Luca Kristóf

The role of intermediate actors in transmitting rural goods and services in rural areas under urban pressure.

This paper seeks to review the role of intermediate actors in transmitting rural goods and services (RGS) to urban consumers in rural areas. The central questions are to identify intermediate actors and their capacity to conciliate, bridge and connect actions between rural and urban actors. Comparing the case studies of five European countries (Finland, France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Spain), the interpretation of the term ‘intermediate actors’ is rather dissimilar. The transformation of administrative structures and development policies and the rise of the culture economy are important factors to explain the emerging number and strengthening role of intermediate actors. To reflect the intermediate cooperation between the urban and rural actors, three types of conceptual structures may be relevant for analysis: the French ‘multiple’, the Finnish and Dutch ‘organized’ and the Spanish and Hungarian ‘adaptive’ models. Finally, it has been argued that rural development and its power structures could be more considered in terms of encouraging certain activities and enabling mediators to be primary actors of new urban–rural relations.

Mapping the Post-communist Class Structure: Findings from a New Multidimensional Hungarian Class Survey

In this article, we define a schema for the class structure of Hungary, in which we consider a case for an Eastern-European capitalist system emerging from post-communist societies. Our schema is based on the findings of the Hungarian Class Survey, 2014. Using six measures of Bourdieusian economic, cultural, and social capital and applying the methodology of latent class analysis (LCA), we have constructed a model of eight LCA-based classes: upper class, cultural middle class, affluent middle class, young urban consumers, network-embedded rural workers, young drifters, middle-aged deprived, and the precariat. Hungarian society seems to be quite hierarchical but is also fragmented within the upper and lower strata. Status inconsistency in terms of possessing economic, cultural, and social capital is strongly present even for the middle classes. There is a clear divide in our class model between the upper four and the lower four classes, in terms of vertical and nonvertical aspects of social stratification. We also compare our new multidimensional class typology to the traditional occupation-based one and demonstrate its added value for class analysis in Hungary.

Narrative Identities and the Egalitarian Norm Among Hungarian Elite Couples

Our article aims to study the attitudes of the elite to family life and gender equality. This is a social group who still experiences significant gender imbalances. We focus on attitudes to family life, which has thus far been underresearched in elite literature. With the help of the analysis of 34 individual interviews with members of the Hungarian political, economic, and cultural elite, we identify and present three types of narrative identities: dominant, deferential, and egalitarian. The main finding from our qualitative content analysis is that egalitarian partnership norms which were discussed in every narrative and gender equality appear in most cases as a norm among the elite. However, there is a narrative tension between this norm and the couples’ actual experiences of their family life. We conclude our article with some comments on how the ideology of egalitarian essentialism strengthens gender inequalities reinforcing the underrepresentation of women in elite positions.