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THE KÓSPALLAG OLD HOUSE PROJECT AS PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH... 255 Community development Community development was not originally a priority. However, it soon became clear that to achieve our goals, we needed to build a community of people who would take ownership of the Old House, commit to maintaining it and fill it with activities. So the core team was formed of ‘do-it-yourself’ community developers who began to learn the skills of the trade. It soon became clear to us that the anthropological perspective and community development are related fields. The developments that result from such a process tend to have an explicit communitydeveloping dimension, or, in the case of physical investments, necessarily involve the creation of the community that fills them. This was made possible by the particular circumstance that we were invited to participate in the research, as we are known locally, by the ‘ethnographic’, ‘old cottage’ team (now consisting of a large number of young professionals, not only ethnographers but also sociologists, human ecologists, biologists, rural development experts and people with many other qualifications). The three NGOs in the village also had the aim of setting up a country house in their statutes, but lacked the requisite ethnographic expertise. Thus, a fortunate meeting, a brainstorming session and a mutual friendship between the professional leader of the research and two leading local NGOs was our ticket to the village. Their invitation is what makes our effective work possible. We often feel that without their role as a permanent bridge, we would have no place in the village, but that at the very least, our work would be much less successful and embedded. It is primarily through them that we began to understand the village’s past, present and complex human relations; their role, although it has changed (since they have become part of the municipal board), is still crucial.
