::: readings

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

Looking into the effects of globalization on childhood, Fass explores an oft-overlooked aspect of history, the history of children. Interestingly enough, advertisements have not overlooked the effects one’s perceptions of childhood have on individuals, and contintually capatalize on both sides of the coin–the one on feeding consumerism by training kids to want and parents to give, and the other by showing images of the world’s destitute and poor children as they ask for humanitarian support.

I would categorize this under

• Childhood and youth
• Categories of Difference
• and Law, Church, and State

here are some quotes from the text:

“there are startling images that confront us regularly now as the economy becomes a global network and as our means to communicate information penetrates into and out of every village and hamlet” (202).

“It is my hope that an understanding of children’s hisotry will help to make discussions of globalization both more realistic, since many children are and will be affected and more attuned to the peculiar Western sentiments that are evoked in the media’s voverare of the conflicts over globalization.” (202)

“Children are everywhere present in this debate, but never heard from or addressed.” (202)

“In this new system of values and beleive, the child was important not for what he or she could contribute economically, but for the emotional satisfaction hsi cultivation could provide to the family.

“But since the neinteenth century for young people in the West, play has been identified not as time stole from work, but as the very structure of childhood.” (211)

“If children’s work will, as I have suggested, increasingly become a subjet of contention globnally, we can expect that play will become probably an even greater flash point.” (212)

“As a result, in the United States, adolescence became an extension of childhood rather than a preparation for adulthood, although its in-between status was meant to suggest how one could unfold into the other.” (213)

Gallo, Gerard; Seifert, Wolfgang; and Strozza, Salvatore — “Immigrants In The German Labour Market: The Case of Italians, Greeks, Former-Yugoslavs and Turks” Status Emigrazione 39.148 (2002): 755-793 (686-705).

This article does an excellent job of presenting the statistics relating to immigration to Germany since the Second World War. It most certainly does not, however, provide much if any commentary nor intepretation of the events described. It would an excellent source for someone looking to interpret and simply in need of the data, however. The only real intepretation provided is the way in which they have divided up the years into three periods, namely:

“the active policies of recruitment in the period 1955-1973; the process of consolidation of foreign presence in Germay from the end of 1960’s to the second half of 1980’s; finally, the carrying aspects of more centy period, such as the fall of the Berlin wall.”

Good for demographics, but not for much else, to be honest; maybe Law, Church, and State as well.

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.’”

Susan Grayzel, “Women’s War Work: Remunerative, Voluntary and Familial” in Women and the First World War (2001), 27-50 (588-602).

Understanding the role women played in the ammunition factories and elsewhere on the “home front” of WWI is crucial to a complete understanding of how relationships between men and women changed in the 20th century. Indeed, perhaps more than anything else, the first world war propelled the Western world on a trajectory that led it to its current position. This is true even though many things went “back to normal” after the end of the war. Still, the seed had been planted and the old molds broken.

Grayzel explores this and other changes in the lives of women during the war.

Some quotes from the text:

“One of the more visible changes in women’s lives during the war came with their entrance into a wide range of occupations, some of which had never before included women.” (27)

“Women entered not only wartime factories, but also banks and places of business and government as clerks, typists, and secretaires. They were found running trams and buses, deleiving milk, and even joinly newly-created armed forces auxiliaries and become police officiers” (27)

[often they would work in the same filed of occupation as their husband who went away to war, but not always.]

“In Britain, the decision to institute conscription in 1916 followed the creation of a National Register in August 1915, recording the age, sex, and occupation of all men and women between the ages of 16 and 65.” (28)

“[Women] became important figures of wartime propoganda.”

“In either case, the question of pay became a heated one; if women earned less than men for the same job, they undercut male employment. On the other hand, paying men and women equally seemed far too radical and, some argued, unfair since male workers were undoubtedly superior. As a compromise, womena nd men were paid the same for piece work, but not for time rates.” (30)

Employment for women within medicie grew during the war bothe because of the expansion and prefessionalisation of nursing servies and of new opportunites for medical training and for women doctors” (37).

“the wartime world required this service from women, but the postwar world was not always sure what to do with the women who had performed it.” (41)

Lloyd Bonfiled, “European Family Law” in Family Life in the Long Ninenteenth Century 1789-1913 (2001), 109-154 (551-574).

Legal histories focus, as does this one, on the effects governments have on familied. It is, undeniably, important, especially when one begins to talk about legal custody of children. This article talks about the change of the legal status of women.

By the nineteenth century, many reforms had already taken place, giving women more right to the legal custody of their children, and of the legal status of married and divorced women.

This definitely falls under the category of Law, Church, and State, as well as Family Economy and Marriage and its Dissolution.

Mary Jo Maynes, “Class Cultures and Images of Poper Family Life” in Family Life in the Long Nineteenth Century 1789-1913 (2001), 195-226 (425-441).

Maynes herein lays out an argument that has not yet been fully understood or developed by others. It is that the development of the ideal family int he 19th century and the subsequent rejection of this by the lower class led to more tensions between the middle/upper classes and the lower class over what family life should be like. These tensions were further exaserbated as individauls within the middle class, through religious movements typically, sought to bring reform to those in the lower classes.

Some quotes from the text:

“Establishing a proper family life was an engrossing and contentious enterprise in nineteenth-century Europe.”

“If family life had been a concern of state builders in Europ at least since the Reformation, by 1900 debates avout the family had become exlicitiy and widely politizied.” (195)

“…the construction of a new model of domesticicity and family culture acorss bourgeois Europe beginning in the late eighteenth-century, and demonstrate the connection between that fmaily culture and bourgeois class formation.” (196)

“New fmily ideals were widely diffused in prescriptive literature, idealized visual images, domestic fiction, religious sources, and descriptions of middle and upper-class practices.” (196)

“attemtping to unviersalize their family values or even impose theom on the poor. Throughout the ninteenth century, representations of the contrast between middle class family life and that of the poor had been deployed as evidence for the moral superiority of the propertied and as justification for their intervention into the lives of the poor” (225).

Raffaella Sarti, “Home and Family: Bringing Things Together or Setting Up Home” in Europe at Home (2002), 42-75 (407-423).

Deciding how to organize one’s family, and especially how this would play out as families became more nuclear and the number of possessions grew, is an interesting topic and the one that Sarti decides to explore in this article.

Many factors contribute to the differences between individuals in how this process plays out, among them: class, demographics, socio-economic organization of the area, andd so.

Sarti notes that there were those who could never safe up enough to get married. This brings up some interesting points, highlight both a later age for marriage now that individauls were saving up to get married as well as the growth in those who never got married.

One of the complaints about “privledge” in Europe during this time was that with privledge came obligations to marry others of similar social class. This limiting met with resistence among some young couples but held a substantial amount of social pressure and ultimately would not be overthrown at large.

Sarti also describes the changes in women’s doweries during this time.

Suzanne Desan, “Reconstituting the Social After the Terror” in The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France (2004), 249-282 (355-388).

In the aftermath of the French Revolution there was a lot that was changed back to something more similar to what it had been than what it became. In other words, there was a complete revolution and things changed, and then changed back again. Desan analyses this as it applies families and the changes that had been instituted.

It should be noted that most of the changes brought on by the French Revolution were changes in the laws of the land concerning a given topic, and not as much the underlying facts or pressures.

The laws were then changed back, in many cases, and over time as the underlying pressures changes, so too did the laws again. Most of the laws herein discussed have to deal with inheritance or other more legal aspects of the law as well as divorce (although Desan doesn’t talk about that as much).

One quote from the text:

“The social order is entirely overturned,” commented two voacal opponents of France’s new inheritance laws.”

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)