Roland Habich-Spéder, Zsolt
Income Dynamics in Three Societies

The paper sets out to offer a new insight into social change, especially social transformation. The authors drawn up new types of social indicators - especially income indicators - to encapsulate social change, with the intention of widening its meaning. The investigation draws on longitudinal panel studies: the German Socio-Economic Panel Study 1990-1996 (GSOEP) and the Hungarian Household Panel 1992-1994 (HHP). The single, albeit crucial social dimension examined is the income position of families within the income structure. The analysis takes a comparative and longitudinal approach. Hungary and East Germany, as societies in transition are compared with West Germany, as a case of 'usual' social change, while the income mobility of individuals is traced over time. Both these aspects are examined in relation to modernisation theories. While classical measures such as the Gini Coefficient have shown a remarkable stability of, or very slight shifts in income inequality, the indicators elaborated here reveal a high degree of individual movement behind macro stability.
 

Horváth, Gergely Krisztián-Kovách, Imre
Black Economy (Trade in Oil and CMEA-market)

The authors summarise the results of a research, conducted between 1996 and 1998, studying how the phenomenon of black economy (smuggling of oil, CMEA-market) is socially embedded in Eastern Hungary. Studying the problematique of black economy also from the aspect of social history, it is found that the CMEA-market and the smuggling of oil are nothing else but the renewed institutionalisation of the formerly existing ethnic and regional division of labour, this time adjusted to the requirements of the 90s, in other words, it is a return to the trade relations organised spontaneously on the grass-root level among the peoples of the Carpathian Basin before 1920. It is stressed in relation to the black economy of the 90s that the forms of activity are significant primarily as survival strategies, and that the forms becoming massively employed are due to the lack of alternative forms of livelihood. The relative lack of state regulation may be traced back to an intention to preserve social peace. Black economy offers resources to investment in the backward north-eastern region, stretching over state borders, it creates job opportunities and demand for the losers of systemic change. Thus such a viable development of the area and of the economy, organised from below, is realised which is moved by the losers of transformation, and against which the state has not yet been able to offer alternatives beyond aid given by social policy.
 

Füstös, László-Szakolczai, Árpád
Continuites and Discontinuites in Value Preferences in Hungary (1977-1998)

The central assertion this paper wants to test is that communism exerted a very susbstantive and lasting, though mostly indirect, latent, hidden impact on society, and on value preferences. This claim can first be translated into two negative claims. One is that there was no comprehensive and basic reversal at the level of individual value preferences towards the elimination of the fundamental difference with respect to the pattern exhibited by the 1968 American values. Some of the outstanding peculiarities of the value preferences of Hungary as manifested in the late 1970s would therefore persist in the mid-1990s as well. The other assertion, however, is that there were nevertheless significant dislocations at the level of value preferences as compared to the communist period, refuting any substantive continuity, especially in so far as the most exposed socialist or communist values are concerned.

These claims in themselves only assert a combination of continuities and discontinuities before and after 1989 that in itself would be a fairly trivial idea. They will therefore be complemented with a second set of more positive general hypotheses. They will be related to the clarification of the distinction between direct vs. Indirect, or manifest vs. Latent differences. First, it will be argued that changes will be greater concerning the terminal than the instrumental values. Terminal values are explicity stated life-goals, while instrumental values are related to the modality of action and behaviour. Terminal values have a higher degree of visibility and immediacy, are closer to the surface of consciousness, while instrumental values are closer to ingrained habits, the modality of the conduct of life or the habitus. It will therefore be assumed that 1989 would hardly represent a major dislocation concerning the instrumental values, while there would be much more basic changes in the average preference of terminal values.
 

Csepeli, György-Örkény, Antal-Székelyi, Mária
Representations of Coexistence in Transylvania

Our survey has explored four structural strata in the relationship of the Hungarian and Romanian population, living together in Transylvania. The first stratum is similarity. Visibly both national groups have experienced post-socialist transformation to the same extent and in the same way, upon which they have similarly reacted. In the second place the differences were explored, which are rooted in the different historical tradition and different religious stratification of the two national groups; further on, in the different relationship to the meanings created by the Hungarian and Romanian culture respectively. The reserves of ethnocentrism have proved to be alive in both the national groups, and additional corresponding tendencies were found in data related to social distance. The fourth layer of coexistence was conflict, examples of which were found in abundance in the field of symbolic, as well as real social life.
 

Orisek, Andrea
Song about Deborah
The Priestesses' Position in the Reformed Church of Hungary

In the present paper I have examined a very complex situation related to gender discrimination within the Reformed Church of Hungary. Recently one cannot see any discrimination at the level of legal regulation, but at the same time there are a lot of contradictions in practice, concerning the real position of women-members of the Reformed Church of Hungary. The jurisdiction of the church has cancelled any gender discrimination but this is not reflected in the mind of the members of the congregation, priests, priestesses, etc. The priestesses have the most immediate experience in all these at the Church. What can be the reason of it? In certain attitutes only "the males" are responsible for all the problems. According to my hypothesis , "the females" contribute to the evil condition as well. During the theoretical and empirical investigations it has turned out that they are unsatisfied with their absurd position but they do not have any strategy for solving the problems. The majority of them shrink back from assuming real (public) responsibility and think that it is far better when "the males" occupy the leading role and decision-making positions. The basis of all these is a socialized lack of self-confiedence, which is strenthened by a certain trend in the Church.
 

Borboly, István
Legislation against Black Economy as Reflected
by the Parlamenti Napló

The topic of black economy had its heyday in the period between 1995 and 1996. In my paper I wish to present the disputes and the struggles of definition, accompanying legislative work wishing to push the phenomenon back. An emphasis is put on the parliamentary decision-making mechanism. I have investigated legislative work, aiming at pushing back black economy, on the basis of the minutes of the committees and plenary sessions of Parliament between 1994 and 1998. I have particularly focused on the presentation of those steps of legislation which resulted in the activation of economic interest groups so that interest asserting behaviour, characteristic of the individual actors, may be identified. In the first part of the paper important steps of law-making targeted to pushing black economy back are presented, to be followed by the decision-making mechanism and the characteristic features of the individual interest groups.
 

Pikó, Bettina
Sociologican Interpretation and Empirical Evidence of the Relationship between Religion and Health

Sutides on religion and health form a significant research field in medical sociology. Researchers should, however, face many methodological problems when justifying empirically the relationship, among others, problems of definition, operationalization, validity and reliability of the measurements. Since the 1970s, a number of socio-epidemiological studies have justified that there is a beneficial relationship between religion (and spirituality in a broader sense) and health. Research investigated mortality and morbidity among Catholics, Protestants, Adventists, Mormons and in the Clergy. The potential mechanism of effect is rather complex and involves factors from behaviour control through social support to providing a frame for the interpretation of life. Further research on religion and health should provide a sophisticated understanding of the role of reinterpreted religion in health.
 

Csite, András
From "the Peasant" Gemeinschaft to the Rurality:
Some Key Issues of the Past Thirty Years of International Rural Research

In the present writing I was trying to argue that the assumption of the "Gemeinschaft"-nature of the organisation of rural society was given up in the 60s and 70s and researchers of the countryside have oriented themselves in different theoretical directions.

Change can be grasped as a shift in the interpretation of the country: rural researchers of the 60s and 70s (either representatives of modernisation theory, students of peasantry, or exploring the political economy of the agrarian domain), interpreted the country as a type different from urban social organisation, going back to earlier beginnings. Whereas from the 80s onwards such a view has become generally accepted according to which it was expedient to challenge and even suspend such an assumption and research should focus on social practices (and also interpretations), as a result of which the meaning of the rural areas, and the legitimate forms of action, linked to the countryside, emerge. After the 'cultural change' of rural research now the country primarily appears as a type of social space, the interpretation of which is rather debatable, and it is just the study of these disputes of interpretation which may yield scholarly results most.