Past Issues


In 2019, the relationship of Romanians and Hungarians living in Romania was overshadowed by the conflict that happened in the Úz Valley military cemetery. The conflict was triggered when Dormánfalva from Bákó County built a memorial in the cemetery – belonging to Csíkszentmárton, a Hungarian village in Hargita County – to honour the Romanian soldiers supposedly buried there. The cemetery has been a subject of county border disputes for decades: both Bákó and Hargita counties consider the area as their own. This administrative debate culminated three years ago in cemetery closures, cemetery occupations, protests, nationalist manifestations, involving politics, civil society, various Romanian authorities and the media. In this study, I compare how the Hungarian and Romanian language print media from Szeklerland presented the events that led to the Romanian - Hungarian physical conflict in the Úzvölgy military cemetery, reflecting on what kind of interpretations of the reality was offered, represented in the local media of the two nations. Using Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis, I compare the media discourse of the local Hungarian and Romanian newspapers, and the local and national political discourse presented in the media, and analyze the different definitions of reality represented in the media.

Keywords: media representation, classification struggles, paralell realities, interethnic conflicts, Úz Valley military cemetery

Full text (in Hungarian)

The academic interest in right-wing populism and conspiracy theories has significantly grown in the past years. Hungarian political changes in the past decade have also gained attention, while common features of populism and conspiracy theories are rather neglected. This paper analyses a slice of Hungarian political discourse in order to shed light on populist and conspiratorial rhetoric, especially on the construction of national authenticity.

Keywords: populism, conspiracy theories, discourse, Hungary

Full text (in Hungarian)

Rural tourism started to emerge in Szeklerland (Romania) after the regime change in the early 1990s, developing at a relatively rapid pace and providing supplementary income for many in precarious financial circumstances. Like all industries, it was not immune to change. My study seeks to illustrate these changes by conducting interview research in a settlement with a long history of tourism. Initial organisation and networking was followed by a process of decline and individualisation. With the emergence of rural tourism, many people started to host guests and the number of hosts increased rapidly, but has now declined again. There are several reasons for this, which stem from the transformation of rural tourism, such as the reduction in the size of tourist groups and the changing needs of the tourists who visit.

Keywords: tourism, rural tourism, network, transformation, Szeklerland

Full text (in Hungarian)

The youth organizations of the Hungarian minority typically operate in the civil sphere. However, when examining the Hungarian civil sphere in Transylvania in an international, European context, it is necessary to take into account that due to historical characteristics, the process of the formation of minority civil sphere in Transylvania differs from the process of the emergence of civil society. The aim of the study is to assess certain theoretical dilemmas after a brief presentation of the organizational sociological aspects and the possibilities of interpreting the Hungarian civil sphere in Transylvania. Additionally, it seeks to provide a theoretical approach to the examination of Hungarian youth organisations in Transylvania that can contribute to the interpretation of the sphere of youth organizations.

Keywords: Hungarian youth organizations in Transylvania, NGOs

Full text (in Hungarian)

This paper reviews the features of consumption and, more specifically, food supply under state socialism in Romania. Emphasizing the specific duality that characterized food production. In parallel with collectivisation, which was also proclaimed as a rational organisation of production, forms of production organisation based on family ties were maintained to a considerable extent. Moreover, this form of production organisation was extended from rural to urban areas in the crisis management process of the 1980s. The emergence of urban kitchen gardens and barns was not only of economic importance in the context of shrinking supplies, but also functioned as an important social historical moment. It reversed and inverted the processes of systemic identification that had begun to take shape in certain forms during the two good decades of consolidated state socialism.

Keywords: state socialism, social history of consumption, urban kitchen gardens, consumption statistics

Full text (in Hungarian)

Present Issue


et2023 1

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