Urbanities,
Vol. 4
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No 2
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November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
90
that is still the hallmark of social anthropological studies. The US and British anthropologists
who embarked upon anthropological fieldwork in Hungary (P. Bell, C. Hann, S. Gal, E.
Huseby-Darvas, M. Sozan, I. Vasary) all studied the countryside and published unique village
monographs. Finally, here was somebody who wanted to conduct research in an urban area, in
Hungary, in 1985, and that really pleased my advisors. Importantly, John Cole’s previous
doctoral students conducted fieldwork in Transylvania to study the changing rural landscape
of Ceausescu’s Romania. In the early 1980s, Cole entered a furious debate with some
Hungarian scholars including anthropologists as to the actual Romanianization plan of ethnic
communities in Romania, and received a good amount of criticism of his, and his students’,
pro-Romanian perspective on that issue. The possibility of someone studying in Hungary and
producing a PhD dissertation on a Hungarian topic surely came as a blessing to him and his
programme.
To me, studying Budapest anthropologically seemed ideal at that time, and I believe it
is an ideal research even today. Hungary’s capital was already at its peak population boom
with two million residents, now it is somewhat below that figure, but most of the outer
districts, and some blocks of the notorious eighth, were dilapidated exuding the feeling of
either the inter-war or the 1950s Stalinization periods. The 21st district of Csepel was a
perfect choice to select for a fieldwork site (Kürti 2002b). It has been expanding both in its
size and industry with a heterogeneous labour-force, its connection to downtown Budapest
was ensured via tram. However, the district, with several high-schools, churches and large
housing complexes, managed to avoid anthropologists before. It was not only ideal, but
remained a
terra incognita
and there was a lot to be done. In the 1980s, it was still referred
by its residents as Red Csepel, an epithet preserved from the 1920s and 1930s, mostly because
of the working-class movement. Since WWI, Csepel was Hungary’s number one factory
town, thanks to the skilful Jewish entrepreneur, Manfred Weiss, who established his steel-mill
there. Csepel became even more marked as a hotbed of industrial movement after 1945 as the
Stalinist state magnified its symbolic power. By World War II, Csepel’s population increased
to 65,000, most working in the district’s several factories. After the war, Stalinist political
economy brought dramatic changes to workers and to Hungarian industry as a whole.
Consequently, factories were nationalized and state control was established throughout the
economy and as I was able to witness, through central control, mass housing projects and the
implementation of Stakhanovism (a work-competition to speed up industrial output), Csepel
became a ‘model’ socialist city (Kürti 1990).
Following the reorganization in the post-Stalinist era, the original Weiss factories were
incorporated into a ‘socialist trust’ employing more than 40,000, most commuters from the
countryside who were offered cheap housing in one of the apartment complexes. In 1968, the
New Economic Mechanism was introduced to reverse the crisis caused by Hungary’s re-entry
into the capitalist world-system and the deficiencies of a centrally planned economy. By the late
1970s, it was evident that the ‘reforms’ could not buttress the serious of external economic
shocks (primary associated with the high oil prices) and their internal ramifications. After a wave
of political turbulence, the Csepel factories were facing yet another transformation: the trust was
eliminated completely and independent production units were created under a new system of
