Overview
- Traces the development of environmental consciousness in twentieth-century Hungary
- Highlights the contradictory and irrational relationship between the natural environment and technology in modern Eastern Europe and states under authoritarian rule
- Contributes to ongoing scholarly debate on the economic, technological, and environmental performance of authoritarian regimes
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About this book
This book explains how and why the state-socialist regime in Hungary used technology and propaganda to foster industrialization and the conservation of natural resources simultaneously. Further, this book explains why this process was ultimately a failure. By exploring the environmental pre-history of communist Hungary before analyzing the economic development of the Kádár regime, Pál investigates how economic and environmental policies and technology transfer were negotiated between the official communist ideology and the global economic reality of capitalist markets. Pál argues that the modernization project of the Kádár regime (1956–1990) facilitated ecological consciousness – at both an individual and societal level – which provoked great social unrest when positive environmental impact was not achieved.
Today, global issues of climate change, urban pollution, resource depletion, and overpopulation transcend political systems, but economic and environmental discourses varied greatly in the twentieth century. This volume is important reading for all those interested in economic and environmental history, as well as political science.
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Keywords
- Kádár regime
- Eastern Europe
- Technological modernization
- Industrialisation
- Technological modernisation
- Industrialization
- Natural Resource Economics
- Environmental impact
- Authoritarian states
- Democratic states
- Ecological consciousness
- Propaganda
- Technology and the environment
- State-Socialist Hungary
- Hungarian Economic History
Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“This work achieves its goal of reassessing our understanding of authoritarian regimes, showing that state-socialist Hungary actively pursued environmental programs. The regional emphasis is a great choice, because it enables an in-depth analysis of how local actors implemented these programs.” (Luminita Gatejel, Technology and Culture, Vol. 61 (3), 2020)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Viktor Pál is Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He coordinates the Interdisciplinary Environmental Hub for Authoritarian Regimes (IEHAR) at the Aleksanteri Institute, Finland, and has served as a guest researcher at UCLA, USA, as well as at various European institutions. His research interests include urban environmental history, water history, history of technology and popularizing science.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Technology and the Environment in State-Socialist Hungary
Book Subtitle: An Economic History
Authors: Viktor Pál
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63832-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Economics and Finance, Economics and Finance (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-63831-7Published: 04 October 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-87649-8Published: 18 May 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-63832-4Published: 15 September 2017
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 263
Number of Illustrations: 30 b/w illustrations, 3 illustrations in colour
Topics: Economic History, Environmental Economics, Economic Policy, R & D/Technology Policy, Industrial Organization, Economic Growth