Peto Andrea

Central European University Vienna

The EU has faced substantial demographic challenges in recent times, and will continue to do so in the coming decades. This e-paper analyses why and how demographic discourses were hijacked by illiberal, right-wing and conservative forces. It explores who are the main actors in the field of demography in the EU institutions by looking at Twitter po...

The discussion focuses on the recently opened "Crystal Wailing Wall" at the Babi Yar memorial complex, an art object created by the famous artist Marina Abramovich. The authors from different analytical positions and from different fields demonstrate the rich interpretative resource of the Wall. Describing various aspects of the composition, the pa...

The emergence of illiberal science policy also raises serious questions about the European scientific authorization process as the rapid spread of illiberal science policies, such as closing accredited study programs and research institutions, privatizing higher education, appointing university leaders based on their loyalty to the government, igno...

From 2010, right-wing populist Fidesz has been under international pressure to comply with written and unwritten laws, including those related to Holocaust remembrance. This chapter discusses a paradigm change in Holocaust memorialization within illiberal polypore state formations. It also discusses two elements of this paradigm change in detail: n...

In his 1992 article, ‘Today, Freedom is Unfettered in Hungary,’ Columbia University history professor István Deák argued that after 1989 Hungarian historical research enjoyed ‘unfettered freedom. Deák gleefully listed the growing English literature on Hungarian history and hailed the ‘step-by step dismantling of the Marxist-Leninist edifice in hist...

Family Planning and Birth Control in Hungary as a Legacy of War Time Sexual Violence and Lobby Work of Gynaecologists. In Hungary, the regulation of family planning and birth control intersect with mass rapes committed during the First and the Second World War. The paper observes how the phenomenon of mass military rape influenced ongoing debates...

The Hungarian government has received international criticism over a new law that bans thedepiction or promotion of homosexuality to those under the age of 18. Andrea Pető argues that the law may well prove to be a miscalculation by the country’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán.

5/3/2021 4 reasons why Gender Studies has changed because of illiberal attacks, and why it matters | Heinrich Böll Stiftung | Brussels office-European Union https://eu.boell.org/en/2021/05/03/4-reasons-why-gender-studies-has-changed-because-illiberal-attacks-and-why-it-matters?fbclid=IwAR2zO-f0kzsCUso6hhzANKdqf2x62aYj5RPwS5rBkEQFVK4Ojqfrx… 1/5 4 re...

On 15 August 1998, a couple of thousand women and some men gathered on one of the main streets of Budapest. This street in the 14th district, whose name has changed over the years from the rather bland ‘Arena Street’ to ‘Stalin Street’ and then back to Dózsa György Street (Dózsa being the leader of a sixteenth-century Hungarian peasant uprising), w...

This chapter puts into dialogue the lives of far-right women in politics(intellectuals, relatives of party functionaries, administrators, artists, simplecriminals) who rejected both the “conservative offer” and the leftist emancipationproject in the interwar Hungary with the women participating in contemporaryradical politics rejecting both the neo...

Life of an academic has always been divided between intellectual solitude spent writing single authored text, and intellectual public engagement of teaching. The distinction between the two aspects of this life: between research and teaching, is artificial as one cannot really teach without research of her own. But can one do research without teach...

The Holocaust narrative elevated the moral command of “Never Again” into a measure of universal integrity. But now a major paradigm change is happening in Holocaust memorialisation that will have a major impact on European identity.

In 2019, I have been investing considerable time and energy in teaching on a safe, on-line digital platform with a colleague, who lost her job because of political reasons in another country. We were teaching a course on a topic which would not fit in the curriculum of countries controlling their higher education by political or/and by economic for...

“The Arrow Cross did not bother with women. Women were not partners for them. During the interrogations, I did not meet a single Arrow Cross woman. And you are saying this only now [that 10 percent of Arrow Cross party members were women]. Why didn’t you tell me this thirty-five years ago, when I could have swooped down on them?” This was the answe...

Familienpolitische Maßnahmen in Österreich, Bulgarien und Ungarn 1 Die Familienpolitik Österreichs, Bulgariens und Ungarns orientiert sich vor dem Hintergrund unterschiedlicher sozioökonomischer Rahmenbedingungen und politischer Kulturmuster an primär auf die Familie als Einheit und nicht auf das Individuum ausgerichteten Konzepten. Diese verweisen...

In this paper is strictly focused on a so far painfully neglected phenomenon: the gender appeal of the far right for women. Consciously therefore, the author will not refer to the discussion of the dominant normative political masculinity that has resurfaced in recent years. The study is not rooted in the traditional political sciences’ methods, bu...

One of the enigmas of present state of Hungarian democracy is the very limited public protest against different government decisions which, according to the report authored by the Green Party MEP Rui Tavares on behalf of the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, are reconfiguring the institutions and infrastruc...

Recent years have brought unprecedented civil activism in Europe. From France to Istanbul, tens of thousands of protesters were rallying to support progressive politics independently from political parties. In postdemocracy (Collin Crouch) new political programs emerging rearticulating the relationship between state and citizens are redefining and...

The fact that the few candidates who competed for the title of the world’s first professional female ambassador were all delegated by extraordinarily short-lived governments, and all quietly forgotten by posterity is symbolic. Among them, Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952) representing the Soviet Union, was who made it into (some of) the official acco...

This article is joining in the recent public debates about future of social democracy in Europe and answers to the question how social democracy is shaping social imaginary in Hungary. I would like to do so with analysing how gender differences are historically conceptualised claiming that the unresolved conflict of women’s participation in social...

I WOULD like to start with a quote from a member of the Lukács School, the philosopher Sándor Radnóti who described the political situation in Hungary by saying that “now Hungary is dancing on the forehead of the world” in his talk at Eötvös Collegium in Budapest on 7 May, 2012. The connotation is that Hungary would basically set an example for the...

Who do you think the most well-known and widely translated German gender sociologist in East-Central Europe is? Before you start guessing, the answer is Gabrielle Kuby, who labels gender studies, together with gender mainstreaming and LGBTQI rights, a “culture of death.” Kuby gives book talks throughout Central Europe and was recently appointed as...

An der Jahreskonferenz der Gendersektion der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie hielt ich im Herbst 2015 einen Vortrag. Der Titel der Konferenz hieß „Feminism reloaded. Contested terrains in times of antifeminism, racism and austerity“. Bei meinem Vortrag fragte ich die Zuhörerschaft, wer – ihrer Meinung nach – die bekannteste deutsche Soziologi...

Most studies on memories ignore their own audi-ence, as Wulf Kansteiner warned us some years ago.1 Because stories matter and because memory can be assigned and attributed to certain social groups, there will necessarily be competing memory cultures. Kansteiner argued that collective memory is a result of complex processes of production and consump...

Die Anti-Gender-Bewegungen eröffnen ein neues Terrain in Europas politischer, kultureller und sozialer Landschaft und stellen bisherige Konfliktlinien infrage. Auf der einen Seite schwindet das Ansehen demokratischer Politik: Die Wahlbeteiligung sinkt, etablierte Parteien finden keinen Nachwuchs. Auf der anderen Seite bleibt die Zahl derer, die sic...

Die Analyse der Geschichte derKriege verlockt grundsätzlich zu einer einfachen Analyse nach Geschlechtern, denn was wäre eindeutiger, als dass die Männer an der Front kämpften und wichtige politische Entscheidungen trafen, 2 während die Frauen inzwischen daheim Wohltätigkeitsarbeit leisteten und die Männer unterstützten. Laut offizieller Geschichts...

Parallel zum Aufkommen der sozialen Bewegungen in den sechziger Jahren begann die europäische sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung auch, deren historischen Vorbildern und Wurzeln nachzugehen, und setzte sich deshalb unter anderem mit der Geschichte der linken und liberalen Frauenbewegungen auseinander. Ebenso fast zeitgleich mit einem gewissen Erstark...

The Polish film Aftermath (2012), directed by Władysław Pasikowski, discusses — with pictures and references from the Old Testament — the guilt of Polish peasants for the murder of the Jewish inhabitants of their village in 1939. In the film, two brothers from the village seek to discover the secret, despite being warned against doing so. They end...

Systematische Angriffe auf die Geschlechtergerechtigkeit verschärfen sich weltweit und sind in einigen EU-Staaten bereits Teil des Regierungshandelns. Als Infragestellung basaler Menschenrechte und zumeist rechtspopulistisch bzw. fundamentalistisch motiviert gefährden sie die Demokratie. Aus internationaler und interdisziplinärer Perspektive analys...

There was a significant debate in the Hungarian journal of social sciences and culture Kommentár in 2008 initiated by Gábor Gyáni as to whether Hungarian Holocaust research had or had not been successfully integrated into international discourse after 1989.1 One element missing from the debate was that after 1989, main concepts and the language of...

Anstatt der üblichen Form eines Gesprächs haben wir im Rahmen eines „virtuellen Round Table“ fünf kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlich arbeitende Kolleginnen aus unterschiedlichen europäischen Ländern danach gefragt, wie sie den Umbruch von 1989 sowohl aus ihrer jeweiligen fachwissenschaftlichen Sicht als auch aus lebensweltlicher Perspektive wahrgen...

In the countries of former „state feminism”, it is perhaps the term ’neoliberalism’ next to ’feminism’ that has a really bad connotation in scientific discourse today. The semiperipheral situation of former communist countries also determines the circumstances of knowledge production. The experience formulated in the limited communication of ’state...

In this paper I will argue that there is a major paradigm shift happening in Holocaust memorialization and this needs to be addressed in order to avoid sleepwalking when planning a new museum about the Holocaust. The 2008 triple crises migration, financial and security crises neoliberal global order had an impact on museology as well. This, what I...

The 7th August, 2017 is an important date in gender equality policy in Hungary. In 2009, a government decree included teaching about gender stereotypes in kindergartens which were omitted in 2010 when the Christian-Conservative Fidesz-KDNP government took office. In the past seven years there has been rhetorical presence of anti-gender ideology, bu...

When we say, horribile dictu, sing that “Love is in the air” or “All you need is love”, then we all assume to know what it means. We mean the most important, most valuable and also most painful human feeling. The word ’love’ does not denote the split between eros, filia and agape, or the split between the meanings of ’szerelem’ (erotic or romantic...

The Central European University became an access point for the Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive (VHA) in 2009. Anette Wievorka labeled the work done by VHA as a "historiographical revolution."1 ln this article I analyze the pa1ticular challenges this database poses to educators who wish to use this collection in their teaching. Since 2009,...

The paper examines the social composition of lawyers who took up working for the people's court defending war criminals based on the documents of the Archive of the Budapest Bar Association. The three major changes influencing the composition of lawyers - anti-Jewish legislation (numerus clausus), postwar lustration, and lutrations by the communist...

If we are measuring democracy by women’s participation rate in political decision making, we find in the literature that the main obstacles to women’s participation in politics are the party structure and the party systems.1 This paper analyses the historical moment of 1989, when new parties were formed and a new party structure was formed in Hunga...

When I was asked to make an overview of the debates on EU accession and on the new constitution of the European Union in the accession countries, and first of all in Hungary, the country I know the best, from a gender point of view, I suspected that I will have an easy task. An easy task, since this topic is non existent in the public discourse. Th...

Luisa Passerini described in her work the difference between history and memory caused by the Cold War division in Europe. She claims that on the western side of the Iron Curtain, memory was spontaneous and non-reflexive and history was scientific and critical, while at the same time in the countries of the former Soviet Bloc, institutionalized his...

“Gender ideology ignores the existing scientific knowledge.” This surprising statement by Jan Figeľ, former EU Commissioner for Education and Culture (quoted in Kuhar 2014), shows that the “gender ideology” debate opens up a new chapter in the political, cultural and social landscape of Europe questioning previous political chasms. The five chapter...

Is there an expression that says: “history is knocking at one’s mailbox?” On 12th October 2004, struggling with the forty e-mails pouring in every day, I found one that came from a certain Pauline and László. I would like to share this personal story with you, as it renders a gender-sensitive reading of memory and oblivion. The characters of this s...

Three of my most talented female graduate students have not ended up in those academic appointments where they were predestined to be at the beginning of their graduate studies: stars of our profession. My daughter, your colleague and a wife of graduate student, who was much smarter than her husband, still he became a star and she is just a lecture...

The course was developed by Maria Lafuente, Berteke Waaldijk, Margot Birriel, Izabella Agardi, Mary Clancy, Patricia Chiantera-Stutte, Leena Kurvet-Kaosaar, Annika Olsson, Sabine Grenz after a survey of the countries involved (the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Ireland, Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Italy) as far as teaching empires are concerned. The te...

Working on foremothers has a long and impressive tradition in teaching women’s studies. Foremothers can be female family members of an earlier generation, professional predecessors or inspiring examples and political heroines. In this project the experiences of this feminist pedagogic tradition are combined with the new possibilities of enhancing d...

In November 2003 fourteen women academics, all members of the Hungarian Historical Association (HHA), * signed the founding charter for a section of Women’s and Gender History, only to be voted down by the general assembly of the Association. A year and a half later the new section was finally incorporated, with the understanding that it should not...