Professor Béla Tomka

Leutragraben 1 | 07743 Jena
Phone: + 49 (0) 3641 9 440 70
Mail: tomka(at)hist.u-szeged(dot)hu

Béla Tomka is professor at the Department of History, University of Szeged. His main research area is 20th-century social and economic history with an emphasis on comparative approaches. Within this field, his earlier research centred on changes of population and family patterns and the welfare state, while his later work focused on the process and determinants of economic growth, along with the history of consumption in East Central Europe. His current research interests also include the history of European integration and globalization. His publications include Austerities and Aspirations: A Comparative History of Growth, Consumption and Quality of Life in East Central Europe since 1945 (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2020) and A Social History of Twentieth-Century Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 2013).

Research project at the Kolleg

My research explores various aspects of a larger project that studies the globalization process in post-communist East-Central Europe. Research into the globalization of this region after 1989 is fairly selective and strongly compartmentalized by scholarly disciplines: the economic aspects of globalization have generated massive research, however, the understanding of the social and cultural fields is much less advanced. Similar asymmetries exist concerning the actors of globalization in the region: so far, scholars have highlighted the role of international organizations, multinational companies and the local elites, and have mainly ignored what role the wider sections of East-Central European societies played in the globalization process. Against this background, the project aims to produce a comprehensive account of globalization in East-Central Europe in the past few decades by carrying out a comparative analysis of four countries (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slovakia and Hungary) in main areas of globalization. For this purpose, it is necessary to address the following main aspects, which have been established by the critical assessment of the related scholarly literature: timing and dynamics of the process; gates of globalization and barriers to globalization; the selectivity of globalization; main actors of and attitudes towards globalization; the outcomes of globalization (homogenization, hybridization/glocalization, conflicts); and the unity of the region in the globalization process.

Main areas of research

Social and economic history of 20th Century Europe (with a special emphasis on comparative approaches, history of social welfare, consumption history, determinants of economic growth

Positions and memberships

President of the István Hajnal Society of Social History, Hungary
Board Member of the International Social History Association, Amsterdam
Co-editor and editorial board member of various scholarly journals and publishers (including Aetas; Demográfia; Hungarian Historical Review; ISHA Newsletter; Esély; Studien zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte Ostmitteleuropas, Harrassowitz Verlag)

Monographs

Béla Tomka, Austerities and Aspirations: A Comparative History of Growth, Consumption and Quality of Life in East Central Europe since 1945 (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2020).

Béla Tomka, Szociálpolitika: Fejlődés, formák, összehasonlítások [Social Policy: Historical Trends, Forms, and Comparisons] (Budapest: Osiris, 2015).

Béla Tomka, A Social History of Twentieth-Century Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 2013). [***Winner of the ‘Outstanding Academic Title 2013 Award’ from CHOICE, American Library Association***]

Béla Tomka, Gazdasági növekedés, fogyasztás és életminőség: Magyarország nemzetközi összehasonlításban az első világháborútól napjainkig [Economic Growth and Consumption: Hungary in an International Comparison, WWI to Present Day] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2011, 306).

Béla Tomka, Európa társadalomtörténete a 20. században [A Social History of 20th-Century Europe] (Budapest: Osiris, 2009, 648). (Second, fully revised edition: Budapest: Osiris, 2020, 664).

Béla Tomka, A jóléti állam Európában és Magyarországon [The Welfare State in Europe and Hungary] (Budapest: Corvina Publishing, 2008, 120).

Béla Tomka, Bevezetés Európa újabb kori társadalom- és gazdaságtörténetébe [The Economic and Social History of Modern and Contemporary Europe: An Introduction] (Budapest: HEFOP, 2006).

Béla Tomka, Képes banktörténet. Magyar pénzintézetek a kezdetektől az államosításig [An Illustrated History of Hungarian Banks: From Beginnings to Nationalization] (Budapest: HVG Kiadó, 2006).

Béla Tomka, Welfare in East and West: Hungarian Social Security in an International Comparison, 1918–1990 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004).

Béla Tomka, Szociálpolitika a 20. századi Magyarországon európai perspektívában [Social Policy in 20th-Century Hungary in a European Perspective] (Budapest: Századvég, 2003).

Béla Tomka, Családfejlődés a 20. századi Magyarországon és Nyugat-Európában: konvergencia vagy divergencia? [Family Development in Hungary and Western Europe in the 20th Century: Convergence or Divergence?] (Budapest: Osiris, 2000).

Béla Tomka, A magyarországi pénzintézetek rövid története, 1836–1947 [A Short History of Hungarian Banking, 1836–1947] (Budapest: Aula Kiadó, 2000). (First edition: Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó, 1996).

Béla Tomka, Érdek és érdektelenség: a bank–ipar viszony a századforduló Magyarországán, 1892–1913 [Interest and Disinterest: Bank-Industry Relations in Hungary at the Turn of the Century, 1892–1913] (Debrecen: Debrecen University Press, 1999).

Béla Tomka, A Harmadik Birodalom. A kutatás új útjai [The Third Reich: New Directions of Research] (Szeged: JATEPress, 1998).

Edited volumes

Béla Tomka, ed, Intézményi és kulturális transzferek a 20. századi Magyarországon [Institutional and Cultural Transfers in 20th-Century Hungary], thematic issue of the journal Aetas 34, no. 4 (2019).

Béla Tomka, ed, Az első világháború következményei Magyarországon [The Consequences of the First World War in Hungary] (Budapest: Osiris, 2015).

Béla Tomka, ed, Rendszerváltozások Magyarországon és Kelet-Közép-Európában [Regime Changes in Hungary and East Central Europe], thematic issue of the journal Aetas 28, no. 4 (2013).

Béla Tomka, Korok és korszakolás a történetírásban [Periodization in History], thematic issue of the journal Aetas 25, no. 4 (2010).

Béla Tomka, Károly Halmos, Judit Klement and Ágnes Pogány, eds, A felhalmozás míve. Tanulmányok Kövér György tiszteletére [The Art of Accumulation: Studies Honouring György Kövér] (Budapest: Századvég, 2009).

Articles

Béla Tomka, ‘Consumption and Leisure in Twentieth-Century Central and Eastern Europe’, in The Routledge History Handbook of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, vol. 1: Challenges of Modernity, edited by Wlodzimierz Borodziej, Stanislav Holubec and Joachim von Puttkamer (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), 385–443.

Béla Tomka, co-authored with Stanislav Holubec, ‘Population and Family in 20th Century Central and Eastern Europe’, in The Routledge History Handbook of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, vol. 1: Challenges of Modernity, edited by Wlodzimierz Borodziej, Stanislav Holubec and Joachim von Puttkamer (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), 235–312.

Béla Tomka, ‘The economic consequences of World War I and the Treaty of Trianon for Hungary’, Regional Statistics 10, no. 1 (2020): 82–100.

Béla Tomka, ‘Lebensstandard und Konsum im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, forthcoming in Handbuch zur Geschichte Südosteuropas, Band 6: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in Südosteuropa von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Ulf Brunnbauer (Oldenburg: De Gruyter, 2021), ca. 25 pp.

Béla Tomka, ‘Fogyasztás a második világháború utáni Kelet-Közép-Európában: politikai meghatározók és transznacionális hatások’ [Consumption in Post-war East Central Europe: Political Determinants and Transnational Connections], Aetas 34, no. 4 (2019): 62–74.

Béla Tomka, ‘Az első világháború és a trianoni béke gazdasági hatásai Magyarországon’ [The Economic Effects of WWI and the Trianon Treaty in Hungary], in Háborúból békébe: a magyar társadalom 1918 után. Konfliktusok, kihívások, változások a háború és az összeomlás nyomán, edited by Zsombor Bódy (Budapest: MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Történettudományi Intézet, 2018), 47–80.

Please find more information on Béla Tomka on the website of the University of Szeged.