Edited by Davide Torsello and Melinda Pappová, Social Networks in Movement: Time, Interaction, and Interethnic Spaces in Central Eastern Europe emerged from a conference hosted by the Forum Minority Research Institute in Slovakia. Following the book’s subtitle, its 13 papers have been grouped into sections on "Time and Social Networks," "Interethnic Spaces" and "Integration, Migration and Change." The book also contains three appendices on the holdings of different archives in Slovakia, which should serve as a useful practical guide for scholars intending to research there.
Social Networks' introduction presents a careful review of literature on social networks in anthropology, which unfortunately seems to bear no direct relation to the papers that follow it. That is, while all the papers address questions of changing social relations, they more often than not presume the importance of social networks in these relations without demonstrating their effects. The volume likewise suffers from anthropological myopia. Thus, all the papers in the book demonstrate intimate knowledge of the researchers' fieldsites. However, about half of them lack the kind of contextualization that might render their descriptions interesting to someone who does not already possess intimate knowledge of the contexts they present. For example, while Laszlo Szarka's chapter on the language border between Hungary and Slovakia presents some novel insights regarding the mutability, porosity, and nested qualities of boundaries between languages, it also presumes that readers are already well acquainted with local scholarship on language border types. Similarly, Elke Kappus' piece about the ethnic Italian population living in former Yugoslavia alludes to conflictual scenarios in Slovene-Italian relations, without specifying exactly what those multiple conflicts are. A third problem with Social Networks is that its contributors often neglect to offer explanations for the cultural significance of their findings. So, a brief article by Attila Szep about Slovakian Roma seeking political asylum in other countries ends abruptly without explaining the potential future implications of the Slovak government's belated steps to address questions surrounding the persecution of Roma.
Other papers, especially some of those dealing with social relations across state borders, satisfactorily presented their findings in relation to broader contexts. In particular, the papers on Roma worked well together to create a larger picture of how Romani lives have changed since the late 1980s. I also found the paper on Africans in Moscow engaging, although this may reflect my own anthropological myopia since Russia is the state with which I am most familiar.
Social Networks in Movement is an interesting effort. It introduces new data on changing networks in Central Eastern Europe, primarily from researchers whose cultural knowledge of the region stems from their own upbringings. Thus, it could benefit scholars whose focus is Central Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, many of the papers contained in it would be improved by situating the relations they describe within a broader nexus of the anthropology of social networks.