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Self-promotion and reinterpretation of local identity is becoming increasingly important in rural communities. Local identity building is succeeded very differently by rural municipalities and regions. The paper analyses the role of small towns in local identity creation. There are varying interpretations of places in Hungary as ways of achieving meaningful territorialisation. Small towns based on their leading and central position within the micro regions can dominate the place-making processes. Using the example of six Hungarian rural micro-regions we analyse how rural small towns position themselves by local image building. The aim of this paper is to investigate interactions between territorial position and innovative capacity of rural towns through the analysis of symbolisation process and image building. We purpose to introduce a concept of a place oriented approach and demonstrate its usefulness for analysis of rural innovation and place-based development. The case-studies are based on qualitative methods: document-analysis, semi-structured interviews, transect walking and participatory observation. The paper analyses the process of local community and identity building in six rural micro-regions. We seek to understand how small towns position themselves in place-making, the aim of ‘placing’ themselves in the territorial hierarchy of the settlements of micro region. Our results suggest that small towns play very different roles in local image building. Characteristics and territorial scope of local cultural heritage significantly determine the innovative capacity of small towns in local image building where there is a wide range of meanings procedures and processes of place-making.

The aim of this article is to present and study how a digital archive can shape and create new ways of producing, publishing, and studying historical sources. Based on our analysis of the COURAGE (Cultural Opposition—Understanding the CultuRal HeritAGE of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries) Registry about cultural dissent under state socialism in Eastern Europe in the second half of the twentieth century (and focusing on collections about environmental issues in this registry), we seek to understand how different private, amateur, and professional archivists have shaped the scientific and public legacy of cultural dissent under state socialism. The COURAGE Registry conveys a unique view of the history of the Soviet Bloc, providing an assemblage of documents concerning people, groups, institutions, events, and pieces from the time. Together, they tell an alternative story of cultural opposition under socialism, shedding light on important—but until now marginalized—problems, topics, and actors. Our results have shown that cultural opposition in the Registry is understood and constructed as a wide range of forms of engagement and activities, and it is not limited to specific high-cultural or direct political products. The structure of the COURAGE Registry creates a balance among collections that are very diverse in form, and its linked data structure helps connect the information and stories compiled in it. The COURAGE Registry enables researchers to use it as a tool with which to build their own scientific narratives about dissent under socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging evidence has shown that a sustainable mode of farming contributes to the sustainability of societies. However, agricultural modernization and land concentration have resulted in a decreasing role of agriculture in rural societies everywhere in Europe and also in Hungary. Governmental funds and agendas increasingly focus on the regeneration of rural areas with a special interest in the new generations of farmers. This paper analyses a small wine region in Hungary to explore the perceptions and activities of young farmers regarding sustainability. The paper is based on qualitative sociological research, including 20 semi-structured interviews with wine producers and other key actors of rural development in the region. The analysis focuses on generational change both in wine producer farms and in the wine region. How do farmers approach sustainability, and how does the concept of sustainability contribute to family wine production? How can generational change affect farming approaches and activities, especially changes toward a more sustainable way of farming? Our results show that rural regeneration can be understood not only as a generational renewal; it also includes endogenous development processes and new approaches targeting a more sustainable rural milieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our article aims to study the attitudes of the elite to family life and gender equality. This is a social group who still experiences significant gender imbalances. We focus on attitudes to family life, which has thus far been underresearched in elite literature. With the help of the analysis of 34 individual interviews with members of the Hungarian political, economic, and cultural elite, we identify and present three types of narrative identities: dominant, deferential, and egalitarian. The main finding from our qualitative content analysis is that egalitarian partnership norms which were discussed in every narrative and gender equality appear in most cases as a norm among the elite. However, there is a narrative tension between this norm and the couples' actual experiences of their family life. We conclude our article with some comments on how the ideology of egalitarian essentialism strengthens gender inequalities reinforcing the underrepresentation of women in elite positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the extensive areas of under-used green and brownfield land that remain in public ownership, little academic attention has thus far been given to the role of the public sector in utilising this resource for shared forms of community food growing. Building upon recent calls for more research targeted towards the governance of social innovation, but also the spaces and places in which it occurs, this article presents an in-depth qualitative account of one such public sector-led attempt at instigating the co-production of community food growing. Guided by social innovation theory and Lipsky's (1980) street level bureaucracy, the discussion pays particular attention to the discretional practice of front line public sector workers. Whilst at one level public sector-led initiatives lack sufficient intention or scope for bringing about the transformation of existing social orders, their contribution to propagating individual and smaller scale occurrences of social innovation in the context of community food security should nevertheless not be overlooked. It is by adopting a more micro-level, situated and process orientated approach to the analysis of alternative forms of collaborative public sector-led community food growing, that it becomes possible to evidence the presence of innovative practice as it unfolds on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the "Valley of Arts" festival and its outcome, the phenomenon of urban pressure. There are six villages in the Káli-Basin in the Valley of Eger stream, close to Lake Balaton, which had been unknown until the first festival was organised there. The small villages have the typical problems of post-communism: the inhabitants are ageing, unemployment is increasing because of the closure of mines and agricultural cooperatives, the youth are moving out of these villages since there are no employment prospects. The "Valley of Arts" is a non-profit making enterprise. It is organised by a civil foundation, The Cultural and Environmentalist Association of Kapolcs. This foundation was established and is headed by István Márta. The festival expenses are paid by the Hungarian Government and private sponsors. The aim of this paper is to use the post-modern idea in order to understand and explain the phenomenon of the "Valley of Arts." In industrialised, developed countries, the way people act as consumers has recently changed. Post-modern tourism was created as an alternative to mass tourism, i.e. traditional tourism, so its main points are special quality services and a special form of journey, connected to archaeology, anthropology and ethnography.