Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1985 (13. évfolyam, 43-46. szám)
1985 / 45. szám
changes associated with the introduction of the New Economic Mechanism. The inadvertent interaction of changes in central regulations was crucial for the development of the semiprivate sector on the fringes of the agricultural cooperative sector. The relationship between the cooperative and the semiprivate entrepeneur is succinctly stated: “The co-op gives us a letterhead and a bank account. In exchange we have to deliver 60 percent of the value added produced by the plant. The remaining 40 percent goes to wages and entrepreneural income.” The author is a specialist in labor economics, organizational analysis, and evaluation research in Washington, D.C. Stolarik, M. Mark. GROWING UP ON THE SOUTH SIDE. Bucknell University Press, 440 Forsgate Drive, Cranbury NJ 08512, 1985. 152 pages, biblio, illus. $19.50 cloth. This study attempts to show why Slovaks left 19th century Hungary for America, why they settled in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and how they adapted to their new environment. The author describes first-generation Slovak communities in Bethlehem, which, as in the rest of the U.S. coalesced around families, boarding houses, churches, and fraternal benefit societies. Chain-migration brought people from particular villages in the Old World to specific American settlements, and these Old World neighbors initially sought each other out in saloons and boarding houses. Later, they organized themselves into fraternal benefit societies, again influenced by their villages of origin, and by their religious affiliations. National consciousness also played a role in this process of community building, as did the dialects the immigrants spoke. The second and third generations of Bethlehem Slovaks had different concerns. They have never seen the Old World and looked upon their mature American communities as the models to which they had to adapt or as confines from which they had to escape. Generally speaking, the second generation was the most stable of the three. Members of the third generation looked beyond Bethlehem and the steel mill for their “American dream.” Further schooling, whitecollar jobs, and suburban life lured them away from the old neighborhood. They are in a state of transition between the old ways and the new. The author is president of the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies in Philadelphia. Sugar, Peter F.ed., ETHNIC DIVERSITY AND CONFLICT IN EASTERN EUROPE. ABC-Clio Press, Riviera Campus, 2040 Alameda Padre Serra, Santa Barbara, CA 93103; for the ACLS/SSRC, 1980. xii + 553 pages, notes. No. 8 in the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe Publication Series. $27.50 cloth. The volume contains ten refined versions of papers presented in a conference on ethnicity in 1975. The preface written by the editor is followed by a discussion of ethnic groups and nationalities in East Central Europe, the formation, persistence, and transformation of ethnic identities in the region, and authored by Paul R. Brass, U. of Washington. Chapter 2 is on social theory and ethnography: neglected perspectives on language and ethnicity in East Central Europe by Joshua A. Fishman, Yeshiva U. In chapter 3 Tama's Hofer, HAS, first relates the ethnic model to peasant culture then offers a contribution to the ethnic symbol building on linguistic foundations in East Central European peoples. BOOKS (Continued) 4 Chapter 4 written by Walker Conner, SUNY, Brockport, deals with the ethnopolitical challenge and governmental response. In chapter 5 Trond Gilberg concerns himself with a related topic, the influence of state policy on ethnic persistence and nationality formation. Chapter 6 is authored by Ernest Gellner, London School of Economics, makes an attempt to find the place of ethnicity between culture, class, and power. In chapter 7 Julius Rezler, Loyola U., Chicago, discusses economic and social differentiation as related to ethnicity. Chapter 8 by Cynthia H. Enloe, Clark U., analyzes the relationship of religion and ethnicity, as is Michael B. Petrovich, U. of Wisconsin, in chapter 9. The final chapter is by the editor who concludes that “Eastern Europe never became ‘modern’... the state of Eastern Europe moved from their traditional societies without moving the bulk of their people away from their traditions. Events moved too fast and started from a base too high to permit the development of ethnicity first and a transformation into nationalism.” The book was reviewed by Edith Kurzweil, Rutgers U., in Contemporary Sociology 10:5 (Sep 81) 684-5. The editor is professor of history at the U. of Washington. ARTICLES AND PAPERS Kapótsy, Béla. “The American Relevance of the Hungarian Legal Abortion Experience.” Natural Family Planning (Collegeville, Minnesota) 8:4 (Winter 1984) 283-296. Abortion is conceived as an emotionally charged moral problem with very important health and demographic consequences. The author attempts to relate the nearly three decades-old Hungarian legal abortion experience to the still fermenting American abortion debate. “Most of the East European countries legalized abortion in or around 1956, seventeen years before the U.S., and the Hungarian situation in the middle 1970s had striking similarity to that of the U.S. Hungarian vital rates (birth and death rates, and their difference, the rate of natural increase) were either very similar or identical to ours in 1975 — the most important one, the annual rate of natural increase, was 0.6% for both countries in the year. The Hungarian population has been actually declining since 1981. Hungary has started to alter its liberal abortion law in response to public clamor. A reasonably well informed public concensus, reinforced by articulate writers, demographers and medical specialists put pressure on the government to alter its abortion of 1956, leading to considerable abortion restrictions in 1974. The author is assoc, prof, at Hunter College, CUNY. □ Kontra, Miklós. “Should Hungarians Teach British English or American? In: Az angol nyelvtanítás módszertani irodalmából (From the literature of methodologies in teaching English.) ed. by Péter Medgyes and Edit Nagy. Budapest: National Institute of Pedagogy, 1984. Should American English be given preference over British English in language courses in Hungary? The author believes so. Some of the arguments for and against teaching American English are given. On the one hand, it is unpredictable what kind of English speaker a contemporary student may encounter let us say ten years from now, hence, there cannot be justification for preference in either direction. It is most likely that the student will encounters variety of English dialects, a fact which strengthens the argument for equality. The learning of American English has become increasingly popular in recent years, in spite of the fact that some label it “ugly." A NO. 45, AUTUMN 1985, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER
