ABSTRACT
The family-history project The Social History o f Poverty in Slovakia' terminated in 1997, more as a result of lack of funding than of the topic being exhausted. It had originated as part of the international project designed by Julia Szalai, and was based on the provocative idea that unemployment and poverty in many post-Communist countries represented the outcomes not so much of the current economic transformation as of the (under socialism uneven) structural opportunities that existed for escaping dependence on a feudal state and developing new entrepreneurial competencies (Szalai, 1995). A recognition of the importance of family transmission, and of the transmissibility of various kinds of capital, for social mobility in modem societies (Bertaux, 1993, p. 512) resulted in the family-history approach being adopted as being that most suited to the study of structural opportunities for upward mobility under Communism.
