Works in progress: the practical accomplishment of activist spaces and political projects in Budapest

Abstract

This thesis is an ethnography of Budapest’s community spaces and activist groups—a study of their members, their work and their many projects. By examining the situated, interactive and ongoing practices through which these communities work out ‘what they’re up against’ and ‘what should be done’, I develop an argument for a respecification of political theory in terms of the practical decision-making and experimentation undertaken by people and communities in and as their work to enact social and political change. Through their everyday activities, plans and setbacks, these groups assemble a work-in-progress geography of Hungarian politics. In the words of Ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel, they offer a ‘uniquely adequate’ account of the work involved in creating, improving and sustaining their own better possible worlds. By drawing together Ethnomethodological studies of everyday interaction and Pragmatist understandings of practice ecologies, my analysis offers empirical and conceptual contributions to contemporary debates in Human Geography regarding the ‘grammars’ of political action. Through a combination of participatory ethnographic fieldwork, video-data and interviews, I examine the projects these groups work on, the protests they work up, and the objects they work with. In so doing, I give attention—and priority—to the methods, theories, and strategies used by these communities to make sense of their actions and how they ‘fit’ within Budapest and the wider world.