LES ARTISANS DANS LA SOCIÉTÉ LOCALE
CRAFTSMEN IN LOCAL SOCIETY

Summary/Abstract: Earlier Hungarian ethnography paid little attention to the role of crafts in local society. It is only in the last three or four decades that the attention of ethnography and other social sciences has turned to this theme. Drawing on his decades of research and the recent literature, the author elaborated a model to assess the social role of crafts. This research model takes into account the following factors: 1. The number and proportion of craftsmen in a given settlement. 2. Their financial situation on the basis of the lists of highest taxpayers. 3. The craftsmen’s assistants (it is characteristic that in Hungary in 1890 62% of tradesmen worked alone). 4. Which crafts were the most popular in different periods? 5. The ratio of trained craftsmen to untrained peasant handicrafts specialists. 6. The origin of the tradesmen (e.g. it was common for crafts to be inherited from father to son, but there were also many tradesmen from families of landless or poor peasants). 7. Many tradesmen acquired land (especially vineyards), regarding it as a source of financial security in old age. 8. The tradesman and the peasant were dependent on each other, but the prosperous peasants who owned their own land regarded themselves as above the tradesmen. 9. Prosperous tradesmen also kept a shop, but most tradesmen sold their products in trade fairs and the market. 10. The tradesmen’s associations played an important role in their members’ education, in organising local social life and in spreading bourgeois taste and forms of behaviour. Summing up: from the early 20th century to 1948 craftsmen played a role out of proportion to their numbers in the society of towns and villages of the Great Plain.

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