- Title
- East-West discourses in Transylvania: transitional erderly, German-Western siebenburgen or Latin-Western ardeal?
- Creator
- Davis, Sascha
- Relation
- The East-West Discourse: Symbolic Geography and its Consequences p. 127-154
- Relation
- http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=54555
- Publisher
- Peter Lang
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2011
- Description
- In the multi-ethnic environment of interwar Transylvania, both Hungarians (Magyars and Szeklers) and Saxons (Germans) resisted Romanian assimilationist policies by distancing Transylvania from the rest of the Romanian state in a symbolic geography. Transylvanianists, both Saxon and Hungarian, engaged in an act of "philosophic geography," distinguishing the Western character of Transylvania from the rest of Romania, seen as "eastern." Yet while both Hungarians and Saxons used East-West discourses to promote Transylvanian distinctiveness, they could not agree with each other about Transylvania's symbolic location. Hungarians preferred to see Transylvania as the bridge between East and West, while Transylvania's Saxons saw the province as unambiguously "western," thanks mostly to their own presence. However, Transylvanianists also utilized the East-West distinction for the purpose of social mapping: they classified Transylvania's different ethnic communities along East-West lines. This process of social mapping had its roots in Transylvania's web of traditional ethnic stereotypes and competing claims of Westernness. By establishing an ethnic hierarchy of "westernness" among Transylvania's ethnic groups, Transylvanianists undermined the efficacy of Transylvanianism as a political movement. Incompatible visions of who could claim to be "western" produced deep tensions between Transylvanianists of different ethnicities, ultimately circumscribing the possibility of interethnic co-operation.
- Subject
- Transylvania; Eastern; Western; ethnicity; social mapping
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1059510
- Identifier
- uon:16625
- Identifier
- ISBN:9783034301985
- Language
- eng
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