Rescaling States – Rescaling Insecurities: Rural Citizenship at the Edge of the Hungarian State

Hajajj, csak most vettem észre, hogy holnap 11:00-13:00 között lesz a CEU-n egy doktori védés egy fontos témában. Társadalomföldrajzos terminológiában (tér, hely, területi átrendeződés, újraléptékesítés, rurális térségek, egyenetlen/egyenlőtlen fejlődés) beszél egy "nem-társadalomföldrajzos", nem elgondolkodtató ez? Mindenesetre, aki nem is tudna elmenni, az az előadó, Szőke Alexandra kutatási területét böngészgetheti.

Rescaling States – Rescaling Insecurities: Rural Citizenship at the Edge of the Hungarian State

Absztrakt:

"This dissertation examines how the ongoing neoliberal state restructuring in Hungary affects rural areas through the lens of two remote villages and analyses the ways in which rural inhabitants and officials reposition themselves and their locality within the currently emerging state spaces. The capitalist scalar restructuring along with the post-1989 state decentralisation and accession to the EU has brought a variety of new opportunities for remote rural places, but has also produced manifold insecurities. Extending the theoretical framework of neoliberal state restructuring to rural localities outside the core economies allows for a critique of the popular interpretation that the ‘post-socialist transition’ can explain Hungary’s current wide-scale unemployment, entrenched poverty, ethnic tensions, high levels of individual indebtedness and uneven development. The dissertation utilises ethnographic methods to delineate the present form of these processes with a particular emphasis on the practices of local state officials in three crucial areas: social security, development and access to resources. It examines the social processes through which state rescaling is taking place, the ways local officials and inhabitants cope with the consequent rescaling of insecurities and the ways these reconfigure the relationship between rural inhabitants and the state. It is argued that state rescaling has important consequences for social citizenship, which can only be captured by developing a spatially sensitive conceptualisation of citizenship that integrates the experience of rural inhabitants."