Peripheralization, Political Discontent, and Social and Solidarity Economy—Case Studies From Rural Hungary and Germany

Melinda Mihály

doi:10.3389/fpos.2021.741956

Abstract

The reintegration of Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies into globalized capitalism resulted in increasing regional polarization and the emergence of internal peripheries. The crisis of the globalized capitalist economy in 2008 resulted in the further peripheralization of rural areas, and the related crisis of representative democracies triggered rural resentment against the existing order. Inhabitants of peripheralized areas have a feeling of abandonment and political discontent. The rise of right-wing populism may be understood as a revolt of people living in precarious conditions in peripheralized areas both in Hungary and Germany. Left-wing populism, which builds on equality and social justice and is based on radical democracy, has not been able so far to reach the precaritized inhabitants of peripheralized rural areas. Solidarity economy, which is a contemporary social movement, refers to a comprehensive program aimed at transforming the entire economy, and may have the potential to address the political discontent of people living in peripheralized rural areas. In spite of the rising support for right-wing populism, social and solidarity economy (SSE) initiatives are being carried out in rural peripheries. These initiatives are based on the principles of participatory and economic democracy. Spaces provided by SSE initiatives can become forums for deliberation and co-management to develop economic democracy and become seeds of a solidarity economy movement in CEE. Therefore, based on a critical realist ethnographic approach, this paper aims to answer the question of how SSE initiatives may address the everyday material challenges and political discontent of people living in peripheralized villages by studying two SSE initiatives being carried out in two contrasting cases of peripheralization. Studying SSE initiatives in relation to 1) the locality they are embedded in, 2) “subaltern” groups within the locality, and 3) participatory, economic and 4) representative democracy helps to better understand in what ways SSE initiatives can mobilize political discontent to strengthen the solidarity economy movement in CEE.

Highlights

The post-socialist transformation, or the reintegration of Central and Eastern Europe into globalized capitalism (Hardy 2014; Themelis 2016) has resulted in a massive social and economic crisis (UNDP 2008; Leibert 2013) and an extremely polarized regional development where “rural peripheries” stagnate at a low level or fall even further behind “urban centers” (Smith and Timár 2010; Ehrlich et al, 2012; Lang 2012)
The reintegration of Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies into globalized capitalism resulted in increasing regional polarization, and the emergence of internal peripheries
This paper aims to answer the following question: How do social and solidarity economy” (SSE) initiatives address the everyday material challenges and political discontent of people living in peripheralized villages?1 A critical realist2 (Bhaskar 1978, Bhaskar 1983; Brewer 2000; Gorski 2013) ethnography (Porter 2001) has the potential to produce knowledge that can contribute to transforming the precariousness of life that dominates the world we inhabit and help in better understanding how participation is reached, practiced, developed and increased in rural areas despite peripheralization and rising right-wing populism

Summary

Introduction

The post-socialist transformation, or the reintegration of Central and Eastern Europe into globalized capitalism (Hardy 2014; Themelis 2016) has resulted in a massive social and economic crisis (UNDP 2008; Leibert 2013) and an extremely polarized regional development where “rural peripheries” stagnate at a low level or fall even further behind “urban centers” (Smith and Timár 2010; Ehrlich et al, 2012; Lang 2012). The crisis of the globalized capitalist economy, which resulted in the peripheralization of rural areas and the related crisis of representative democracies, triggered rural resentment against the existing order. This resentment has manifested itself in rural support for right-wing populist parties and in grassroots nationalist movements (Mamonova et al, 2020) both in Hungary (Kovai 2018; Szombati 2018; Vigvári 2019) and in Germany (Lees 2018; Vorländer et al, 2018; Förtner et al, 2021; Schmalz et al, 2021). Left-wing populism (Goes and Bock 2017; Mouffe 2018; Förtner et al, 2021), which builds on “equality and social justice” (Mouffe, 2018: 47) and a radical democracy “in which differences are still active” but where people are united in their opposition against “forces or discourses that negate all of them” (38), has not been able so far to reach the precaritized inhabitants of peripheralized rural areas

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