Collectivization and the transfer of soft capital in two life stories from Hungary

Abstract

Through the analysis of two life stories of former peasants who had experienced collectivization in the early sixties in Hungary the paper sets focus on personal strategies of handling the trauma of societal transitions. Firstly, with help of social and cultural capital theories the importance of what Bourdieu named the transubstantiation of immaterial assets is explored in the process of adaptation from one system to the other. Secondly, the paper elucidates how these survival strategies constitute key elements of self-representations and which kind of meanings are attached to the collectivization experience in the personal life story. Following Gergen’s distinction between the plot and the story, the paper elaborates narrative constructions of the representations of self. Emphasis is placed on how the representations allow the narrator to reinstate self-respect through positioning the self in the traumatic event of collectivization. Realistic and constructivist approaches are combined utilizing life story analysis. The two cases represent gender- and class-specific polarities characterizing diversities of the collectivization experience.