Der Bergarbeiterstreik in Pécs 1893: Die Herstellung sozialer Ordnungen in der Berichterstattung ungarisch- und deutschsprachiger Lokalzeitungen
The Miners’ Strike of 1893: The Production of Social Orders in the Reporting of Hungarian and German-Language Local Newspapers

Summary/Abstract: This article takes a look at cultural practices of Hungarian- and German-language newspapers in the multi-ethnic city of Pécs (Fünfkirchen) in dealing with the strike action of the immigrant miners in 1893. The historical-ethnographic analysis shows that, in a variety of ways, the papers used physical and ideational distances, spaces, routes, and the representation of people’s actions in them, to construct an imagined topology of their society; a social space in which the miners were located as a marginalized group. This social space was constituted by those above and those below: locals, immigrants who had been living in Pécs for some time, and recent arrivals who were to become members of an imagined Hungarian nation. The languages used in this process served as the media of the negotiation processes practiced for this purpose. Spatial attributions function as cultural means for the production of social orders, and languages served not only as a means of communication, but also of demarcation, distancing and spatial positioning.

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