Rescuing the Vulnerable: Poverty, Welfare and Social Ties in Modern Europe / Edition 1

by Beate Althammer, Lutz Raphael, Tamara Stazic-Wendt

Overview

In many ways, the European welfare state constituted a response to the new forms of social fracture and economic turbulence that were born out of industrialization—challenges that were particularly acute for groups whose integration into society seemed the most tenuous. Covering a range of national cases, this volume explores the relationship of weak social ties to poverty and how ideas about this relationship informed welfare policies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By focusing on three representative populations—neglected children, the homeless, and the unemployed—it provides a rich, comparative consideration of the shifting perceptions, representations, and lived experiences of social vulnerability in modern Europe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781785331367
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	05/01/2016
Series:	International Studies in Social History , #27
Pages:	438
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Beate Althammer is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Trier and a visiting lecturer at the University of Lüneburg. She is author of Das Bismarckreich 1871-1890 (2009) and co-editor of the volumes Bettler und Vaganten in der Neuzeit (1500-1933) (2013) and The Welfare State and the “Deviant Poor” in Europe, 1870-1933 (2014).

Lutz Raphael is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Trier. His recent books include Imperiale Gewalt und Mobilisierte Nation: Europa 1914-1945 (2011) and (together with Altay Coskun) Fremd und rechtlos?: Zugehörigkeitsrechte Fremder von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Ein Handbuch (2014).

Tamara Stazic-Wendt is a doctoral student at the University of Trier and is currently completing her dissertation on unemployment in rural Germany during the interwar period. Her recent publications include “The ‘New Morocco’ Settlement between Trier and Euren, Germany: Drawing Boundaries and Constructing Deviance, 1925-1933” in The Welfare State and the “Deviant Poor” in Europe, 1870-1933 (2014).

Table of Contents

Illustrations, Figures and Tables viii

Poverty and Endangered Social Ties: An Introduction Beate Althammer Tamara Stazic-Wendt 1

1 Poverty and Social Bonds: Towards a Theory of Attachment Regimes Serge Paugam 23

I Endangered Childhoods

2 Living at the Edge of Society: Wallachian Orphans in Nineteenth-Century Bucharest Nicoleta Roman 49

3 Orphans, Pauper Children or Wayward Children? The Lives of Children Cared for by Public Institutions in Hamburg, 1892-1914 Katharina Brandes 74

4 The Reduction of Poverty Starts with Children: Swiss Societies for Educating the Poor in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Ernst Guggisberg 97

5 Compassion for the Distant Other: Children's Hunger and Humanitarian Relief in the Aftermath of the Great War Fredcrike Kind-Kovács 129

II Vagrancy and Homelessness

6 Traditional Mobility and Solidarity in Crisis: Jeremias Gotthelf's Response to Pauperism in the Vormärz Andrew Cusack

7 Controlling Vagrancy: Germany, England and France, 1880-1914 Beats Althammer 187

8 The Problem of Homelessness in Post-war Britain Tehila Sasson 212

III Unemployment

9 'Unite Idle Men with Idle Land': The Evolution of the Hollesley Bay Training Farm Experiment for the London Unemployed, 1905-1908 Elizabeth A. Scott 237

10 An Unbearable Social Existence: The Unemployed in Rural Poor Relief (Germany, 1918-1933) Tamara Stazic-Wendt 259

11 How Unemployment was Normalized by the Establishment of Public Labour Exchanges in Austria, 1918-1938 Irina Vana 283

12 The Poor Unemployed: Diagnoses of Unemployment in Britain and West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s Wiebke Wiede 307

IV Re-Establishing Social Ties: Narratives and Appeals From the Poor

13 Voices from the Lower Depths: Russian Poor in Their Own Words Hubertus Jahn 335

14 'They Sit for Days and Have Only Their Sorrow to Eat': Old Age Poverty in German and British Pauper Narratives Andreas Gestrich Daniela Heinisch 356

15 Seen with Their Own Eyes: Self-presentation of the Poor in Freiburg and Schwerin, 1950-1975 Dorothee Lürbke 382

Conclusion: The Twisted Paths of Recognition and Protection: Vulnerability and Welfare in European Societies Lutz Raphael 405

Index 417

Editorial Reviews

“…a readable collection of interesting case studies on a topic likely to interest many political sociologists, historians, area specialists, and scholars of poverty and welfare in both the social sciences and the humanities… The breadth and innovative use of archival and literary sources make the work overall a trove of interesting ideas for comparative and historical researchers.” • Contemporary Sociology

“This volume’s focus on the young, the homeless, and the unemployed is particularly welcome given the limited amount of scholarship within histories of poverty and welfare on these groups. The book’s underlying principles are of universal significance and will be of interest to the general reader of welfare history.” • Olwen Purdue, Queen’s UniversityBelfast

From the Publisher