Paper short abstract:

My presentation deals with a small Hungarian mountain region, where social structure have been rapidly changing in the last two decades due to economic and demographic reasons. I study the connections of locals and environment through the concept of topophilia.

Paper long abstract:

In recent times, migration and free move is increasing in a great scale, which dramaticly alters our working practices and habits, especially in montanious areas with bad infrastructure. In my paper presentation, I am dealing with the changing social composition and the varying economic basis of villages lying in Mecsek-mountains (South-Hungary), and the attitudes toward spaces reflected in land use activities. It involves the research of various pursuits from farmers' work to hikers' leisure activity in the last two decades. My approach is standing on Yi-Fu Tuan’s book about topophilia, in which he describe numerous possible connections and ways of thinking about landscape and space. I also use Castells’ „network society”, Ingold’s „lines” concept as a theoretic frame, to introduce the experiences of a long term participant observation. I argue that despite of free move, people have less (depending on their economic power and holding) access to natural resourses (material and intangible), and it can be measured through the use of places. The use of spaces and the landscape in general is practiced by specialized groups (with varying landscape knowledge from shallow to deep), however the most of man-made, and touristically appreciated values (scenery, folk architecture etc.) are threatened because of globalized consumption patterns.