::: readings

Paula Fass, “Children and Globalization” in Children of a New World (2007), 202-218 (707-715).

Flora Shaw, “Belgian War Refugees” in DiCaprio and Wiesner, Lives and Voices (2001), 404-410. [783-786]

Categories:

• Law, State, and church.
• Categories of Difference

This piece is an excellent example of the growing involvement of the state in the lives of individuals. Particularly telling is the detailed description of the the organization of departments and bureaus to coordinate the massive relief effort. Lady Lugard’s account of not only the “outpouring of public generosity” (406) but also of the “machinery by which the work [i.e. the coordination and placement of displaced families and individuals] was done” (407) is telling. All of this is perhaps best summed up in her statement that “Nations, like individuals, have their moments of unconscious self-revelation. It was a moment which unmistakably revealed the heart of England” (406).

This piece also shows much of the optimism and strength of nationalism at the outset of the war, and into the first few years. As time passes, and the war drags on, this charity obviously wanes (which is evidenced in this report by the decreasing availability of accommodations and the rescinding of offers as temporary guests become something more permanent, and the hospitality of even the more philanthropic individuals is taxed, as seen on page 409).

Another important clue contained within the report is found in respect to the statements on class divisions. Lady Lugard is clear to praise the effort’s widespread support, stating that the “outpouring of public generosity… came not from one class nor from one place, bur from all classes and from all places. Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Nonconformist, high and low, rich and poor united, all unaware, in a spontaneous tribute of sympathy and respect” (406). Particularly telling, however, is not only the fact that she distinguishes here between classes but more specifically that she highlights the plight of the wealthy class of refugees and how she has given specific and personal attention and time to helping them. She first states that, once the crisis proved to be of a more enduring nature, it was needful to find employment for those of the lower classes. She then goes on to state that “since Christmas we have been most acutely pre-occupied [with] giving suitable help tot the urgent needs of the propertied and professional classes. This is a class with which I have myself been thrown into close and constant touch, and the sorrows and difficulties of their position are very vivid to me. They have suffered, of course, horribly in regard to their material possessions, and the numbers increase daily of persons accustomed to live in the comfort of comparative affluence who are reduced to absolute penury. Such cases call for the sincerest sympathy and for practical help” (409).

Victoria De Grazia — “The Family Verses the State” in How Facism Ruled Women, ITaly 1922-1945 (1992), 77-115 (625-646).

Challenging the traditional interpretation of top-down politics, De Grazia argues that families, and particularly mothers, in Italy’s Facist Regime played significant roles. Indeed, as they saw it, the State owed them something after they had given it their wedding rings, firstborn sons, and time. They demanded things in return, and were ready to organize to request them. In one sense, they had truly “married” themselves to the state, only now (as a marriage partner) they demanded something back in return.

Quotes from the text:

“…it creates for itself in what it suppresses and what is at the same time essential to it, an internal enemy–womanhikn in general.” — georg wilhelm friedrich hegel

“this rallying to the cause did indeed appear to seal a new union between Italian women, their families, and the fascist state”

“Yet the ring ceremony also generated unorthodox messgages about the realtionship between women, their fmailies, and the state. the very gesture of traind in gold bands for cheap tin substitutes cast uncertainty on whether a woman’s first obligation was to the Dice, facism, and the nation or to her spuse, children, nad kin as decreeed by suctom, sacred church vowsw, and pronatalist sloganeering.”

“The dictatorship thus became trapped in a paradox of its own making.”

“…in Wesern socieites, becomeing more nuclear and more dependent on the state and the market to carry out protective, educativce, and recreational functions they previously had not needed or had once fulfulled themselves.”

“all int he state, nothing outside the state”

“far from being incenties fo family growth, the family allowance system was thus tied to cutting wages to substandard levels.”

“the idea that their offspring belonged to the nation and that in case of war they had to be sacrificed to its well-being. The dictatorship thus combined paternalism in the familiar, humanitarian sense with a murdeous, abstract claim on the lives of dependendts; it obsessed about the pricledged bond between mothers and children, and the brutally violated it.

“Thus facism’s cult of the family in the service of the state was undercut by antistatist attutde that might be characterized as ‘oppositonal familism.’”

Pier Paolo Viazzo, “Mortaility, Fertility and Family” in Family Life in Early Modern Times 1500-1789 (2001), 157-187. (267-282)

In this well-researched paper, Viazzo reviews the history of demographics and sheds new light on old understandings and interpretations. The old notions of what caused shifts throughout history in the population proved to not be as true as many had suspected when a detailed picture was assertained by recent demographic work. This piece is a tremendous resource looking into the study of demographics.

“One of the changes that has characterized European society most strongly over the past two centeires is the shift from high levels of mortality and fertility to a demographic system in which mortality is greatly reduced and fertility controlled.” (157)

“This shift, which began in some parts of Europe as early as the eighteenth centure and ended only in the mid-twentieth century, is generally know by demographers, economists, and sociologist, as the ‘deomographic transition.’ Many scholars see this radical shift in the population of Europe and the West as a consequence, and also as one of the salient features, of the more general proecess of modernization. The economic growth brough on by industrialization, plus the consequent improvcement in diet, coupled with progress in medicine and public health, are beleived to have produced a decline in moretality to whicht he populations of Europe, after an initial period of rapid deomgraphic growth, repsoned by deliverately reduceing the number of births.” (157)

“…between 1500 and 1800 the population of Europe more than doubled. Yet the increase was neither contintue nor uniform; periods of intense growth alternated with periods of stagnation or decline. Moreover, changes in poulation followed different patterns and different routes in the various European countries, with trends that were often very divergent and levels of mortality and natality which presented frequent regional variations. Such variations were greater than the (more predictable) variations to be found between different socio-economic groups.” (157)

“Thomas Robert Malthus [in 1789] had not hesitation in name [hunger, epidemics, and war] as the main curbs to demographic growth. (what he called positive checks).” (158)

“Until recently, modern historian did not depart significantly from Malthus; they continued to regard famine, epidemics, and war as the three prime causes of the high mortality amongst preindustrial populations.” (158)

“[Jean Meuvret] argues that “First comes famine, then comes plague.” (158)

“Illness flourished against a ‘background of famine.’” (158)

War was a demographically significant factor only in areas that were directly in the path of the army.

“On the whole, however, the correlation between peaks in the mortality rate and food crises seems to be much less close than was previously supposed.”

“During the ‘age of the plague’ the… only ‘normal’ featuer of mortality seems to have been its instability.” (162).

“The English figures also show how mistaken it is to imagine that the futther back in time one goes, the highter the mortality rate must be.” (164)

“In pre-industrial Europe women did not have the prodigious number of children that they had always been supposed to have had… [but instead] had an average of only five or six children.” (169)

“Paradoxicall, the consignment of their babies to a wet-nurse ‘liberated’ the reproductive potential of urban woemn from the restraining influence of breastfeeding.” (172)

“The use of contraception leaves traces in parish registers which demographers have learned to identify with increasing sophistication.” (174)

“Some have attributed [the growth in illegitmacy] to growing urbanization dn the onset of industrialization, two processes of modernization which are believed to have produced drastic changes in morals.” (177)

“The investigation of the different demographic patterns and outcomes between men and women, rich and poor, city dwellers and country folk–usually called ‘differential demography’–represents an important step toward a more detailed understanding of the relationship between demographic forces and the family.” (182)

“The end of the acien regime witnessed the birth of a new concept of the reponsibilities of the state and a different way of coping collectively to solve the problems gereated within the fmaily by demographic forces.” (187)