The Ideal of Self-Sufficiency and the Reality of Dependence:

Vidacs, Bea

doi:10.2307/j.ctt9qcxgd.7

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Economic anthropologists have provided profound evidence that across post‐socialist societies ideals of thrift and self‐sufficiency are deeply embedded in the habitus of the rural working class (Gudeman and Hann ). Even though the scope of subsistence farming has considerably decreased since the transition to capitalism, the self‐provisioning of food is still a common practice shaping everyday life and rural identities (Haukanes ; Smith and Jehlička ; Vidacs ; Decker ). In my field, many people cared for kitchen gardens, sometimes in combination with keeping farm animals, particularly bees or chicken.…”

Section: ‘Good’ (Grand)mothers Ideals Of Self‐sufficiency and The Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ambiguous Experience of Motherhood in the Western Bohemian Countryside: Exploring Rural Gender Inequalities Through the Framework of Precarity

Decker

2019

Sociologia Ruralis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Perspectives from Central and Eastern Europe rarely find their way into the debate on rural gender inequality. In this article, I aim to mitigate this imbalance by exploring everyday arrangements of women with dependent children in a peripheralised rural region of the Czech Republic. Using an expanded framework of precarity that integrates different spheres of work, I demonstrate that in the spatial context studied, motherhood increases the social disadvantage women face while simultaneously constituting an important field of female agency. I further show that in order to identify room for manoeuvre within configurations of insecurity the whole life‐situation of women must be taken into consideration. My findings add to a nuanced and context‐sensitive understanding of gender inequality in the European countryside, in particular by highlighting the field‐specific interaction of low‐wage economy, gendered division of work and mobility, and concepts of rural childhood, good (grand)parenting and self‐sufficiency. The study draws upon semi‐structured interviews and ethnographic research.

show abstract

Section: ‘Good’ (Grand)mothers Ideals Of Self‐sufficiency and The Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ambiguous Experience of Motherhood in the Western Bohemian Countryside: Exploring Rural Gender Inequalities Through the Framework of Precarity

Decker

2019

Sociologia Ruralis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It now makes more sense (also for status reasons) to apply the same quantity of labour to maintaining an attractive lawn and perhaps installing play equipment for children and grandchildren. Few villagers slaughter pigs nowadays, since this is an onerous and smelly task (Vidacs 2015a). Meat obtained cheaply in the supermarket can still be smoked in traditional ways and spices added according to family recipes, but it is nowadays rare to send samples to relatives and neighbours for tasting.…”

Section: The Populist Countermovement 2010 -?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But some native Ta´zla´r households have lost the routines of the oikos altogether (cf. Vidacs, 2015b). They point out that the low cost of most food products in large foreign-owned stores such as Tesco and Lidl, easily accessible in neighbouring towns, removes the incentive to toil in one's garden.…”

Section: The Populist Countermovement 2010-?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Marketization and development on a European periphery: From peasant oikos to socialism and neoliberal capitalism on the Danube-Tisza interfluve

Hann

2018

Environ Plan A

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The modern term economy is associated above all with market exchange. But it derives from the Greek oikos, which for Aristotle referred to the well-managed estate, able to withstand the forces of supply and demand by virtue of a high degree of self-sufficiency. The paper explores the long-term discontinuous expansion of the principle of price-forming markets (in the sense of Karl Polanyi) at the expense of self-sufficiency in a zone of the Great Hungarian Plain where the author has carried out long-term field research. The historically “backward” region of the Danube-Tisza interfluve has been integrated into wider historical processes through different forms of market exchange, first under peripheral variants of capitalism, then in the later decades of socialism, and recently under neoliberal capitalism in a political climate of “illiberal democracy” or populism. The paper analyses continuity and change across these epochs at the societal level, with ethnographic illustrations. In addition to Polanyi’s notions of “market society” and “double movement”, it draws theoretically on Ferenc Erdei’s agenda to overcome rural backwardness through embourgeoisement; it is found that the interests of the rural population were more effectively promoted in the decades of market socialism than in any other period before or since.

show abstract

“…Lacking markets, most people don't consider it viable to engage in agriculture. 31 The dismal economic picture is further exacerbated by the drying up of jobs in the nearby town that like many others has undergone serious deindustrialization since 1989.…”

Section: Transformations In the Hungarian Countrysidementioning

confidence: 99%

Blood Is Thicker than Water

Vidacs

2017

Journal of Family History

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The research took place in two time periods thirty years apart (in 1980-1981 under socialism and in 2009-2010 under the emerging market economy, following the regime change of 1989). It documents the shift from choosing godparents from a combination of relatives and nonrelatives to practically always relatives. After a brief literature review, the article discusses the place of godparenthood in the village in the 1980s, including how godparents were "recruited" and the introduction of the socialist, civil "name-giving ceremony." Compadres acquired in the civil ceremony were treated similarly to those acquired through baptism, and the "name-giving" system was integrated into the overall system of godparenthood in terms of terminology, obligations, honors, and cooperation in rituals and labor exchange. The latter was an important part of village life: relatives, neighbors, and compadres participated roughly equally. It also contributed to the synergies developed between the production cooperative and peasant household production under socialism. Following 1989, the cooperative closed and labor opportunities declined; labor exchange was replaced by market relations in all aspects of life. The results of a questionnaire on choosing godparents show that the switch from unrelated friends to relatives as godparents was long in the making, slowed somewhat by the contrary trend under the oppressive political circumstances of the early 1950s, indicating that the villagers tried to cement their networks by choosing unrelated compadres. By now, as more and more people are leaving the village, they choose relatives exclusively as if to try to strengthen family ties in the face of modernization and globalization.

show abstract

The Ideal of Self-Sufficiency and the Reality of Dependence:

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

The Ambiguous Experience of Motherhood in the Western Bohemian Countryside: Exploring Rural Gender Inequalities Through the Framework of Precarity

The Ambiguous Experience of Motherhood in the Western Bohemian Countryside: Exploring Rural Gender Inequalities Through the Framework of Precarity

Marketization and development on a European periphery: From peasant oikos to socialism and neoliberal capitalism on the Danube-Tisza interfluve

Blood Is Thicker than Water

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About