In Memoriam: Júlia Szalai (1948–2022)

Abstract

The death of Júlia Szalai (1948–2022) is a great loss for Hungarian and international sociology; she was an intellectual leader with a critical, independent perspective in a field often endangered by political pressures. Her research ranged from the problems of recognition and redistribution in state socialism and later in capitalism, to the fate of the “losers” in the postsocialist period, to the solidarity-creating power of middle-class music. She worked across the East/West divide, determined to understand the seismic political and structural changes of her time. But it is equally a loss for readers of Social Politics not only because she served on the journal’s editorial board, but also because the themes she chose paralleled those around which Social Politics was Júlia Szalai