Blooming Populism

Based on long-term ethnographic research in a Hungarian village between 2014 and 2026, this book examines how Viktor Orbán’s rule takes shape through everyday ‘populist projects.’ From pest control and greenhouses to soil, flowers and vegetables, rural life becomes a medium for redistributing resources to loyal networks while generating tacit and explicit propaganda. As successive crises – from the 2015 refugee moment to COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine – reconfigure social relations, ordinary practices are recast as symbols of national belonging. Tracing these shifts, the book shows how populism appropriates and exhausts social commons, even as its grip begins to loosen.;