ABSTRACTS

Spéder Zsolt
Households in a Small Region

The paper wishes to explore the characteristic features of the livelihood of households, their daily routine, procedures and strategic elements. At first the relevant literature was surveyed, and next the issues raised were tested with the help of the data of empirical literature. It was regarded particularly important to locate the various household activities (small scale production, preserving food, sewing garments, whitewashing and putting on wall paper, participation in the so-called 'CMEA' markets, utilisation of possibilities of cheap purchase, etc.) in social stratification as well. It is among our most important conclusions that the functioning of households cannot be understood exclusively with the help of a single explanatory logic; stratification, traditions and the scale returns appearing in the economy of households all have a significant role in the explanation of household activities. While social inequalities behave as usual in the market and in the use of commercial institutions, we have received interrelationships contrary to the expected ones in several fields of subsistence economy. Linkage to the type of settlement obviously manifests itself even within a small region, consequently one may speak about urban and rural self-supporting activities respectively. By checking the effect of the region it can be stated that self-supplying cannot be regarded the form of livelihood used by the poor. It can be rather said that this solution is applied most frequently by the middle strata.


Laki, László
Household Farming Yesterday and Now

During the past years we have attempted to explore and describe a specific type of the dramatic processes that have undergone in the Hungarian economy and labour market. In other words, we were trying to get an answer to what happens to a region and to its inhabitants which used to be mostly an agricultural one up to the late 70s, then was subsequently industrialised, only to see the closure of the established factories under the critical conditions of the 90s and the dismissal of the workers.

The clarification of the issue what role was played by the agricultural 'second economy' in the life and livelihood of the local population during the past decades was an important part of the survey. The position of this population in the labour market and their career were rather different as there have been first generation industrial workers in considerable numbers, who could find jobs in the factories transferred here from the 70s onwards; there were weekly commuters among them, who used to work in distant cities; there were industrial workers whose ancestors had also been in industry for several generations, and of course there were many people who worked in agricultural co-operatives and in ancillary enterprises. As in the early 90s these people were dismissed from their industrial or agricultural jobs, it was a question how far small scale agricultural production, playing a "subsidiary" role at the most until then, was reassessed, and what role does this form of production play in the livelihood of people concerned, or in their break out of their predicament.

The paper also goes into detail of the question how the economic, organisational and financial conditions of household farming changed in the period of state socialism and have been modified since the systemic change.


Oláh, Sándor
Invisible Impoverishment

The paper is a case study of the adjustment strategies of a rural household in the Székler land at the time of the Romanian economic recession in the mid-90s. At first the trends of the major social changes are presented which influence the rural household economies in the period under survey, then after the presentation of a case, an attempt was made to partially grasp the macro-level processes set in motion in the rural environment under pressure of the macroeconomic transformations.


Csite, András
Approaches to the Development of the Country in Hungaryin 1970-1996: the Emergence of the New Regional Policy

The paper attempts to outline the characteristics of the three sets of views, aiming at the development of the countryside of the past three decades. By isolating the socialist-industrialising, the transitory-compensating and the regional approaches, I wish to shed light on the fact that
- during the past three decades the development of the countryside as a governmental task was continuously present in Hungary;
- the direction of development, its institutions and the circle of the participants in the decision-making processes were different in the three approaches;
- the participants used different sets of concepts, interrelationships and stresses in the various approaches to the development of the countryside;
- by now the approach of regional-territorial development can be regarded as more or less evolved (New Regional Policy), though it cannot be considered as the hegemonic approach to the development of the country even after its set of institutions has been established.


Szántó, Zoltán
Social Class, Class Consciousness and Collective Action

The paper describes in detail how Jon Elster interprets and criticises Marx's class theory. According to Elster's proposed interpretation the objective of Marx's theory of class is to explain the occurrence and the preconditions of the development of the different types of collective activity. The further critical development of the theory is the foundation of the concept of class activity on a micro level in terms of rational choice theory. The paper discusses in detail the definition of the concepts of social class and class consciousness, the conditions of class action as a collective one, the types of class conflicts and also the rationality of class activity. Class action is modelled as a quasi-n person prisoner's dilemma situation.


Vedres, Balázs
Is the "Econocrat" Manager-Elite the Winner of Transformation?

The paper attempts to identify the effects of economic transformation on the changes of the criteria of success of the economic elite where the mediating mechanism is the changing value of the most important kinds of knowledge capital, such as qualifications in economics and technology. The hypotheses of the paper have been tested by two samples of people in leading positions in 1988 and 1993 respectively.


Belinszki, Eszter
Does Work Ennoble?
Gender-related Issues of Work: Theoretical Explanations of the Position of Women in the Labour Market

For decades several empirical surveys have reached the conclusion that the position of women and men on the labour market is fundamentally different, and it is not surprising that the position of the "weaker gender" is not weaker at all. The present paper focuses on the question of "Why?" and wishes to summarise some more or less known theoretical explanations. In addition to the theory of economics the theories of difference and hierarchy, familiar in feminist studies, are also presented. Finally a brief detour is made and the outlines of a less elaborated attempt at a "de-constructivist"explanation and direction of research are given.