Alabán, Péter (postdoc researcher) will work on the organization of labor in the rural areas under socialism and will focus on the rural second economy in villages surrounding one of the largest industrial plants of socialist Hungary, the Ózd Furnace Works, such as Domaháza (a settlement rich in ethnographic traditions but also known from the film sociographies of the Gulyás brothers), Kissikátor, a neighboring settlement which avoided ghettoization, the former mining settlement of Farkaslyuk, and the former record factory settlement of Borsodnádasd. Alabán will also study the work patterns, consumption patterns, opportunities for political participation, and moralities regarding the abovementioned topics in these settlements in the context of privatized gardening (háztáji) and services (fusi).
He will do research on the crossovers and entanglements of industrial and agricultural labor and will explore how these connections shaped social relationships in the region. This research will also draw on often neglected sources, such as socio-photographs, documentaries and feature films, local documents regarding industrialization and local companies, understudied local and company press materials, local governmental documents, and oral history interviews.
Keywords: social history, labour and workers’ history, filmsociography, socio photo, rural history