Chris Hann is a justifiably celebrated ethnographer of eastern European societies during the socialist period and the now three-decades since the end of those regimes in 1989–90. One might even say he is an anthropologist's anthropologist, given how much serious empirical research he has contributed to our knowledge, especially of rural Hungary and Poland and their ethnic minorities, to nurturing a major, long-standing research group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and to the history of anthropology as a discipline, set of competing theories, and community of colleagues, which he considers essential to understanding that research and the decades of change in east central Europe in the chapters of this book. Although the emphasis of the book's articles is on the post-socialist period, they are nestled with older articles from the socialist period. Only three of twelve chapters are new, although Hann adds commentary to some of the older ones, and one is recent (from 2007). Yet even readers who are familiar with his work will benefit from reading them in one full sweep, while those who come to it fresh will find a fascinating story of change for villagers, from the pre-socialist to socialist to post-socialist periods, especially focused on property regimes, which few have recorded so well. Of particular note is the dramatic change in the status for peasants that Hann demonstrates. Although he has much that is critical to say about the socialist period, particularly the absence of democracy, he notes the immense gains (and then loss after 1989) of the rural population in status, living standards, and respect. He calls this the “socialist civilizing process” (16) in the countryside, which he documents and even emphasizes cannot be dismissed, especially by those who feel genuine nostalgia for that period.

All scholars who choose to package work done at different times and published separately into a book need a hook—what do they have in common sufficiently to justify the new publication? Hann has very cleverly chosen Karl Polanyi because of his Hungarian and central European origins. I was not convinced that the little discussion of Polanyi, which is substantial in Chapters 1 and 4 but seems unnecessary in Chapter 11 and is almost non-existent in other chapters, contributes much to what Hann has to say, whereas Hann's use of Polanyi taught me a lot about the difference in the way different disciplines use authors so protean as Polanyi. As a political scientist, my Polanyi is almost unrecognizable. In a book that is particularly alarmed at the rise of right-wing populist nationalism in the region, especially in Hungary and Poland, it seems almost demeaning to refer to “repatriating” him. (By the way, this book's subtitle is also misleading; it is not about the Visegrád states, despite a cursory inclusion of the Czech Republic in the conclusion.)

Hann's Polanyi is his economic anthropology and particularly four types of integration. He sees the rise of populist parties in the east as examples of a “countermovement” (xii), while the migration crisis, as he calls it, was a Polanyian double movement, a reaction against the reality of capitalist market societies since 1989 parallel to Polanyi's critique of classical liberalism in the nineteenth century. For us political scientists, however, Polanyi is seeking an explanation for the long peace of the nineteenth century (in Europe) and its end with WWI and especially with fascism and WWII after it. His theory has four institutional components, all essential to each other—disembedded market society (as a fiction), the liberal state, the gold standard (an international monetary system), and a pro-peace coalition of international bankers. The double movement of the 1930s, producing both fascism and social democracy, was a state policy to protect its citizens against the devastating consequences, but a result especially of organized labor protests. The double movement is a profound theoretical concept and theory, not just a label. In Hann's story, despite his criticism of neoliberal economic policies, the role of international finance, currency, and aid, which were so critical to the devastations of the post-socialist period, beginning in the 1980s especially in indebted Poland and Hungary, is absent, as is the role of social and political movements in forcing a state protectionist response. Actors are all individuals and “hyperglobalization” is some ghostly presence. Indeed, for Hann, most important in understanding Polanyi is his Christian “ethical individualism” (13) and dedication to freedom.

So, reader, you can see how much you can learn from this excellent volume.