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Everyday Life Under Communism and After - Tibor Valuch

Everyday Life Under Communism and After

Lifestyle and Consumption in Hungary, 1945–2000

(Autor)

Buch | Hardcover
508 Seiten
2022
Central European University Press (Verlag)
978-963-386-376-3 (ISBN)
CHF 148,35 inkl. MwSt
By providing a survey of consumption and lifestyle in Hungary during the second half of the twentieth century, this book shows how common people lived during and after tumultuous regime changes. After an introduction covering the late 1930s, the study centers on the communist era, and goes on to describe changes in the post-communist period with its legacy of state socialism.




Tibor Valuch poses a series of questions. Who could be called rich or poor and how did they live in the various periods? How did living, furnishings, clothing, income, and consumption mirror the structure of the society and its transformations? How could people accommodate their lifestyles to the political and social system? How specific to the regime was consumption after the communist takeover, and how did consumption habits change after the demise of state socialism? The answers, based on micro-histories, statistical data, population censuses and surveys help to understand the complexities of daily life, not only in Hungary, but also in other communist regimes in east-central Europe, with insights on their antecedents and afterlives.

Tibor Valuch is a social historian and research chair at the Center for Social Sciences, Institute of Political Science, Budapest. He is also professor at the Institute of History, Eszterházy Károly University, Eger.

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Acronyms


Introduction


Chapter 1. The Study of Hungarian Everyday Life: Historiography, Methods, and Concepts

About the sources used for this volume

The concept of daily life, correlations between lifestyle and changes in society


Chapter 2. Two Hundred Pengős a Month, Five Hundred Forints, Two Thousand Forints…: Financial Circumstances, Prices, Wages, and Income Inequalities in Everyday Life

National revenue, real wages, and changes in the standard of living

Wages, prices, inequalities

Unchanging and changing forms of poverty

Accumulating property and wealth


Chapter 3. From Plentiful Privation to a Consumer Society: The Changes and Characteristics of Consumer Consumption

Consumption and consumer attitudes

The corner store, the supermarket, and the shopping center: Changes in the locations of consumer consumption

Homes, home construction, furnishings, and durable goods

Clothing and the consumption of apparel

The consumption and supply of foodstuffs


Chapter 4. This Is How We Lived: Housing Conditions, Usage of Living Space, and Interior Decoration

The general characteristics determining housing and the state of urban housing

Village houses, village dwellings

For those without a home: apartments for rent, beds to let, and work dormitories

Living in dire straits—slums, shantytowns, and ghettos

The general characteristics of changes in home interiors

Working-class and middle-class homes

Rural and peasant interiors

The interior world of Soviet-type housing estates

Summer and weekend homes


Chapter 5. “Well-dressed and Fashionable”: Changes in Clothing Styles, Habits, and Fashion

Need and puritanism: rural and urban styles of dress in the mid-twentieth century

Fashion and dressing habits during the state socialist period: changes in norms for everyday and formal occasions

Up-to-date fashion and the re-differentiation of apparel at the end of the century


Chapter 6. “We Ate, We Drank, We Filled Our Stomachs”: Nutrition, Eating, and Dietary Habits

The general characteristics of eating habits

From starvation to “goulash communism”

The years of “feeling full”

Abundance and shortages after the fall of the Iron Curtain


Conclusions


Appendix

Bibliography

Index 

Erscheinungsdatum
Zusatzinfo 68 Figures; 17 Tables, black and white
Verlagsort Budapest
Sprache englisch
Maße 152 x 229 mm
Gewicht 848 g
Themenwelt Geschichte Allgemeine Geschichte Zeitgeschichte
Geschichte Teilgebiete der Geschichte Kulturgeschichte
ISBN-10 963-386-376-7 / 9633863767
ISBN-13 978-963-386-376-3 / 9789633863763
Zustand Neuware
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