István Kemény:
The Social Costs of the Transition Period

The primary assumption of this treatise is that the social costs that have been incurred and augmented since 1990 are not the consequeences of the transformation of the old socie-economic system, but of its total collapse. This assumption is demonstrated by the examples of the issues of unemployment and the pensions. A further argument is provided by referring to the fact that later, when the market economy has already been consolidated, the social ills do not disappear automatically. The concluding part of the treatise yuestions the widespread belief according to which the social costs are too high and it also calls into question the assumption that these costs can be reduced in the near future.
 

János Köllõ:
Employed and Unemployed - after the Turning-point

The lecture wishes to survey the process of the emergence of unemployment, its duration and also its effects on the various ways of earning income.
 

Éva Orosz:
The Role of the Private and Public Sectors in Health-care

The paper analysis the issue of what effects the publicly and privately financed healthcare systems have on the growth of health-costs and it tries to reveal the difference. The paper formulates the assumption that the expenditive on health-care will grow to a significant degree if private financing gaips ground. This change would result in the increase of the existing inequalities and in their becoming institutionalized.
 

Zsolt Csalog:
The Gypsies on the Hungarian Labour Market

This paper analyses from the point of view of historical sociology the weakening of the position of the traditional gypsy occupations.

In the period of extensive industrialization the unemployment of the gypsies could also be elimenated, but the gypsies became a marginal stratum among the community workers of the heavy industry.

Presently the mounting unemployment affects primarily this stratum and the social tensions surrounding the gypsies are also mounting.
 

György Lengyel János István Tóth:
The Spread of the Entrepreneurial Inclination

The paper analyses the social determinants of the entre-preneural inclination of the Hungarian population. On the one hand it endeavours to explain what social factors had decisive influence on the entrepreneurial attitudes in 1988 and 1990 and on the other hand it tries to throw light on how these factors were modified between 1988 and 1990. The data show that between 1988 and 1990 the entrepreneurial inclination became markedly stronger; it rose from 25 per cent to 44 per cent. In both years the demographic factors were found to have the closest relations with the entrepreneurial attitude.

In respect of the entrepreneurial inclination there is an increasing tension among the various sections of the intelligentsia because of the conflicting interests. Those whose knowledge can be utilized on the market insist on becoming entrepreneurs in 1990 as well, while the rest, that previously also displayed an interest in the enterprises, abandoned this idea by 1990. The second significant split occurred not between the workers and the employees, but within the working class: while the skilled workers were inclined to start enterprises möre often than the average, the semiskilled workers did not reach this level of frequency.

During the analysed period the mechanism of social recruitment was modified in two aspects as well. On the one hand those who were inclined to start enterprises could be characterized less and less by stratum-criteria. In reply to the question whether one would like to become an entrepreneur, the answer stressed - apart from the demographic factors - not so much the occupation and the educational qualification, but rather the capital of relations and the satisfaction with the given work.

On the other hand those whose family background had a lower social status, displayed a decreasing inclination to become enterpreneurs from 1988 to 1990. Owing to this effect the number of those who wished to start enterprises decreased.

The probable connection between the economic effects and the memmchanisms of social recruitment lies in the fact that the crisis increases the number of those who feel compelled to start enterprises and thereby makes the circle of potential entrepreneurs more open. The ensuing changes in the economic policy promote the strengthening of the social capital and also that special capital which is based on having good relations.
 

Magdolna Leveleki:
The Flowers of Decay

This case-study follows with attention how - parallel to the disintegration of a large-scale enterprise, employing more than 10 thousand workers in a country town - small-scale enterprises were formed in the same branch of industry. Some of those who lost their jobs in the early 1990s now try to become independent entrepreneurs, utilizing the konwledge, the experiences and connections which they had acquired while working within the large-scale enterprise.

What are their chanees of success against the large-scale enterprises? How can we characterize their relations with one another and with the large-scale enterprise? Will they ever be able to exceed the level of small-scale production and will they be able to influence the market by inoovation? The study endeavours to answer these questions.
 

Judit Csoba:
Job-seekers and Work-shirkers
The inclination to work among the long-term unemployed

This study searches for an answer to the question to what extent is unemployment a constraint and to what extent the result of a free choice for those people who are unemployed for a long period. The interviews were conducted in two cities, in Debrecen and Nyíregyháza.

In conducting the 100 interviews we attempted to measure the degree of 'the "voluntary character" of unemployment. We investigated what importance was attached by the unemployed persons to finding work as soon as possible and also those special reasons which contribute to the long-term character of unemployment. We tried to identify among the unemployed - whose group is often considered to be a nnified group - such types that help to throw light on the motivational background and the forced decisions of those people who are out of work for more than a year.

We analysed in details the typical ways of getting out of unemployment, their forms and their efficiency. We also analysed the most characteristic reasons of "falling back" repeatedly among the unemployed.
 

Endre Boross-András Csite-Ferenc Hella:
After the Change of the System - Changes of Fortune in a Village in the Carpathian Basin

The authors inform us of the first results of those social and economic changes that have taken place since 1989 in a small village of Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg. county, Ököritófülpös. On the basis of the first field work of the three-year-programme they depict the natural, economic and social setting of the village and then they arrange in groups the peasant households. In the final part of the study they analyse the local manifestations of some processes which are characteristic of present-day Hungarian society.
 

Máté Szabó:
The Taxi Drivers' Blockade and its Aftermath - a Challange for the Social Sciences

The treatise sums up the results of the debates, held at the 1992 autum conference of the Hungarian Sociological Society, in the section having the same title.

The taxi drivers' blockade was analysed from the point of view of the underlying causes, its dynamics, the organizational form, the forms of its actions, the social and political framework, primarily the political and administrative control and the reactions of the political control system. From a theoretical-methodological standpoint various approaches are applied in the analysis of the taxi drivers' blockade: the sociological intervention, the logic of rational behaviour, the approach of cultural anthropology, that of communicative discourse and also the evaluation of the reactitons of the political parties and interest-organizations, together with the analysis of the social movements. As a conclusion it was stressed that the taxi drivers' blockade highlighted a serious problem of the post-Socialist societes, the threats of mass actions, deriving from the social problems of the transition to the markel economy - threats which directly questioned the stability of the newly established democratic political order.
 

Endre Sik:
Robin Hood, the Vulture - about the Taxi Drivers' Blockade after Two Years

The years have passed since the taxi drivers' blockade and I have revalued the statements which I made in 1991. I took into consideration all the available new information, the new explanations and the social and economic position of the taxi drivers in other countries. My conclusion is that I was right in 1991.