Szelényi, Iván
Bio: (1938-) Hungarian-American sociologist. Iván Szelényi received his doctorate from the Institute of Sociology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, where he was employed. Because of his critical views against the Communist Party and its leadership, he was expelled from Hungary. After that, he taught at the University of Kent, Flinders University of South Australia, and at several universities in the USA, including Yale. In the book Intellectuals on the Road the Class Power (1979) co-authored with György Konrád, the authors explore the inequalities that exist between different classes in the socialist regime in Hungary, paying special attention to the role of intellectuals in class relations. Szelényi continued to write about the problems of socialism in Hungary in the books Urban Inequalities under State Socialism (1983) and Socialist Entrepreneurs: Embourgeoisement in Rural Hungary (1988). He describes the situation that arose in Hungary after the fall of the socialist regime in the book Social Conflicts of Post-communist Transitions (1992). Szelényi also studied the interconnectedness of poverty, ethnicity, and gender in Eastern European transitional societies in the books Poverty, Ethnicity and Gender in Transitional Societies (2002) and Patterns of Exclusion: Constructing Gypsy Ethnicity and the Making of an Underclass in Transitional Societies of Europe (2006).
Fields of research
Authority Bureaucracy Capitalism Capitalist Class City Citizenship Classes Community Conflict Consumerism Control, Social Crisis Culture Discrimination Economy Elites Entrepreneurship Ethnicity Gender Ghetto Inclusion Inequality, Social Integration Market Multiculturalism Politics Poverty Power, Political Prejudice Privatization Race Socialism State Status Subculture Tolerance UnderclassMain works
Városszociológia (1973);
Intellectuals on the Road the Class Power (1979);
Urban Inequalities under State Socialism (1983);
Cities in Recession (1984);
Socialist Entrepreneurs: Embourgeoisement in Rural Hungary (1988);
Városi társadalmi egyenlőtlenségek (1989);
Social Conflicts of Post-communist Transitions (1992);
Making Capitalism without Capitalists (1998);
Urbanizáció és területi gazdálkodás (2000);
Poverty, Ethnicity and Gender in Transitional Societies (2002);
Patterns of Exclusion: Constructing Gypsy Ethnicity and the Making of an Underclass in Transitional Societies of Europe (2006);
Hogyan legyünk milliárdosok? avagy A neoliberális etika és a posztkommunista kapitalizmus szelleme (2010);
Varieties of Post-communist Capitalism (2019).
