"In her beautifully written, deeply researched, and elegantly
argued book, Lynne Haney shows how much American policy-makers can
learn from Hungary's social welfare experience. By unpacking the
very different strategies that Hungary has adopted during the past
half-century, Haney's account illuminates basic policy choices
about how a society--any society--addresses the problems of
poverty. It makes indispensable reading for those, on both sides of
the Atlantic, who care about the lives of the poor."--David Kirp,
author of "Gender Justice
""Inventing the Needy is a theoretically engaged and
methodologically innovative ethnography of Hungarian welfare
regimes from 1948 to 1996. Studying the state 'from below, ' her
multi-layered and multi-sited analysis of the transformations in
state policies and institutional practices, and their effects on
everyday life, is an important contribution to comparative studies
of welfare states, the social construction of the materialization
and materialization of need, as well as to critical socialist,
postsocialist, and feminist studies. Well-written, lucidly argued,
thoughtful, and thought-provoking!"--Gail Kligman, author of "The
Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's
Romania
""Inventing the Needy stands at the forefront of a new
generation of revisionist scholarship. It dispenses with the sharp
dichotomies of capitalism and communism and forsakes triumphal
interpretations of the transition to the free market and liberal
democracy. Looking at Hungary through the eyes of women and their
experiences with successive welfare regimes, Lynne Haney offers a
more balanced and variegated picture of the state socialist past
and a moresober account of the capitalist present. "Inventing the
Needy is a brilliant combination of ethnography, history, and
theory."--Michael Burawoy, co-author of "Global Ethnography:
Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World
"Lynne Haney's provocative, original, and altogether brilliant
study of welfare restructuring in Hungary in the wake of 1989
challenges us to rethink gender, states and social policies in both
'east' and 'west, ' while providing essential conceptual tools for
doing so."--Ann Shola Orloff, coauthor of "States, Markets,
Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia,
Canada, Great Britain and the United States
"This important book engages the central issue sociology faces
after the fall of communism. Inventing the Needy is a careful,
empirically well documented, and beautifully written analysis of
the Hungarian welfare system during and after socialism. Haney
shows that a critical analysis of capitalism is possible from the
perspective of a socialist alternative, even today. She challenges
'transitologists, ' who often contrast an idealized capitalist
present with a homogeneous and negative view of socialism. This
book is a must for those interested in theoretical debates about
socialism and capitalism and in the welfare state and gender
relations under and after socialism."--Ivan Szelenyi, author of
"Privatizing the Land: Rural Political Economy in Post-Communist
and Socialist Societies and co-author of "Making Capitalism without
Capitalists: Class Formation and Elite Struggles in Post-Communist
Central Europe
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