Havas, Gábor-Kemény, István
On the Romas of Hungary

The paper collates the general data of the representative surveys of Romas, Gypsies, conducted in the years 1971 and 1994. While stating the growth of the Roma population and the growth of their proportion within the entire population of the country between the two surveys (1971: 3%; 1994: 5%), we have also found that the completion of the primary school has become quite general among them, which means that the Romas are not illiterate any more, but their disadvantages in secondary and higher education do not seem to diminish. The housing conditions of Romas have significantly improved, however, their segregation continues to be quite significant. The situation is the worst in respect of employment, in 1971 the Gypsy and the total male population were employed more or less to an equal extent, there has been no demand for the labour power of Romas as a consequence of recession: two-thirds of them are unemployed, which is just the double of the national average.

In the paper proposals are elaborated for the improvement of the position of Romas at school and in labour.
 

Tóth, András
Civil Society and Trade Unions

The paper has the objective of exploring and describing the role of trade unions in the development and strengthening of civil society. However, the study of how far the trade unions can be regarded civil social movements is closely associated to it. Several characteristic features of the trade unions link them to the civil social movements. As far as their roots are concerned, they were produced by the self-organisation of employees. The main feature of the trade unions, namely that they represent economic interests in the face of employers, has shaped them different from the civil organisations. The paper argues that the specific contribution of employees' interest representation to the evolution of civil society can be found within the framework of the system of labour relations. In other words, it is not enough to think in terms of the dichotomy of state and the self-organisation of society, when one wishes to clarify to what extent have the trade unions contributed to the evolution and strengthening of the civil social sphere. The establishment of the legal and political conditions of free combination, the free establishment of the employees' interest representations, the regained independence, or dissolution of the existing trade unions nationalised, or kept under control earlier, is only one of the conditions of the trade unions playing their proper role in the development of civil society. The other condition is the setting up of new trade unions, independent of employers, and the acquisition of autonomy from the employers by the already existing organisations of employees' interest representation.
 

Szabó, Máté
Trends of Mobilization of Collective Protests in Central European Post-Communist Countries:
Survey on Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia

The study is based upon a survey of leading dailies and weeklies in Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia regarding their news on protest politics in these countries in 1993. After a short introduction in the traditions of protest; at the scope and methode of analysis, the results on the size, goal, organization and social background of protest will be analyzed. As a preliminary result, existence of differentiated, neve protest cultures is documented based upon the new framework of opportunities for mobilizing in the post communist democracy. Characteristic differences of the three countries protest cultures are there, but there are also some common traits of East Central European protests compared with the rather violent mass mobilizations in former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
 

Mrs. Földesi, Gyöngyi Szabó
The Social Composition and Motivations of the Viewers of the Class I Football Matches of Hungary

This study is based on a survey carried out in the 1992/1993 soccer season in the stadia of all Hungarian first league teams with the aim of collecting information about the major social and demographic characteristies of fans attending the matches, about their motivations and match-day routin. Taking into consideration the special methodological problems the sample was selected gradually and randomly (N=2608), the data were collected by personal interviews, indepth interviews and by document analysis. The findings provide the readers not only with wide-range facte concerning the age, sex, level of education and profession of spectators in the stands and on the grounds as well as concerning their sport-related values and motivations, but with thourough analysis of the main social, economic and cultural factors influencing the social composition and behaviour of the Hungarian soccer crowd. In conclusion the author points out some dysfunctional consequences of first league soccer matches in Hungary causing more detriment than benifit both at individual and social levels.
 

Szántó, Miklós
Hungarian Sociology between 1960 and 1968

The present paper is a first attempt to write the chronicle of the Research Group of Sociology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences between 1960 and 1968. This "workshop" was the framework of the exciting work of starting anew, full of contradictions, achievements and failures. However, to the understanding of its establishment the institutional antecedents should be discussed: those conditions which prepared and forced the reorgan~sation of Hungarian sociology, the setting up of a sociological division within the Institute of Philosophy in the spring of 1960, which had been in operation for three years and from which an autonomous research group, breaking through the narrow bonds, entered the scere of Hungarian social sciences.