Intellectuals, Inequalities and Transitions

Tamás Demeter is "Lendület" Research Group Leader at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Professor at the Sociology Department of the University of Pécs. He has held various fellowships in Cambridge, MPIWG Berlin, IASH Edinburgh, and NIAS Wassenaar. He has published widely on the sociological tradition of Hungarian philosophy, and on early modern philosophy including its sociological context. He is the author of David Hume and the Culture of Scottish Newtonianism (Brill, 2016), and co-editor of Conflicting Values of Inquiry (Brill, 2015).

“I warmly recommend this volume to the reader. Those interested in Hungarian social science, in the basic features of capitalist and socialist societies and the transitions between them, will find an important source in this collection of papers. Beyond the relevant issues discussed by the contributors, the reader can catch a glimpse of the history of Hungarian social science. The papers reveal Iván Szelényi’s intellectual predecessors and his influence on his contemporaries, disciples and the younger generations of sociologists. Reading Szelényi and reading about Szelényi is always a source of intellectual enjoyment. I have been reading his works for several decades now, and I do not cease to learn and derive inspiration from them – when I agree with him, and even when we disagree here and there. It is due to his sharp formulations and engaging style that he has become a leading authority of Hungarian sociology and political science in particular and social science in general. I do hope this volume will find a wide readership, and that it will serve as course material recommended to sociology students.”─János Kornai, Emeritus Professor of Economics, Harvard University

• PrefaceAcknowledgementList of Figures and TablesNotes on Contributors1 Futures Present: On the Concepts of “Intellectuals” and “Intelligentsia” in Iván Szelényi’s OeuvreGil Eyal2 Normative Frames and Systemic Imperatives: Gouldner, Szelényi and New Class FractureMichael D. Kennedy3 New Class Theory as Sociology of KnowledgeTamás Demeter4 How to become a Dominant or Even Iconic Central and East European SociologistKarmo Kroos5 Inequality and Transitions: Human Frailty in a Sample of PrisonersBruce Western6 Neoclassical Sociology Meets Polanyian Political EconomyDorothee Bohle and Béla Greskovits7 Mechanisms of Institutional ChangeVictor Nee8 Transitions and Structural DistortionsTamás Kolosi9 The Ouvrierist Szelényi and the Missing Sociology of LaborDavid Ost10 Replies and CommentsIván SzelényiIndex