Interests, resources and status: The distribution of income, work and authority in the family in a Northern Hungarian Village

Sárkány, Mihály (2013) Interests, resources and status: The distribution of income, work and authority in the family in a Northern Hungarian Village. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 58 (1). pp. 87-96. ISSN 1216-9803

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Abstract

The author deals with two interconnected features of contemporary Hungarian rural family life from a historical perspective based on fieldwork carried out in Varsány in the early 1970s and between 2000 and 2005. The first is the intertwining of the lives of successive generations of families in a period when other segments of Hungarian society were becoming more individualistic. This case puts into question whether economic models of the direction of the flow of goods between generations (linear, altruistic or exchange models) are applicable for this situation. The author suggests that Polányi’s ideas may be of help in understanding this phenomenon. The second is the balance of genders within families. Tatjana Thelen, who did fieldwork in another Hungarian village, Mesterszállás, pointed out a decline in the status of women. She holds the Hungarian policy of privatisation and reprivatisation responsible for it, which followed the great socio-economic and political change from socialism to capitalism in 1990. As a similar decrease in the status of women did not occur in Varsány, the author argues that other factors also should be taken into consideration for analysing such situations, like the role of commuting, education, and women’s share in landed property.

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