My neighbour is my friend

Locality as the organizing force of friendship in the peasant society of Hajdúdorog

Abstract

This study aims to contribute to the research of the now clearly recognized connections of the neighbour/friend relationship, which is interpreted as another separate type of relationship in the social sciences.
What connection do we find between local neighbourhood relationships and friendship relationships? The paper starts from a scientific debate that wants to get to know the relationship between neighbourhood and friendship by illuminating the contextual conditions of the 20th century, referring to the 1940s in Hajdúdorog.
Accordingly, the study moves within the framework of the ethnography disciplines. This work is based upon sources that discuss the topic of the neighbour/friend relationship through the exchange of obligations, work connections, mutuality and other existing aspects between the two parties. In a peasant society, the concepts of kinship and neighborhood often overlap. Thus, the community’s approach has mostly obscured the supposed role of friendships. So back then, the characteristics of a friendship can be deduced from different ethnographical articles through numerous aspects like: locality, the neighbourhood, lending to each other, mutuality and children. The structure of the study is the following: after gaining some familiarity with background theoretical concepts, the research categories are, firstly, the relationship between contemporary groups, friendship and locality, and, secondly, the relationship between the neighbourhood, friendship and locality, examined through in-depth interviews.
The in-depth interviews were made with women and men over the age of 65 in Hajdúdorog, mostly from the smallholder peasantry. The results show that friendship and neighborhood are closely related to each other, and the relationship system of neighbours is a shaping factor for friendships.