Hungarian family law and the struggle for "gender order", 1848-1913The study contains three main theses: the idea that there was a need for ‘legal stability' in Hungary was a construction of positivist legal science, bound up with the idea of the (legally) unified nation state; legal and religious pluralism in Hungary posed a huge problem for legal science, especially when it came to developing a state-regulated family law; the process of "clarifying" and "stabilising" family law was at the same time a process of "clarifying" and "stabilising" gendered power relations within the family. The study argues that the inability of the state to complete this project was in fact symptomatic of deep uncertainties over the social roles of men and women, and multiple/competing definitions of both law and patriarchal power.