Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1984 (12. évfolyam, 39-42. szám)

1984 / 39-40. szám

a girl to death that are really important, but the flaring passion in which the husband gives free vent to his rage, the bride’s protest against something, enduring even being* dragged tied to the tail of a horse, and the repression of this defiance... All this serves to raise sympathy in the audience. People revolt against oppressive powers, unjust social norms, fight for the right of certain emotions, for the right of the individual in the face of stubborn social practice. That is what we all approve even today.”

The author is prof, and scientific adviser at the Institute of Musicology, HAS.

Verdery, Katherine. TRANSYLVANIAN VILLAGERS; Three Centuries of Political, Economic, and Ethnic Change.

University of California Press, 2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94720, 1983. xvii + 436 pages, tables, maps, diagrams, illus, biblio, $29.95 cloth.

This important study, the first English-language work on Transylvanian rural society, is based on thorough anthropological research among Romanian villagers in Binfifi, and on archival research in various European holdings. It approaches its objectives on a variety of interrelated levels adding historical and sociological dimensions to its basically anthropological frame of reference. It looks at Romanian villagers’ interaction, past and present, with several layers of the political environment, most explicitly with the state. It looks at a relatively isolated village community in the context of global, economic forces changing from capitalism to socialism and from Hungarian to Romanian domination. The author sees these themes “as tightly interconnected: changing political and economic relations produced what became the paramount issue in Transylvania, namely differences in nationality.” She makes strenuous efforts to view the nationality issue in a detached manner and thereby produced data which may aid all sides in understanding the basic issues better, though the rich grassroots data obtained from a Romanian settlement lets her efforts succeed on the village level only.

The author is assoc, prof, of anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University.

Wall, Richard ed. in colaboration with Jean Robin and Peter Laslett, FAMILY FORMS IN HISTORIC EUROPE, Cambridge University Press, 32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, 1983. x + 606 pages, diagrams, tables, maps, biblio. $64.50 cloth.

The rapid growth of interest in family history as an integrating field of study, has inevitably brought about a degree of disorganization in terms of comparability and methodology. The contributors to this volume reflect such a division in the literature, some studies being particular, other thematic. The volume is actually a follow-up to P. Laslett and Ft. Wall (eds.) Household and Family in Past Time, Cambridge U.P., 1972, with the ambitious objective to describe and compare the various European familial systems. In his analytical introduction Wall measures and traces the origin of major differences between the family patterns of eastern and western Europe, suggests new ways to categorizing households, and examines the family budgets collected by French sociologist P.G.F. Le Play to ascertain to what extent peasant and blue collar worker households in the midnineteenth century were able to support themselves from their own resources. The cultural entities covered include Austria, the Baltic, Bavaria, Burges, England, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Rheims, Russia, and West Flanders. A study on

NO. 39-40, SPRING-SUMMER 1984 HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER

László Orszagh

_________________1907-1964________________

Pre-industrial household structure in Hungary (pp. 281 -307) was written by Rudolf Andorka and Tamás Faragd, but

Hungarian references can be found elsewhere in the volume, especially in John Hajnal’s paper on household formation systems. Reading the volume should be a rewarding exercise for anthropologists, sociologists, and historians with interest in the European scene.

The editor is senior research officer, Social Science Research Council, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, Cambridge.

Winner, Irene Portis and Rudolph M. Susel, eds. THE DYNAMICS OF EAST EUROPEAN ETHNICITY OUTSIDE OF EASTERN EUROPE; With Special Emphasis on the American Case. Schenkman Publishing, 3 Mount Auburn Place, Cambridge, MA 02138, 1983. xiv + 224 pages, tables, charts, $24.95 paper. No. 11 in the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe Publication Series of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council.

This collection of nine essays is based on papers presented at an international conference held at Bellagio, Italy, in 1977 on the problem of East Central European ethnicity outside of East Central Europe. The essays compose four parts. The first three parts focus on migration patterns and the “ethnic process” pertaining to Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia. The essays of the fourth part concentrate upon the interrelations between various ethnic subsystems that define the ethnic situation. The first essay is on The Background of Migration and Its Role in Shaping Magyar Communities in the U.S.A. 1880-1914 by Julianna Puskas (HAS). She describes patterns of emigration from Hungary in historical, economic, and regional terms as well as settlement characteristics in the U.S. including a multiethnic table on immigration from 1899 to 1924. A select bibliography is a useful feature of the article. The second essay is on War in the Peace Fort: Ancestral Heritage as a Disunity Factor in an Ethnic Community by Linda Degh (Indiana U.). After outlining the rationale for such studies, the author focuses on a case history involving the Hungarian settlement of Kipling (Bekevar) on the Canadian prairie, and concludes that traditional values influence the cultural evolution of groups; that seemingly insignificant causes can erode identification with larger ethnic units; and that time frequently works for widening rather than narrowing the chasm between groups.

Winner is adjunct prof, of semiotics, Brown U.; and Susel is a journalist and former prof, of history at Arizona St. U.

DISSERTATIONS*

Fitting, Andrea Ferenci (U. of Pittsburgh, 1982) A Classification of Stone Tools from Middle Neolithic Eastern Hungary.

174 pages. Microfilm and xerox no. DA8318182.

Ground stone tools in museum collections deriving from Neolithic sites in Eastern Hungary were analyzed for size,

‘Abstracts are usually based on those published in Dissertation Abstracts international. Microfilm and zerox copies of the original full dissertation may be obtained, when indicated, from Xerox University Microfilm 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106. When ordering, use the number,shown.

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