ABSTRACT
In one recent publication it has been noted that: 'The traditional neighbourhood ties, based on exchange labour and mutual assistance, have disappeared. Neighbours often choose to work together in the cooperative and spend their free time together but these activities are based on free choice and are not constrained by the former type of economic necessity.' (Hollós and Maday, 1983:16) On the basis of observation in Pécsely and elsewhere (cf. Simó, 1983) this statement may have to be qualified. Networks of reciprocity remain important, not in relation to work in the collectives but to plot farming and housebuilding. As Simó shows (1983) the economic value of the reciprocal help exchanged through informal networks of kinship and friendship, is vast. Most of the houses built in rural areas (that is, 40-45% of the houses built in Hungary) are built to a large extent using informal help, which does not involve cash transactions at all but is based on reciprocity. In rural communities cash is needed to buy the houseplot and the building materials only; the building itself is largely done by friends and kinsmen. Equally, plot farming requires a fairly extensive network of reciprocal help. It is unlikely that the present level of plot farming and the solving of pressing housing problems could progress without such networks of reciprocal help. It is, however, true that this help is somewhat different from the traditional forms of cooperation existing in earlier times; before World War II the level of peasant existence was altogether much nearer to bare subsistence levels and today, the question is not: 'Will I have enough grain to see us through the year?' but: 'Will I be able to move into the new house in spring?' The questions are undoubtedly of a different order, yet they are still posed with some urgency.
