A Vajdasági Magyarok Néprajzi Atlasza / Ethnographical Atlas of the Hungarians in Voivodina. CD-ROM. Ed. by Árpád Papp. Subotica/Szabadka (former Yugoslavia): Kiss Lajos Ethnographical Association, 2002. Árpád Papp

The main objective of the Kiss Lajos Ethnographical Association, which was founded in 1990, is to coordinate the work of professionals and amateurs working in the field of ethnography in Voivodina. The association, which had previously functioned as a department of the Yugoslavian Hungarian Cultural Association and became an independent civil organization in 1997, has several long term plans. One of them is to gradually develop and operate a provincial-level collecting network, which would support medium-range research programs. The first major enterprise undertaken was the project to publish the Ethnographical Atlas of the Hungarians in Voivodina, which required a high level of coordination, since surveys had to be carried out using questionnaires in forty-one settlements inhabited by Hungarians all around Voivodina. Unlike what had previously been the case, our ethnographers began this project without an institutional background, but with a common will and a shared conception.

The results of the several-year-long project are now available on a CD-ROM, which provides easy access to this unique database, the only one of its kind in Voivodina. The CD-ROM includes some 900 maps, which can be projected onto one another according to the user’s needs. In addition to the maps, settlement descriptions, statistical data, and location plans are also provided in an appendix. By publishing the database on a CD-ROM, we wanted to do more than just meet the demands of the modern world: on the one hand, we wanted to avoid the problems of previously published atlases (e.g., they are difficult to survey), and on the other, our small budget made it necessary to publish the huge amount of material compiled in this form.

Concerning its data and methodology, the Ethnographical Atlas of the Hungarians in Voivodina is closely connected with the Ethnographical Atlas of Hungary, as well as with the Ethnographical Atlas of Yugoslavia (Etnološki Atlas Jugoslavije), the diachronic principles of which also underlie the present work. Further, we wished to provide a research and data processing tool which would radically transform the otherwise difficult handling of large databases. We have made use of the Polish, Yugoslavian, Hungarian, and Slovakian atlases of folk culture as methodological antecedents, but we consider the Ethnographical Atlas of Hungary and the Atlas of Hungarian Dialects our most important sources. The focus of the two latter works also included the territory of Voivodina, but due to the different nature of their tasks, this region had not been explored in its entirety. A regional atlas such as the Ethnographical Atlas of the Hungarians in Voivodina can thus provide us with a more complete and detailed picture of our local folk culture.

The Ethnographical Atlas of the Hungarians in Voivodina is a compilation of the results of different surveys which had only covered individual settlements and had focused on only one segment of folk culture. We could not hope to accomplish a complete survey of the folk knowledge of the Hungarians living in Voivodina and to cover all its details, but we can safely assert that the present database will be crucial for any future study.

In the design of our project we followed two principles when defining the periods to focus on: (a) we wished to achieve a certain compatibility with and to offer a continuation of the Ethnographical Atlas of Hungary and the Atlas of Hungarian Dialects, which we consider our methodological antecedents, and (b) we wanted to document three clearly distinguishable periods in the development of the region:

• the decade following World War II

• the ‘Golden Age’ of the 1970s, and

• the social changes of the 1990s.

When defining the topics, we strove to achieve as complete a functional classification of folk culture as possible, but our primary aim was to make our survey comparable to those that had previously been carried out with the same methodology in Voivodina and in the Carpathian Basin. On the one hand, we took into consideration the by now standard topics of the Ethnographical Atlas of Hungary and the Atlas of Hungarian Dialects, but on the other hand, we tried to put together a list of those topics and related questions to which we could find relevant and sufficient answers in the periods examined. Finally, we decided on sixteen topics, taking into consideration the aforementioned principles as well as the local conditions and economic facts. We “tied the hands” of the topic administrators (i.e., the researchers responsible for individual topics) in so far as they could only examine a maximum of ten questions related to each topic and add another three sub-questions to further explore each phenomenon.

When deciding on the geographical focal points and the location of the research centers (i.e., the villages examined and put on the map), the main criteria were the following:

• We adopted all the research centers in Voivodina mentioned in the Ethnographical Atlas of Hungary, thus making possible diachronic research.

• We also included all research centers present in the Atlas of Hungarian Dialects and extended the list by adding some of those used in the local dialect atlases (i.e., the atlases of the dialects of Bácska, Bánát, and Szerémség, edited by Olga Penavin).

• Further research centers in Voivodina were included, in accordance with the quadratic system of the Ethnographical Atlas of Yugoslavia, in order to make the two publications compatible. Thus our centers often correspond to those where similar surveys about other ethnic groups had already been carried out. As a result of this practice, it is possible to draw parallels, and a comparison with the results of surveys of the non-Hungarian population may raise a number of new questions and possibilities.

This long-term research project involved some fifty field-workers and approximately four hundred informants who assisted us with their answers. The lack of an institutional background was most noticeable during the process of data collection: in order to establish a network, we had to rely on both professional and amateur ethnographers. Our fieldworkers had previously done minor data collecting projects on chosen topics in their own settlements, but they had seldom engaged themselves in larger projects using questionnaires.

The data assembled during the Ethnographical Atlas of the Hungarians in Voivodina project, i.e., the answers given in the questionnaires and the tape-recordings made during field work, are all available in full length in the database, and for the purpose of identification they were given thematic letter codes which appear on the maps. If the data contain further information which cannot be indicated by the letter codes, it is noted separately. The topic administrators elaborated their topics in analytical essays which are accessible on the CD-ROM and will also be published in a separate volume of commentaries.

The Ethnographical Atlas of the Hungarians in Voivodina CD-ROM is useful for purposes of education, demonstration, and research, and it provides a relatively accurate picture of a large number of Hungarians living outside the borders of Hungary. The database is a compilation of more than a million bits of data which can be easily managed with the help of software developed exclusively for this purpose. Comparing our atlas with former ethnographical atlases compiled with traditional methods, the main difference is that here the number of answers listed for a given topic can be changed according to the user’s choice: it is possible to display all related answers as well as only one selected answer. Answers containing additional information are indicated on the map by a red sign.

Computerized data processing can successfully handle the task of analyzing different maps simultaneously, which in the past had posed an insurmountable problem. In developing the software, we put special emphasis on the comparative analysis of the maps, and designed a feature which enables the user of the CD-ROM to project the signs on the different maps onto each other. The signs chosen from individual maps are in ‘OR’-relation with one another, while the logical link between the maps selected is an ‘AND’-relation, thus it is possible to model such complex questions like the relationship between the destination of pilgrimages and liturgical practices, for example, or changes in certain elements of festive meals.

A glossary helps the users orient themselves in the rich database: the occurrences of the words searched for are displayed in a separate box designed for this purpose. Exploiting the possibilities of computerized data processing, the CD-ROM contains not only individual maps which can be projected onto each other but also a large number of old and new photographs as illustrations.