Private practice story

Abstract

In Hungary, the economic and social effects of regime change have focused primarily on events at the two extreme poles of society, with less attention paid to other modes of career building and advancement between the two extremes. In my case study, I analyse the story of one such doctor/entrepreneur, a representative of the so-called „regime change generation”, who took advantage of the opportunity of history and was one of the first to leave the state health care system in the first half of the 1990s, when only a few dentists were practising full-time in the private sector, and opened a private practice which has been operating successfully full-time ever since. What and where did he find the resources that helped him to thrive amidst constant institutional change? To describe the resources of the interviewee, I use the concept of capital introduced by Bourdieu and Coleman, as this helps to link institutional change to individual success and mobility. I interpret the concept of success primarily along the dimensions of occupational and labour market, financial and income status. The source of the present work is a (life history) interview conducted by the author in Budapest in the spring of 2023. While recognising its limitations, the case study is a highly suitable method for presenting a complex phenomenon in a multidimensional environment, which can be interpreted in an interdisciplinary way.