Mimi Larsson - Political Action in a Post-Socialist Society: An Anthropological Analysis of the Hungarian Telecottage Movement

Political Action in a Post-Socialist Society
An Anthropological Analysis of the Hungarian Telecottage Movement

Department of Anthropology and Ethnography, Århus University
MA Research Thesis

To all the wonderful people in the Hungarian Telecottage Movement, who have shared their thoughts and plans about Hungarian society with me and allowed me to become part of their impressive efforts to make their dreams come true. To Gabriella Benkõ, Erika Bánszky and Krisztina Üveges for being my personal friends and trouble-shooters in Hungary. To Rune Drewsen for designing the cover page. To Kai Schafft, Tom Wormald, Mary Beaton and Szilárd Molnár for sharing their work, their contacts and their native language skills with me. To everyone at the Information Society and Trend Research Institute in Budapest for taking me in. To Ole Nørgaard and the Demstar project at the Political Science department at Århus University for inspiring me and taking an interest in my research. To my advisor Martijn van Beek who constantly inspires me to do more thorough research, to make stronger arguments and to write with greater clarity.

Acronyms

DemNet Democratic Network (also the popular name for FDDR)
EC European Commission
EU European Union
FDDR Foundation for Development of Democratic Rights
HTM Hungarian Telecottage Movement
ICT Information and Communication Technology
IKB The Government Commissioner’s Office for ICT (Informatikai Kormánybizottság)
IST Information Society Technology
MTSz Hungarian Telecottage Association (Magyar Teleház Szövetség)
NGO Non Governmental Organisation
SME Small and Medium-sized Enterprise
USAID United States Agency for International Development

Introduction

The people who inspired this thesis are individuals with clear opinions about societal developments in their country. They are acting on the basis of Hungary’s situation since 1989, when state socialism was irrevocably rejected. They want to have a say in the shaping of a new kind of Hungarian society, based on democratic ideals. And they take matters into their own hands and establish institutions, practices, and rules to live and act by in order to secure their desired developments. In my mind their actions are political in the sense that they are based on a particular vision for society. Still, these people claim to be non-political and most of them will not even think about becoming active in a political party or other political organisations. This thesis springs from my own personal confusion and frustration over a seeming conflict between my own observations and the statements of my informants. When I discovered that many studies of politics and democratisation came to largely the same conclusion as my informants - that actions of the kind they undertook were not political – it inspired this theoretical analysis of their activities.

In the following chapters I investigate collective political action in post-socialist Hungary based on an extensive study of one empirical case, namely the Hungarian Telecottage Movement (HTM). It considers questions about what it means to take political action in a post-socialist democracy; and how a social movement can influence the formation of order in a society where values, norms, right and wrong change radically for the second time in a life-time. In answering these questions, the thesis aims to bridge existing theoretical gaps between political science and social anthropology. At the same time, it deals with structuralist and system oriented analyses of political processes and proposes instead a ‘cultural’ approach that focuses on social practices and change. I choose the cultural approach because it can better grasp the different and emerging forms of political action, which are important to understand the shaping of a new order in society at large as well as the changing character of political action.

Post-socialist transition includes processes of rapid change, making it an obvious object for studies of cultural and political transformation. Studies of transition can provide us with a better understanding of the mechanisms of social and political change. Democratic transition is a particularly interesting phenomenon because it claims consensus on the goal of society’s change, namely democracy. Furthermore, democracy building has politically and, to some extend, scientifically been taken as a question of copying existing models (Pickel 2002). However, processes of democratisation do not always live up to expectations as people and institutions act differently than planned. It is often described as a democratic deficit when newly democratised masses fail to vote at national elections and interest organisations do not openly challenge politicians (Krastev 2002:40, 48, Lovel 2001). Indeed, one often gets the impression that citizens of post-socialist countries are utterly disinterested in – and even suspicious and hateful towards - politics. Such democratic ‘short-comings’ are typically explained by ‘socialist legacy’, or as the result of a temporary economic set-back and disappointment caused by neo-liberal reforms of the economic system (Krastev 2002:42-43, Lovel 2001). I believe the distaste for politicians and political systems make many people take their political interest and energy elsewhere, to a sphere where they feel less helpless and more influential. This is why I look for a broader conceptualisation of political struggles.

Overview of the thesis

Chapter I is a short introduction to the history of democratic transition in Hungary that serves both to contextualise my argument and to conceptualise the process of democratic transition itself. In chapter II the reader is introduced to the Hungarian Telecottage Movement, its central organisation and their main areas of activity. Chapter III is mainly a theoretical discussion of political struggles and social movements leading to a conceptualisation of political action and, particularly, the relationship between politics, culture and practice, which is central to the thesis’ argument. In chapter IV, I demonstrate how the HTM - through the production of social practices - enacts considerable political agency despite claims to be non-political, and I will argue that the movement’s activities, institutionalisation and public discourse have significant influence on cultural and political currents in Hungary. Finally, chapter V outlines some theoretical perspectives implicated by my analysis before summing up the main conclusion.

Throughout the thesis end-notes [Translation notes] are marked in Roman numerals and are exclusively used for the original Hungarian text, which has been translated in the thesis. Footnotes [Notes] contain explanations and clarifications with direct reference to the text in question. The original Hungarian acronyms are used when relevant and a full list of acronyms is provided in the beginning. All personal and place names have been changed to secure the anonymity of my informants. Exceptions are Budapest, Csákberény, public political figures and the former president of the Hungarian Telecottage Association Mátyás Gáspár who is both my informant, a public figure and the author of literature used in this thesis - his multiple roles being a point in itself.

I. Transition and Democratisation in Hungary

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 initiated a comprehensive and complex process of change in the whole Eastern bloc, where it had become irredeemably clear that socialism had failed and needed to be replaced by another system of rule. Hungary was the first country to open its borders to the West, putting the East German power-holders in an awkward position where they could do little except open their own borders. In the light of Gorbachev's reform policies (e.g. perestroika and glasnost) and the success of Solidarity in Poland, a forced closure of Hungarian borders was no longer a realistic option (Holmes 1997:23-27). The opening of the borders in Berlin, with masses of ecstatic people flooding into West Germany, became the starting signal to formally dismantle the Soviet Union. There was a loud call for democracy and leading figures such as the Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, talked about 'returning to Europe' - an expression that soon became a popular slogan in the rhetoric of new East European governments up through the 1990s (Hyde-Price 1996:8).

In the years after the Berlin Wall came down, East European countries were busy writing constitutions, establishing political parties and drawing up reforms. In Hungary reforms had already been underway during the 1980s and even before the Wall fell legislation was passed in the Hungarian parliament (and accepted by Gorbachev), which allowed for multiple political parties. On October 23rd, 1989 a thoroughly amended constitution⁽¹⁾ was instituted as a result of the roundtable discussions between the Communist Party and the united opposition. In this early version of the revised Hungarian constitution the country's name was changed from ‘the People's Republic of Hungary’ to ‘the Hungarian Republic’ (Holmes 1997:65-68). But the compromise between old communist and western oriented reformist views was still obvious:

the Republic of Hungary is an independent democratic constitutional state where the achievements of both bourgeois (western type) democracy and democratic socialism prevail. (Elster et al. 1998:96 my emphasis).

Following the elections in 1990 the new parliament - which had only 9% Communists - further amended the constitution nine times during the first year, thus erasing all references to socialism from the constitution (Neuhold et al. 1995:32, Paczolay 1993:21-25). The first major reforms to be enacted under the new government were related to privatisation of the economy and decentralisation of public administration. As a result of the first local government act in 1990 (Act LXV) virtually every settlement in Hungary gained autonomous, locally elected governments (Soós et al. 2002). This means that there are today 3168 municipal units, of which 1510 operate a municipal office (KSH 2004). The smallest municipality has a mere 14 inhabitants (www.nyilvantartas.hu).

The system change⁽²⁾ from a one-party socialist system to Parliamentary democracy, and from plan economy to market economy, was experienced as a completely new and chaotic environment for people to live their lives in. An environment filled with challenges, uncertainties and opportunities. The economic system under socialism offered a high level of security for its citizens: a free and universal health system; (formally) no unemployment; subsidised housing and consumption items - to name a few examples. In contrast, the first years of market economy brought about high and rising unemployment, racing inflation and stark demands to production rates - all combined with declining social security (Offe 1996:225-227). The picture is one of increasing uncertainty for citizens of post-socialist states, as they cannot know what the future will bring. Many have been highly disappointed with the harsh realities of market economy that looked so promising from behind the Iron Curtain (Holmes 1997, Offe 1996, Verdery 1996, Sampson 1996).

However, there was - and is - a strong sense of consensus about the direction these societies should be moving in. Indeed, no system change occurs in an historical or ideological vacuum. In the words of Klaus Offe ‘East Central European transformations take place in the dual context, or cognitive frame of reference and comparison, of ‘the West’ and ‘the past’.‘ (Offe 1996:230). Simply put, the large majority seems to agree that the socialist past must be abandoned in favour of a brighter future modelled on western ideals as it is indeed reflected in the constitution.

The final goal of transition is democracy and thus the post-socialist process of change is politically and popularly conceptualised and as one of ‘democratisation’. Political scientist Pickel comments on early transformation debate, noting that

… an almost universal consensus quickly emerged that the central problem was the practical problem of transition from the Communist system to the liberal capitalist system. It was widely assumed, moreover, that solving this practical problem did not pose any serious problems for social science since the relevant scientific knowledge was presumed to be available. (Pickel 2002:111)

Most significantly, Pickel points out that the need for a ‘theory of transformation’ derives from practical concerns of economic, social, and institutional nature that arose in the process of transformation itself. He explains that, because the project of post-socialist transformation was from the beginning essentially a political one, defined as the rejection of communism in favour of liberal capitalism, democracy and a ‘return to Europe’, western economists and political scientists were assumed to possess the needed knowledge. In this way, the problem of post-socialist societal change was broadly defined as a transition from one definite order to another, rather than an open-ended process in a particular time-space setting (Pickel 2002:112, Sampson 1996).

I.1 Post-Socialism: Transition or Transformation?

The terms ‘transition’ and ‘transformation’ are often used interchangeably, but there can be an important point to using one rather than the other. Using the word ‘transition’ indicates a definite idea of the outcome of a process of change (that being for example ‘democracy’ or ‘market economy’). ‘Transition’-studies typically consider macro-processes of change in political and economic systems but the underlying assumptions can be identified in other types of studies as well, and - in its most outspoken form - in popular and political discourse on democratisation. Thus, the very notion of ‘democratisation’ implies a well-defined and obvious goal – namely ‘democracy’ - of an ongoing process. The process of transition from post-socialism to democracy is conceptualised as a linear, evolutionary process suitable for measurement of a kind that can determine the ‘degree’ or ‘stage’ of democratisation in a given society. The yearly ratings by Freedom House is one of the most extreme example democracy measurement. Freedom House operates with ratings of ‘political rights’ and ‘civil liberties’, where political rights include for example the right to vote and compete for public office. In this way the organisation produces yearly ratings – in numbers - of the degree of ‘freedom’ in all the world’s countries (Freedom House 2004).

‘Transformation’, on the other hand, alludes to the understanding that processes of change in general - and the post-socialist process of change in particular – are not linear and predictable. Broadly speaking, ‘transformation’ is change into something new and unknown whereas transition is change into something known and defined (Verdery 1996:14, Berdahl 2000:2)⁽³⁾. This is an important difference, not because it is necessarily better to do open-ended research, but because the outcome of societal change is always unpredictable. These lines by Katherine Verdery outline how encompassing and unpredictable a process post-socialist change is:

I believe the postsocialist change is … a problem of reorganization on a cosmic scale, and it involves the redefinition of virtually everything, including morality, social relations, and basic meanings. It means a reordering of peoples’ entire meaningful worlds. (Verdery 1999:35)

This reorganization, as Verdery points out, goes beyond the institutional reorganisation of the political system and involves making sense of malleable terms such as ’democracy’; knowing what is ’good’ and ’bad’ behaviour; and conceptualizing the relationship between state and individual. All this happens whether anyone intends it to or not, as people are bound to perceive an order in society, to have ideas about the ’rules of the game’ and common norms, because this enables them to make choices and to orientate themselves socially and develop dispositions - in short, to live their every-day lives. However, the process of reordering is influenced by various agents, some individual and some collective, such as social movements. Steven Sampson also points to the fact that transition in Eastern Europe is influenced by many actors and do not necessarily follow the Western European recipe:

Transition in Eastern Europe is not a fundamental, irrevocable social change along Western lines, nor is it the controlled transfer of western experience to the east. Rather, the transition is a social space in which various resources - material, organizational, human, symbolic - are manipulated and reconstituted by a variety of actors in an organizational setting of global character. (Sampson 1996:122)

Nevertheless, most scholars stick to the term ‘transition’ even while ascribing to the conceptual framework of ‘transformation’ (e.g. Verdery) as there seems to have emerged a general acknowledgement of the former as the more general term of the two⁽⁴⁾. While general consensus has emerged within the social sciences that post-socialist change must be conceptualised as an open-ended transformation, the idea of a transition to western style democracy is still the politically dominant conception.

I feel it necessary to make one last note on the debate about transition versus transformation. I believe that the best argument for sticking with the term transition is that this is how most implicated actors view the process. There is a definite (even if imagined) goal of the process, namely democracy, and actors aim at this goal by following (more or less rigidly) existing models (whether or not these are well interpreted or well represented). Therefore, the process is not seen as a transformation into something new and unknown, but as transition into a particular model. It is this process we must seek to understand when we scrutinize ‘democratic transition’ as an object of study. Post-socialist, democratic transformation is brought about by actors so determined to make it a transition, that this becomes our object of study: a transformation claiming to be a transition. Let me underline that viewing democratisation as transformation has no implications as to the success or failure of the project, neither does it state anything about how closely new democracies resemble old ones. Transformation is merely the most plausible framework of the two for any conceptualisation of processes of social change, because the concept of transition implies something far too linear, structured and static to cover those societal processes of change which we call transitions.

I.2 Conceptualising Transformation to Democracy

Today, Hungary has established a formal democracy, understood as a set of rules, procedures and institutions (e.g. multi-party elections, ombudsman, separation of the legislative, the judicial and the executive power) and for the most part modelled upon western European examples. While this formal system is now firmly in place, both popular and scholarly discussions about the state of Hungarian democracy are often centred around the realisation of what some call substantive democracy. For example, Mary Kaldor and Ivan Vojevoda write:

We consider substantive democracy as a process that has to be continually reproduced, a way of regulating power relations in such a way as to maximize the opportunities for individuals to influence the conditions in which they live, to participate in and influence debates about the key decisions that affect society (Mary Kaldor et al. 1999:3-4).

This view underlines that democracy – as any other type of society - is not a final or static state of being but a ’process that has to be continually reproduced.’ Such processes of social reproduction take place all the time in all societies, but during the transitional period from one type of society to another, they become far more explicit as new concepts are introduced into daily language; new practices are established; the whole logic of political life (not to mention daily life) is and must be redefined; and at the same time there is a lack of natural authorities to provide clear answers about what the ’new order’ is, or should be.

While political discourse on democratisation gives the impression that we are talking about a well-defined and shared sense of order, only the most hard-core structuralist political scientists have a very clear and delimited definition to offer. At a conference at the Johns Hopkins Institute a professor of political science demonstrated such certainty, when he ended our discussion on the nature of democracy by stating that as soon as there were popular elections in a country this is a democracy⁽⁵⁾. Other analysts are more nuanced and will grant it that democracy can mean – and is by most people taken to mean - far more than that. To different people democracy is also a question of ‘political culture’ (Putnam 1993); equality in access to the decision-making process; a free press; of ‘civil’ mentality and behaviour (Carter 1998); a vibrant ‘public sphere’ (Habermas in Calhoun 1997); the level of ‘trust’ in a society (Lovel 2001). Finally, several of my informants believe that democracy requires a certain level of living standards or even a welfare state that ensures some redistribution of resources, before people will have the surplus and the independence required to claim their rights and voice their opinions. Árpád Nyári, who holds a degree in social politics and works for the NGO DemNet (to be introduced in detail later) expresses his view:

So, a country can be very democratic but if it is economically weak it will function according to those very systems of [personal] relations on the basis of which Hungary is indeed functioning in many cases. So you have to strengthen the market, because the market is a basic pillar of democracy. […] Because anyone can be bought, so you can’t say that you have rights but no job, because it won’t work - then you are in a situation of dependence on someone...’⁽ⁱ⁾ (Interview with Árpád Nyári June 26, 2000)

Post-socialist transition has attracted many scholars investigating processes of change. Over the past five to 10 years we have seen a growing body of anthropological literature on post-socialism focusing on the challenges and options of everyday life for individuals living in the times of system change. A few prominent scholars on socialist countries set the stage with outstanding analyses of life under socialism and some preliminary guesses at what comes next (e.g. Hann 1993 and Verdery 1996). A range of studies have since emerged on the everyday life of post socialism, touching upon issues such as consumption (Caldwell and Patico 2002, Fehérváry 2002), rock music (Szemere 2001), gender roles (Gál and Kligman 2000) and village life (Hollos 2001).

One of the most renowned post-socialist scholars is Verdery, who has carried out numerous extensive studies in Romania before and after the system change. In her conception post-socialist transformation is an open-ended process that entails altering landmarks (e.g. tearing down or replacing statues), repositioning dead bodies⁽⁶⁾, rewriting history, forming new political arenas, redefining morality and basic values and much more – ‘a reordering of people's entire meaningful worlds’, as Verdery herself puts it (Verdery 1999:35). I agree with the now common notion that social change and redefinitions happen all the time in all societies. What makes post-socialist transformation exciting is the overall political and public agreement that profound changes must be made and are taking place. At the same time great uncertainty and controversy prevails regarding the practical implementation of principles such as democracy and free market economy and their implications for people’s everyday life. In this situation every person is eligible to have an opinion on ‘the new’ versus ‘the old’ order and change is indeed a constant topic of conversation in all parts of society as people experience more - and less - significant alterations of everyday life experiences and circumstances. Because, obviously, wide consensus about the necessity and desirability of democracy in no way ends the discussion about what democratic society looks like. Exactly because the concept of democracy is generally so vaguely defined, it is immensely powerful as a political symbol – powerful because it is at the same time widely celebrated and holds the capacity to evoke a multitude of understandings⁽⁷⁾.Thus actors in the transition also participate in a struggle to ‘utilise’ the concept of ‘civil society’, as Sampson has phrased it (Sampson 1996:124). What Sampson aims at here, is that the widespread consensus about the desirability of democracy and civil society is not simply a matter of a sudden change in morals. Such orientations are also a product of heavily supported projects in the name of democracy and civil society, the available resources creating strong incentives to become a devotee (Sampson 1996:124).

I.3 Hungarian NGOs and (Non-)Politics

My own interest in transition studies started in 1997 when I spent four months in Hungary and started to learn Hungarian. A year later I returned for six months to improve my language skills and in 2000 I carried out seven months of fieldwork as a volunteer with the Foundation for Development of Democratic Rights (FDDR). The organisation was originally set up as a programme office for USAID to administer a programme called the ‘Democracy Network’ programme, from which the organisation still carries its popular name ‘DemNet’.

The original focus of my fieldwork was the relationship between donors and recipients in the world of NGOs. Specifically, I looked at how conceptions of democracy and civil society were developed, transferred, interpreted and put into practice in the chain connecting foreign and international aid organisations to small NGOs in the Hungarian countryside. I interviewed representatives from DemNet and from organisations that received their grants - and one representative of USAID. In a way I expected people from local NGOs to be quite political in outlook, to have visions for society – after all, as members of the NGO community and grantees of DemNet they were supposedly all involved in efforts to ‘build civil society’ and ‘enhance democracy’ in Hungary (DemNet PR material 2000). It therefore struck me as quite peculiar that many of these people and NGOs, who were all skilful users of international political buzzwords, often seemed uninterested in political developments and they all refrained from political affiliation. Although everyone had their own private idea about what was good about the transition and what should be different, these viewpoints were rarely connected to any direct political activity. Even the efforts of NGOs were usually kept at the level of solving very local problems by providing services that would otherwise not be available. The idea of combining their efforts with advocacy work and political lobbying for more general changes was typically refused. One explanation I was given was that such efforts were futile because the system was not ready for ‘real’ democratic behaviour. Many of the NGOs felt morally raised above the public system, since they felt officials used their positions for their own personal benefit and not in the interest of the people. Very often people just did not want to be enmeshed with the political system because they said officials were corrupt, ineffective, uninterested and nepotistic. It was continuously pointed out that many politicians started their carrier in the socialist system and now continue unaffected by the changes as party leaders and ministers in the democratic system. In 2002 the new Prime Minister Péter Megyessy was heavily criticised in public media as it was revealed that he had worked as a secret agent under the socialist rule. The opposition argued that he should step down because he was unreliable as a representative of the democratic Hungarian state but Megyessy stayed on⁽⁸⁾.

In 1997 DemNet had provided support for 30 NGOs to establish telecottages and after visiting some of them I decided to focus on this particular type of initiative. The NGOs behind telecottages were different from other DemNet recipients, first of all because they were united in the international Hungarian Telecottage Association⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ (MTSz). This was unusual according to DemNet staff, who experienced it as a general problem that Hungarian NGOs are unwilling or unable to unite in parachute organisations. Staff explained this with a general lack of trust and a sense of competition among NGOs. Several scholars and other commentators have also noted the poor success and missing efforts to create umbrella organisations or to unite around campaigns (e.g. Kúti et al. 2000). But here was an association with an idea that had in 2000 already attracted around 100 independent NGOs. What attracted NGOs to the MTSz was of course access to funding, but the same NGOs could have applied for funds without entering the MTSz. The association had something more. In 1997 the idea of telecottages in small Hungarian villages was highly innovative - to some it even sounded unrealistic - and many of the NGOs that were interested needed the expertise MTSz could offer. There were also members who had started something similar at an earlier point and they felt that in the MTSz they could meet and work with like-minded individuals. An NGO in a small village near the Slovakian border had already established a meeting place reminiscent of a telecottage when they heard of the MTSz and joined in order to share experiences. In fact I quickly observed a strong sense of brotherhood especially among the initial 30 organisations, and this raised my interest in what telecottage leaders were starting to refer a to as the Hungarian Telecottage Movement (HTM). When I visited telecottages I was almost always presented with the telecottage book and video film ‘Telecottages and Distance Work in Hungary’ (Bihari 1999) and people enthusiastically told me about the vision behind their efforts. Everyone I talked to emphasised that telecottages are not just about technology, their mission involves strengthening local democracy, empowering citizens and establishing a new ‘civil’ culture. The computers were just a tool to bring all this to the small communities. I found it exciting to finally meet some people who wanted to have a say in Hungary’s future and who actually had an idea of what they wanted Hungarian society to look like in 10 or 20 years. This was an association of people who did not only try to solve the immediate task at hand in their particular settlement, they actually saw their efforts in a greater perspective, they united and they had a vision for the future. However, just like other NGOs, the telecottages also claimed to be ‘non-political’ in outlook, their activities being ‘free of politics’ and themselves unwilling to participate political struggles. And still, they all had strong opinions about what society should look like and how the telecottages should contribute to this process. This struck me as a dilemma: on the one hand, these individuals and their national organisations all carried well-defined ideas about society, and what needed to be changed. They also worked night and day to make these changes real through their telecottage activities. Yet, they claimed not to be interested in the world of politics and not wanting to engage in political struggles.

In the first five to 10 years after the collapse of the Soviet system, transition studies were dominated by economic and political scientists, who typically focused on formal changes within the system of government and social and economic reforms, with the general objective to evaluate the speed and quality of democratisation in different countries (e.g. Diamond 1999, Elster et al. 1996, Kaldor et al. 1999, Soós et al. 2002). In such studies the ‘pace’ or ‘degree’ of democratisation is measured on the basis of a structuralist understanding of politics as something going on within clearly defined formal institutions, thus excluding actors outside this formal system as not properly ‘political’. This approach has been criticised by Alvarez and Escobar, among others, who challenge what they see as too strong a focus on ‘measurable aspects’ leading to a disregard of ‘the less visible effects at the levels of culture and everyday life’ (Alvarez and Escobar 1992:7). Instead they propose a focus on practice and small-scale changes to balance the overload of surveys ‘testing’ democratic institutions.

There is criticism among academic and political observers that the bulk of NGOs do not address or articulate political or social issues and, especially smaller NGOs, tend to pursue a highly ‘de-politicised’ approach (e.g. Lovel 2001, Grunberg 2000, Kúti 1996). The renowned Hungarian NGO scholar Éva Kúti notes that ’Foreign observers are often surprised and disappointed by the prevalence of the pragmatic, problem-solving approach in Hungary’ (1996:137). She herself observes that NGOs generally do not try to challenge policy makers directly and only rarely concern themselves with legislation or political programmes. Instead they act as ‘alternative policy makers’ carrying out new types of (or better) services and lobbying for state donations or contracts for their particular organisation (Ibid:139). This means that problems are addressed locally and there is little confrontation of the local or national government. Instead, problems are solved for the individual (group) on the local level, but the overall structures of inequality remain unchallenged. A woman who developed social and educational programmes (e.g. organisation of a foster home network, education of social workers in family counselling, etc.) in cooperation with both NGOs and social authorities was frustrated with what she felt was a general lack of perspective and political ambition:

The problem is that in Hungary many times they just cater the tasks but not the problem.⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ (Conversation with Gabriella Nyikos September 20, 2000)

In my own studies of Hungarian NGOs – including telecottages - I have also observed this tendency to refrain from engaging in ’politics’. This attitude is expressed in a strong aversion to affiliations with political parties and their programmes, and NGO staff typically insist that their activities are ’non-political’. And not only are they opposed to affiliating with parties and formal politics, they also do not use such methods such as demonstrations, sit-ins, mass mailing, letters to the editor, etc. to put pressure on politicians and government administrations.

Observers of NGOs in other post-socialist countries have noted similar tendencies. Laura Grunberg did a study of women’s NGOs in Romania and explains their ‘politics of anti-politics’ as the result of a ‘long tradition… of treating politics as something apart from society, even shameful’ (Grunberg 2000:310). She also notes the lack of a ‘formal lobby’ to influence policy-makers and points out that ‘women’s NGOs are busy helping women but not emancipating them’ (Grunberg 2000:314). While this is probably a correct analysis from the point of view taken, it nevertheless ignores two essential questions: does the Romanian women’s movement have to be about emancipation (as understood in other – Western - women’s movements) in order to be political in scope? Is lobbying and confrontation through the established system the only way of enacting politics? The theories that lay the ground for Laura Grunberg’s criticism have been developed in political science departments of those countries we may now call old democracies and the 'success criteria' they lay out for developing democracies are based on a particular historical and societal context. Thus theories ‘take for granted a particular form of society, that of the modern West’ (Escobar 1992:410). I argue that this bias in important ways makes them unfit to grasp the way in which NGOs in post-socialist states, specifically Hungary, do indeed engage in political struggles.

Contrary to the studies mentioned above, my findings show that the activities of NGOs – specifically telecottages – are bursting with politics, even though political struggles are not primarily fought through the official political apparatus. The MTSz has developed distinct lobbying techniques for the purposes of achieving state-funding and influencing the policy of changing governments – without engaging in ‘politics’ understood as public political discussions, direct public challenges or appraisals of government policy or any adherence to political parties. In connection with a research internship at the Demstar research project in 2001, I did a pilot study of the MTSz’s lobbying techniques, which revealed that the MTSz has close ties to a range of political decision-makers in the central government. The main conclusion of my study was that the MTSz performs extremely targeted lobbying, which is co-ordinated and carried out mainly by the lead character Mátyás Gáspár. While he performs most of the direct negotiations with ministries and other potential donors, other actors are encouraged to feed the same institutions with positive statements about the telecottages. Thus, for example, the director of the Information Society and Trend Research Institute where I worked in 2002 revealed how his timing of telecottage appraisals to ministerial representatives had been co-ordinated with Gáspár. My most important finding was, however, that the relationship developed through lobbying is best compared to the relationship between business partners and therefore theories of political lobbying were not easily applicable. In an effort to familiarise myself with a ‘political science’ rather than an ‘anthropological’ approach I had decided to study the MTSz lobbying techniques using a highly system oriented analytic framework, which had clearly defined indicators for lobbying success or failure (for example, the strongest indicator of political influence was participation in law formulation and execution)⁽⁹⁾. However, because these indicators do not correspond very well to the objectives of the MTSz lobby, my research design could not properly grasp the effects of their activities. The MTSz offers programmes to the state in a manner which is quite similar to that of a contractor and they hope to influence state policy and investments by convincing the authorities to provide resources for telecottages. In this way the current goal of lobbying is to sell a product rather than to formulate or change laws, thus measuring effectiveness as a question of influence on law making proved to be a misguiding choice.

My point is that - even though studies of formal political institutions are valuable and important - we cannot properly understand the changing character of the political - which is an inherent part of transition in Hungary and other post-socialist states - unless we turn focus to look for political agency in activities not conventionally understood as such. Looking at transition merely from a system oriented understanding of ‘the political’ does not allow us to see how new social practices and cultural innovation shape the reordering of society and reshape relations between state, civil society and the individual. Lovel uses surveys on people’s confidence in politicians and the political system to show that many post-communist societies are lacking a crucial ingredient, namely trust, and therefore there is a ‘gap of varying widths between institutions and appropriate behaviour throughout postcommunism’ (Lovel 2001:28). He finds that whereas democratic institutions are in place, the democratic behaviour is still lacking because of a lack of trust in politicians and officials. He explains this as a result of ‘communist legacy’ and proposes the level of trust as a measurement for democracy (Lovel 2001:33). I find it ironic how Lovel’s analysis stands in opposition to my informant’s viewpoint that it is the system which is not yet ready for real democratic behaviour. Apparently it does not occur to Lovel that maybe it is the institutions which are not ‘appropriate’ for the people. The problem with Lovel’s approach is that he fails to ask where people place their trust if not in the political system. First of all, to claim that people had no trust in each other during communism disregards the existence complicated and widely extended personal networks for exchange of favours and goods, which demanded quite a high level of trust in other people’s willingness to keep their eyes shut to illegal activities (Hollos 2001). Secondly, turning focus from the gap between newly established democratic institutions and people’s ‘inappropriate’ behaviour, to look at political action in a broader perspective proves more fruitful if the goal is to detect democratic political activity. Explaining current problems by ‘legacy’ usually proves to be an over-simplification, a point made convincingly by Krastev, who also suggests a turn of focus away from institutions towards people’s everyday life and experience in his area of expertise, the Balkan region:

It is time to adopt a perspective that focuses on citizens and treats their experiences as the key to understanding Balkan politics. Democracy, in this view, is less a matter of institutional settings than of the relations between governments and citizens. Democracy means not only that people can vote in free and fair elections, but that they can influence public policy as well. What people think matters at least as much as what governments do. (Krastev 2002:45)

As I have already pointed out, I find that the activities performed in telecottages are deliberately aimed at changing basic values, norms and even power structures in society, based on clear conceptions of how they believe society should develop and what the ’true’ meaning of democracy is. Therefore I hold that it is simply foolish to consider them void of politics, even if they do not behave ‘appropriately’ in relation to the new political system. Katherine Verdery proposes a more embracing definition of politics that I find more useful to conceptualise post socialist political behaviour:

I see politics as a form of concerted activity among social actors, often involving stakes in particular goals. These goals may be contradictory, sometimes only quasi-intentional; they can include making policy, justifying actions taken, and creating or manipulating the cultural categories within which all of those activities are pursued. (Verdery 1999:23)

When NGOs unite in the MTSz with the outspoken intention of establishing a whole new set of institutions – arguing that they are instrumental in the country’s successful transformation from socialism to democracy, from traditional to information society - this is most certainly a ‘concerted activity’ with ‘stakes in particular goals’ as Verdery puts it. While system oriented approaches miss (or dismiss!) this kind of politics, I choose to work with a sense of politics and political agency that is closer to Verdery’s conception. I do so because I believe this approach allows me to say much more about post-socialist political agency and the transformation of post-socialist societies than will a study of the model political system and its conventional actors.

With a theoretical basis in the Latin American school of New Social Movements (e.g. Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998) I identify a sense of ‘political agency’ in practices conventionally understood - by analysts as well as practitioners - to be non-political. I find this an especially relevant study in the post-socialist context because of the so far prevalent tendency to dismiss NGO activities as politically inconsequential by political and social science scholars alike. Other post-socialist scholars have taken steps in this direction considering, most notably, the politics of gender and gendered politics (Gál and Kligman 2000) and the politics of repositioning dead bodies (Verdery 1996). However, to my knowledge, no studies have yet explicitly combined the Latin American school of new social movement theory with the study of post-socialist politics and political agency. I use this approach for a more explicit investigation of the character of post-socialist political agency, because I find it an obvious choice all the while the Latin American school of new social movements is centred around the question of cultural struggles as political struggles (Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998).

I will return to more elaborate discussions of theories on ‘politics of non-political activities’ in the following chapters. For now, I claim that telecottage activities in Hungary are in fact clearly ‘political’ in the sense that they do address general ideas about what the Hungarian society should look like and almost always exist as a critique (explicit or implicit) of existing practices in their field(s) of operation.

I believe it is important to properly understand the changes happening in post-socialist societies, lest we blindly accept the widespread - but mistaken - assumption underlying the political project of ‘post-socialist transition’ that changes in one time-space setting (post-socialist countries) can be carried out as a direct mimicking of former developments in a different setting (Western countries). This would not only be poor science but also leads to misguiding policy recommendations and useless spending of resources. In my own experience the many presumptions inherent in standard models for democratic society channelled through the world of NGOs do not reflect the reality of transitional societies. Thus it rang hollow when American experts told Hungarian NGOs to become more independent and sustainable by diversifying their sources of income. A recurrent suggestion was to opt for donations from private companies as NGOs do in the United States. But the two things are not comparable: In the United States the tradition for company donations to NGOs emerged when bourgeois women started organisations to distribute food for homeless people, organise orphanages and the like. Their husbands were typically the directors of local enterprises or banks with a tight connection to their local environment and an intimate relation to the NGO activists. This could not be further from the situation in rural Hungary, where NGO leaders are school teachers, university students and pensioners and local enterprises are non-existing or quickly loosing business to multinational companies whose directors have no personal ties to or interest in the local environment.

Transition discourse of international development projects frames post-socialist transformation as a question of one-directional transfer of models from West to East (Sampson 1996). This leads to an enormous waste of resources, for example when western specialists fly in to deliver their standard lecture to Eastern European NGO staff, who know all the points but cannot use them because reality looks entirely different than the model or setting the expert is grounded in (Sampson 1996). Krastev voices a similar frustration with what he sees as a predominant focus on ‘why things are not working out as they should (according to that paradigm’s ideal)’ instead of ‘finding out why things are happening as they are’ (Krastev 2002:45). In my attempt to take this approach I refrain from judgements about whether or not actors behave in the ‘appropriate’ democratic way ascribed by an arbitrary democratisation paradigm, instead I concentrate on the notion of political action.

I.4 Democracy, Civil Society and NGOs

Generally accepted theories about democratisation follow a logic according to which the civil sector, made up primarily of NGOs, will monitor the state and provide services that guarantee equality among citizens (i.e. fill in the social ‘gaps’ left by the state). Also they will foster ‘political activity’, thereby securing the basis for representative democracy. These largely political assumptions have their roots in political science theories reaching back to Alexis de Tocqueville who observed civil organisations in the USA in the middle of the 19th century (Tocqueville 2000). One political scientist writing specifically on processes of democratisation is Larry Diamond, who defines civil society with strong emphasis on organisation as

…the realm of organized social life that is open, voluntary, self-generating, at least partly self-supporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules. (Diamond 1999:221 emphasis in original)

Keeping in line with a long tradition of theoretical thought on democracy and civil society - and similar to other contemporary theorists like Andrew Arato and Jean L. Cohen (1992) and Robert D. Putnam (1993) - he argues that civil organisations promote democratic development and consolidation because they carry out a range of vital functions in democratic society, which can be summed up as follows: civil society limits and controls state power (through challenges by the free media, interest organisations, etc); organizational life stimulates political participation and deliberation by constituting small-scale, practical ‘schools for democracy’ (which ‘teach the democratic ways’ and fosters professional politicians); civil society mediates between the individual and the state (e.g. through conflict mediation and dissemination of information) (Diamond 1999:218-260). These ideas lay the ground for efforts to support the enhancement of civil society in democratising states. As this excerpt from an EC communication shows, civil society is considered fundamental to democratisation:

A flourishing civil society, able to draw on an independent and impartial legal system, plays a fundamental role in holding governments accountable and denouncing human rights abuses. (EC 2001:16)

These few lines also bring out an emphasis on formal institutions (‘an impartial legal system’, ‘governments’ and ‘human rights’) typical of democratisation programmes, which must be measurable in future evaluations of the programme’s results. According to the same communication, approximately 100 million Euro has been allotted to EC’s European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) to support ‘human rights, democratisation and conflict prevention activities’. Such activities are to be realised through ‘partnership with NGOs and international organisations’. OECD aid statistics reveal that the total amount of aid granted to the Central and East European Countries and the former Soviet states in 2002 amounted to 8331 million US dollars. Out of this app. 898 million⁽¹⁰⁾ were designated for ‘government and civil society’. The largest donors of aid to the same region are by far the EC with 39% and United States with 26%. Hungary is still among the region’s top ten recipients with 471 million US dollars in development support in 2002 (OECD 2004).

In the first years of democratic rule Hungary saw a virtual explosion of NGOs⁽¹¹⁾ - along with enormous expectations to them as key actors of ‘civil society’. Civil society remains a cornerstone of democracy in western political thinking, in all its different readings. The transition from one system to another and the development of democratic institutions after the ‘velvet’⁽¹²⁾ revolutions in East Central Europe were aided by USA and EU member states. Thus, also in Hungary development agencies like the USAID provided professional and financial support for social and economic reforms and strengthening of civil society. Sampson has observed how Danish democratisation projects in Romania have a tendency to measure democracy in numbers of NGOs (Sampson 1996:124,128). In the same way USAID’s support for Hungarian civil society translated into programmes that supported NGOs. It was one such programme that caused the establishment of the organisation where I did fieldwork. According to their mission statement, DemNet

…serves democratic civil society development in Central and Eastern Europe through design and management of innovative programmes that strengthen non-profit⁽¹³⁾ sector sustainability and improve social institutional structures. (DemNet PR material 2000).

Apart from the assumptions about purely democratising effects of civil society outlined earlier, other ideas about the role of NGOs in the transitional process also play an important role in grant distribution. The NGOs that received support from DemNet in 1998-2000 had applied within one of four thematic areas, namely ‘advocacy’, ‘rural development’, ‘niche social services’, and ‘Roma entrepreneurship and education’ (DemNet informational pamphlet 2000). These areas were laid out by USAID as a general framework to guide grant distribution⁽¹⁴⁾ and thereby the donor had already defined these four areas as central to their conception of civil society. Grantees in the ‘niche social services’ area were partly selected on their objectives to address issues of social inequality – or ‘gaps’ - and organisations that received support typically offered very specialised social services, one example being a day care centre for disabled children. There was thus a general expectation that NGOs can take on a significant role in an emerging ‘free market’ of social service provision. This is also reflected in an analysis of the Hungarian NGO sector performed by Kúti on behalf of the World Bank in Hungary:

…the nonprofit institutional form is generally considered to be an appropriate means of facing the numerous social and economic challenges of the transition period. (Kúti et al. 2000).

One of my informants was an American woman who worked with fundraising and internal procedures at DemNet. She also voiced the view that NGOs were not just the building blocks of civil society but also important contributors to a reformed system of social institutions:

… that's why we think the non-profits are the key to improving things in Hungary. If we can get them to a point where they are professional organisations that work professionally in a transparent way, providing quality services. Then they have a huge ability to bring in outside resources… (Interview with Cindy Graham June 15, 2000)

DemNet serves as an example of how political objectives to build democracy through the strengthening of civil society are put into practice, and how these practices effectively shape and cement the conventional wisdom about ‘proper’ civil society. More importantly (for my discussion), the DemNet example also illustrates an inherent contradiction in NGO/civil society discourse as it unfolds in a Hungarian post-socialist settting: NGOs are conceptualised, at one and the same time, as nurseries for deliberative democracy; a counterweight to state power; and as service providers that engage in a direct relation (often as state contractors or grantees) with that same state to fill in social gaps left by reform policies.⁽¹⁵⁾ I think it is obvious that the sector has a problem living up to all these expectations simultaneously and sometimes it creates difficult dilemmas for organisations that feel they cannot voice critique of government policy in fear of loosing vital support. At a monitoring visit with a relief organisation for children with Down’s syndrome, the DemNet representative asked the daily leader how much support the organisation receives from the state. She grasped the opportunity to express her viewpoint that NGO’s were actually supporting the state, not the other way around, because her organisation carried out services which the government would pride themselves of ‘in Bruxelles’⁽¹⁶⁾. However, if she were to voice her opinion in public it would be sure suicide for the organisation, which was partly dependent on public contracts and grants. So, although she felt it would be much better if the number of users determined how much support a place got (which, she argued, would imitate a free market mechanism, putting similar places – public and private - in competition for clients), she assessed that actively advocating this viewpoint at a political level was not in the organisation’s best interest. Therefore, she decided (like many others) to focus on delivering high-quality social services hoping that their efforts might help raise general standards.

II. The Hungarian Telecottage Movement

Telecentres have been identified internationally as powerful tools in poverty reduction and development projects because information and instant communication are to information society what labour and raw material was to industrial society – so goes the argument (e.g. OECD 2001, WB 1999). The information society demands different investments than did industrial society and both state, interstate and private organisations have designed strategies and programmes to address the problem of a ‘digital divide’ emerging between populations with and without access to information and communication technology (ICT) or, with the more encompassing term which I prefer: Information Society Technology (IST) (e.g. USAID 1997, EC 2002, WWF(sic!) 2002). The main argument for investing in IST in developing countries is that the technology is instrumental for economic development in the information age when knowledge and information are the most valuable resources. This excerpt from the 1998/99 World Development Report by the World Bank expresses well the hopes vested in this the 21st century’s most promising development tool:

KNOWLEDGE IS LIKE LIGHT. Weightless and intangible, it can easily travel the world, enlightening the lives of people everywhere. Yet billions of people still live in the darkness of poverty—unnecessarily. (WB 1999)

The first telecentres were established in the late 1980s in Norway, Sweden and Denmark in order to make it possible for farmers and small entrepreneurs placed in distant locations to benefit from new technology and ease communication with the world around them. With the Internet they could acquire almost any kind of information just by going the short distance to the local telecentre. This was (and still is) deemed of especially great importance for those living in small villages in the mountains or distant costal areas (Qvortrup 1989, Latchem and Walker 2001, OECD 2001).

II.1 Background: History and Mission

In Hungary a few librarians, some community development workers, teachers and other people were inspired by this Scandinavian idea soon after the system change in 1990. They saw in it a great potential to help their own isolated villages become again economic communities instead of sleeping towns where elders and unemployed dwell in oblivion. In 1992 the first attempt was made to start a telecentre but a lack of funding quickly closed it down and only in 1994 a more durable one opened in the town of Csákberény in Western Hungary. Its founder, Mátyás Gáspár had worked in community development for years in a Budapest district administration, and he brought together the small town citizens to discuss needs and shortcomings of their village, to which he had moved. A partial answer was the Telecottage of Csákberény, which secures local citizens access to information and technology they would otherwise have to go a long way for and might not know exist (Gáspár 2003, Murray 2001).

Gáspár and a few other people quickly decided to establish a national association for telecottages, the MTSz which works for the establishment of ever more telecottages in Hungary and their continuous improvement. With this act they acknowledged that their project is larger than the simple question of one village gaining access to computers. In Gáspár’s words the telecottage is a ‘cultural turning disc’⁽¹⁷⁾ and they address a problem of cultural conflict and change:

You could say that the telecottage mission is to lead the small communities and their members into the information society, so that they can benefit from its opportunities. I usually say that the information society and the traditional culture collide frontally. Like in a car accident.^(iv) (Interview with Mátyás Gáspár October 11, 2000)

Gáspár further explains that there is a great contrast between ‘traditional’ culture, which is lived out in villages and the demands and opportunities of the information society. First of all, it is a question of how one obtains information: for example people should learn to use the Internet for correct and adequate information rather than relying on the casual knowledge of fellow townsmen. However, the ambitions are higher than just teaching individuals about the splendour of modern technology. Studying informational pamphlets, books or course material for ‘telecottage managers’ produced by the MTSz, one learns that a telecottage should be a public meeting place; it should instigate local debate and activity; and it should ease the adjustment to a new system in Hungary and EU. The following excerpt is from a Serbian/English language book on telecottages, which was published to celebrate the establishment of 60 Yugoslavian telecottages, a project financed by USAID and carried out jointly by the MTSz and DemNet.

The telecottages ‘bring’ the information to local people and provide opportunities to use the information in different ways: to work, to learn or to play… A telecottage is also a community center where local people can meet with each other to organize events. Telecottages are relevant tools for sparking community development programs and through their services, may develop and strengthen local communities from the ground up. (Nizák and Pálvölgyi 2002:11)

This excerpt is a reformulation of Hungarian telecottages’ general mission and it refers to three core objectives of Hungarian telecottages, namely to secure broad access to information; to provide centres for community activities; and to instigate rural development.

II.2 MTSZ – Educator and Lobbyist

The MTSz was established as a forum for the growing amount of people interested in the telecottage concept and since the beginning it has functioned as a professional and fundraising organisation. After the first telecottage was established with private funds it was used as a ‘showcase’ for potential donors and when the first ministries and international sponsors provided funds, they were dealing with the MTSz. Today the MTSz is a large and diverse association offering many services to its members. There is a webpage with general information about membership, announcements of meetings, courses, conventions, new grants, ideas and advice on the successful operation of telecottages and much more. The telecottages have their own news service, both in the form of daily news pieces on the webpage, a print newspaper and a radio programme. The MTSz further handles all major telecottage grants including applications, monitoring, instruction of new telecottageers and composition of teaching materials. Finally, the association represents the telecottages to the world, sending representatives to international conferences to spread the ‘Hungarian experience’. This year (2004) the MTSz was the driving force in the establishment of the European Union of Telecottage Alliances (EUTA).

The MTSz has meant that rather than a few people merely being inspired by each other to establish telecottages and the like, people from all over the country can come together as a community with clearly formulated objectives and a diverse set of tools (resources, organisation, experience) to reach them. There can be no doubt that the association plays a key role in the nurturing of a telecottage movement and to many the association is the movement.

Probably the most effective tool to secure certain standards and a sense of unity among operating telecottages are the training sessions (often compulsory when receiving a grant administered by the MTSz); they include practical information about the daily operation of a telecottage (how to keep a register of visitors and services, how to balance the cash holdings, etc.), advice on ‘critical’ issues for telecottage establishment (how to identify the right person to operate the telecottage, how to negotiate cooperation with other organisations, how to secure long-term operation, etc.) and, most importantly, a thorough introduction to the ‘Telecottage Minimum’ containing six overall ‘Operational principles’^(v) and ten ‘Basic services’^(vi). The six operational principles are also listed and explained in the book ‘Telecottages and Telework in Hungary’ (Bihari 1999), a basic reader on Hungarian telecottages which can be obtained free of charge and is on the shelf of every telecottage. In short, the operational principles are:

In the further explanations of these points, it is emphasised that the telecottage must exist at the service of the community. It must investigate and be sensitive to specific needs of local residents, organisations and enterprises. Furthermore, the telecottage must secure a public meeting place and instigate public debate, ‘civic virtues’ and free access to information. Besides the general operational principles the material also lists ten basic services:

The ten basic services underline that we are not just dealing with internet cafés , even though six of them refer specifically to provision of IST (3. Internet access, 4. electronic mail for residents, 7. office services, 8. multimedia use, 9. computer games, 10. computer related work). The first basic service listed is: ‘1. civil organisations’ service centre’. This reference to the enhancement of civil society was heavily emphasised in the initial applications to USAID, which focused on supporting small NGOs. In the later years this has fallen in the background as a less topical issue. The second point: ‘2. Assistance [with official procedures]’ reflects the view that many citizens are at a loss when dealing with public authorities, because information is scarce and service in public offices⁽¹⁹⁾ is poor. Therefore it is a constant objective to secure instant access to relevant and correct information and, for example, help people retrieve needed forms and fill them in. Finally, two points define the telecottage as responsible for dissemination of local information: ‘5. Public information’ and ‘6. Local centre for announcements and news’. For the uninitiated, this may seem a bit off target, but in the villages where telecottages were typically founded during the first years the situation often called for more effective dissemination of very local information – about the local school, city council decisions, municipality opening hours, local sports activities, cheap potatoes, etc. The only media one is sure to find in very small villages is a bulletin board in front of the Municipal office, administered by municipality staff.

II.3 The Daily Life of Telecottages: Fields of Action

A telecottage is basically a building or a room with computers, a telephone line, Internet connection and various other office equipment and new technological appliances. Members of the MTSz are required to follow the prescribed principles and provide the specified minimum of equipment and services outlined above⁽²⁰⁾. Apart from this, they can have quite different profiles, as some focus more on areas like social problems, children, minorities (generally Roma), SMEs⁽²¹⁾, computer literacy, NGO support, local democracy, empowerment, etc.

In the following I will outline the main issues that telecottages relate to and define their profile against. As I will later show, it is exactly the telecottages’ practices in these fields that define them as political actors, because they position themselves clearly in relation to existing practices and specific policy formulation.

All telecottages provide access to computers and Internet⁽²²⁾ and some form of introduction or training in the use of these new technologies. In many places the telecottage cooperates with the local school, which may send pupils for computer courses or if the school has a computer room the telecottage may use that for group training courses. Such courses may be organised for the employees of local municipal offices, typically as part of the agreement that grants the telecottage free use of public premises. There are also courses for which anyone can sign up, and these may be aimed specifically at beginners, elderly people, SMEs or introduction to specific computer programmes. People can also benefit from individual assistance when they use the computers in the telecottage and kids first get acquainted with the technology by playing games or drawing on the computers after school.

Some examples of what local IST access has meant for individual users may provide some insight into the significance of telecottage initiatives: In the small town of Kútibagos in the economically backward eastern part of Hungary, a candy maker receives orders from retailers in Slovakia by e-mail. He has an agreement with the local telecottage that they call him up whenever there is a new e-mail. When a new order has been placed the telecottage also prints labels for the candy that has been ordered. This arrangement allows for greater flexibility and low cost for the candy maker. In the telecottage he receives the services he needs and thus he can benefit from IST without making overwhelming and insecure investments. Kuruc, who founded a very successful telecottage in a nearby settlement of Szentpuszta and now operates an educational centre for unemployed people and telecottageers explains how great a thing it was to introduce the e-mail in her village:

The Internet was unimaginable a few years ago: that you could retrieve a piece of information in just one minute! The e-mail is very exciting and people are happy to use it, they are still in awe when their relative or friend in America or Canada gets their letter in two minutes, and half an hour later the answer is already here.^(ix) (Interview with Ildikó Kuruc July 27, 2000)

A final example serves to underline that it is not just individuals and small businesses which have gained access to new information and opportunities through the telecottages. In many cases, the telecottage also cooperates with local or regional municipalities in organising events and programmes or securing funds. In Börcs, located in western Hungary, telecottage staff are deeply involved in the establishment of and fundraising for a ‘Forest School’, where school children come for camp and learn about nature and ecology⁽²³⁾. And in Elke the telecottageers look out for grant proposals on behalf of the local municipality, which does not have access to the Internet⁽²⁴⁾.

It is the aim that these IST access and skills enhancing activities help ease the transition from the ’traditional’ culture to a global ‘information society’ by securing universal access to IST and providing people with basic IST skills, which are a necessary requirement for many new jobs (Bihari 1999). Originally, the movement focused on rural areas because they were concerned with the ‘digital gap’ (i.e. the inequality in IST access and skills) between rural and urban areas. By now, many telecottages are placed in urban areas, where they typically seek to serve areas with large minorities or other disadvantaged populations.

Becoming able participants in a global information society is considered of crucial importance to secure people’s livelihood and the further development of Hungarian economy (Bihari 1999), but it is also a question of opening up to the surrounding world. The latter objective has found an expression in the words of a popular Hungarian poet, which are put up on the wall or webpage of several telecottages as an everyday reminder of their mission:

We must bring the whole world here, we must bring here all that is beautiful, noble and worthy [of being brought here]^(x) (Péter Veres see for example www.telehaz-del-alfold.hu)

Among other things, telecottages must function as a public forum and instigate both public debate and community initiatives. In effect, a widespread telecottage service is the publication of a local paper or newsletter, which carries information from the local council, the school, news pieces on land reforms or other legislative changes relevant to rural dwellers, and small articles about current events in the area. In many settlements this is the only source of community news other than the one or two public bulletin boards. In this way telecottages seek to realise a minimal level of efficiency in information dissemination.

In Szentpuszta, telecottage founder Ildikó Kuruc took the initiative to make a special issue of the telecottage newsletter when local elections were coming up: all candidates for the local council were invited to submit half a page text and a picture of themselves. The paper was distributed to all houses in the village. This raised peoples’ interest for the elections considerably and when the campaign paper was followed up with a public meeting in the local culture house people had to stand along the walls⁽²⁵⁾. The little campaign paper was a simple way to give citizens some idea of candidates’ plans and skills for their town’s government and this enabled them to make an informed decision at the elections.

As this example shows, telecottage activities for the enhancement of democracy carry an inherent idea of the need for empowerment. Many telecottageers feel that providing a forum for public debate, enforcing citizens’ rights, and empowering people are very important issues in the transition from socialism to democracy and a free-market economy.

This is also part of a strategy to develop and strengthen local democracy. In a chapter on the ‘National Telecottage Strategy Concept’ in the book ‘Telecottages and Telework in Hungary’ we find a list of ‘telecottage answers’ to local issues, one of them reads:

By way of community development and planning services we must foster the realisation of community values, principles, new functions (e.g. … the operation of democratic institutions, independence, self-sustainability, self-protection…) especially with regards to servicing local civil organisations and civil self-governance. We uphold our commitment to local public telecottages under civil control.^(xi) (Bihari 1999:29)

The argument is that because the larger part of the population has lived all or most of their lives under Socialist rule, they simply do not possess the attitude and skills demanded for successful survival in this new situation, which demands large amounts of personal initiative and responsibility. A stark contrast to life during socialism, when you were better off not questioning orders given and everybody had their designated role in society (for good or bad). There is also a general feeling that the transition has resulted in a lack of solidarity among people as privatisation and the free market made some people millionaires while growing numbers are living on the streets⁽²⁶⁾ (Offe 1996:225-227, Sampson 1996, Verdery 1996).

By now Hungarian society struggles with the contrast between generations marked by socialism and the young, who are oriented towards the West and have little understanding for the often apathetic attitude of their parents and grandparents. Zoltán Kállai, who is the daily leader and co-founder of the telecottage in Elke, explains:

You have to teach democracy somewhere. You have to teach them that we had a Communist regime and now hopefully we have democracy. You must teach people to exploit the opportunities, their own opportunities… Earlier, right, you couldn’t have a civil organisation, because that wasn’t possible in the communist era. If 20 or 30 people gathered, that was immediately suspicious and they kept an eye on that and they would say we were organising against the system. Well, that’s why, even though it’s not like that now, it’s still in the older generation – ok it’s subconscious but it’s there somewhere and they can’t easily free themselves from it, because they grew up in it. But the generation growing up now will not be like that.^(xii) (Interview with Zoltán Kállai October 21, 2000)

An important part of the telecottage mission is to mediate between the old and young generations and secure a smooth transition to democratic life. This is sometimes posed as a matter of unlearning socialist patterns of behaviour from people’s routines and teaching new democratic behaviour. The need to teach people how to help themselves, how to grasp opportunities and claim their rights is a recurrent theme. It reveals the concern with social marginalisation which also plays an important role to many telecottageers. The concern is that the free market, democracy and the information age together create so massive barriers to old and uneducated people that they will become marginalised and Hungarian society will be socially divided into have-alls and have-nots.

Especially those telecottages that gained support in the first DemNet grants round and, later, from the Hungarian Ministry for Regional Development and from the Ministry of Social and Family Affairs have focused heavily on basic social services (e.g. organising food delivery and gardening help for elderly people) and unemployment programmes. These were pressing issues because the economic reforms meant that many social problems were no longer solved by the state and unemployment was rising. Telecottage staff thus assist large or poor families⁽²⁷⁾ to obtain social benefits or special grants that they are eligible for but either had no knowledge of, or they did not know how to enforce their rights. In the same manner unemployed people come to the telecottage to learn about their opportunities and rights. Sometimes telecottage staff will then refer to the public job centre and sometimes they will themselves try to place the person in a new job or suggest skills-enhancing training, such as language or computer courses. Telecottageers typically believe that they carry out these services in a better and more efficient way than existing public institutions. Just as the woman from the organisation for children with Down's syndrome mentioned earlier, they carry out their activities as parallel – competing - alternatives rather than attempting to improve the system already in place.

It is repeatedly explained that telecottages must be a friendly and helpful alternative to public offices, which are generally considered to be bureaucratic, dismissive and insensitive to the individual. Tünde Karay works in the Szentpuszta telecottage and she feels her main task is to help people ‘find their way in the bureaucratic maze’^(xiii). Kuruc further explains that in the municipal office people do not receive any assistance but are simply told to write applications and fill in papers, regardless of whether they can read and write. In the telecottage staff listen to people's problems and will even help them write up a formal letter, retrieve an application form or call-up public authorities for information on their behalf. In public offices, Kuruc explains, they have neither the time nor the right mentality for these kinds of services:

It's also a question of time because in the offices they undertake official matters, they have a lot of work. The other thing is that they don't really understand the burden for this person, that he cannot solve the problem on his own, that's why he turned to them for help. But […] those who work there have turned into clerks [bureaucrats] and they don't think that it's their job. […] This is very sad because it shouldn't be like this… and it became like this over the centuries.^(xiv) (Interview with Ildikó Kuruc, July 27, 2000)

It is up against this picture that Kuruc and many of her fellow telecottageers define their role in society: they represent another way of doing things - a culture of openness and helpfulness - and they propose this as a model for interpersonal relations in the community. Telecottages address a need to re-establish solidarity and provide self-help:

This is why telecottages are necessary: for people to help each other and themselves with the strength and support of the community^(xv) (Bihari 1999:3)

II.4 Sensing the Politics of Telecottages

My meeting and engagement with the HTM is the immediate source of this thesis. When I went to Hungary in 2000 to do fieldwork at DemNet, I wanted to investigate donor-recipient relationships between NGOs as well as the emergence and conceptualisation of ‘civil society’ - a powerful buzzword in political discourse and something that was conceived of as an instrumental ingredient in the ongoing democratisation of Hungarian society⁽²⁸⁾. During this fieldwork I was introduced to 30 telecottages, which all received grants from DemNet. After a while, I realised that despite enormous differences between specific objectives in the NGOs behind each telecottage, they were all united around the telecottage concept and embraced a kind of ‘telecottage feeling’. Initiators and leaders of telecottages called themselves ‘telecottageers’^(xvi) and, clearly, they felt a sense of community, something which I later learned was the result of the many events, publications and other activities aimed at exactly this goal: to create a sense of community and unity in mission. As mentioned, this sense of larger community struck me as atypical among NGOs in Hungary. I was surprised to see that a rather large number of NGOs could unite around the idea of a ‘telecottage’ and so I concentrated the last part of my fieldwork on the emerging movement.

My own participation in movement activities included visits to telecottages; establishing contacts to foreign partner organisations; giving presentations on the Hungarian telecottage model at 5 international conferences; writing an application for a study trip to Denmark; designing a major survey of telecottage services and equipment (Kas and Larsson 2001); and working as a telecottage specialist for a Hungarian company involved in an EU project to improve broadband access in rural and maritime areas⁽²⁹⁾. This involvement secured me profound insight into the movement’s life and dynamics. One thing that always disturbed me was activists’ insistence that their activities were not – and should not be – political. Ildikó Kuruc thus explained that she does everything in her power to keep the telecottage ‘free of politics’ because political involvement could jeopardise their independence and future livelihood - since friendly affiliations with one wing will cost dearly if power shifts⁽³⁰⁾. Such statements were typical and were also clearly reflected by the leadership of MTSz.

This claim of being non-political puzzled me for a long time: it was in such stark contrast to the fact that those very same people explained their activities in the telecottage (association) in opposition to status quo in Hungarian society and they considered their own initiatives (better) alternatives to those services (or lack of same) provided by the state and local public institutions. For example, it was explained to me many times that telecottages constitute service-minded, competent and technologically well-equipped alternatives to public offices, which were criticised for being inefficient, unfriendly and old-fashioned. I asked Kuruc why she thinks people come to the telecottage instead of going the municipal office and her answer clearly demonstrates how she thinks telecottages are different from – and better than – public offices:

... Probably also because it is not a public office and it doesn’t operate like a public office... while people only go to the public offices in the very last instance, they find it natural to come into the telecottage. They have learned that it is here for them. And probably this is why they like to use it.^(xvii) (Interview with Ildikó Kuruc July 27, 2000)

Kuruc may or may not be right in her assumption, the point that puzzled me was that everyone were so keen on comparing telecottages to public offices. Why did they do that? They did not have to position themselves as better or worse than the local municipal office in order to bring technology, education and information to rural communities. Clearly, this was in some very subtle way also an attack on the old bureacratic system, which still operated through official procedures and old habbit.

Furthermore, an MTSz paper from 2003 relates the HTM directly to the system change in 1989-90 and the process of transition. A timeline shows HTM’s history in brief and starts with the five dates shown here:

"1989-90 – the attention of the state, politics and economics focused on the change in system, while concerns developed about the challenges posed by an information society, civil thinking and free and responsible action.

1992 – librarians introduced the telecottage concept, but nothing came of it as the change in system brought on more important and immediate concerns.

1994 – The first Hungarian telecottage was established because of a local community development initiative supported by the Ministry of Social Affairs.

1995 – The Hungarian Telecottage Association came into existence through private initiative.

1997 – USAID supported the first major telecottage program – 30 telecottages and the development of the first National Telecottage Program.’
(Gáspár 2003:2)

In this way, the HTM is staged as an answer to those ‘concerns’ which were prominent in Hungarian society at the time. The confusing contrast between a claim to be non-political and the – to me – obviously political reasoning and objectives behind telecottage initiatives was intriguing and demanded further investigation. After some time, I realised that I am not the only one to have noticed this phenomenon, rather it is a common observation in many post-socialist studies. Laura Grunberg in her study of Romanian women’s NGOs finds that

"Many Romanians refuse to acknowledge that they are now involved in politics or political acts. They have a long tradition, in fact, of treating politics as something apart from society, even shameful… " (Grunberg 2000:310)

Grunberg concludes that the women’s movement in Romania is ‘relatively weak’ because organisations focus on ‘meeting practical needs rather than strategically addressing the broader issues of gender relations’(ibid:324). Other contributors in the book draw similar conclusions. However, I cannot stop at such a conclusion for the HTM – even though their struggle is not articulated in political programmes and their only attempt to introduce a bill of legislation has failed⁽³¹⁾. Yet I find that the HTM does indeed address broader issues of power relations and have some influence on the future (politics) of Hungarian society. In the following chapters I will argue how this is so. The next chapter is a theoretical discussion of collective actors and political struggles, which will lead to a working definition of social movements as well as a broader analytical framework for the investigation of ‘alternative’ political agency.

III. Conceptualising Political Struggles

This chapter is a presentation and contextualisation of new social movement theory, including introductions to important theoretical currents and conceptual roots. I find in social movement theory some powerful tools to conceptualise and investigate collective political actors and their role in changing society. I also find it necessary to position my thesis firmly within the framework of social movement theory, because my findings touch upon central issues in current social movement discussions – particularly discussion on new social movements. Most obviously, whether or not ‘cultural’ struggles can and should be understood also as ‘political’ struggles.

Social movement theory constitutes a central research topic within collective action theory and is a popular subject for contemporary researchers especially within the social and political sciences. To Alain Touraine sociology should be conceptualised as the study of change and he proposes two possible approaches, which clearly demonstrate the centrality of social movements in his theoretical framework:

For some, one must first give up the idea of a social system in order to acknowledge that everything is change and that social movements are the agents of change; for others, to the contrary, one must keep the idea of social system but one must reconstruct it on the basis of an analysis of social movements… (Touraine 1988:63)

Touraine here points out that whether one takes the structuralist approach to societies and view them primarily as systems or one sees everything as change, social movements remain central to societal change.

Social movement theory has for a large part focused on movements as entities or units – organisations – rather than on processes of change. This is often reflected in a focus on the emergence and organisational characteristics of movements with little emphasis on their role in the reconfiguration of society (Alvarez and Escobar 1992:317-18). Scholars who try to understand social movements as a dynamic phenomenon– as the term surely suggests – may be frustrated and confused by this tendency that investigations of social movements are usually concerned primarily with organisations to be explained as outputs of social situations. The word and the concept of an organization imply something that is established, organized and ordered – a sharp contrast to ‘movement’, it would seem. Nevertheless, organizations are popular objects of study for scholars, like myself, who are interested in social movements understood both as expressions and agents of change, innovation and redefinition. I wish – along with many other scholars – to ask what is being changed, how and by whom. Thus I focus on the movement’s role as an agent of social change. The concept of social movement here refers not to the formal entity of an organisation but to a more fluid constellation held together by organizational, coordinating activities (some scholars therefore conceptualize social movements as networks). Organisations are seen to initiate and direct social movements and it is this, which makes them attractive objects of study. According to Gramsci organisation is necessary to create a (‘class’ or ‘group’ with a) culture (that can become hegemonic) or, in some sense, an awareness of the group’s place in the system. This is essential to the creation of counter-hegemony that can be the first step to enact social change (Crehan 2002:132).

The importance of organisation for a social movement has lead many scholars to confuse one for the other, but it is of crucial importance that we maintain a clear distinction between the association as an organisational unit and the movement as the analytical concept referring to a specific kind of collective actor. Otherwise we run the risk of considering all organisations to be social movements, whereby the very concept of social movement loses its analytic value. Of course, the two overlap in the empirical reality I write about, but my references in this thesis to the MTSz and the HTM should not be seen as interchangeable.

III.1 Collective Action Theory - Theoretical Roots

Collective action was first analyzed as deviant behaviour in the 1950s’ and early 60s’ structuralist theories, which explained the phenomenon as a reaction by restrained groups that had not yet benefited from modernization⁽³²⁾. Collective action was seen as irrational and a sign of disorder because the legitimate object of research were institutions and therefore it was seen as an anomaly when actors by-passed conventional politics (Melucci 1989:18, Offe 1985:838-9, A. Scott 1990:2, 38). The Marxist tradition offers a different approach, taking as its starting point the transformation of society rather than the stability of institutions. In this view the labour movement was a ‘natural’ reaction to capitalist domination over the workers’ class (A. Scott 1990:38).

Some newer studies in particular concentrate more on social movements as agents in social and political processes of change (Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998), many of them drawing also on the thoughts of Gramsci and the much later social constructivist school represented, for example, by Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. In the rest of this chapter I will introduce some of the most prominent scholars within social movement theory and present those theoretical approaches that I draw on, particularly the analytic framework of Alain Touraine and Antonio Gramsci.

Those theorists still firmly grounded in structuralist theory typically seek to explain how movements emerge, finding explanations in the conditions of the surrounding (political) environment. This approach is especially dominant within resource mobilization and political process theory and is represented in contemporary academia by authors such as Sidney Tarrow and Doug McAdam. Their ‘political opportunity thesis’ is very popular among some social movement scholars. It states, in short, that social movements gain influence when acting on ‘political opportunities’ that emerge in the political environment. In the last instance, the explanation for movement formation is found in changes within the institutionalised political system (McAdam et al.1996:3). As pointed out by Goodwin and Jasper the political opportunity thesis makes most sense when political opportunities are defined narrowly and in this case it can be used only to measure how movements can enter the already institutionalized political scene. On the other hand, if the concept is broadened out to include all that might influence movement emergence, it becomes tautological by implicitly stating only that ‘movements cannot emerge where people are unable… to associate with one another for political purposes’ (Goodwin and Jasper 1999:30). Another crucial weakness of their approach is tied to the implicit ‘success criteria’ for social movement activities. Movements’ strength is measured in ability to influence policy and gain access to the formal political system. Hereby, a strict definition of the political is presupposed and the role of social movements is confined to interaction with existing institutions of government. The main problem with this approach is its inability to question the nature of ‘the political’ or to study social and political transformation. Alain Touraine pinpoints the dilemma between the constitution of order and the dynamics of change:

A society is formed by two opposing movements: one which changes historicity⁽³³⁾ into organization, to the point of transforming it into order and power, and another which breaks down this order so as to rediscover the orientations and conflicts through cultural innovation and through social movement. (Touraine 1981:31)

Thus, by studying that which is already organized and ordered, e.g. society’s formal political institutions, one is rejecting the processual approach and cannot consider the opposing innovative movement, which is transforming society (and its political institutions). This problem is described as the ‘structural bias’ by Goodwin and Jasper (1999) in their extensive critique of political process theory and the book by McAdam et al. in particular⁽³⁴⁾.

Marxist theories of social change, on the other hand, are about socio-political organization and the transition from one type of society to another. The workers’ movement is ascribed significant agency in this process as the main vehicle of social change. Rather than being an anomaly, the social movement is seen as the driving force of society’s transition from capitalism to socialism. This basic understanding, which I find is in essence the most important contribution of Marxism to social movement theory, can be traced in many contemporary works, maybe the most obvious example is Alain Touraine’s book ‘Return of The Actor’, in which he treats social movements as - in his own words - ‘agents in the structural conflicts of a social system’ (Touraine 1988:69). Touraine refutes historical and social determinism as well as the strong focus on structure prevalent in traditional Marxism and he talks of the workers’ ‘movement’ rather than working ‘class’ exactly to distance himself from Marxist thought (Touraine 1995:240). In Marxist analysis a social movement is based on class relations and the question of class has remained a crucial point of discussion in new social movement theory, which in many ways draws on Marxist and neo-Marxist ideas. Critics have pointed out that Touraine is limited in his analysis because of such a bias. I will return to this criticism below.

New social movement theory was first formulated as a reaction to the emergence of what was seen as a new type of movements that have emerged since the 1960s. The ideal type of a new social movement is often described as a single-issue interest-group, which focuses on cultural rather than political issues, addressing matters of identity before economics and refraining from directly challenging the state. Classic empirical examples are the civil rights, the feminist and the green movement (e.g. Offe 1985, Melucci 1985, Touraine 1988, 2000).

The novelty and significance of ‘new’ movement characteristics has been a central issue of debate ever since the term ‘new social movements’ was first coined. There are two main trends in new social movement theory, one is seen in a focus on changes in society and explains social movements in terms of reactions to or mirrors of these changes. Another trend argues for a definition of social movements based on their role as agents of social change.

Alberto Melucci finds that contemporary ‘complex societies’ create new needs, powers and risks because ‘postindustrial societies no longer have an ‘economic’ basis; they produce by an increasing integration of economic, political, and cultural structures’ (Melucci 1985:795). In this context movements are ‘signs’ from society and collective action is ultimately the construction of collective identity. Therefore the answer to movement formation should be found in individuals’ involvement. Melucci distinguishes sharply between the private and the political and he claims that, since the major conflicts of complex societies are related to individual and everyday life this creates an increasing distance of movements’ activities from formally organized politics (Melucci 1985).

Jürgen Habermas analyses social movements as a reaction to changes in society, which he describes as an increasing state intervention in the private realm characteristic of late capitalism. He finds that new social movements are about protecting civil society from state intervention that turns private concerns into state issues through a politicization of questions formerly thought of as private (e.g. poor family members, health care, mental care) (A. Scott 1990:69-71).

Claus Offe approaches the matter in a sense from the opposite viewpoint, claiming that ‘new social movements politicize the institutions of civil society’ placing agency with the movements rather than the state, but he agrees that the role of movements is a reconstitution of ‘a civil society that is no longer dependent upon ever more regulation, control and intervention’ (Offe 1985:820, 826). One main difference between Offe and Habermas is that the latter understands the role of social movements as one of avoiding politicization and thereby securing privacy, whereas the former argues for an understanding of movements as a means of politicizing private issues in order to oppose state control. Offe further finds that new social movement values, such as autonomy and identity, are ‘not in themselves ‘new’ but are given different emphasis and urgency within the new social movements’ (1985:829). As such, they belong to a ‘new political paradigm’, that replaces the ‘old’ one, which was dominant from the post war years to the seventies and was focused on issues of economic growth, distribution, and security. The new themes do not ‘fit’ institutional politics, because they cannot easily be defined as either ‘private’ or ‘public’ in the conventional terms. Therefore, they come to represent a ‘space’ of non-institutional politics and in this way they challenge our very understanding of the political (Offe 1985).

Alain Touraine identifies fundamental changes from the societal conflicts of industrial society to what he refers to as the ‘programmed’ society – changes that are reflected in the social movements of each societal type. Touraine identifies major changes in the material base of the ‘programmed’ society’s economy – which is no longer so material:

The production and distribution of knowledge, medical care and information, and therefore education, health and the media are to the programmed society what metal-working, textiles, chemicals and even the electrical and electronics industries were to industrial societies. (Touraine 1995:244)

This change is creating a new generation of societal conflicts, which are reflected in the organization and activities of social movements. Touraine's ‘diagnosis’ of the economic basis for contemporary society is in fact perfectly in line with popular conceptions of information society economy that lie behind much of the international support for telecentres. International actors thus argue that today’s most important resource is knowledge and access to information, which is why the trend of establishing telecentres has become a primary development tool (e.g. WB 1999, EC 2001). In my view, it is therefore not surprising that the HTM emerges at this time struggling for control over one of the most important resources of our time - IST.

III.2 Social Struggles

Touraine rejects a structuralist approach, which focuses on organisations that are, in his view, the very outcome of social struggles. He places focus instead on the struggles and those actors that influence the processes of social continuity and transformation. So what are social struggles in contemporary Hungarian society? What I have observed in the HTM is not an attempt to start a revolution, it is not even a refusal of government policy. On the contrary, it seems the lobbying efforts of the MTSz are aimed at finding mutual standpoints with the government in order to be able to argue for the telecottage model. Yet, it would be unfair to suggest that the HTM is merely implementing government policy. Rather, they address the government's guiding principles of for example ‘democracy’, ‘equal opportunities’ and ‘information society’ and tie this in with issues of rural-urban inequality in access to IST, education and public services. Thus, they argue that the telecottage model is the best way to secure democracy, equal opportunities and the building of an information society, because it provides near universal access to crucial resources (IST, education and public services) (Bihari 1999, Gáspár 2001, Átjáró 2000).

Touraine claims social movements ‘fight over historicity’ in an effort to define ‘social forms’. This is elaborated in his book from 1988, where he states that:

A social movement is a conflictual action through which cultural orientations, a field of historicity, are transformed into forms of social organization defined by general cultural norms and by relations of social domination. (Alain Touraine 1988:66, my emphasis)

It should be noted that Touraine’s concept of a social movement is defined as action, the aim of which is the transformation of ‘cultural orientations into forms of social organization’. ‘Social forms’ are the organizational shape given to the major principles shared by society's adversaries. Thus, in Touraine's classic example the actors are ‘entrepreneurs’ and ‘workers’, who shared the fundamental principle of industrialism. This means that both entrepreneurs and workers argued for an industrialised society, but they had entirely divergent visions of how such a society should be organised (Touraine 1988:8-9). In the same way we may consider democracy a major principle for the ongoing transition in Hungarian society, a principle that is shared by the major actors of societal struggles. The HTM addresses the principle of democracy to argue for particular changes in the social forms of democracy, but they do not argue to alter the principle itself. In the same way they argue alongside their adversaries for the building of an information society, but they disagree on the most effective way to reach the goal – and they also disagree on what is the desirable organisation of such a society. The strong focus on community rather than individual access is tied in with visions of a strong civil society, equal access to resources and a transparent and service-oriented public system. This, it is argued, may all be realised through the telecottage model and this is the kind – the social form - of information society the HTM advocates (Bihari 1999, Gáspár 2001). It is also argued that community access is the quickest and cheapest way to reach the ‘critical mass’ of users for the effective functioning of information society, which in turn is crucial for Hungary’s competitiveness in the globalised future – that is, a purely economic argument (Gáspár 2002a-c).

However, the point is that the HTM is trying to influence much more than the economic performance of Hungary in the information age. They also try to shape the social taxonomy and relations of domination in this future society. One clear example is the question of rural versus urban access to IST. HTM argues that rural areas and small communities can and should be equal participants in information society and therefore efforts must be directed at securing access to IST even in very small settlements. Their adversaries oppose the telecottage model with various arguments. One argument is that a true competitive information society requires individual rather than community access to IST and therefore policies should focus on securing internet access and computers for individuals who already use IST. This argument is frequently heard in Budapest where access is not a technical problem as it still can be in rural settlements. Arguments about the need for individual access have been answered by a campaign in 2002 that offered state subsidised broadband connections to private households. Another initiative that reflects this line of thought was a state campaign in 2001 in which large families could apply for a free computer and Internet connection. Approximately 1000 computers were distributed in this way.

HTM’s case illustrates disagreements about the form of information society that should be developed, not about the desirability of information society per se. We may understand this through Touraine’s notion of ‘general values and social orientations’. He argues that social movements are not necessarily set on overthrowing power-holders or systems, but may challenge social domination ‘in the name of general values or social orientations which it shares with its adversary’ (Touraine 2000:90 my emphasis). In Touraine’s view social struggles are thus not defined by a total rejection of oppositional actors, rather it is a particular form of action. He formulates a definition of a social movement, which clearly draws the line between ‘social movement’ and other forms of social action:

The notion of a social movement is useful only if it allows us to demonstrate the existence of a very particular type of social action: a type of social action that allows a social category⁽³⁵⁾ – and it is always a particular category - to challenge a form of social domination that is at once particular and general. (Touraine 2000:90)

Touraine believes the concept of social movement is inseparable from that of class - or social category - and one of his points is that most of the so-called new social movements are not based on ‘social category’ and do not challenge a form of social domination and therefore they should not be considered social movements. I believe the question of ‘class’ is futile in my discussion and I find much more relevant the general concept of ‘social domination’ as a defining parameter of a social movement. In the case of telecottages, the struggle is waged on behalf of underprivileged groups that are best defined as ‘marginalised citizens’. The social relations that are most obviously challenged are the domination and priority of urban over rural populations, and the rights of citizens against the state. Thus, it is not a struggle between ‘classes’ in a Marxist sense, but I argue that it can be seen as a struggle between ‘social categories’, namely those of marginalised citizens and political and administrative power holders.

The Marxist legacy has left social movement theory struggling with the issue of class - specifically the question of whether social movements are class-based or not is a recurrent theme of discussion. I find that his insistence on the idea of class or social category in some ways keeps Touraine from taking the full consequences of his own conclusions. While first seeming to distinguish sharply between economic, political and cultural movements (which he claims are the characteristic movements of industrial, modern and contemporary societies, respectively) he later claims that economic and political struggles may well be based on movements of cultural identity (Touraine 2000:89 and 109). He also identifies a rather pragmatic problem of newer movements in relation to playing a role politically: whereas the old labour movements were directly involved with or even incorporated into the labour party, new social movements typically maintain a declared independence from political parties and therefore, he claims, they do not constitute as great a political force (Touraine 2000:97).

In his effort to distinguish between social movements and other kinds of collective action, Touraine argues for the concept of ‘societal movement’ to replace the conventional term ‘social movement’. This new term reflects the conception that they ‘challenge society’s general orientations’ (Touraine 2000:90). This is set in contrast to ‘cultural’ movements, which have emerged since the 1960s and are centred around ‘the assertion of cultural rights’ and ‘historical’ movements that challenge the élites in control of social change. His conclusion is that too many of contemporary movements are not full s

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