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Public health policies had a profound impact on urban life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, yet relatively few people took an active interest in the formulation of these policies. In this book Marjaana Niemi examines the impact of different political aims and pressures on 'scientific' health policies through the analysis of public health programmes in two case studies, one in Birmingham and the other in Gothenburg. By examining early twentieth-century campaigns concerned with infant welfare and the prevention of tuberculosis, the book provides illuminating insights into the relationship between public health and the regulation of urban life. Not only does the book analys...
Over the last 100 years, most European countries have experienced great, and in many cases similar changes. A general term for the phenomenon is 'modernisation', and in this anthology the authors present several different aspects of modernisation and the modernisation revolution. Among other issues, the articles are based on the importance of industrialisation, education and economic development for the success of modernisation. Spain, Sweden and Denmark have been used as starting points to illustrate differences in the modernisation process between northern and southern Europe.
Of the many changes that have taken place in Western society during the past two centuries, few have been more significant than the steep fall in infant and child mortality. However, the timing and causes of the decline are still poorly understood. While some scholars attribute it to general improvements in living standards, others emphasize the role of social intervention and public health reforms. Written by specialists from several disciplinary fields, the twelve essays in this book break entirely new ground by providing a long-term perspective that challenges some deep-rooted ideas about the European experience of mortality decline and may help explain the forces and causal relationships behind the still tragic incidence of preventable infant and child deaths in many parts of the world today. This book will become a standard work for students and researchers in demography, social and economic history, population geography, and the history of medicine, and it will be of interest to anyone concerned with current debates on the policies to be adopted to curb infant and child mortality in both developed and developing countries.
Before the Servant Project began its activities, on the initiative of the editor of this book, the long term history of domestic service was still in its beginning stage. This volume is the first wide-ranging attempt to determine the role of domestic workers both in past and present times. Domestic service was of major importance in the multi-secular process of urbanization and socio-economic development of European societies. Today, domestic workers (mainly women) represent an important component of international labour migrations to Western countries. Instead of disappearing, as expected for a long time, paid domestic work is currently experiencing a kind of «resurgence». The contributions assembled in this volume analyze the situation of domestic workers, and contribute to improve knowledge concerning their individual characteristics (gender, ethnic group, religion), origin, motivation and cultural identity, relationship with their own families and those of the employers. Further topics are connections with the home country and place of destination, legal status, rights and duties, in order to understand the current globalization of domestic work.
Employing a macro-sociological perspective applicable to all Western countries, this book argues that mass schooling is an essentially ideological enterprise. Concentrating on the 1650-1850 period in Swedish history, the book traces the institutionalization of the universal, egalitarian individual and the homogeneous, integrated national polity as primordial social elements in place of the corporate groups of estate society. It then studies the reorganization of the Swedish polity as a secular project for the pursuit of progress under the direction of an active bureaucractic state. These transformations led to the ideology of mass schooling as a ceremonial means of preparing competent, responsible citizens who could participate successfully in the rationalized, exchange-oriented polity. The book's detailed study of primary schooling between 1800 and 1880 supports this theory, demonstrating that competing theories - functionalist, social control, status competition, and modernization arguments - are contradicted by the Swedish primary schooling in the 20th century and speculates about future mass schooling developments.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, infant morality in Iceland was considerably higher than in most other European counties. In fact, levels of infant mortality on this European periphery were comparable only with a few regions in central and northern Europe, all known for a tradition of artificial feeding of newborns or weaning in the first weeks of life. Iceland was not only unique for its high levels of infant mortality. The pace of decline, which came in the late nineteenth century, was even more striking. Thus, by the beginning of the twentieth century, infant survival in Iceland ranked among the best in the world. This book narrates the story of the struggle for improving survival chances for Icelandic children. It focuses mainly on the agents of change - most important of whom were the local midwives.
Unlike previous studies, in which Asia is measured by European standards, Prudence and Pressure develops a Eurasian perspective.
This book examines the demographic behaviour of families in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany.
Asserting the need for social science historians to examine their own field, this wide-ranging volume offers an intellectual history and critical evaluation of interdisciplinary social science and social science historiography. The editors present a creative, experimental mix of topics and genres spanning a range of contemporary thought in the field--exploring the past, present, and future of social science history. This book comes at a time when there is great academic interest in the future of the disciplines and in their place within the organization of university education. Based on the 25th anniversary conference of the Social Science History Association, 2000.
This opening volume of a three-part history of the family in Europe examines the material conditions of family life, housing, diet and domestic organisation, and the economic and social factors that influenced its development.