Cultural Studies paper by Balogh, Róbert
Institute of History, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Shortage as Experience in the 1940s and 1950s in Hungary and Transylvania

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The paper argues that shortage of food and energy as an experience concerned a whole generation during the 1940s and 1950s across the region and that it triggered emotional responses and routines. The paper starts with a close reading of the recently published receipt-book prepared by women in forced labour camp in 1944 (Czingel 2014) and of diaries written in 1944-45 that contain references to shortage. Through these texts I show types of moral economy functioning in the time of crises of those years.
Second, I analyze the discourse of shortage in letters exchanged among professional foresters working in Northern-Transylvania and Hungary between 1939 and 1944.
In the third section I juxtapose these with moral economy of cookbooks published in Hungary and in Transylvania during the war years and in the 1950s, narratives published in specialist periodicals as well as with reports related to food supply prepared by UNRRA and FAO administration between 1946 and 1960 about Hungary and Romania.
As an outcome we will see common and specific elements of the moral and emotional economy of shortage across time and space.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
I have MA in History and Political Science from the University of Debrecen. Currently, I am doing research for my Phd dissertation at ELTE, Budapest. I work as a junior researcher for the Institute of History, HAS in Budapest. My research seeks to link social and environmental history through looking at hybrid elements of urban life during the period of state socialism in Hungary.
I studied at the University of Pisa, Italy with Socrates-Erasmus scholarship in 2005 and at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India between 2011 and 2013 with a grant from Indian Council for Cultural Relations.