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THE KÓSPALLAG OLD HOUSE PROJECT AS PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH... 253 Ethnographic research Research using classical ethnographic methods has been a central part of our work since the beginning in 2017. We have organized research camps lasting several days, and we have been conducting interviews with villagers, mostly elderly people, with varying intensity. The concept of “local knowledge” has become a central element of our work over the years. We approach the concept in a rather extended sense. Part of it is what research calls “traditional ecological knowledge” (Berkes 2018), but more than that, we also consider part of it the personal and historical memory of the local population. A very significant part of it is closely linked to the local ecological environment. Many aspects of life were once strongly linked to the natural environment — not only ecological and agricultural knowledge in the strict sense (such as extensive knowledge of medicinal plants and mushrooms, orchards, livestock, and crops), but also folk industry and craft knowledge and even areas such as architecture and costume (see Bali 2005). In local knowledge, however, the knowledge of the peasant past is not sharply separated from elements of later times; our interlocutors also refer to the agricultural knowledge learned during or since the cooperative period. When we asked for local experts on growing fruit, native residents often recommended our young, second-generation settler friend. Knowledge forms a unity in the minds of its bearers. Only when viewed from the outside does it have ‘ecological’ elements, those which, when separated, carry the idea of existing in harmony with nature, but often these also exist in a hybrid form with other elements. In Köspallag, for example, many of the later built ‘cube’ houses were also constructed of adobe and the boundaries drawn in local knowledge are artificial research constructions, not separated into such categories in the minds of its bearers. In the course of our work in the village, we strongly experienced that the indigenous inhabitants of the village speak of their own knowledge with a kind of minority complex, not seeing it as knowledge: 0/, I dont know anything’. But we are curious about everything and everyone, according to the anthropological approach, so we listen to the knowledge of all local people and we convey this approach in our events. Local knowledge is also fundamentally linked to community building. We have often noticed, and feedback has shown, that the discovery, sharing and dialogue of local knowledge has triggered human connections across social groups. When our volunteers from Budapest spent hours with local elderly people foraging for mushrooms in the forest behind the country house and then listened to their guides life story until midnight, this is exactly what happened. But local knowledge is also important for us because of its practical application. Here too, we were guided by the needs of the local community. The research team was invited to create a village museum where elements of local knowledge could be acguired by those interested. Over the years, it became ever clearer that one of the main motivations for the active local core of the country house is to learn to apply elements of local knowledge appropriate to an ecological lifestyle in their own daily lives, for example to expand their knowledge of farming and mycology. While elements of local knowledge are also put back into practice, different layers of knowledge also come together. Sometimes, of course, they clash, with elements of permaculture farming being referred to as ‘scraping’, while in other cases the agricultural knowledge of the newcomers is taken seriously as useful knowledge.
