Projects

• Culturally Composite Elites, Regime Changes and Social Crises in Multi-Ethnic and Multi-Confessional Eastern Europe. (The Carpathian Basin and the Baltics in Comparison – cc. 1900-1950). (European Research Council)
• Comparative research for Jews and Gentiles in Hungarian ’reputational elites’ 1850-1950
• Educational Inequalities

Culturally Composite Elites, Regime Changes and Social Crises in Multi-Ethnic and Multi-Confessional Eastern Europe. (The Carpathian Basin and the Baltics in Comparison – cc. 1900-1950). (European Research Council)
European Research Council
FP7 – 230518 elites08 

The project is multi-disciplinary by character. It focuses upon socio-historical processes of the transformation and ‘circulation’ of educated and ruling elites in several uniquely composite (both multi-ethnic and multi-confessional) East European regional or national societies, having experienced a number of radical changes of social and political regime as well as state souvereignty in the first half of the 20th century. The historical scope of the study extends from post-feudalism to communism. Societies involved comprise Hungary, Slovakia, Transylvania, Voivodina in the Carpathian Basin, Latvia and Estonia in the Baltics. The study draws upon sociological survey methods applied to historically successive elite brackets in form of exhaustive or quasi-exhaustive computerized prosopographical data banks, based on standardized individual biographies of elite members (as permitted by mostly archival sources to be exploited). The main targets would include secondary school graduates, students and graduates of higher education, the main intellectual professions (like doctors and lawyers.), the political power elites as well as ‘reputational elites’ – those cited in biographical dictionaries. The information fed into our data banks help to clarify thanks to various procedures of multi-variate statistical schemes the contrasting socio-cultural selection and recruitment of elite members, their educational path from primary to higher education, their professional career, intellectual creativity as well as socio-political standing and orientation. This is the first time that large region- or country-wide elite clusters are submitted to systematic socio-historical analyses, covering simultaneously all or most markets of activity and self-assertion of educated clusters in a vast international and comparative perspective related to culturally composite societal formations.

Start: 1/1/2009
End: 12/31/2011
Partners:
Kozep-Europai Egyetem John Wesley College

******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Comparative research for Jews and Gentiles in Hungarian ’reputational elites’ 1850-1950

Name of institution: John Wesley Theological College
Name of contact person in institution: Nagy Péter Tibor
Title: professor

What is the main purpose of your institution?
John Wesley Theological College founded in the time of communism, it was an illegal institute of free speach, and free thinking. Since the nineties it is an accredited college. There are two subjects: theology and social work.

Please describe the main activities of your institution:
John Wesley Theological College founded in the time of communism, it was an illegal institute of free speach, and free thinking. Since the nineties it is an accredited college. There are two subjects: theology and social work.

Please describe the organisational structure and membership of your institution and list the names of directors and/or trustees:

The Wesley College directed by Gábor Iványi. There are two programmes offered, one for social work directed by professor Pál Banlaky, one for MA theology directed by professor Tamás Majsai, and in 2006 a programme will start for BA education directed by professor Peter Lukacs

Project Description
Title of the project:

Comparative research for Jews and Gentiles in Hungarian ’reputational elites’ 1850-1950
What are the proposed starting and finishing dates of the project?

From: 1. October 2006
To: 30. September, 2007

Describe the aims and objectives of the project and the research methodology that you plan to apply:
The project is the extension over the 19th century of an ongoing research, funded locally, on reputational elites in 20th century Hungary. The extension gains its importance from the fact that the Liberal Era of Hungarian nation building, ending with the radically anti-Jewish turn following the collapse of the Dual Monarchy in 1919, represented – especially after 1840 (date of the first law of semi-emancipation) – the heyday of what survives in Jewish collective memory as the ’Hungarian-Jewish symbiosis’. However one interprets this period, it gave rise to an uprecedented mobility of large sectors of Hungarian Jewry towards positions in elite occupational markets of mostly urban economic and intellectual activities. This is reflected in the presence of masses of Jews born in the short 19th century and listed among members of ’reputational elites’, defined by those whose name appeared in national biographies, bibliographies and encyclopaedias since the late 19th century till to-day. The aim of this project is the empirical study of the Jewish cluster of these ’people of fame’ as perceived by the compilers and editors of these ’national’ reference books listing all kinds of members of the elite.

The method of the project is prosopographical by nature with recourse to computarized data banks. It consists of the systematic collection, compilation and collation of biographical data from various sources on each person of the sample. The main data comprise the texts of biographical articles wherever they appeared (with reference to the sources) and a partially coded version of evidence related to social background, regional origins, educational career, demographic data on the family (when available), professional itinirary and publications. This should include exhaustively all those identified as Jewish together with a sample of non Jews in equal numbers. The identification of Jews will draw upon information on religion gathered from a number of sources (including baptism) as well as different list which describe the persons who had left the Jewish religion, or who became victim of Shoah.

The main objectives of the study concern patterns of Jewish social and professional mobility into elite positions as well as Jewish specificities observable in intellectual choices (among others, choices of secondary schools, university faculties, professional tracks), and the professional activities within each great branch of the elite (private economy, academia, cultural industry, the press, the arts and sciences, religion, etc.). This will permit to evaluate the degree of involvement of Jews in national elites of the country, as well as the nature of this implication and integration by sectors of professional activity, rank achieved in professional communities, activities accomplished (notably in terms of creativity as exemplified in publications), public distinctions obtained, etc. The final objective can be defined as the preparation of a breakthrough in Hungarian elite studies which tend systematically to neglect or minimize the impact of Jewish participation in the elites. (For this, public evocations of ’our fame abroad’ with reference to Hungarian Noble Prize laureates constitute spectacular cases in point. The fact that all but two of the dozen and half laureates in question were Jewish by background is indeed regularly forgotten about…)

Please list which sources and materials will be used to conduct this project and where the materials are located (i.e. archives, libraries, fieldwork):

Large representative encyclopedias express the value judgements of people in the various eras concerning the importance of certain individuals. A different logic was applied in the valuable historial elite research carried out in Hungary by, inter alia, Tibor Hajdú, György Lengyel, Tibor Huszár, Miklós Hadas, Jenő Gergely, I. Gábor Kovács, Katalin S. Nagy, and Sándor Szakály, all of whom defined the criteria of becoming part of the elite by profession/trade and by economic sector. Numerous arguments can be made for both methods. The definition by profession/trade filters out the possible arbitariness of decisions made by encyclopedia editors and possible systematic distortions, but it gives perhaps excessive significance to group preferences stemming from contemporaries’ relationships and possible personal frictions. If, for instance, we wish to define the scientific elite as the group comprising “members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences” and “university professors”, important personalities (e.g. radical sociologists) will be excluded, while figures of minor lasting significance will be included. If research on occupational groups is the point of departure, then it is probably possible to find the informal bodies (for instance, in the case of the radicals mentioned above, the Vörösmarty Academy) which compensate for the decisions of the contemporary official bodies. (In subsequent analyses, we shall employ this means of establishing a complete elite.) If, however, the whole of the “known elite” is the target group, this does not seem to be a viable method. A further advantage of the “encyclopedia” elite selection is that it renders the elites of the various sectors intermeasurable.

The “success” of such encyclopedias among the middle classes more or less proves that the selection criteria used by their editorial boards do exhaust, in many respects, the criteria of “being known” and “to be known” – despite the odd case of “unfairness” and the unjustified portrayal of personalities whose significance was not great in historical terms. Many excellent Hungarian encyclopedias were published in the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, but we excluded them as sources for our research, because they do not cover the generations that oversaw Hungary’s modernisation in the latter third of the century – still less Jewish individuals
The earliest encyclopedia that might possibly have assisted us in our research was the Magyar Lexikon [Hungarian Encyclopedia], which was published in the first half of the 1880s. The Magyar Lexikon was published in 12 volumes between 1879 and 1882 by Frigyes Rautmann (publisher) and Ede Somogyi (editor).
We decided, however, to discount this work, since contemporaries heavily criticised it, raising doubts in our minds about the representativity of the positions and tastes reflected in its choice of headwords.
A monumental volume published in the 1890s was the Pallas Nagylexikon [Great Pallas Encyclopedia], which many people still regard as Hungary’s best encyclopedia. The Pallas Nagylexikon was published in 16 volumes between 1893 and 1897 by Pallas Irodalmi és Nyomdai Rt. which had been founded by Lajos Gerõ in 1884. Its volumes were significantly larger than the volumes of the Magyar Lexikon

By means of two “input” and three “output” factors, we could show that this encyclopedia represented the positions and tastes of the contemporary elite and that it reflected relevant knowledge. Input factors included the unprecedented contribution made by academics and scientists to the work of the encyclopedia’s editorial board, the enormous sum of money spent on the edition, and the sheer number of volumes (16) comprising the encyclopedia. Output factors – signs of the encyclopedia’s social acceptance – were the sale of 22,000 copies, strong market demand for the Pallas in 1916-18 when the newer great encyclopedia was out of print, and the fact that the Pallas was the first encyclopedia in Hungary to be published in digital form in the 1990s.
The next group, the elite at the turn of the century, was documented by the Révai Nagylexikon [Great Révai Encyclopedia]. The 20 volumes of the Révai Nagylexikon, containing in total 17,000 pages and 113 million characters, was published between 1910 and 1926. Fourteen volumes had been published by May 1916. Volumes 15-19 were published after the First World War
Supplementary volumes of the Great Révai Encyclopedia, published in the 1920s and 1930s, contained information about members of the elite in the 1910s. And they also presented the careers of an elite that was divided into many parts by the Treaty of Trianon.

Volume 20 (a supplementary volume published in 1927) contained 940 pages (including several pages linked with the end of volume 19). The supplementary volume published in 1935 contained 856 pages
The “input” in this case was the complete copyrighted material of the Pallas, the full capacity of one of the largest Hungarian book publishers, and the contribution of the academic elite – which paralled its earlier contribution to the Pallas. The “output” elements – the signs of social acceptance – were as follows: the great number of subscribers – the Révai had 26,000 subscribers prior to the First World War; the satisfaction of subscribers – as shown by the fact that when the publisher offered to buy back all copies sold to its 26,000 subscribers, fearing that it would be unable to finish the series, just 150 subscribers took up its offer; the enduring reputation of the Révai – it retained its position as Hungary’s “official” encyclopedia until 1948, despite the publication of various complete encyclopedias between the two world wars, such as the Tolnai, the Dante, the Gutenberg.

All of above mentioned Lexikons were published that kind of firms, which based on Jewish capital, led by Jewish managers, dominated by the liberal, or liberal-conservative spirit. So that was no any reason to discriminate the jews when they selected the important titles for Lexikon
When the Új Magyar Lexikon [New Hungarian Encyclopedia] was published in the early 1960s (based on academic research carried out in the 1950s), it was soon regarded as excessively dogmatic even in Marxist circles, and so the Révai continued to be the main reference encyclopedia of Hungary’s middle classes until the 1990s. The Révai was republished during the boom in reprints of 1989-90, and it has existed in digital form since the 1990s. The first encyclopedia series published after Hungary’s political changes of 1989-90 was called the Révai Új Lexikona [New Révai Encyclopedia] – this in itself contributed to the prestige of the series.
In addition to the general encyclopedias, two specialist encyclopedias were used as sources in our research on members of the elite: the two-volume Keresztény Magyar Közéleti Almanach [Christian Hungarian Almanac of Public Life], which was published in 1939 and serves, as an encyclopedia of public figures, as a primary source both for the period between the two world wars and for the decade prior to 1918 – although it excluded a significant part of the elite because it was published in the same year as Hungary’s second anti-Jewish law. (Small contemporary encyclopedias were published from the 1920s onwards, such as Ki kicsoda [Who’s Who] and Magyar Társadalom Lexikonja [Encyclopedia of Hungarian Society]. A separate volume of Christian Hungarian Almanac of Public Life was published on contemporary Hungarians living abroad.)

The other specialist encyclopedia used by us as a source was the Zsidó Lexikon [Jewish Encyclopedia], which was published in 1929 and which provides a uniquely diversified collection of figures of Jewish religion or background and who remained active in public life during the period of anti-Semitic discrimination. This material is also an important source for the era of the Dual Monarchy. The Jewish Encyclopedia, edited by Péter Újvári, was published as a reprint edition in the 1990s. Its digital publication was attempted by me in the 2000s.
Of course, one should not ignore individuals that have turned out to be figures of significance on the scales of history, even though they were left out of encyclopedias published at the time or subsequently. We assigned the role of “balance of history” to the Magyar Életrajzi Lexikon [Hungarian Biographical Encyclopedia], which was probably the most objective encyclopedia published during the 1956-1989 period, as well as its supplementary volumes published under similar titles after the political changes of 1989-90. (The two-volume biographical encyclopedia, which covered the period until the late 1960s, was followed 10 years later by a further volume, which contained the whole work and was 50 per cent larger. At the time of the political changes of 1989-90, a further volume of similar size was published. Thus, the encyclopedia comprises in total about 3500 pages)

An inevitable weakness of volumes in the Hungarian Biographical Encyclopedia series is that they exclude graduates with careers in Romania or possibly Serbia, unless they become active in Hungarian minority affairs in those countries. A further weakness is that one of the selection criteria of the Hungarian Biographical Encyclopedia is that a person should be deceased. (Below, we attempt to correct this weakness by assimilating in those graduates born before 1918 and listed in the new Magyar Nagylexikon (Hungarian Great Encyclopedia) (apr 19.000 pages) published in the 1990s and the early 2000s – a volume which contains people who are still alive today and which supplements the data of the Hungarian Biographical Encyclopedia with value judgements and relative judgements made by historians at the turn of the millennium). The other distorting influence of the Hungarian Biographical Encyclopedia is that it places a disproportionate emphasis – more than is justified by their “true” historical and social weight – on activists in the workers’ movement
We chose not to supplement our group by adding in all those individuals included in the Gulyás and Szinnyei encyclopedias. The series edited by József Szinnyei and entitled A magyar irók élete és munkái [The Life and

Works of Hungarian Writers] contains theoretically the biographies of all Hungarian writers. The initial volumes covered the period until 1900, while subsequent volumes covered the period up until the First World War. The first volumes of Gulyas’s similarly entitled encylopedia continued the work and supplemented it with personalities that had appeared in the meantime until the end of the 1930s. Later volumes, which remained in manuscript until their gradual republication in recent years, covered a period that went well beyond the late 1930s. Since both encyclopedias aimed for completeness, neither of them should be considered authoritative in terms of elite selection, although we may, of course, use their data.
The project is grounded on the computerized exploitation of a big number of serial information on members of reputational elites as defined above, drawn from mostly published biographical sources. Here are the main sources of the core survey :
The comparative dimension of the survey is based on the observation of expectedly all Jews concerned and a sample of Gentiles of rigourously identical size listed in the sources resorted to.

The core survey will be completed by a number of secondary data collections with two targets:

1. to identify Jews who could not be firmly identified in the core survey;
2. to collect complementary data on a number of important issues not mentioned or insufficiently documented in the core survey, such as social background (father’s profession), secondary schooling (place and grade at Matura), educational career in universities (places of studies including studies abroad, marks and age at graduation, etc.), political and ideological orientation (like membership in Freemason lodges or in Liberal, Socialist, Zionist or other political circles, presence in the ’black book’ of the police listing observed political activists, etc.). Such a complementary survey, strictly dependent on the reliability and exhaustivity of the available source material) cannot be expected to be utterly exhaustive as to the information transmitted. It will though represent a precious addition to the core survey.

The secondary survey will draw on existing research materials or empirical results of ongoing research on students of higher and secondary education (based on inscription files, yearly reports of gymnasiums, etc.), computerized listings of members of various political civic organisations, etc.
Products and Results

Please describe the final products (i.e. publication) that are likely to emerge from the project:

There will be three kinds of final products.
On the one hand the data bank of Jewish and non Jewish elites, containing according to preliminary estimations at least some 13.000 cases, will serve as a basis for further studies on Jewish elites in the country.(About 6500 Jewish elite member – all of the Jewhs who were selected into the encylopedias, and 6500 non Jewish elite member, about ¼ of Gentile elit)
Comparisons of the ’reputational elites’ with other members of the educated middle classes (notably university graduates) can indeed revolutionalize the study of educational mobility in this part of Europe.
But the data bank on Jewish elites will serve directly for the preparation of a future new Hungarian-Jewish encyclopaedia, for which it can constitute an indispensable section, the names listed in the Hungarian-Jewish Lexikon (1929) not covering but a part of those liable to be presented for the 19th century (with an over-representation of community leaders).
Lastly I will produce a comprehensive statistical and socio-historical study of the Jewish entry into Hungarian elites in the 19th century. This publication should appear, hopefully, in English too.

Project Impact. Describe the characteristics of the project which make it original, innovative, creative or especially deserving of support:

The project is entirely original, since no similar scholarly entreprise has ever been undertaken in Hungary, focussed on Jews and Jewish elite participation. It is true that some secondary literature exist in similar fields – for example on Jewish and Gentile students in foreign universities. I will obviously make use of such sources. The fact remains that the compilation of all biographical references to Jews born in the 19th century in all major national biographies is a unique enterprise which actually hardly has even West European equivalents, certainly not with similarly exhaustivist ambitions. Most of similar attempts in other countries have indeed met the mostly insurmountable difficulty of manipulating tens if not hundreds of thousands of biographical data, impossible to envisage before the coming of age of modern computer science and demanding even now tremendous efforts.

However original the project can be, its fundamental creativity rests upon the further research which it makes possible. It will indeed open up new paths int he study of Jewish social mobility, acculturation, identity modernisation, etc. – all new fields in the sense that there have been few if any empirical foundations for such studies in an ’objectivist’ and comparative perspective.
If the project is entirely new, explain why you and/or your institution should undertake it:
The researches and delivering lessons about Judaism, Jewry, Christian-Jewish relation, and anti-semitism – means the central profile of Wesley college. These are important issues not only academic meaning: the Wesley College organized several social action, and conferences concerning Holocaust, for example the Wesley College organized memorial celebration nearby every Hungarian railway station – from where trains started to Auswitz.
A sentence form the mission statement:
„We especially devote ourselves – out of out theological vision we consider it of singular significance – to the idea of Jewish-Christian brotherhood and to the Jewish-Christian per defitionem not hostile relationship.”
The Doctoral School ’Education and society’ I have founded and which I direct is concerned above all with the training of students for the study of educational systems, including the ’products’ of higher education. Elite studies belong obviously enough to the topical focus of the Doctoral School. My previous research in the framework of the Hungarian Institute of Research on Higher Education has also heavily drawn upon problems of denominational inequalities of schooling, notably on the implementation of the infamous numerus clausus law in 1920 which was destined to stop Jewish educational mobility towards national elites. Thus the project perfectly fits the intellectual profile of both of my institutional affiliations.

My list of publication:

BOOKS:

6 biggish books about history of education, – In Hungarian 11 smaller books, 2 in English:

The Outline of the Hungarian Education 1500-1945. Bp., OI, Educatio, 1993. 19 p.
The Meanings and Functions of Classical Studies in Hungary in the 18th-20th Centuries. Bp., OI, 1991.

Books – source publications:

Victor Karady–val : Educational inequalities and denominations – a database for Transdanubia, Bp 2003, Oktatáskutató Intézet, – I.- II. kötet 220 p
Karády Viktor-ral:, Educational Inequalities and Denominations., 1910 Database for Western Slovakia, », Budapest, Wesley János Lelkészképző Főiskola, 2004.
Karády Viktor-ral:, Educational Inequalities and Denominations., 1910 Database for Eastern Slovakia, », Budapest, Wesley János Lelkészképző Főiskola, 2005. sajtó alatt
Editing: 12 books, 2 of them in English:
(Tjeldvoll, Arill-ral közösen): Democracy or nationalism? Education in post-communist Europe. Oslo, Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo, 1997. 344 p. (Report No. 3.)
(Tjeldvoll, Arill-ral közösen): Higher Education in the Balkan. Oslo, Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo, 2005. (sajtó alatt)
More than 100 studies, since 1985.

Some of them: – Aviable in English or Ivrit . Or Hungarian text with intensive Jewish relevance
A numerus clausus történetéhez. In: Magyar Pedagógia, 1985/2. – About numerus clausus,
French secondary school in Hungary 1932-1944. In: History of international relations in education, Pécs, 1987.
The social and political status of Hungarian elementary school teachers. In: The social role and evolution of the teaching profession in historical context. Ed. by Simo Seppo. Joensuu, 1988.
Reflexiók egy konferenciához. In: Hiány, 1990/8. 6-9. p.- about Antisemitism
University autonomy in Hungary. Myth and Reality. In: (Arild Tjeldvoll (ed.): Education in East/Central Europe. University of Oslo, Oslo, 1991.
University autonomy in Hungary. Myth and Reality. In: (Arild Tjeldvoll (ed.): Education in East/Central Europe. Report of the Oslo seminar. Special studies in comparative education No. 30 intr. by Philip G. Altbach. New York, 1992.
The Meanings and Functions of Classical Studies in Hungary in the 18th-20th Centuries. In: Aspects of Antiquity in the History of Education. (International Series for the History of Education ; Vol.3.) Ed. by F.-P. Hager et al. Hildesheim, Bildung und Wissenschaft, 1992. 191-203.p
Curriculum-Policy making debates in the 1990s. In: Strategies for curriculum development for primary school. Belgrade, 1995.
A numerus clausus – hetvenöt év után. In: Világosság, 1995. 2. sz. 72-80. p.- Numerus clausus, after 5 years
Antiszemitizmus és felső oktatáspolitika – a numerus clausus törvény jelentősége. In: Neveléstörténeti füzetek 14. Bp., OPKM, 1996. 81-94. p. – Antisemitism and policy for higher education
Háulpán vötafkidó (Felekezeti elkötelezettség Magyarországon.) In: Dialóg (Haifa), 1996. 1. sz. 12-13 p 16-18. p. – Denominational background of Hungarian social groups.
Háháskálá hágávohá böhungaria kijom (Hungarian higher education) Dialog (Haifa), 1996. 2. sz. 20-23. p.
(Tjeldvoll, Arild-dal közösen): Democracy or nationalism? Education in post-communist Europe. In: Democracy or nationalism . Education in post-communist Europe. Oslo, Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo, 1997. 3-24. p.
A nulladik zsidótörvény. In: Állítólag már hetven éves. Emlékkönyv Szabolcs Ottó születésnapjára. Pomáz, Adu Könyvkiadó, 1997. 51-60. p.- the 0. Jewish low
State – church relations in a post-communist educational system . The case of Hungary. In: Education for the 21st century. (European studies in education; 7.) Ed. by Christoph Wulf. Munster, New York, München, Berlin, Waxmann, 1998. 130-141. p.
Teaching history as teaching of pluralism. In: International Society for History Didactics, 1999. No. 1. 78-86. p.
Notnim sztatisztim ál jehudi Berettyóújfalu vömáhuz böjáher. In: Nesher Dávid, Gerő Zsuzsa (szerk.): Berettyóújfalu és környéke zsidóságának emlékkönyve. Haifa, 2001. Memorial Book for Jews of town Berettyoujfalu
A question of the educational policy of Hungary: Church – state relations in the 1990s. In: Religion, society and education in post-totalitarian societies of Central and South Eastern Europe. Ed. Sergiu Musteata. Chisinau, Arc, 2001. 27-37. p.
Sport and public education: The process of integration and segregation (The case of Hungary). In: Proceedings: Sport and Politics: 6th Congress of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport. Ed. by Katalin Szikora [et al.]. Bp., Semmelweis University, 2002. 20-23. p.
The state-church relations in the history of Educational policy of the first postcommunist Hungarian government. European Education, 2003. No. 1. 27-34.p.
The numerus clausus in inter war Hungary East European Jewish Affairs Volume 35, Number 1 / June 2005 Pages: 13 – 22 ;
Péter Tibor Nagy: The Academic Workplace. Country Report Hungary. In: Jürgen Enders, Egbert de Weert (editors): The International Attractiveness of the Academic Workplace in Europe. Shaping the European Area of Higher Education and Research. (Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft, Materialen und Dokumente Hochschule und Forschung, 107.) GEW – Hauptvorstand Vorstandbereich Hochschule un Forschung. Frankfurt/Main, 2004. 204-230. pp.
One in Four. András Kovács: The Difference is Between Us: Anti-Semitism and the Young Elite. In: Budapest Review of BOOKS, Vol. 10. No. 1-2., spring-summer 2000., pp. 35-38.
Zsidóság, asszimiláció, iskola-stratégia. In: Iskolakultúra, 2000. 9. sz. 99-102. p.
A zsidó iskolaügy története Magyarországon. In: Neveléstörténeti Tájékoztató, 1994. [1995.] 4. sz. 6-7. p.

Please note the names of other organizations in Europe which carry out similar work and list any comparable projects which are known to you: Most elite studies I know about are related to academic populations, especially students and university trained professionals. Such studies are being pursued in Hungary too, notably in several workshops with which I am also personally connected. OIne is the circle of disciples of László Szögi, producing repertories of Hungarian students, studying abroad (’peregrination research’). I will certainly use the products of this line of reserach. The other immediate reference here is the group of scholars and students around Victor Karady, engaged int he investigation of graduates of Hungarian higher education.
It would be fastdious to list foreign examples and models. The only one which has marked my study choice in concrete terms has to do with the influential work of the late Pierre Bourdieu in France. This research orientation gave birth to some of Bourdieu’s masterpieces of historical sociology (including ample references to 19th century circumstances) exemplified in his Noblesse d’Etat (1984), the study of the French elites educated in the grandes écoles and concentrated in a quasi corporatis manner int he grands corps of the French civil service.

Another major work by Bourdieu is the Homo academicus, the study of university staffs, equally based on surveys of academic elites. Bourdieu was, for obvious reasons, not concerned, except incidentally, with Jewish participation in his study targets, since their weak presence (for demographic reasons) and quasi perfect integration made them much less visible. But the intellectual level he set remains a guiding target for the kind of project I am concerned with. The historical elite sociology has a huge literature, which is listed concerning Germany in the overview of (International Review of Sociology; Jul2001)
Or the study of Scheuch. (The Structure of the German Elites across Regime Changes ) There is an almost complete bibliography in Scott: The Upper lasses (London, 1982) and Stanwoth-rewe: Lites in Western democracy (London 1974). I was involved into a research network, initiated by Victor Karady (Paris-Budapest), Mariusz Kulczykowski(Kracow), Ion ALUAS (Cluj) , Lucian Nastasa (Iasi), Jürgen Schriewer (Berlin) Christophe Charle (Paris))

What difficulties might you face in carrying out this research (i.e. lack of access to archives etc.)?

Such mass collection of data cannot avoid a number of obvious technical hurdles. There will be a great difficulty to define the Jews and non-Jews amon the elit members who finished there secondary school studies after 1948.
How will you evaluate whether the planned outcomes of your research have been achieved? Please be specific.

Results will be evaluated via the produce of the project. These will be of three sorts:

1. Focussed studies on Jewish ’over-schooling’ and participation in various professional sectors of graduated intellectuals.
2. A computerized data bank on Jewish elit members and their Gentile comprades of study which will be circulated and put at the disposal of interested scholars for further or secondary analysis
3. The development of this data bank by its confrontation – name by name – with other data banks related to other elite sectors of contemporary Hungarian society where the Jewish share was significantly high, sometimes preponderant : members of free mason lodges, secondary school graduates (in the published yearly reports of gymnasiums, lists together with marks obtained in the 8th class in various subjects), members of the liberal Galilei circle, subscribers to the complete works of the liberal novelist Mór Jókai (1893), etc. etc.
I will ask independent (from other universities) evaluators to give a critical account of the accomplishments.

Among them two persons have been contacted for this purpose :

Mihály Csákó, head of the sociology of education programme of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the ELTE University of Budapest
Dr György Haraszti, lecturer of cultural history at the Jewish University of Budapest.
This whole study will be in string relation with projects of professor Karady

References

Please supply the names and full contact details of 2 external referees who will provide us with a confidential assessment of your proposal:
Name: Jürgen Schriewer Professor
Address: Humboldt Universität  Institut für Allgemeine Pädagogik, Abteilung Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft
Name: Jozef Schweizer Professzor an director emeritus of the Hungarian National Rabbinical Institute
Address: Magyar Zsidó Egyetem
1084. Budapest, Bérkocsis utca 2. H- 1444 Budapest
************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

INTERnational COoperation in the SSH: Comparative Socio-Historical Perspectives and Future Possibilities

Start date:2013-03-01

End date:2017-02-28
Project Acronym:INTERCO-SSH

Description

Objective: INTERCO-SSH sets out, firstly, to assess the state of the SSH in Europe. Secondly, it aims to outline potential future pathways that would promote cooperation across disciplinary and national boundaries. To achieve this, it is necessary to study the SSH in their socio-historical context. The project will analyse the process of institutionalization of eight core disciplines – sociology, demography, economics, anthropology, political science, philosophy, literary studies, psychology – to obtain an understanding of the sociological factors that have shaped the academic unconscious of scholars and that facilitate or hinder intellectual cooperation and exchange. Attention will be paid to the relationship between the SSH and political and economic powers. The project will also investigate the already existing circulation of knowledge between countries and disciplines, encompassing an analysis of geographical mobility amongst scholars and an assessment of the circulation of ideas. The project sets out to develop a comparative analysis of the institutionalization of the SSH in at least six European countries (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Hungary) from 1945 to date. It will also analyse exchanges between those countries and other areas: the US, Latin-America, and Africa.
The approach will combine three perspectives; it will: 1) construct patterns of institutionalization of the SSH; 2) map the exchanges between countries and disciplines; 3) study the circulation of paradigms, theories and controversies and analyze the local impact of major authors (like Foucault, Merton or Habermas) in various national academic markets. These three perspectives will help to identify the factors that enable or inhibit intellectual cooperation and to make policy-relevant suggestions to improve it. Using the tools of the SSH to study the SSH, this project also aims to help establish the SSH studies as a proper academic field of inquiry, providing the scientific means for assessing and guiding the development of the SSH, and for strengthening the European Research Area.
The John Wesley Theological College responsible for:
– construct patterns of institutionalization of the SSH in the whole project
– the Hungarian case in any perspective
Leadeship
Professor Victor Karady
http://karadyviktor.uni.hu
Professor Peter Tibor Nagy
http://nagypetertibor.uni.hu

Zsuzsanna Hanna Biró, researcher
Hajnal Both, researcher
Zsuzsanna B. Kádár, senior researcher
István Kamarás, professor
Mihály Csákó, associate professor (1941-2019)
Viktor Karády, professor
Péter Tibor Nagy, professor
Richárd Szentpéteri Nagy senior researcher
Ádámné Tóth, researcher
Anna Troján  researcher
János Wildmann, associate professor