Summer school participants questioned the rigidity of networks. Many pointed especially to how the researcher can create networks in situation where, in practice, these didn’t exist. Instead, they argued for, on the one hand, the flexibility and feebleness of networks and, on the other hand, the network as a scholarly tool for visualizing connections. Claire Lemercier in “Formal network methods in history” argues that “defining a set of ties that can be entered in a data base implies a too often implicit decisions about the time boundaries of the observation and the temporality of ties themselves”.

Knowledge transfers across geographic spaces, from prominent urban centers to peripheral borderlands illustrate this dilemma. Are center-periphery network interactions automatically and consciously shaped by agents? What is the role of connectors? How can one assess the degree of connectivity between center and periphery?

Hungarian intellectual networks centered on Budapest homogenized Hungarian characterology. Groups of ethnographers, racial scientists and anthropologists looked at the Kingdom’s borderlands, such as the Szeklerland in search for the ethnically and morally pure Self. They interacted with Szekler intellectuals on the ground during their research. Addressing Budapest’s attempts to monopolize representations of Szeklerness, elites at the periphery reacted by adopting parts of the center’s discourse on the Hungarian Kingdom’s borderland. In order to support local ambitions to self-representation and political power, Szekler intellectuals tapped into Budapest’s network only insofar as their contacts served their social and political needs. Here, connectors such as journals, novels, intermediaries (e.g. Szekler intellectuals studying in Budapest and bringing their know-how back home) were crucial.

Connections between different networks should not be taken for granted. Ties are neither stable nor of the same quality. Role of connectors should be assessed.