a celebration of intellectual trespassing by a retired "social scientist" as he tries to make sense of the world..... Gillian Tett puts it rather nicely in her 2021 book “Anthro-Vision” - “We need lateral vision. That is what anthropology can impart: anthro-vision”.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Hungarian distinctiveness
Events in Hungary as relayed on a daily basis by the blog I would nominate as one of the few with a dedicated, sustained and gripping focus – Hungarian Spectrum – read like a surrealist novel. Amazingly both the Chinese and American leadership have been in Budapest in recent days – perhaps showing some of the issues at stake. Some very serious Hungarian people signed an open letter to one of the visitors (Hilary Clinton) about the growing repressiveness of the regime – and yesterday’s post told an amazing story about arrests and intrigues which bring back memories of the 1950s in that country I wouldn't be surprised to read next of action being taken against Hungarian Spectrum!
But the most detailed critique came in January of this year from a very revered source - none less than the Kornai who wrote the definitive book in the 1970s about socialist shortages.
Hungary has produced some amazing people - writers particuarly (Arthur Koestler for example - let alone some of the modern novellists like Peter Nadas) but in the photographic field it blazed the trail (Kertesz; Capa and many more). I have always treasured Andre Kertesz's small collection of photographs of people reading - "On Reading"
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