ABSTRACTS

Andorka, Rudolf
The Growth of Social Inequalities and Systemic Change

Based on the data from the four waves from 1992 to 1995 of the Hungarian Household Panel Survey the growth of inequalities and of poverty by social strata, residence, ethnicity age, etc. is presented. The traditional income inequalities, with managers at the top and non-skilled workers and peasánts at the bonom, increased since the system change. The incodence of poverty also increased and is highly differentiated by social and demographic categories. In addition to the "tradition poor", the ninskilled workers and peasants and the residents of villages, new or hitherto less observed groups of poverty are visible: the children, the unemployed and adult dependants and - last but first - the persons belonging the the roma ethnic group. The metribers of the poorer social strata are more dissatisfied, suffer more mentai health problems and show more often signy of anomie and alienation.


Csákó, Mihály
Changes of the Social Blocs of Occupations

In the 60s and 70s the Hungarian skilled worker training institutions served as channels for the massive upward intergenerational mobility of the children of layers with agricultural and unskilled industrial occupation. In 1974 the occupations could be grouped according to their role played in this process of mobility in the first national sociological survey of apprentices. At that time five social occupational blocs could be isolated right from the 'occupations of entry', serving as the lowest gate of the world of skilled work, to the elite occupations. Our survey, conducted twenty years later, shows that with the exception of the 'bloc of the occupations of entry' the social blocs of occupations have lost their Sharp outlines. Today the majority of apprentices come from families of skilled workers, thus for them learning a trade has a different significance from the one it had for the former generation. Changes fit into the explanatory framework of falling social mobility and increasingly cigid stratification, further orv the influence of the return to the market economy should also be considered.


Ferge, Zsuzsa
The Assessment of Systemic Change

The citizens have been more disappointed in systemic change than in a number of comparable countries in a similar situation. The assessment of systemic change is a more negative one, people have a larger sense of loss than elsewhere, and the distance between the expectations and the actual tendencies has grown unusually large. As far as it can be judged on the basis of data, this is not a special Hungarian pessimism: the positive elements, such as the strength of the structures safeguarding political freedom are appreciated by the citizens. At the same time the undermining of a part of safety, highly appreciated by everybody, affects many people very badly. The consequence is lack of confidence in future, besides turning away from politics. All this has not only been brought about by the 'hand of fate', but by the deficit of democracy as well, which had and has made politics unable to respond to the new situations, difficulties and to the resulting new needs.


Kertesi, Gábor
Two Surveys of Gypsies (A Critical Analysis)

The paper compares the representative survey of Gypsies conducted by the Institute for Sociology of HAS in 1993-94 and the Gypsy sub-sample of the survey of nationalities conducted vy the Central Statistical Offie in 1993. It shows that the two samples differ from each other to a significant extent in respect of important social indicators. Looking for the causes of these differences the author studies three issues more closely. He considers the consequences of the differences in the sampling methods and shows that though the sampling methods of the two surveys were founded on totally different principles, yet the significant differences of the samples cannot be explained by those variations. Further on he studies those differences which derive from the different handling of failed questionings. The paper shows that the fact that the dala collection of the Statistical Office - due to the nature of the task - was unable to substitute the aborted questionings of Gypsies by additional Gypsy addresses, has significantly contributed to the distortions of the Gypsy sub-sample of the Central Statistical Office. It is also understood that the method of weighting employed by the Central Statistical Office in the case of the Gypsy sub-sample not only does not improve, but it further deteriorates representativity. Finally the last part of the paper tries to check the correctness of the two samples, more exactly the reality of the number of primary school pupils and of the dala on school education of the adult population on an external source of data, namely on the time sequences of the school statistics of the Ministry of Culture and Education. This test has also unambiguously supported the greater reliability of the data of the Institute for Sociology.


Tomka, Miklós
Changes of the Structure of Religious Denominations in East and Central Europe

The paper studies the Catholic-Protestant presence in the contemporary East Central Europe. While doing so, it unites two approaches of the sociology of religions. The first one is interested in the structure of denominations and trends of its changes. The second one seeks to find the role of religion and identity by religious denomination in the East European systemic change. The issue how the following of the different churches and their relative proportion changed durrog the decades of socialist and communist system, emerges at the meeting point of the two schools. The paper studies the recent dala of three such countries where the Catholic, as well as Protestant population has had significant proportions: Czechoslovakia (the Czech Republic as well as Slovakia), Latvia and Hungary. The data uniformly show the absolute and relative decrease of the proportion of Protestants and the growth of the Catholic ones. The results of comparison in time are corroborated by and offer possibilities to further inferences when the dala of groups of different school education, and of religious commitments of different strength are collated. Finally the paper outlines hypotheses related to shifts in proportions.


Simon, János
What does democracy mean for Hungarians?

By processing the answers to open questions we analyzed with content analysis what the concept of democracy means for Hungarians. We analised the citizens interpretations of democracy during the transition to democracy based on the example of the Hungarians trough a time-series surveis (in 1989. 1990 and 1993). We joined the meanings of democracy in the following 7+1 categories groups: - freedom, participation, social well-being, elections, right, values, emotions, tempers and other. Then we compared the Hungarian results with the picture of democracy of the citizens of an East European (Romania) and a West European country (Spain).

According to our opinion the considerable difference can be explained by the differing character of the old authoritarian regimes.