Assembling the square: Social transformation in public space and the broken mirage of the second economy in postsocialist Budapest

Slavic Review

Volumn 57, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 489-515

  Bodnár, Judit ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0141812500     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2500709     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. Magyar Narancs 6, no. 48 (1 December 1994).
2. Péter György and Zsolt Durkó, Jr., Utánzatok városa, Budapest (Budapest, 1993), 184.
3. A monograph on the city written at the time the regime changed still depicts Moscow Square in a matter-of-fact way, mentioning its "many uses": its transportation function, its weekday users going to work, and its crowds on the way to the hills at weekends; see György Enyedi and Viktória Szirmai, Budapest: A Central European Capital (London, 1992). The emotional overtones that were to accompany later references to the square had not yet appeared.
4. Although citizens were critical of the widening inequalities that were a consequence of increasing market opportunities - see, among others, Chris M. Hann, ed., Market Economy and Civil Society in Hungary (London, 1990) - and the uneducated vegetable vendors who were making several times more than engineers hurt people's sense of propriety, many attributed these problems to the incompleteness of market conditions rather than to market exchange per se.
5. Stalin's name crossed the Danube in 1946 and, for seven years, settled downtown on the former Elizabeth Square. For years this square was considered the possible locus of a real socialist square modeled after Moscow's Red Square. The grand plan did not materialize: the name-giver's direct political significance shrank together with available resources. In 1953, in a cautious return to the classics, the square became Engels Square; after the collapse, the name Elizabeth was reinstated.
6. Enyedi and Szirmai, Budapest, 29.
7. Unless otherwise indicated, the following description is based on fieldwork data obtained through participant observation. The bulk of the research was carried out in the summer of 1995, but the site was revisited in 1996 and 1997, and some of the observations were adjusted accordingly. Thus although the exact physical time of the snapshot is 1995, the essay operates in an extended time frame, in "postsocialist" time.
8. To be noted is the distinction between "Magyars," referring to ethnicity, and "Hungarians" denoting citizenship.
9. Hajnal Fucskó, "'Emberpiac' a Moszkva téren," Magyar Nemzet, 27 April 1995, 7.
10. "Füstösképu" in Hungarian.
11. I have elected to use this terminology rather than Gypsy: it is considered less derogatory.
12. The Vietnamese element is made up of people who arrived as students and remained after their higher education was completed. When they graduated, the obligation to repay the cost of their education to the Vietnamese state if they refused to return to Vietnam pushed them toward entrepreneurial attempts. An apocryphal story tells of a young polytechnic student who supported himself so successfully by selling cigarettes that he established his own "business," becoming his own supplier. With these business profits, he bought a year for himself at Harvard Business School.
13. The technology of the hot dog - an American invention - has its local version in the Hungarian fast-food cuisine. Hot dogs have never been available in their original American form. Hot dog technology came to Hungary from France, where a roasted frankfurter is stuffed in a piece of fresh baguette with some dijon mustard. The bread is pulled over a heated aluminum stick, creating a hole inside for the sausage. The French equipment was adjusted to suit local Hungarian ways and ingredients. The frankfurter was boiled, the mustard was minimized, and the baguette was replaced by half of a giant, crescent-shaped salt stick, a typical central European bread.
14. Georg Simmel, "The Poor," in Donald Levine, ed., On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings of Georg Simmel (Chicago, 1971), 152.
15. Georg Simmel, "The Poor," in On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings of Georg Simmel (1971), 152. Ibid. In a similar vein, perhaps the most efficient method of acquiring personal donations is that of African immigrants sitting in the streets of German cities with a purse and a note saying: "For going back home."
16. Walter Benjamin, "Moscow," in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writing, ed., with an introduction by P. Demetz (New York, 1986), 106.
17. Péter Lengyel, "Belso európai tájakon," interview by Zsófia Mihancsik, Budapesti Negyed 1, no. 2 (Fall-Winter 1993): 186 (emphasis added).
18. Magasépítési Tervezo Vállalat (MATERV), Moszkva tér: Részletes rendezési terv (Budapest, 1991).
19. David Stark, "Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism," American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 4 (January 1996): 995.
20. Names and signs that appear in English in the Hungarian context are enclosed in quotation marks.
21. The building has recently received another face-lift. The billboard has been removed, red lanterns have been placed in all the windows, and the Chinese restaurant that has replaced the pub is frequented by quite another type of audience: Chinese families, local couples, and mid-echelon office workers from the international corporate community.
22. Many people in staunchly cosmopolitan and well-read Budapest also wonder why Ernest Hemingway came to be associated with the most popular candy shops in the city.
23. Open from 9:00 A.M. to 12:00 A.M. except for Sunday, when the needy and their caregivers are supposed to be in church.
24. This need for pet food is entirely created by foreign companies' efficient advertising. From one day to the next, grocery stores, so pressed for space that they had to pile up toilet paper in their windows, installed separate shelves designed and provided by companies producing pet food.
25. Chris Hann presents stories that demonstrate citizens' mixed sentiments concerning privatization and free markets, and their nostalgia for the security of the old regime. See Hann, The Skeleton at the Feast: Contributions to East European Anthropology (Canterbury, 1995).
26. Ágnes Hárs, "Migration and the Labor Market," in Maryellen Fullerton, Endre Sik, and Judit Tóth, eds., Refugees and Migrants: Hungary at a Crossroads (Budapest, 1995), 85-104.
27. A district that starts at Moscow Square and includes Rose Hill, a few older inner-Buda suburbs, and the most rapidly growing new suburbs on the outskirts.
28. Budapest Statisztikai Évkönyve, 1993 (Budapest, 1994), 143-45.
29. Endŕe Sik, "Measuring the Unregistered Economy in Post-Communist Transformation," Eurosocial Report 52 (Vienna, 1995): 15.
30. Little surprise, then, that more extensive informal social network ties produced advantages in both incomes and the quality of housing. See József Böröcz and Caleb Southworth, "'Who You Know . . .': Earnings Effects of Formal Informal Social Network Resources under Late State Socialism, Hungary, 1986-87," Journal of Socio-Economics (1998): forthcoming;
31. and Judit Bodnár and József Böröcz, "Housing Advantages for the Better-Connected? Institutional Segmentation, Settlement Type and Social Network Effects in Late State-Socialist Housing Inequalities," Social Forces 76, no. 4 (June 1998): forthcoming.
32. Sik, "Measuring the Unregistered Economy," presents data for 1992 and 1993 that reveal a monotonic decrease in the proportion of unregistered work as one moves from the lowest income decile - in which it is around 50 percent - to the highest decile. Even in the highest decile, however, it is still 30 percent. Using a different methodology, Sik also offers estimates that conclude with significantly lower numbers and a reversed relationship by income, suggesting in fact that the proportion of unregistered work positively correlates with income. Regardless of the discrepancies in the estimates, the point can still safely be made that unregistered activities are not limited to the poor.
33. See, among others, József Böröcz, "Dual Dependency and the Informalization of External Linkages: The Case of Hungary," Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 14 (1992): 189-209;
34. József Böröcz, "Simulating the Great Transformation: Property Change under Prolonged Informality in Hungary," Archives européennes de sociologie 34 (1993): 81-107,
35. and Endre Sik, "From the Multicoloured to the Black and White Economy: The Hungarian Second Economy and the Transformation," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 18, no. 1 (1994): 46-70.
36. The survey (MATERV, 1991) included three groups of Budapest citizens: those from areas surrounding Moscow Square, those who live further away on the outskirts but travel through the square, and a general control group from the rest of the city.
37. State socialist economies also had guest worker arrangements, but these individuals were few and hardly visible (e.g., Hungarian machine tool operators working in East Germany, Cuban women textile workers in Budapest, or the Polish construction workers who used to work only in the basement of Budapest's Karl Marx University); they worked and lived together, and mixing with the locals was not encouraged.
38. Alejandro Portes, "Toward a Structural Analysis of Illegal (Undocumented) Immigration," International Migration Review 44, no. 12 (Winter 1978): 469-84.
39. Hárs, "Migration and the Labor Market," 100.
40. Alejandro Portes and József Böröcz, "Contemporary Immigration: Theoretical Perspectives on Its Determinants and Modes of Incorporation," International Migration Review 87, no. 23 (Fall 1989): 606-30.
41. György Csepeli and Endre Sik, "Changing Content of Political Xenophobia in Hungary - Is the Growth of Xenophobia Inevitable?" in Fullerton, Sik, and Tóth, eds., Refugees and Migrants, 121-27.
42. György Csepeli and Endre Sik, "Changing Content of Political Xenophobia in Hungary - Is the Growth of Xenophobia Inevitable?" in Refugees and Migrants, 121-27. Ibid.
43. Karl Polanyi, "The Economy as Instituted Process," in Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg, and Harry W. Pearson, eds., Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory (Glencoe, Ill., 1957).
44. György Konrád and Iván Szelényi, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power, trans. A. Arato and R. Allen (New York, 1979);
45. Iván Szelényi, "Social Inequalities in State Socialist Redistributive Economies," International Journal of Comparative Sociology 19, no. 1-2 (1978): 63-87.
46. David Stark, "Rethinking Internal Labor Markets - New Insights from a Comparative Perspective," American Sociological Review 51 (August 1986): 492-504.
47. Needless to say, one should avoid positing markets and redistributive systems with impermeable boundaries and their subordinate elements as incomparably different from each other. Calculative behavior even if pertaining to a smaller sphere of things was a defining characteristic of the second economy of state socialism. The differences between market and Market are subtle.
48. He does this in a way that suggests the analytical subtext of state socialism.
49. Karl Polanyi, The Livelihood of Man, ed. Harry Pearson (New York, 1977), 166.
50. Karl Polanyi, The Livelihood of Man, Ibid., 187.
51. Karl Polanyi, The Livelihood of Man, Ibid., 167.
52. The political importance of this policy can be seen in the fact that, partly due to the second economy, there was no food shortage in Hungary. In fact, Hungary enjoyed a food surplus, making the food industry and agriculture a net contributor to the gross national product - a rare occurrence in today's world market of highly subsidized agribusiness and food production regimes. By contrast, in Poland, a worse-than-usual shortage of food was one reason for the 1980 strikes - which led to the emergence of the Solidarity movement.
53. Portes and Böröcz, "Contemporary Immigration."
54. Akos Róna-Tas, The Grand Surprise of the Small Transformation: The Demise of Communism and the Rise of the Private Sector in Hungary (Ann Arbor, 1997).
55. Members of the police, military, and judiciary were excluded from these activities, along with those employed in health care, child care, most educational and legal services, wholesale trade, and advertising. See Róna-Tas, Grand Surprise of the Small Transformation. Membership was based on work participation - investment did not make one a partner.
56. Róna-Tas, Grand Surprise of the Small Transformation.
57. József Böröcz and Caleb Southworth, "Decomposing the Intellectuals' Class Power: Conversion of Cultural Capital to Income, Hungary, 1986," Social Forces 74, no. 3 (March 1996): 797-821.
58. This is the main terrain of wide-ranging reciprocity that is usually forgotten in the dualism of "mirrored comparisons."
59. László Diósdi, "Szakszervezeti tagok kérdezik: Hogyan lehet ugyanazért a munkáért a költségek terhére többet fizetni, mint a bérgazdálkodás keretei kôzôtt?" Népszava, 12 March 1983, 5.
60. Petit bourgeois not necessarily in a derogatory sense but mostly for its scale. Striving for security is not unknown for higher groups of the bourgeoisie, but it may be accompanied by more leverage and playfulness.
61. Tamás Kolosi, "A 'mellékes' nem mellékes," Élet és irodalom, 29 March 1980, 5.
62. Elemér Hankiss's discussion of the "first" and the "second society" captures a similar tension. After registering initial surprise that "the 'second society' had failed to develop into an autonomous sphere of social existence, an alternative society governed by organizational principles different from those of the 'first society,'" Hankiss notes that they were intertwined in a parasitic way implying the radicalness of their separation. Elemér Hankiss, East European Alternatives (Oxford, 1990), 107.
63. Statistical Yearbook of Hungary, 1993 (Budapest, 1994), 260.
64. Sik, "From the Multicoloured to the Black and White Economy."
65. On this, see, e.g., József Hegedus and Iván Tosics, "Privatisation and Rehabilitation in the Budapest Inner Districts," Housing Studies 9, no. 1 (1994): 39-54;
66. and Judit Bodnár, "'He That Hath to Him Shall Be Given': Housing Privatization in Budapest after State Socialism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 20, no. 4 (1996): 616-36.
67. Ákos Szilágyi, "A kelet-európai szökoállam," 2000, no. 9 (October 1997): 12-24. The typical model of the runaway state in Szilágyi's analysis is the current, post-Soviet Russian state that has had, indeed, many external burdens to drop: Afghanistan, Cuba, Ethiopia, the "eastern Bloc," the world's communist parties, the non-Russian former Soviet republics, the costs of the arms race, and so on.
68. Ulrich Beck; Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London, 1992), 143. Beck's notion of "risk society" as a successor to "industrial society" is inspiring in a generalmetaphorical sense. Much of Beck's concrete discussion of risk society focuses on global ecological hazards - a level different from the kind of risk exposure and risk taking my material discloses. He coined the phrase but did not fully exploit it, thus an unmarked reference to his notion of risk may be misleading. Beck's ultimately "supra-national, non-class-specific, global" risk production incorporates at places a rather more class-specific aspect of risk, for example, in the description of the privatization of physical and mental health risks of work that accompany spatial flexibilization.
69. Multicolored has become black and white, writes Sik on the experience of the transformation of a "first"/"second" economy into a "formal"/"informal" one. Sik, "From the Multicoloured to the Black and White Economy." He is right in emphasizing the polarization of possibilities. The metaphor of black and white captures only part of the truth, however: the process does not entail any loss of complexity; polarization is taking place along with wild diversification.
70. The really wealthy live, of course, in the isolation of their villas and cars and rarely interact with the population of Moscow Square. Theirs is almost a nonpresence in so far as public space is concerned, more so than ever before. Their attention and wallets are caught elsewhere, in the semipublic spaces of malls and clubs of all kinds.
71. Magyar Hírlap, 19 March 1998, 15.