Rudolf Andorka, an Emblematic Hungarian Sociologist of the Second Half of the 20th Century

Abstract

A methodologically based point of view of the second half of 20th century’s Hungary shows a society driven by forces of various historical processes and paradoxical consequences of democratisation. Rudolf Andorka, an empirical sociologist examining Hungarian society in the socialist regime and after the transition in the 1990s, proves inherent and historically rooted social and spatial inequalities supplemented with the analyses of the underdeveloped rural settlement structure and village-town dichotomy. As a social scientist Andorka was stigmatised for his political untrustworthiness. He was arrested for political reasons and had a harsh beginning to his career. Andorka had a multidisciplinary stance in sociology, demography, economics and even beyond the scope of sociology. He took part in various research from regional inequalities through Household Panel Surveys and time series data analyses to deviant behaviour. His criticism of the socialist totalitarian regime was based on a specific approach to analyse social phenomena and gave rise to an innovative trend within Hungarian sociology. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern sociology in Hungary and his concise book of sociology (re-compiled) continues to be the basis of sociological studies at Hungarian universities and his approach to analysing society is prevalent until this day.