Therefore, they defined new areas including electronics and information technology as the possible way out. Although the name of the country was left unchanged again, E-stonia became an existing vision that could be translated into concrete actions and communication.

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They even found its historical roots and ideology: Estonia was the first place in the Soviet Union where computer education was started in 1965 (!), using the famous Ural-1 model. Another reference is that most Western countries provided support for Estonia by donating computers after the restoration of independence in 1991, which were than used by Estonians with great enthusiasm (Bucsky 2016). As a result, all classrooms in the country had been equipped with computers by 1997, and all of them had had Internet access by 1998 (!). The country’s first mobile network with data traffic was launched in 2001, which provided wireless Internet access all around the country, including not too densely populated areas such as forests. By 2011, 2,440 free Wi-Fi hotspots had been created nationwide, including cafés, hotels, schools, and petrol stations (Kovács 2017). Another important factor in the quick spread of computerization was that paper-based bureaucracy had not been built up before because Estonia was just ‘too small’ for this within the Soviet Union. Therefore, they did not have to replace something in the nineties but build and launch something new. This was especially true for the bank system, which they had to build up from scratch – they launched a system with state-of-the-art IT technology. This attitude is also characteristic of their government: since 2000, they have not actually used paper in the sessions of the government and the parliament. Moreover, the right to Internet access was also included in their constitution (!) as a significant channel of democracy (Torontáli 2016). In that sense, the Estonian digital revolution is not only about technology but also about the creation of a citizen-friendly, serviceproviding state, local authorities say. “It is about a state philosophy which probably had not been realized in any countries in such depth” (Kovács 2017). Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who was President of the Republic of Estonia for a decade (2006–2016), recalled the period the following way: ‘Mosaic (the first popular web browser) was published in 1993, and everyone felt like being on a playground. We thought that state administration should also work in a similar way’ (Kovács 2017). The system is based on a chip card and a digital personal document system, which was greatly admired by people from foreign governments following its launch in 2002. ID-kaart is compulsory for all citizens above the age of 15. It functions as an identity card, an address card, a passport within the EU, a health insurance card, a tax card, an identifier for bank transactions, a digital signature, a ticket/pass in Tallinn and Tartu, and a parking ticket but also provides access to government databases and allows citizens to buy prescription drugs – all at the same time (Torontáli 2016). As a result, citizens need to provide each data only once. For example, if someone takes out an insurance for his/her new car, there is no need to provide any personal data that has been provided somewhere before; the new owner only needs to make a declaration about possessing the new car (Kovács 2017).

A Successful Example of Complex Country Branding: The ‘E-Estonia’...

We may also ask how many people use the system. A suggestive number could provide an answer: in the 2015 parliamentary elections, more than 30% of votes were cast online from 116 various countries. In Estonia, citizens have been able to cast their vote for the self-government elections since 2005 and for the parliamentary elections since 2007. Other indicative data prove that filling in tax returns only takes 3–5 minutes with the system, but there are also quick formulas that enable citizens to perform this in 1 (!) minute because they only need to check the numbers provided by the system. It is no wonder that 95% of Estonians fill in their tax returns online. The eesti.ee government portal, launched in 2003, allows citizens to manage more than 160 kinds of their affairs. These are all matters that should also be managed online in other Central and Eastern European countries. For example, citizens can apply online for child care benefit, unemployment benefit, or other social benefits by the state – they do not have to gather information or statements registered by the state again or visit government offices for this reason. E-healthcare may be the most outstanding point of the novel system, and there are opinions that it is the best e-healthcare system of the world. Doctors see the whole patient journey including all prescribed drugs and performed examinations, and they also have access to X-ray, lab tests, MRI data and images. Patients may also authorize their relatives to access some of their personal information. Due to the sensitive nature of patient information, they log everything in the system, and there is a strict monitoring of permissions to access these data. Patients may consult doctors and make appointments via e-mail, telephone, or Skype (!). Another useful feature is the digital medicine system: there are no prescriptions, and citizens can get their medicines in the drugstores with their ID card. They can also request their regularly used medicines via e-mail, and they do not have to visit their doctors for this purpose (Bucsky 2016). In the meantime, important international organizations also created their centres of digital operations in Estonia: the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence was established in Tallinn in 2008. It also had an important message because there was a cyber attack against Estonia a year earlier, in April 2007, following the removal of the Soviet war memorial in Tallinn. It involved the parliament, government agencies, ministries, banks, phone companies, and media firms as well. Although it had never been proved, they suspected that Russia was behind the attacks according to the selection of targets and the coordination of the activities. Therefore, Estonia decided that it would create the world’s first ‘information embassy’ in Luxemburg. It is actually a huge warehouse, where all important data related to Estonia are stored, to make the restoration of servers possible without data loss should another attack occur (Kovács 2017). In addition, the headquarters of the IT Agency of the EU responsible for the coordination of various IT developments within the Union was built in

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Estonia in 2011. Two years later, the UNESCO World Summit on Information Society honoured the Estonian e-Annual Reporting system as the decade’s best e-Government application – among other things, the system provides assistance for the start of businesses. In Estonia, the documentation of the latter can be completed in 18 (!) minutes (Századvég Alapítvány 2015). As the official presentations about the country point out, there are actually only three things that you cannot manage fully electronically: the sale and purchase of properties, marriage, and divorce (https://brand.estonia.ee/ 2017). Others state that as a result of the developments of electronic state administration, the Estonian state reached as far that it could practically govern the country from the other side of the world. Taavi Roives, who occupied the prime minister’s chair in 2014 at the age of 35, even made jokes that he could only recall one occasion when he had to sign something physically during his two and a half years in office, and it was a guestbook of a ceremony that they put in front of him. According to another interesting piece of information, the online availability of 99% of services in the state with a population of 1.3 million spares a quantity of paper that would amount to the size of 12 Eiffel Towers. According to the statistics, it can also be stated that the use of electronic signature in Estonia spares a sum equal to the 2% of the country’s GDP (Kovács 2017). In summary, there is no doubt that Estonia is building the most digitally advanced society in the world. Kersti Kaljulaid, the current President of Estonia always mentions that it has been the definite purpose of her and her predecessors to increase the competitiveness of their country and create an environment for their citizens that would provide them satisfaction and a vision. However, considering their capabilities, they did not just want to develop state-of-the-art technologies; rather, they wished to organize existing solutions into a system that would lead to the best results. This meant that these new technologies would become available not only for the chosen or the wealthy few but the entire Estonian society. It is also important to point out that no one in Estonia is forced to become a ‘digital citizen’, but its advantages are so obvious and tangible that people enter the system willingly and voluntarily (Dajkó 2017a).

6. Digital Start-Ups and Digital Citizenship As a result, it is no wonder that Estonia is a ‘start-up nation’, especially regarding the number of new enterprises in correlation with the population, 1.3 million people. This is also supported by the fact that Estonian children may study programming from the age of 7. All this is part of the so-called Tiigrihüpe (Tiger Leap) programme. ‘In the 1980s all secondary school students wanted to be rock

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stars, but nowadays every teenager wants to be a tech entrepreneur’ – said the Estonian Minister of Culture (Kovács 2017). The small country has also provided the world with great brands. The most famous example is Skype, which has become a standard communications tool on the computers and phones of companies and individuals, and was acquired by Microsoft for USD 8.5 billion in 2011. Playtech, a digital gaming, online poker, and casino company belonging to the FTSE250 index of the London Stock Exchange also has Estonian roots. TransferWise was founded by the first employee of Skype, and in 2016 it helped users to perform international financial transfers worth 800 million pounds each month, which saved 30 million pounds a month as compared to traditional interbank transfers. DreamApply is the most popular online application system for people who would like to study in higher education institutions abroad. According to the feedback, universities introducing the system increased the number of their applicants by 20–300 (!) per cent. Taxify, a competitor of Uber (trying to walk in the footsteps of Uber alternative taxi service in places where it has been banned), is also Estonian. Interestingly, there is a law in Estonia that deals with negotiated passenger transport, which enables individuals to enter the market of passenger services with the help of Internet applications. Lingvist, an application for language learning, is also an Estonian development, which enables us to develop our skills in multiple languages. This is also special because Estonian is a language only spoken by a small number of people around the world – maybe this is one of the reasons studying and teaching languages are important for them. Another Estonian example is GrabCAD, which was founded with the goal of bringing together all the tools engineers need to manage and share CAD files into one easy-to-use platform. Another start-up called Fortumo offers various mobile payment solutions for web services and mobile applications. The PipeDrive application is a sales customer relationship management (CRM) tool for small and medium-sized businesses. Last but not least, Starship Technologies, established by the founders of Skype, is a company developing small self-driving robotic delivery vehicles. The electric-powered rovers ride on sidewalks at a pedestrian speed (max. 6 km/h), can be remote-controlled if autonomous operation fails, and will only be used for relatively short-range local delivery. Since 2016, Starship delivery robots have been used by the Wolt online food ordering service in Tallinn. The policy of encouraging start-ups is well demonstrated by the fact that the region is mentioned as the Baltic Silicon Valley, and Technopol, the largest startup incubator hosts more than 50 tech companies. Considering the number of start-ups per 100 thousand inhabitants, Estonia is well above the EU average, and only Iceland and Ireland surpass the country in this respect (Kovács 2017).

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However, the brands mentioned above ‘forgot’ one thing that would be important from a country branding point of view: none of them communicate their Estonian roots directly. Just imagine that every time you use Skype you see that it has Estonian origins – it would increase awareness regarding Estonia and develop the image of the country, adding to the communication of the E-Estonia message. In comparison, a much less effective but undoubtedly important solution is that there is a showcase room in Tallinn presenting the success of the E-Estonia concept: the far-sighted government, the proactive information technology sector, and the population open to innovation. The 360 square metre exhibition has received delegations from more than 120 countries, who got an insight into topics such as the development of digital society, digital and mobile identity, cybersecurity, smart city projects, transparency, or the Big Brother phenomenon. And, of course, there are a lot of e-topics: e-citizenship, e-government, e-healthcare, e-justice, e-taxation, e-police, e-school, and so on (https://e-estonia.com/e-estonia-showroom/ 2016). If we examine the influence of this smart E-stonia positioning on Estonian economy, we realize that the result is outstanding: at least one third of the 700% Estonian GDP growth is connected to information technology. According to data for the year 2017, the Estonian GDP per capita is almost USD 20,000, which is more than the GDP per capita of Hungary, Romania, or two other Baltic states (Latvia and Lithuania). The nations listed above must face similar challenges: the number of births is decreasing, and so a shortage of skilled labour is expected in the future. Estonia even has a solution for this: digital citizenship, which is available for anyone. 10 thousand people applied for it in 2015, which is a big deal because only 13 thousand children were born in the country in the meantime. Of course, digital citizens do not live in Estonia but abroad. Still, according to a report, 400 of them established a company in Estonia and created 800 new workplaces. In addition, digital citizens only have to pay any kind of taxes if they take income out of the company – so, the adventure might be worth a try (Torontáli 2016). And how serious is the Estonian government about this? According to their plans, this method will increase the number of their citizens to more than 10 million by the year 2025 (even if they are virtual citizens). This digital community may further develop E-Stonia. Start-uppers are especially welcome in the system of digital citizenship. For a start, one of their websites provides 10 reasons for people interested in founding a company in Estonia (Kovács 2017, http://startupestonia.ee/why-estonia 2017): 1) Estonia is the perfect place to test and establish your idea! You’ll find the no-bullshit-people here, who will tell you what works and what doesn’t. 2) Estonians are true techies – kids get programming skills from school and some schools even teach how to build bitcoin apps!

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3) We do things fast! You can establish a company online in 15 minutes and do the taxes in 3 minutes! 4) Talking about taxes – Estonia has one of the most liberal tax systems in the world with zero corporate income tax! 5) Our e-government solutions are top notch! Furthermore, our start-up ecosystem works closely with the government to make Estonia the best place for start-ups to grow. 6) Life quality in Estonia is high but at the same time the living costs are low. Win-win! 7) 51% of the country is covered with forest, we are surrounded by seas from two sides, and our air is the cleanest in the world. Sounds like a great natural environment to boost great ideas? 8) Estonian is a bit tricky to learn, but, luckily, we speak the international language of business! 9) Estonian start-ups raise more and more money each year! Come and see for yourself how they do it. 10) We have a strong tight-knit start-up ecosystem called #estonianmafia! Join the family – we’ve got you covered! In addition, the digital economic ecosystem will soon be accompanied by digital money: in August 2017, they announced that they would be the first country in the world to introduce the digital currency of the country called estcoin. According to their expectations, the government-supported ICO (initial coin offering) and digital investment fund would be extremely favourable for the Estonian economy and its so-called e-citizens (Dajkó 2017b). As the announcement was made when Estonia was already performing its EU Council Presidency, it is interesting to see the branding aspects related to it particularly because the Estonian government apparently scheduled the announcement or launch of several technological developments to this period. For example, the test operation of two self-driving buses was started in Tallinn, the capital, in August 2017.

7. Country Branding during the Six Months of EU Council Presidency The agenda of the European Union Council – similarly to that of the European Union itself – is mostly defined in advance, and the presiding country always has to align to it. However, they do have the opportunity to include policies that are especially important for the presiding country with greater emphasis, and they also have the opportunity to present the country in general to the most important decision-making bodies.

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Considering Estonia and the presidency of the country in the second half of 2017, it can be seen that the country was probably taking its opportunities more effectively than previous countries, which may also be justified by the fact that one of the four priorities of the Estonian presidency was ‘A digital Europe and the free movement of data’. ‘We have proved several times that we are pioneering in this field, and therefore it is almost our duty to solve as many questions involving digital technology as possible.’ – emphasized Member of EP Marju Lauristin. Member of EP Yana Toom expressed her hopes that as a result of their presidency the use of digital services in the public sector would spread more quickly all around Europe because the Estonian government system has been praised in every forum for its openness and reliability. Besides, they have also laid special emphasis on the development of e-commerce at an international level (see Európa Pont 2017). It is also important to highlight that the other three priorities besides ‘A digital Europe and the free movement of data” were also closely connected to their country branding measures: ‘An open and innovative European economy’, ‘A safe and secure Europe’, and ‘An inclusive and sustainable Europe’. Digitalization, infocommunications solutions, and e-commerce also appeared in these priorities as much as possible. At the same time, it can also be seen that Estonians do not only consider the digital world very important but also regard nature as a priority, which is no surprise as half of the area of the country is covered by forest. As they described the country on the EU2017EE website, Estonia is a place where an affinity for nature and the benefits of digital society go hand in hand. ‘The story of Estonia is depicted in two values. At the base is a connection with nature, at the top is a story of new technologies and ways of living. The aim of finding balance and synergy between natural and man-made, old and new, is our unfolding story.’

8. Building the Country Brand Involving Estonians One of the toughest challenges associated with the success or failure of the branding of a country is if locals, people living in the country can be convinced to stand behind the case and how much they can be affected to communicate about the country in a way preferred by the country positioning defined by the national government and the experts involved. This is an extremely sensitive issue in the Central and Eastern European region because there were similar attempts on the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain during the Communist/Socialist era, but these were considered the worst kind of propaganda, e.g. ‘we are the country of iron and steel’.

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However, Estonia is skilfully balancing: its digital country brand platform, brand.estonia.ee is an excellent example of how to build a country brand involving local citizens facilitating uniform communications. As the website explains to its users: Brand Estonia helps you introduce Estonia in a way that attracts attention, creates trust and makes you proud. It can be used by anyone who wants to talk about Estonia: businesses, government institutions, universities, organisations, events and people. Here you will find the tools to introduce Estonia in a considered, clear and recognizable way. Together we will create the image of Estonia. Considering the brand platform and usage, they formulate different levels called ‘think, use, create, see’. The think level includes character, core messages, story and verbal identity, and the use of words. Let us examine these in more detail.

Character Nordic, surprising, smart. These are the essence of Estonia. These are what we want to be and to be known for. If we understand and present Estonia’s values and advantages in the same way, our voice is stronger and more convincing. These traits are not to be shouted out as slogans. For that we have our story and our core messages – they bring out Estonia’s advantages and uniqueness. The values here are the starting point for all actions aimed at promoting Estonia. They are the essence of Estonia. Table 3. The character of the Estonia brand Nordic Surprising – Pragmatic – Different – Honest – Individualistic – Straightforward – Contrasting – Egalitarian – Brave – Close to nature Effect: We attract Effect: We are attention. trustworthy.

Smart – Innovative – Tech-savvy – Curious – Discontented Effect: We are pioneers.

Source: Brand Estonia (2017): https://brand.estonia.ee/, downloaded: 27 August 2017.

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Core Messages These core messages are the first things you can say about Estonia. Pick any combination of them depending on the target audience. Always use at least one of the core messages when introducing Estonia for the first time. Independent minds Estonia’s biggest asset is our people. Many of them have done significant things. Some are world famous and others known only to a few. What matters is that all of them have used their minds independently and brought their vision to life. − Our society is not hierarchical − Everyone can live up to their potential − Easy and straightforward communication with the state Clean environment Estonia has a lot of untouched nature and a low population density. This is very rare in today’s world. We know how to care for our environment and we are proud of it. − We hold fourth place in urban air quality in the world − 51% of Estonian territory is covered with forests − 40% of the territory is organic collection area − 17% of our farmland is organic − 22% of our country is wildlife preserves − From any point, the nearest marsh is always less than 10 km away. Digital society Estonia is the first country to function as a digital service. Our citizens and e-residents can get things done fast and efficiently. A number of worldrenowned technology companies were born in Estonia and the nation boasts more thriving start-up companies per capita than anywhere else in Europe. − The first country in the world to offer e-residency − The first country in the world to vote online − Three minutes to file your taxes − Most entrepreneurial country in Europe As it can be seen, digital society is just one of three pillars here. As we have already mentioned, half of Estonia is covered with forest, and the choice of nature may serve as some kind of counterpoint or balance with technology: they treasure Estonia’s breath-taking nature, such as the forests and marshes, just as much as

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their e-state solutions: ‘in fact, you could say that we use the latter to spend more time enjoying the former’. And why is ‘independent minds’ the first pillar? Probably because the commitment to eliminate the so-called homo sovieticus, a post-communist kind of personality, is still strong. This way, the Estonian state supports all initiatives that facilitate the self-reliance of people and decrease their dependence on the state. This also involves determined, almost extremely market- and enterprisefriendly economic policies (Átlátszó.hu 2016).

Story/History ‘In Estonia, clean and untouched nature co-exists with the world’s most digitally advanced society. It is a place for independent minds where bright ideas meet a can-do spirit.’

Verbal Identity The way we speak reveals the way we think. The way we talk and write about Estonia is critical, as is the tone we use and our manner of speaking. Friendly: Write like you would write to a friend – be direct but polite. Don’t fawn, flatter or apologise. Unique: Focus on our uniqueness. Talk about things that catch your listeners’ or readers’ interest. Content-rich: Do you have something new and informative to say to your readers? Avoid excess adjectives, don’t be wordy or generic. Down-to-earth: We always have a plan how to make our disadvantages work for us. Instead of saying how much it rains in Estonia, introduce people to mushroom picking. Also – use the word ‘small’ only in a positive context.

The brand comes alive Of course, it is extremely important how a brand can come alive. As the ‘use’ menu item of the abovementioned website says: ‘The easiest way to make Brand Estonia work for you is to use these ready-made materials to promote Estonia. Here you will find up-to-date and professional presentations, videos, publications and our official webpage. These materials are meant for businesses, government employees, tourism professionals, journalists and anyone else wishing to introduce Estonia to the world.’ Just to mention one aspect, Power Point presentations on this topic include examples such as:

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– Need to introduce Estonia for the first time? – Here is a general overview. – e-Estonia introduction – Want to introduce e-Estonia and the world’s first fully digital business environment? – What is Brand Estonia? – Here you will find the Brand Estonia introduction. – Fun facts – 12 fun facts about Estonia. – Want to be brutally honest? – Here are 8 not so positive facts about Estonia. These concise factual presentations have also provided valuable background information for this study (see: https://brand.estonia.ee/use/presentations/ 2017). The ‘Create’ menu item is even more exciting. On the one hand, a lot of quality photos about Estonia are available in visual compositions according to the brand, which can be freely used for the promotion of Estonia as long as the source is indicated. In addition, the ‘EST’ game also appears here, which is not only an abbreviation of Estonia but also the ending of several English words, e.g. as the superlative of adjectives. This provides the opportunity for a little game highlighting the ‘est’ part, be it campaigns, presentations, websites, or even souvenirs. A nonexhaustive list of such words is presented below. Table 3. Highlighting the EST part in English words as a superlative form of the adjective finest lightest scariest best clearest funniest longest shortest biggest closest greatest loveliest smartest blackest coldest happiest lowest strongest boldest coolest newest sweetest bravest cosiest healthiest highest oldest warmest brightest dearest hippest prettiest weirdest busiest deepest whitest hottest proudest chilliest easiest wildest largest safest cleanest fastest wisest Source: Brand Estonia 2017 (https://brand.estonia.ee/, downloaded on: 27 August 2017)

Besides, there are English words where EST does not appear as the superlative form of the adjective. Examples include: forest, guest, invest, manifest, modest, and festival. Another ‘wordplay’ and part of the branding process according to the E-Stonia concept is that they ask people to ‘Create a link between positive and progressive words starting with the letter “e” and Estonia so that these e-words become synonyms for Estonia.’ A few examples can be seen below:

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Table 4. E-words, starting with the letter ‘e’, which can be linked to Estonia in a positive and progressive way (E-stonia) eager electronic encouraging especial expectant eat embrace enjoy even experience edifying eminent enlightened excellent experimental educational emphatic enter exciting explore effective empower entertaining exhilarating expressive efficient empowering enthralling exotic exquisite egalitarian enable enthusiastic expand extend electrifying enchanting e-residency expanding extensive extraordinary Source: Brand Estonia 2017 (https://brand.estonia.ee/, downloaded on: 27 August 2017)

Last but not least, an important part of the ‘Create’ point is how to involve Estonians (who are otherwise active in social media) in the country branding process. The website facilitates it by providing help to include a pebble-like image in the Facebook cover picture and the profile picture. The pebble (at least, this form) is again an Estonian characteristic, which is also part of the visual identity of the Estonia brand. The ‘Design’ menu item of the brand.estonia.ee website provides help primarily for graphics experts and design professionals and is closely connected to the above point. This part also determines the fundamental principle that: ‘The visual language of Brand Estonia is light, clean and simple. Simple as in clear, but also smart. Clean as in uncluttered with unnecessary elements and confusing typography. Light because we leave enough room around text and images; that makes them easy to read and the focus will be on the content.’ Two other design aspects must also be mentioned. There is no central country logo. Instead, they use wordmarks that are connected to Estonia and a specific topic. They have a distinct graphic form and usage rules. The text of each mark is related to the topic’s key search terms or URL, thus helping to reach the info easier. The other aspect is that the country has its own official typeface called Aino, created by Estonian Design Team and Anton Koovit. From a certain point of view, it is the most widespread and recognizable element of the brand as it communicates their ideas in all mediums – in print and on screens, in long and short texts.

9. Conclusions, Findings At the end of the study, it is worth drawing the most important conclusions provided by the E-Estonia case study. This may also serve as a guideline for other countries.

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There is no successful country branding without a country strategy The case of Estonia clearly shows that country branding is much more than the creation of a logo with a characteristic design or the creation of a catchy slogan. Moreover, it is much more than strategic communications. A fundamental prerequisite of successful country branding is a successful country strategy. Examples include the ‘Positively transforming’ concept, which was first used in 2002, but at about the same time another concept was born, which later became a vision and a kind of mission: the ‘E-Estonia’ concept. A country must find a unique position that corresponds to the classical rules of positioning Estonia’s position is like that: it is based on something which is the strength of the country, something that provides sensible advantages for investors, tourists but most importantly to locals; it can be clearly distinguished from the positioning of other countries; it is based on macrotrends. All in all, it is true that it is distinguishing, relevant, true, concrete, motivating, and strategic. Whatever the size of a country is, it can be branded Considering its area, and, especially, its population, Estonia is not only one of the smallest countries of Europe but also of the world. It still managed to find a unique proposition that can distinguish it, and make the country interesting for the world. Country branding has its steps that countries have to follow For states breaking away from the Soviet Union, this has meant the following: in the early 1990s, they had to introduce themselves to the world: ‘we are here’. Then they had to demonstrate that they are just as normal states as any other: ‘we are normal’. Only after these two phases could the third one follow, once they had already discussed in what sense they were different from others: this was (and is) the ‘we are special’ period. Good country branding affects all six dimensions defined by Anholt The E-Estonia strategy was primarily created with the purpose of promoting investments, but it actually affected many other things: – Government policies, for example, ID-kaart, e-government, companies that can be founded within 18 minutes, or the fact that Estonian children can study programming from the age of 7. – People because the most advanced digital society of the world is developing here, although this is always kept in balance with nature. – Export as Estonia mostly provides digital brands for the world such as Skype, PlayTech, Transferwise, DreamApply, Taxify, Lingvist, GrabCAD, Fortumo, PipeDrive, or Starship Technologies; and several other start-ups are likely to appear here. – Tourism as many people visit Estonia because this modern digital world in harmony with nature is exciting for them.

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– Investment and immigration; it is enough to think of digital citizenship. – Culture because this does not only mean classical culture but also how the country can represent it today, what cultural values it creates for the world in the present. A good country brand concept has a positive influence on economic performance Estonia is an excellent example of the development path that a country may achieve within years or decades through a good strategy. The former Soviet member state became the front-runner of the Central and Eastern European region, and its GDP does not only exceed that of the two other Baltic states but also that of Hungary, for example. However, we must also add that Estonians prefer to consider themselves as a Northern people, not as a Baltic or Central/ Eastern European one. Success must be proudly presented to the world Among other things, the E-Estonia Showroom in Tallinn also serves this purpose. They have received delegations from 120 countries, who could get acquainted with this unique country branding strategy and country strategy. All international events organized in the country must be related to the country brand concept The case of Estonia demonstrated this well in connection with the 2002 Eurovision Song Contest, which was one of the reasons to prepare their first country brand book, and the same was expected from the 2017 EU Council Presidency (see the next paragraph). If there is a country branding strategy, it is much easier to utilize the six months of EU Council Presidency In the case of Estonia, priorities were almost obvious. One of the four themes was clearly connected to the brand essence of the country (‘A digital Europe and the free movement of data’), but the other three also included related ideas: ‘An open and innovative European economy’, ‘A safe and secure Europe’, and ‘An inclusive and sustainable Europe’. This was also facilitated by the fact that Estonia has always wanted to be the top student of the EU, and government materials expressly mentioned this as early as 2004, before joining the EU. Wordplays with the name of the country work well in country branding, especially if you want to raise awareness We can see several examples of this concept. It is enough to think of Slovenia’s slogan ‘I feel sLOVEnia’, but some years ago the Czech Republic also had a campaign based on the Facebook-like craze called ‘The Czech RepubLIKE’. As mentioned above in this case study, Estonia even considered replacing its original country name with E-Stonia. Instead, they now use E-Estonia in many contexts, and it is worth checking out how many wordplays the brand book suggests, be it words including ‘est’, or ones simply starting with the letter ‘e’.

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Good country branding involves local people but does not create the impression that it is propaganda Estonia is also balancing well in this field. Its brand book leads and directs but does not control anything. It provides tools for Estonian citizens to highlight the appropriate items if their country is mentioned in any forums. This is great help to ensure the awareness of Estonia and support the reshaping of the country image in a more uniform way.

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Book Review

Acta Univ. Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies, 14 (2018) 119–121

DOI: 10.2478/auseur-2018-0014

Spatiality and Sociality

Viktor Berger: Térré szőtt társadalmiság. A tér kategóriája a szociológiaelméletekben [Sociality Woven into Space. The Category of Space in Sociological Theories]1 In recent decades, a significant transformation – relevant to spatial theory – has been taking place in the field of theoretical sociology. While previously sociology regarded space merely as the environment of social actions, existing independently from the people, according to the new approach, space itself is a product of society, and sociality and spatiality are inseparable and interconnected. It is a connection, the two components of which are constructing one another: social actions – in a Lefebvrean perspective – produce spaces, which, in turn, determine social conditions. However, relational sociology focusing on the relativity of sociality and spatiality does not have the necessary potential to become a pronounced helper of the age diagnostic tasks of sociology yet. According to Viktor Berger, in order to develop this potential, first, the appropriate definition of space has to be developed, as authors of the concepts of spatial sociology do not consider that borrowing concepts from other disciplines leads to a reinterpretation of their content (p. 227). He warns that sociology has to become able to develop the problem of space in compliance with its own methodology and disciplinary attributes. The handbook presenting the spatial theories of sociology and following the method of historical reconstruction of the concepts strives to aid the process of solving this issue. Besides reputable sociologists, it also introduces authors who are not primarily regarded as sociologists, but their inclusion in the book is justified by their insights and results, which could prove to be useful for the relationist sociology of space that is in the main focus of the author. As such, a significant number of the discussed authors do not have a systematic concept of spatial sociology, while their works analysed by Berger suggest a shift towards the relationist approach. Berger not only presents but reviews; he mostly analyses the different approaches of spatial theory from the perspective of Martina Löw’s review. Instead of exploring the causes of the spatial turn, the book discusses the development of the theoretical foundations of relationist spatial sociology and 1

Published by L’Harmattan, Budapest, 2018.

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argues for the usefulness of this concept of space and spatial sociology, taking into account the limitations of theory as well. Before discussing the various concepts of spatial theory of the authors, he provides an overview of the wider disciplinary environment affecting the theoretical thinking of sociology. The theoretical basis of the differences between the absolutist and the relativist concepts of space can be understood through physics and philosophy. Sociology leaned towards the dualism of the absolutist concept of space for a long time, thinking about space as a background or container of objects, and defined society as a unit closely connected to a clearly defined area (country, administrative unit). Although the majority of the discussed authors distanced themselves from the absolutist concept of space, there are some in the works of whom there are traces of absolutism, writes Berger. One example of this could be Maurice Halbwachs, who rejects the absolutist concept the least and according to whom space is nothing more than the background of social activity; Émile Durkheim’s morphological concept was closely connected to the absolutist concept of space – although, as Berger sees it, his social morphological analyses go beyond the absolutist concept of space. The author chose the method of historical reconstruction of sociology to present the pathfinding of sociology that ultimately led it to a relativist position, which – focusing on relations – is the most suitable for its constitutional features. According to the relationist view, rejecting the dualism of space and sociality, the space surrounding us is not homogeneous but a combination of created spaces – hence, a social construction. In order to define this concept, the author follows the apparatus and insights of Henri Lefebvre – regarded as a pioneer of relationist spatial sociology –, according to which space is not a container space, it cannot be reduced to limited physical spaces and spatial distances. Spaces are objectified relations, simultaneously created by people and things, which contain human actions and generate new ones. This view is present in the works of Barry Schwartz, Michel Foucault, and Georg Simmel as well as in the Chinese concept of space analysed by Marcel Granet – less known in sociologist circles –, in which space is not a homogeneous container but the totality of relational spaces of various qualities. Berger’s view on the matter is that the theories and approaches that only consider space as the stage of human movement and activity, defining its concept as existing independently from the people, do not understand the essence of sociality. On the other hand, the sociocultural environment is an artificial, intersubjective creation, in which ‘the created objectivity reflects onto the actor’ (p. 12). This same view can be recognized in the morphology of Marcel Mauss, which points out the active human organization of spaces. However, the philosophical price of accepting the theories of spatial sociology is high – it can only make sense of the network of space and actors if it abandons the concept of the acting individual: there is no autonomic individual and action, there are only action networks, in which ‘the most diverse elements are interwoven: humans

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and all kinds of non-humans (objects, living beings, symbolic creations)’ (p. 240). Berger also interprets the attempts to define space in the context of sociology from the perspective of the various structure and action theories determining it. The representatives of action theory – such as Norbert Elias, Alfred Schütz, and Erving Goffman – contemplate the space-altering effect of social processes. Berger’s analysis focuses on the spatial sociological concept of Martina Löw – also categorized under the action theory and serving the author’s goals well – as ‘the spatial theory outlined by Löw is capable of handling a number of problems that absolutist concepts of space are not, [as] it thinks of space as something created and relative’ (p. 212). Nonetheless, Berger also criticizes Löw, who ‘embeds the novel and relational definition of spaces into a social theory that, due to its unique conceptuality, did not let the relational features fully develop’ (p. 221). The conceptual ambiguity disapproved – by Berger – at Löw is present in the case of almost every author – points out Berger – whose concepts of spatial sociology might show decidedly relationist features but still fail to create a complete relationist theory. Moving beyond theoretical experiments of structure theory representatives Georg Simmel, Marcel Mauss, Pierre Bourdieu, and Anthony Giddens, John Urry strives to relieve the dichotomy of structure and action through the thematization of movements, while Rob Shields does it through the concept of social spatialization. Regardless of how much more dominant action theory seems to be than structure theory, according to Berger, neither of these theoretical positions are superior to the other. He makes their application dependent on the research area and objective, and, as he says, as a result, ‘we do not need a dominant relational concept of space as much as accepting the diversity of the different approaches and exploiting the benefits that come with it’ (p. 237). In fact, the last chapter of the book questions the necessity of structuralist and action theoretical categorizations. Berger believes that the conceptuality of such categorization ‘has some inherent issues, such as not being able to permanently abandon the contrast of space and society’ (p. 238), which is another argument for the need for introducing a new conceptuality. In Berger’s view, sociology needs a combination of Löw’s spatial sociology and the insights of the action network theory; these create the conditions – by providing an appropriate concept of space and conceptual clarification – for a modern and consistently relational concept of space. Besides being useful, even essential for empirical sociology, the theoretical reconceptualization successfully conducted by Berger can also add important insights to the field of psychology or other social sciences. Lili Gombor student Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Department of Philosophy

Conference

Acta Univ. Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies, 14 (2018) 125–127

DOI: 10.2478/auseur-2018-0015

Challenges, Conflicts, and Opportunities. 100 Years of State- and Nationhood in Central and Eastern Europe – International Conference at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania – As a new chapter of an ongoing, long-term, and vivid institutional relationship between Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania (SHUT) and the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities (RIRNM), the abovementioned international conference (a.k.a. ‘#Challenges100 Conference’) took place in the period of 15–17 November 2018. The hosting venue of the Conference was the main building of the Faculty of Science and Arts (SHUT), Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár. This international scientific event was organized to present some important ongoing investigations, research, and theoretic models dealing with the social, political, historical, financial, or legal aspects of state- and nation-building in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) of the past 100 years. The concepts of state- and nationhood, the dilemmas of the social integration, unification or even disintegration in the multiethnic countries of the debated territory were the main topics of this international conference. Besides the presentation of the latest research domains in this area of science, another important goal of this conference was scientific network building for researchers from all over the world dealing with social sciences. The Conference had six thematic panels within which more than 30 presentations were held. At the Challenges100 International Conference, in order for all willing researchers to be able to participate and discuss each other’s research, there were no parallel panels. After a short opening plenary held by representatives of the two main organizing institutions − Mr Tibor Toró (SHUT) and Mr István Székely (RIRNM) −, the first panel’s main topics were language rights and minorities. Here a number of five presenters (researchers, academics, and even young PhD fellows) took the floor and presented their research/papers for the numerous crowd. Besides the ‘big picture’ type of papers, the audience could hear a couple of presentations of researches where the main methodology was linguistic landscape. The second panel on the first day of the Conference

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was entitled ‘History, Nation-Building I: Romania and Others’. This panel hosted three presentations dealing with the ‘Great Union’ of Romania and the period before. After a short lunch break, the third panel was somehow a continuation of the second one, bearing the title: ‘History, Nation-Building II: Habsburg Empire and Others’. The panel’s chair, Mr Tamás Kiss, moderated the five paper presentations in this section. Scientists from all over Europe, from Birmingham to Budapest or from Vienna to Cluj-Napoca, presented and debated upon their ongoing researches about one of the greatest empires of XIX-century Europe, the Habsburg Empire. On the first conference day’s afternoon, there were organized two book presentations. ‘Embers of Empire. Continuity and Rupture in the Habsburg Successor States after 1918’ was the first volume presented by Marta Filipova (University of Birmingham, UK). Paul Miller and Claire Morelon (Berghahn) edited the book in 2018. The second volume presented in this section of the Conference was edited by Tamás Kiss, István Gergő Székely, Tibor Toró, Nándor Bárdi, and István Horváth and had the title ‘Unequal Accommodation of Minority Rights. Hungarians in Transylvania’, a contemporary approach research of the usage of minority rights and language rights in a multiethnic region of Eastern Europe, Transylvania. The last three panels were held on the second day of the Conference. The morning panel dealt with kin-state topics. Following this panel, in which 5 participants presented their research on kin-state issues form several countries such as Albania, Ireland, Hungary, or even the Islamic minority of the Dobruja/ Dobrogea region, the next panel was entitled ‘Autonomy’. The four presenters of this panel came from four different institutions and four different countries. The dilemmas of autonomies were presented by the case studies of the South Caucasus region, Catalonia and Transylvania. The last panel dealing with ‘Identity, Development, Post-Socialism’ was a much more theoretical one with three presentations of identity-related research from Romania, Finland, and Hungary. After this, the participants of the Conference visited the newly inaugurated ‘House of Religious Freedom Museum’ in Cluj-Napoca. The three-day Conference ended with an optional trip to Turda/Torda. Here the participants visited one of the most spectacular touristic objectives of Transylvania, the Salt Mine of Turda, and also the Monument of Religious Freedom. As an ending of the Conference, the organizers made possible a guided city tour of Cluj/Kolozsvár by night. The Challenges100 Conference hosted more than 30 presentations, debates, discussions, interviews, and collateral events. The participants came from 8 different countries, 10 cities of Europe and the Unites States. There were participants presenting their papers from the Sapienza University of Rome (ITA), the University of Tampere (FIN), Dublin University (IRL), the University of

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Birmingham (UK), the Austrian Academy of Science, Vienna (AT), the Hungarian Academy of Science, Budapest (HUN), the organizing institutions from ClujNapoca (SHUT and RIRNM), from the Adrian College (Michigan – USA), from the London School of Economics (UK), the Central European University from Budapest, etc. ‘Challenges100 International Conference’, according to the closing ideas of the organizers and the reactions of the participants, was a success. The two main goals of the event, to learn about the ongoing investigations in the domain but also to enlarge the scientific network of researchers in this field of study, were accomplished. Sapientia University and the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities organized this scientific event as part of their biannual regular conference series. As the previous four events were a success, this conference was a good continuing episode of this series.

Ferenc Török PhD student Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Faculty of Science and Arts, Cluj-Napoca Department of International Relations and European Studies

Instructions for authors Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies publishes original papers and surveys concerning the historical development, the economic, societal, political, and philosophical dimensions of the European integration project. The European and Regional Studies provides an independent forum for informed debate and discussion of European affairs. Papers published in current and previous volumes can be found in Portable Document Format (pdf) form at the address: http://www.acta.sapientia.ro. The submitted papers should not be considered for publication by other journals. The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining the permission of coauthors and of the authorities of institutes, if needed, for publication, the Editorial Board disclaims any responsibility. The paper should be submitted both in Word.doc and pdf format. The submitted pdf document will be used as reference. The camera-ready journal will be prepared in pdf format by the editors. An accurate formatting is required in order to reduce subsequent changes of aspect to a minimum. The paper should be prepared on A4 paper (210 x 297 mm) and it must contain an abstract not exceeding 100 words. Only papers written in English will be published in the journal (please, use English spell-check). Use the template file at http://www.acta.sapientia.ro/acta-euro/euro-main.htm for details. Submission must be made by e-mail (acta-euro@acta.sapientia.ro) only. One issue is offered each author free of charge. No reprints will be available.

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