Open Research Repository
The Open Research Repository (ORR) is the official institutional repository of the Central European University. The repository provides access to the research output of the CEU community by collecting open access versions of scholarly works authored or co-authored by CEU faculty and students.
For more information, please contact us at: scholcom@ceu.edu
Recent Submissions
Publication Hegemony in Action: Crafting New Common Sense at Orbán’s Hungarian Academy of Arts (2011-2023)(University of Salento, 2024-07-15)This article analyzes the construction of a right-wing hegemony through the lens of its intellectuals. I examine the Hungarian Academy of Arts (HAA) [Magyar Művészeti Akadémia], a flagship institution in Orbán’s Hungary that has not been previously researched. To understand the Academy’s mental and material processes in tandem, I mobilize Antonio Gramsci’s concept of common sense. With this concept, I approach the Academy’s “popular conception of the world”. With the help of ethnographic methods, I aim to study the heart of the state and analyze its power relations. The article argues that as much as the political economy of the regime, its ideas are full of paradoxes. These controversies do not stem from incompetence but from the contradictions of capitalism. Therefore, the article points out that the ideas of right-wing intellectuals are far from a coherent ideology. Institutions such as HAA consolidate these ideas into a messy mixture of common sense. In the case of HAA, the organizing principle of common sense is the feeling that right-wing artists were oppressed before Orbán returned to power in 2010, but they can now fulfill their vocation. By emphasizing how the beliefs and ideas of right-wing actors fuel an authoritarian capitalist regime, I bring three contributions to the literature. First, I demonstrate how the worldview of HAA is rooted in the past inequalities of post-socialism. Second, I go beyond the image of top-down propaganda and stress that the incoherence of common sense emerges from the regime’s internalized contradictions. Third, I draw attention to the role of the state and its intellectuals in orchestrating the common sense to normalize the local regime of capital accumulation. As a result, the article claims that right-wing intellectuals should be neither demonized nor idealized, but their ideas must be considered along with their pasts and the regime they craftPublication State Labour Control and Women’s Resistance in Austro-Hungarian Transylvania Tobacco Manufacturing (1897–1918)(Springer Nature Switzerland, 2024-12-25)This chapter explores women’s labour activism and labour organising practices in Austria-Hungary, with a focus on two major labour conflicts, in 1897 and 1911, in the state tobacco factory in the Transylvanian city of Kolozsvár/Cluj Napoca/Klausenburg. In Europe, Hungary was a key producer of tobacco leaf but it exported little beyond Austria; most of its finished products were destined for internal consumption. Since the end of the nineteenth century, numerous new tobacco manufactories had been established in Hungary by the state tobacco monopoly organisation. During this era, women tobacco workers became more willing to engage in labour conflicts and had stronger links than before with the regional and national labour movement. The chapter documents their labour activism—rooted in their gendered experiences as low-paid women workers—and shows how their demands were countered and neutralised through site-specific forms of paternalistic benefits alongside discipline and control. The chapter shows that the labour activism of the women workers in Transylvania was closely linked to processes of capital accumulation as well as the social and political movements developing in Austria-Hungary after the 1890s. It demonstrates how the state tobacco factory became increasingly less a site for negotiation and rather one of confrontation that met with hard-line employer retribution, and that this reconfiguration ultimately weakened Kolozsvár tobacco women’s organising.Publication Democratic Values in Nagari: An Analysis on Electoral System Shifts in One Province of Indonesia(2024-12-15)The Nagari system, a traditional form of regional government in Minangkabau, has historically employed a direct election method that empowers community members to elect their leaders. This model of participation aligns with the democratic values enshrined stated in the 1945 Constitution and the principles of human rights. However, a 2018 regulation altered this process, transitioning the selection of Nagari leaders from direct community engagement to an indirect election facilitated by the Nagari Traditional Council (KAN). This change was justified as a means to prevent the election of leaders who do not reflect the community’s values. This article seeks to identify the most effective democratic framework for village communities, particularly Nagari societies. The primary issue at hand is the shift from direct democracy to representative democracy in the election of Nagari leaders, instigated by Regional Regulation Number 7 of 2018. Utilizing normative legal research methods, this study emphasizes that the new regulation risks undermining democratic values by restricting direct voter engagement. The findings suggest that these modifications to the electoral process weaken the foundational principles of democracy in Nagari by curtailing direct community participation, a vital aspect of local governance and social cohesion. Therefore, it is essential to reevaluate these regulations to safeguard the democratic rights and participatory traditions of the Nagari community, ensuring alignment with constitutional principles of direct democracy and comprehensive citizen involvement.Publication Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU. Vol. 29, 2023(Central European University, Department of Medieval Studies, 2023)Publication A “Special Category of Women” in Austria and Internationally: Migrant Women Workers, Trade Union Activists, and the Textile Industry, 1960s to 1980s(Brill, 2024-05-04)At the beginning of the 1960s, Austria joined Western and Northern European states in recruiting temporary migrant workers. While the European “guestworker” and migrant labour regimes have been subject to multiple studies in the last 40 years, migrant women have rarely been at the centre of these investigations, although their specific issues have comprised a facet of the international labour movement since the 1970s. Female migrant workers faced a double marginalization in the labour movement, both as migrants and as women. By analysing printed source material, archival documents, and interviews with women trade unionists, this chapter examines this specific double marginalization; how gender, class, and ethnicity shaped the labour activism of domestic and migrant working women; and how the international, national, and local levels interacted in the context of the deindustrialization of the Austrian textile industry.
Communities in ORR
Select a community to browse its collections.