@article {Fehérváry:2007:1350-4630:561,
title = "Hungarian Horoscopes as a Genre of Postsocialist Transformation",
journal = "Social Identities",
parent_itemid = "infobike://routledg/csid",
publishercode ="routledg",
year = "2007",
volume = "13",
number = "5",
publication date ="2007-09-01T00:00:00",
pages = "561-576",
itemtype = "ARTICLE",
issn = "1350-4630",
eissn = "1363-0296",
url = "https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/csid/2007/00000013/00000005/art00002",
doi = "doi:10.1080/13504630701580134",
author = "Feh{\’e}rv{\’a}ry, Krisztina",
abstract = "In the mid-1990s in Hungary, astrology publications and horoscopes - along with porn and evangelical literature - were among the Western cultural forms once restricted or banned by the socialist state that were enjoying enormous popular interest. Rather than examine astrology as a religious belief or superstitious practice, I approach it as a particular genre of self-transformation, often regarded as harmless and entertaining but nonetheless having efficacious potential. Drawing on numerous examples from print publications, interviews with professional practitioners and informal discussions, this article makes two observations: first, that readers of horoscopes looked to the divinatory capacity of horoscopes to assist them in making decisions and navigating the uncertain context of the 1990s; second, that as a genre able to shape and constrain subjectivity, horoscopes were instrumental in affecting transformations of normative character, moral codes and worldview from a localist, state-socialist cosmology to one more in accord with the demands (and enticements) of a global, neoliberal capitalist order.",
}