Heritage-Making in the Metropolitan Area. The Case of the “Wedding at Ecser”

Abstract

The paper focuses on the case study of a settlement in the immediate vicinity of the Hungarian capital, which became nationally recognized in the second half of the 20th century through the staging of the community’s wedding customs, known as Wedding at Ecser. Over the decades, the element lifted out of the local lifeworld – and ultimately constructed – has become linked with various community meanings and interpretive structures, through the examination of which the underlying historical, economic, and socio-cultural processes are being presented. Not only has the cultural relic – initially constructed by and through external actors – appreciated for local society, it soon developed into a central element of self-representation. At the same time, the cyclically growing interest in the staged custom and the repeated re-articulation of the wedding in new ways were closely linked with the social changes of the given period and the transformation of the local community and also dependent on the nature of power discourses at the local level. However, the wedding became not only an economic, ideological, political resource for the local community but also a valid meaning structure beyond the local level. This study pays special attention to discussions of the role that this phenomenon – which has nearly 60 years of history and many layers of meaning – may have played in the heritagization practices of the 21st century. There is particular emphasis on how the wedding as a heritage element and – more broadly – heritagization are linked to local experiences of a changing rurality.