Tázlár in 1976: the village of the specialist cooperative

Author
Chris Hann

Publisher
Kiskunhalas: Halasi Múzeum Alapítvány 

Year of publication
2026

ISBN
978-615-5282-34-8

AnthroSearch

Abstract
In 1976 Chris Hann, then a PhD student in Cambridge, began his long-term fieldwork in the Hungarian village of Tázlár. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of this project, he has published a volume of photographs from the original research. Hann focused on a type of cooperative characteristic of this region, in which farmers were afforded considerable scope to continue working on their own plots as a household unit, supported by the socialist institution. This path enabled a symbiosis of modern technologies and the evolved peasant economy. The specialist cooperative brought unprecedented material prosperity to a previously impoverished community, exemplifying the flexible compromises of Hungarian “goulash socialism”.

This Hungarian-language volume documents a lost world, a path of rural transformation that was definitively abandoned with privatization after 1989. The book concludes with summaries in English, French and German.

Copies can be ordered from the publisher, the Halasi Museum Foundation, 6400 Kiskunhalas, Köztársaság u. 2, Hungary: halasimuzeumalapitvany@gmail.com