American Kitchens, Luxury Bathrooms, and the Search for a 'Normal' Life in Postsocialist Hungary

Fehérváry, Krisztina

doi:10.1080/0014184022000031211

Cited by 145 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Consumption patterns of the Western middle classes were widely seen as attainable and became a reference for people all across Eastern Europe (Fehérváry, 2002). These increased aspirations clashed not only with old economic realities but also with a dramatic economic decline (Thornton and Philipov, 2009).…”

Section: Conclusion and Feedback To Theoretical Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They emphasized that patterns of consumption of the advanced center are diffused throughout the sending society. In this sense Fehérváry's (2002) paper is illustrative. She drew our attention to that as far as consumer aspirations are concerned, in Hungary the reference group was the middle class of Western countries in the 1990s.…”

Section: Development and Migration -Theoretical Paradigmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Depopulating semi-periphery? Longer term dynamics of migration and socioeconomic development in Romania

Horváth¹,

Kiss²

2016

DEE

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Section: Conclusion and Feedback To Theoretical Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Development and Migration -Theoretical Paradigmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Depopulating semi-periphery? Longer term dynamics of migration and socioeconomic development in Romania

Horváth¹,

Kiss²

2016

DEE

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“…Not unique to Albania, this aspiration towards modernity -often equated with a 'normal' life (as opposed to the 'abnormal' one of communist times) -can be found in many other post-socialist societies. See, for example, Fehérváry (2002) on material culture and aspirations in postsocialist Hungary, particularly the place the kitchen and the bathroom occupy in shaping modern aspirations. 2…”

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confidence: 99%

Albania on the Move : Links between Internal and International Migration

Vullnetari¹

2012

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“…Instead, most found themselves struggling to "keep up" their social status in the face of economic and institutional upheaval (Fehérváry, 2002;see also Berdahl, 1999, Patico, 2008. My inquiries into polgárosodás in Dunaújváros were met with a shrug of the shoulders or sighs of exaggerated despair.…”

Section: Polgárosodás In Dunaújvárosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polgári lakáskultúra(bourgeois furnishings) and a postsocialist middle class in Hungary

Fehérváry¹

2011

Hungarian Studies

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This article looks at the fate of the kind of home furnishing in Hungary known as "bourgeois" (polgári lakáskultúra) as a way to investigate the middle classes that have emerged since the fall of state socialism. In the 1990s, political discourse was full of speculation about the revitalization of a historic bourgeoisie, and the media regularly featured the material culture of such a historic class. Such furnishings were indeed highly valued among an urban intelligentsia, and seemed to represent evidence of a long history of Hungarian bourgeois taste, civilized values and refinement starkly at odds with socialist material culture, tastes and manners. However, I argue that for many of the emerging middle classes in the 1990s and 2000s, this form of furnishing was no longer a suitable expression of the kind of class position to which they aspired, nor for how it was being newly legitimized. As I show through my anthropological fieldwork among the aspiring middle classes in the former "socialist" town of Dunaújváros, even families who owned such furnishings sold them or demoted them to less prominent places in their homes. Although the socialist state had attempted to devalue inherited, antique furnishings in its promotion of modern lifestyles in the 1960s and 70s, it was not until the end of socialism that such furnishings began to fail to represent middle class respectability. New ideals for such a class were based on entrepreneurial achievements in the present rather than on inherited status, and new home décor was an important way in which this new middle class subjectivity was being constituted.

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American Kitchens, Luxury Bathrooms, and the Search for a 'Normal' Life in Postsocialist Hungary

Cited by 145 publications

References 9 publications

Depopulating semi-periphery? Longer term dynamics of migration and socioeconomic development in Romania

Depopulating semi-periphery? Longer term dynamics of migration and socioeconomic development in Romania

Albania on the Move : Links between Internal and International Migration

Polgári lakáskultúra(bourgeois furnishings) and a postsocialist middle class in Hungary

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