ABSTRACT
In the 1980s, and not for the first time in the 1980s, the Hungarian Geographic Society, sensing some crisis situation, devoted its annual conference in the summer of 1989 to the evaluation of geography in Hungary. József Becsei (1989: 53–54), a settlement geographer, claimed that ‘central’ (i.e. state ideology-driven) perception, did not recognize ‘the existing society operating in horizontal and vertical stratification’; it only recognized the existence of ‘a labour force subordinated to production’. This approach ‘failed to identify both human beings in their entirety and their diverse (e.g. cultural, community- and service-related) needs’. In order that ‘geographical topics and methods with relevance to reality’ might be found, Becsei called for ‘the removal of ideological barriers’. According to Tivadar Bernát (1989: 39), an economic geographer, geography—hamstrung by the prevailing theory and practice of socialism—needed a change in paradigm, leading to the formulation of a new ‘grand theory’. He found that the creation of a ‘new image of socialism’, which was a prerequisite for the construction of such a theory, was the challenge of the time. Attila Ágh (1989: 11), a political scientist invited to the conference, went so far as to raise the issue of political reforms, claiming that ‘without mapping the current power relations, no comprehensive reform programmes can be worked out. Neither is national renewal in the true sense of the word feasible, for a nation exists in a given territorial structure with certain power relations, the renewal of which is one of the most pressing objectives of any political reform’.
