Oldal 294 [294]
292 ANDRÁS TAKÁCS-SÁNTA
The Microcommunity Program
The germ of the above ideas about the importance of rediscovering communities
dates from the beginning of 2008 and they were so animating that I immediately
organized a team to launch a social change of this kind already in that very year.
We named our initiative the Microcommunity Program.’
Our major objective was to help the establishment and running of as many
ecological local communities all over the Carpathian Basin as possible — in all
settlement sizes from microvillages to large cities. We defined our activity as a
research and activist program, indicating that while we were conducting research
in the traditional sense, we were also intent on promoting social transformation.
Despite the ambitious goals, the Microcommunity Program was fairly introverted
in its first nine years, exposing very little of its activity to the external world. The
aim was to create firm theoretical bases for the program and to collect broad field
knowledge, and we felt we had much to learn in order to consolidate the
foundations. The introverted period could not have been much shorter, for the
program — with a few sporadic short periods — worked with volunteers (and this
is more or less the situation today as well).
To build solid foundations, we set out along two main tracks. On the one hand,
we started fieldwork, mapping the country for about three years, to get to know
as many kinds of ecological local initiatives in Hungary as possible, first of all
communal initiatives. In each, we conducted in-depth interviews, primarily with
the leaders.* Sometimes the interviews were complemented by observations of the
participants. In 2012, we were asked to contribute to the National Council for
Sustainable Development's collection of good practices. Eventually, the publication
included 14 case studies (Kajner et al. 2013) based on the findings of our nationwide
field research. We continue to tour the country, but with less intensity, since we
receive word of fewer and fewer initiatives that are new to us, the likes of which
we have not yet examined. As of early 2023, we have examined some 75 local
ecological initiatives, and visited some of the most intriguing ones two or three
times.
Our fieldwork was expanded in a new direction from 2012. We launched the
first study of this kind in two neighboring Pest County settlements, Nagybérzsony
(from 2012) and Késpallag (from 2014). While in the former, no ecological
community evolved (though we helped the local people found a short-lived
producers’ market), the latter was founded in 2016 and was the first community
to emerge due to our inspiration.”
The other main track of the first nine years of the Microcommunity Program
was writing books and processing the relevant academic literature. We set ourselves
a very ambitious goal: to publish a manual and a webpage that contains a critical
overview of the situation in the diverse fields of our life in Hungary today and
also presents many alternative communal activities. A chapter of the book with
> See www. kiskozossegek.hu
This fieldwork was supported by the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Future
Generations in the first two years — up until the massive curtailing of the ombudsman’s licenses
and budget.
The summary of the first years of the action and research at Nagybörzsöny and Köspallag, see
Takäcs-Sänta 2017: chapter 8.
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