Call for Papers – Family & Demography Network – European Social Science History Conference 2008

Family and Demography Network

Call for papers / Proposed sessions for ESSHC 2008

• Solitary Households and their Demographic Effect
  Who were the
  solitaries? Were they elderly and widowed? Were they young people preparing
  for marriage or unable to marry? Does the presence of many solitaries explain
  demographic patterns of marriage, mortality or illegitimacy? Is there any
  effect?
  Organizer: Mary Louise Nagata, mnagata@fmarion.edu
• The Definition of Poverty as and Impediment of Marriage: How poor was
  poor?
  “Poor” people were prevented from marriage by communities in
  northern Protestant Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. At the same
  time, demographic research has shown that young people from poorer families
  were more likely to marry in southern Catholic Europe than young people from
  more affluent families. Why this difference? Did marriage bring some survival
  benefit to these poor couples? How poor were they? How did they manage? Were
  the communities in the Protestant north wrong about the ability of poor
  couples to support their families? How did the northern communities define
  “poor”?
  Organizer: Mary Louise Nagata, mnagat@fmarion.edu
• The Borderline between Life and Death: neonatal and perinatal
  deaths
  Organizers: Olof Gardarsdottir, Olof.Gardarsdottir@hagstofa.is
  and Eilidh Garrett, eilidh.garrett@btinternet
• Childlessness
  Organizer: Olof Gardarsdottir, Olof.Gardarsdottir@hagstofa.is

• Marriage Contracts I: a quantitative approach to family
  strategies
  Organizers: Gerard Beaur, Beaur@ehess.fr and Joseph Goy
• Marriage Contracts II: inheritance systems
  Organizers: Gerard
  Beaur, Beaur@ehess.fr and Joseph Goy
• Mapping the Demography of Tuberculosis
  While the slow retreat of
  tuberculosis in Old World urbanized societies is familiar, its mechanisms
  remain puzzling. Moreover the impact of tuberculosis on indigenous peoples and
  rural immigrants to New World instant cities is arguably even more complex.
  What can we learn from a comparative approach to mapping the demography of
  tuberculosis in Old World and New World societies in the C19th and early
  C20th? Can the mapping and demography of changing household sizes and
  densities provide useful data on its decline? Were there different cohort
  effects? Did New World societies witness different patterns in tuberculosis as
  they underwent crises of urbanization and industrialization, and what can the
  mapping of tuberculosis in those new, often ethnically diverse communities,
  reveal of the dynamics of social dislocation, deprivation and discrimination
  in periods of rapid growth?
  Organizer: Janet McCalman, janetsm@unimelb.edu.au
• Rowntree Revisited: Poverty, Welfare and the Life-cycle
  More
  than a century has passed since the pioneering social investigator Seebohm
  Rowntree published the results from his study of poverty in York. Although his
  definitions and methods have been discussed and criticized over the years, his
  model of poverty life-cycle still stands out as a crucial insight in a
  historical context as well as in the contemporary society. But are Rowntree’s
  results still undisputed? Have we learned anything about the relationship
  between poverty, welfare and the life-cycle since 1901? Can the same pattern
  be traced in rural areas as in industrial York or in pre-industrial societies?
  Is Rowntree’s model equally applicable in other national contexts, outside
  Britain? This session welcomes papers discussing these issues from a broad and
  comparative perspective.
  Organizer: Elisabeth Engberg, elisabeth.engberg@ddb.umu.se
• Individual experiences of Vulnerablility
  In an international
  perspective the historiography of poverty and poor relief is vast. There are
  numerous studies discussing the legal framework and poor relief policy on both
  a national and a local level. The number of studies that focuses on the poor
  and vulnerable themselves and their life course is, however, considerably
  smaller. This session directs the focus away from poor laws and policy-makers
  to the poor themselves. What do we know about the experiences of being poor
  and vulnerable in past societies? Who received relief and who did not? How did
  people make ends meet over the life-course? What sources and methods can be
  used? And finally – how can poverty be defined from an individual perspective?
  
  OrganiIzer: Elisabeth Engberg, elisabeth.engberg@ddb.umu.se
• Making Large and Complex Data Bases Easy to Use
  The historical
  community is now fortunate to have a growing number of large-scale, public
  databases of life histories from the past. Some of these databases have been
  under development for a long time, such as the Demographic Database in Umea,
  the Utah genealogical database, the Scania database in Lund and the PRDH and
  BALSAC in Quebec. Others are relatively recent, such as the Historical Sample
  of the Netherlands. Although many of these databases are intended to be public
  resources and available to any qualified researcher, relatively little work
  has been conducted with them. Since longitudinal databases are exceptionally
  rich and address a host of questions not covered by cross-sectional data, the
  difference is striking. One of the reasons for this relatively low use is the
  enormous complexity of this kind of data. The main object of this session is
  to find ways of making this kind of databases more easy to use, especially for
  those scholars in the historical and social sciences who have little or no
  experience in programming.
  Organizer: Kees Mandemakers, kma@iisg.nl
• The Impact of the ‘Industrious Revolution’ on the Family
  The
  intention of this session is to further a discussion on household behaviour in
  the 17th to 19th centuries concerning the input of labour and goods for a
  market. Since Jan de Vries launched the concept in 1994, there has been a
  discussion on the usefulness of the concept. Some historians have doubted the
  existence of such a change, while others have readily adopted the concept. The
  hope is that this session could bring new material to the discussion. Some
  questions would be: Can we identify changes in market related work put in by
  men, women, and children in preindustrial Europe? Is there a change in the
  gender division of work? Is there a change in mentality towards work in the
  period? Can we identify an increased stress on industriousness in the
  upbringing of children?
  Organizer: Ida Bull, ida.bull@hf.ntnu.no
• Mobilities, integration and formalisation of social relationships in
  the urban context
  Migrants to the city try to become integrated in
  social or kin networks. In order to do this, it can be useful for them to
  reinforce some existing bonds or to create news ones. Using more or less
  institutionalized rites (wedding witnessing ; Christian spiritual kinship or
  its French secularized version – the Republican sponsorship- ; joining
  specific groups as confraternities ; etc) is often a way to “formalize” these
  relationships and to give them more strength and durability. Taking into
  account the diversity of the actors, this session will try to analyze various
  “formalization” strategies and their impacts on the building of urban social
  networks (contacts with new circles, for instance the native urban citizens ;
  rebuilding of existing communautary ties ; formation of local solidarities),
  by insisting on the specific modalities and spirit of each formalized or
  institutionalized relationship. We would also try to think about our capacity
  to understand and describe urban social networks by focusing on these
  formalized bonds which are often the only available ones within the historical
  sources.
  Organizer: Vincent Gourdon, vincent.gourdon@aliceposta.it
• Did Peasants Die in their Own Beds? Rural Migration in the 18th-19th
  Centuries
  This session will focus on the places where the peasants were
  likely to die before the Industrial Revolution. Historical demographers and
  historians have found it was not unusual for peasants to abandon their
  children, to die on the road out of their villages or to run away from their
  villages under the serious damage of great famines. Peasants did not all die
  in their own homes. We expect to address mobility of peasants in traditional
  society by investigating the last moments of death.
  Organizer: Hiroshi
  Kawaguchi, kawag@tezukayama-u.ac.jp
• Evidence and Use of Clean Numbers
  Social science history has
  enabled scholars from a number of disciplines to address past phenomena from
  their respective disciplinary views. Unfortunately, they take for granted the
  canons of evidence of their particular fields. This can be dangerous in that
  the use of evidence can vary widely from field to field. Macroeconomists, for
  example, routinely alter their statistics as revised numbers are reported to
  governments, a practice alien and confusing to historians. Historians,
  however, might accept 19th century nosologies which are no longer acceptable
  to 21st century epidemiologists. This panel will therefore address the ways in
  which scholars can negotiate differences in rules of evidence in order to
  promote interdisciplinary approaches.
  Organizer: Bruce Fetter, bruf@uwm.edu
• Unnatural Kinship: familiarity outside of family, 15th-19th
  Centuries
  The session will focus on relationships that were not founded
  on ties of blood or affinity, but which conveyed a sense of familial
  closeness. The most important of these was spiritual kinship created by
  baptism, which like blood ties also created impediments to marriage. Other
  relationships, although not officially recognised as one of kinship,
  nevertheless infused a sense of familial rapport as is suggested by the
  extensive use of familial terms and metaphors of kinship: such is the case,
  for example, of the “family of the prince” composed by his closest courtiers
  and servants, or of “institutional families” such as orphans who resided in
  the same hospital. While these non-biological familial ties have been much
  studied from a juridical-institutional point of view, we need to explore
  further their actual social meaning.
  Organizer: Guido Alfani, guido.alfani@unibocconi.it
• Models of Illegitimacy in Comparative Perspective
  The frequency
  of illegitimate births has long been studied in Europe in relation to the
  general increase of abandoned children. Administrators and policy makers had
  to organize charitable support for single mothers or wet-nursing arrangements
  and on the whole pay for an enormous number of burials, particularly in urban
  areas. Some attempted to analyze the geographical and social distribution of
  illegitimacy, but until the 1930s and the beginning of the sociological study
  of bastardy, illegitimacy was taken more or less as an index of the moral
  state of a community. The session will encourage comparative historical
  studies using longitudinal data. The aim is to trace various models of
  “illegitimate” children in various cultures and family surroundings, taking
  account-particularly to understand their life expectancy-of the economic and
  social conditions of the mothers and whether the babies were born (or not)
  from a more or less stable or stabilized couple.
  Organizer: Antoinette
  Fauve-Chamoux, fauve@msh-paris.fr
• Intergenerational aspects of Demography
  This session is focused
  on intergenerational aspects of demographic behavior. Different aspects of
  demography in history have been studied extensively. Individual-level data has
  permitted studies of the role of environment, social class, gender and so on.
  What only recently have started to be explored are different intergenerational
  aspects of demography. Do we find similar patterns of reproductive behavior or
  health and longevity between generations? Was high mortality or high fertility
  concentrated to certain families? What do we know about how these patterns
  were transferred? Papers and presentations that analyze these topics as well
  as those discussing methodological aspects of such studies are
  welcome.
  Organizer: Soren Edvinsson, Soren.Edvinsson@ddb.umu.se
• Cultural Constructions of Blood from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth
  Century, 1-4 sessions
  Notions of blood are central for familial and
  kinship identities, the devolution of property, the succession to office and
  rulership, the construction of affinal relations, mapping categories of
  inheritance and kinship onto conceptions of nation and race, theological
  propositions, juridical reasoning, and social practices. Perhaps as many as
  four sessions can be dedicated to exploring these issues across intellectual
  domains and practices.
  Organizer: David Sabean, dsabean@history.ucla.edu
• Demography of Indigenous Populations, 1-2 sessions
  The session
  is open for papers focusing on historical demography of indigenous populations
  in the world. The health transition, family composition, fertility, marriage
  patterns, and cultural analysis are examples of broad topics that are
  naturally included. Additionally studies of indigenous classification, medical
  history, and colonization are easily adopted.
  Organizer: Peter Sköld, peter.skold@cesam.umu.se
• The Survival Strategies of Widows
  The intention of the session
  is to focus on strategies adopted by widows and their families to secure
  survival and well-being. Some of the issues will relate to inheritance and
  property and the control of assets by widows. Others will deal with the
  strategies adopted by widows in balancing family co-operation and public
  assistance. In analyzing household composition and kin co-operation the
  question will be raised whether the approach of viewing societies as relying
  either on family or on public assistance will give answers that truly
  illuminate the past.
  Organizer: Beatrice Moring, bke.moring@ntlworld.com
• Demography and Dictatorship
  Organizer: Isabel Moll, isabelmoll@ono.com
• Nobilities in Empires: Creole family networks, 16th-19th
  centuries
  This session will be devoted to a general assessment of the
  participation of the different European nobilities to the conquest,
  preservation and management of the European Empires and to examine the links
  these colonial nobilities maintained with relatives in their mother country
  and especially how they maintain social and family ties.
  Organizer:
  Francois-Joseph Ruggiu, francois_joseph_ruggiu@hotmail.com
  This
  session is co-sponsored by the Elites network.
• The Use of Genealogies with Long Family Lines for Demographic
  Research
  The purpose of this session is for those who have used, or
  those who intend to use genealogies for the analysis of demographic behavior,
  e.g. fertility regimes, or mortality rates, to share their interests. The
  session will also explore the possibilities of incorporating the results of
  such long-term demographic studies into comparison of economic, (other)
  social, and cultural factors, thereby linking regional variations with
  definitive demographic trends. Ultimately, such research may also help
  understand issues related to the phenomenon of exceptional
  longevity.
  Organizer: Harriet Zurndorfer, h.zurndorfer@kpnplanet.nl
• Denomination of Foundlings
  In several European countries, and
  particularly in the catholic ones, the numbers of foundlings increased during
  the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Some of them arrived at the
  hospital with the name of their father (or mother) and kept it, while some got
  new names. Other ones did not have any name and the hospitals had to create
  names for hundreds of foundlings every year. In this session, we will describe
  the names that were given and the way theses names were created. It seems that
  in Italian hospitals and in some Spanish hospitals, thousands of foundlings
  shared the same name (as Colombo in Milan). In France, names were more
  various, but some of them were very specific. In anglo-saxon countries (U.K.
  and U.S.A.) specific names were created (as reported by Charles Dickens in
  “Oliver Twist”). We will also wonder about the meanings of these practices and
  their effects on the identity of the foundlings.
  Organizer: Guy Brunet, Guy.Brunet@univ-lyon2.fr
• Migration and inequality within families: Multigenerational
  Perspectives
  This session asks how migration either contributes to or
  is a reaction to inequality within families. The families can be nuclear, or
  larger, ie go back several generations in time as in genealogical data bases.
  If there was a move in the past, how long did its effects last? The inequality
  can be in wealth, occupational status, access to education and the like. What
  happened to the children who did not inherit the family’s resources, who might
  have been “forced” to move? What happened to their children?
  Organizer:
  Alice Kasakoff, Kasakoff@gwm.sc.edu
• L’Année 1911: demographic realities and political reactions
  The
  summer of 1911 was long, hot and dry. In a large part of Western European
  countries, this led to increase the infant and childhood mortality and, less
  obvious, the old population mortality. 1911 provides an ideal case to study
  how European countries observed the event, both statistically and politically:
  which kind of statistics were produced? Which kind of grounded observations
  were made about the causes? Which political lessons were drawn? The comparison
  of national experiences from France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, England
  and Wales, Italy and Spain would be of interest to see how the event was taken
  into account in the statistical and epidemiological studies and in the agenda
  of public health policies.
  Organizer: Catherine Rollet, crollet@club-internet.fr
• Kin-Marriages as Strategies for Social Reproduction
  Whereas
  marriages inside near kinship were prohibited in Europe by religious and later
  civil authorities, such practices nonetheless did occur with a frequency that
  cannot be disregarded. What about the social and geographic milieus in which
  it appears to have been a preferred behaviour, and what is to be thought of
  the variations in time of this phenomenon and its turning points? Besides,
  this session is intending to focus on the different interpretations of
  kin-marriages : while some of them obviously derived from the restricted
  number of potential spouses in some given situations, or from cultural habits,
  it will be examined whether in such marriages kinship did not represent the
  best way to the achievement of social strategies, either related to
  inheritance, social reproduction, or to the preservation (or even improvement)
  of social status and identity in some specific contexts.
  Organizer Bernard
  Derouet, bernard.derouet@wanadoo.fr
• Emigration, Female Marriage, and Social Mobility
  As population
  grew in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, men and women were forced to
  emigrate to find additional means for survival. Emigration for women was as
  vital for survival as for men but most women found solutions to survival
  through marriage. Emigration involved specific choices, destinies, and social
  mobility, with benefits as well as sacrifices. What kind of marriage did
  migrating women make? What kind of social mobility did marriage secure them?
  Did they maintain their social status, improve it, or on the contrary
  experience downward social mobility? How different did their life become from
  their parents’? What benefits and/or sacrifices did they make through
  marriage?
  Organizer: Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga, marie-pierre.arrizabalaga@u-cergy.fr

• Divorce, Women and Families in the Balkans, 18th-20th
  Centuries
  A couple’s separation has always been, in the past and today,
  a social, economic and affective issue. In a number of European countries
  divorce was not accepted until the late eighteenth century and this led to the
  “invention” of a series of more or less effective solutions, including
  separation [séparation de corps] and the annulment of the marriage. However,
  the Orthodox Church, for example, while proclaiming that marriage was
  indissoluble in principle, accepted divorce in practice and allowed spouses to
  separate for a whole range of reasons. Our session tries to find out how and
  who invoke separation, in which moment of marriage and what is happened with
  both partners. Moreover, another significant topic which could be catch our
  interest is the induced effects of this separation on family, children and
  even on society.
  Organizer: Constanta Vintila-Ghitulescu, c_ghitulescu@yahoo.fr
• Medical and Demographic Knowledge: quantifying and classifying death,
  17th-19th centuries
  Organizers: Christine Théré, ch_there@ined.fr and Jean-Marc Rohrbasser,
  rohrbass@ined.fr