scholarly journals Household Strategies for Survival: An Introduction

2000 ◽  
Vol 45 (S8) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Fontaine ◽  
Jürgen Schlumbohm
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Third World ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Seasonal Fluctuations ◽  
Economic Cycles ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Natural Factors ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Ruling Elites

In early modern Europe, as in developing countries today, much of the population had to struggle to survive. Estimates for many parts of pre-industrial Europe, as for several countries in the so-called Third World, suggest that the majority of the inhabitants owned so little property that their livelihood was highly insecure. Basically, all those who lived by the work of their hands were at risk, and the reasons for their vulnerability were manifold. Economic cycles and seasonal fluctuations jeopardized the livelihood of the rural and urban masses. Warfare, taxation, and other decisions by the ruling elites sometimes had far-reaching direct and indirect repercussions on the lives of the poor. This is also true of natural factors, both catastrophes and the usual weather fluctuations, which were a major factor affecting harvest yields. Equal in importance were the risks and uncertainties inherent in life and family cycles: disease, old age, widowhood, or having many young children.

“Constructing the Poor in Early Seventeenth-Century London”1

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 450-463
Author(s):  
Claire S. Schen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Demographic Pressure ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Undeserving Poor

Historians of early modern Europe have become accustomed to the dichotomy of the deserving and undeserving poor, though they still debate the origins of the transformation of attitudes toward the poor and poverty. Historians have studied less carefully the ways in which these presumably static categories flexed, as individuals and officials worked out poor relief and charity on the local level. Military, religious, and social exigencies, precipitated by war, the Reformation, and demographic pressure, allowed churchwardens and vestrymen to redraw the contours of the deserving and undeserving poor within the broader frame of the infirm, aged, and sick. International conflicts of the early seventeenth century created circumstances and refugees not anticipated by the poor law innovators of the sixteenth century. London’s responses to these unexpected developments illustrate how inhabitants constructed the categories of die deserving and undeserving poor. This construction depended upon the discretion of churchwardens and their fellow officers, who listened to the accounts and read the official documents of the poor making claims on parish relief and charity.

Developing the “Causes of Poverty in Developing Countries Questionnaire (CPDCQ)” in a Spanish-Speaking Population

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (9) ◽  
pp. 1167-1172 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Juan Vázquez ◽  
Isabel Pascual ◽  
Sonia Panadero
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
University Students ◽  
Third World ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
World Poverty ◽  
Spanish Speaking Population ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Causes Of Poverty

From information supplied by 1,092 university students from countries with different levels of development, in this work we developed an up-to-date instrument to allow the causes of poverty in developing countries to be studied. Taking the Causes of Third World Poverty Questionnaire (CTWPQ; Harper, 2002), the most widely used instrument for this purpose as the starting point, and taking into account contributions made by other authors, The Causes of Poverty in Developing Countries Questionnaire (CPDCQ) was developed. It is an instrument of 20 items organized into 5 factors: “Blame causes within developing countries”, “Blame causes external to developing countries”, “Blame attributed to developing countries' populations”, “Blame attributed to developing countries' services”, and “Blame attributed to the poor distribution of land in developing countries”.

Revelry and riot in Archaic Megara: democratic disorder or ritual reversal?

2005 ◽  
Vol 125 ◽  
pp. 73-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Forsdyke
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
Role Reversal ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Historical Question

AbstractPlutarch (probably following Aristotle's lost Constitution of the Megarians) associates several episodes of riotous behaviour with the existence of a radical democracy in Archaic Megara (Moralia 295c-d, 304e-f). Modern historians, in turn, have accepted that Megara was ruled by a democracy in the mid sixth century BC. I suggest that this conclusion is unjustified because the connection between riotous behaviour and democracy in Plutarch is based on fourth-century anti-democratic political thought. I propose instead that anecdotes describing the insolent behaviour of the poor towards the rich are better interpreted in terms of customary rituals of social inversion and transgression. Drawing on comparative examples from the ancient world and early modern Europe, I show that popular revelry involving role reversal and transgression of social norms was an important locus for the negotiation of relations between élites and masses. I argue that such rituals provided temporary release from the constraints of the social hierarchy, and served to articulate symbolically the obligation of the powerful to protect the weak. The comparative examples show that such rituals were usually non-revolutionary, but could turn violent in times of rapid social and economic change. I argue that the violent episodes reported by Plutarch reflect the escalation of ritual revelry into real protest and riot in response to the breakdown of traditional relations of reciprocity between rich and poor in Archaic Megara. I suggest that élites in Archaic Megara successfully warded off more far-reaching rebellion and political reform by enacting new measures for the economic relief of the poor (e.g. the return of interest legislation). In conclusion, I address the broader historical question of why subordinate groups use ritual forms to express discontent.

Do Cities ‘Modernize’ the Developing Countries? An Examination of the South Asian Experience

1974 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Qadeer
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Third World ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The City

The City is a civilizing influence. This is one of the enduring themes of western thought. The crowding, filth, and exploitation of the industrial city in nineteenth-century Europe could not dampen the enthusiasm of urbanists such as Weber, Ruskin, or Spengler; nor is there any dearth of eulogizers of today‘s sprawling megalopolis. This mode of thought has also found its way into the poor countries of the third world, where the overwhelming majority lives in isolated villages. The current message for them is to seek urbanization if they want to be prosperous. This is the essence of a now familiar proposition that cities are necessary for economic development.

The Public Anatomy Lesson

2020 ◽  
pp. 217-262
Author(s):  
Charlotte Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Body ◽  
State Building ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
The Body ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Dutch Painter

This chapter analyses a crucible of the state’s making in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the public anatomy lesson. The body, this piece of ‘natural’ property that every human ‘has’, was being increasingly opened up and peered into for the purposes of finally seeing human nature itself. Bringing together visual studies and international relations, the chapter charts the scopic regime that established vision as modernity’s primary ordered instrument and that was honed upon the body dissected in public. To map its contours, it begins with the writings of anatomist William Harvey and scientist-statesman Francis Bacon. The chapter then tracks how this scopic regime was institutionalised by the spread of the highly popular public anatomy lesson across early modern Europe. It then analyses Renaissance and early modern representations of the public anatomy lesson, notably the frontispiece of the first manual of modern medicine, Andrea Vesalius’s On the Fabric of the Human Body (1943), and Dutch painter Rembrandt’s anatomy lesson paintings. The chapter examines the work of boundary-drawing and state-building wrought by these public performances by tracking the roles of the female and the poor body in their crafting.

The Organization of Welfare

2012 ◽  
pp. 77-135
Author(s):  
Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Welfare Provision ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Charitable Activities

This chapter examines the organization of poor relief along both centrally controlled and private lines and identifies what cultural patterns were reflected in the structure of Portuguese welfare provision. Centralization of poor relief, a fairly new phenomenon in early modern Europe, helped to co-ordinate the various charitable activities, optimizing the care of the poor and keeping it under control. The Amsterdam Portuguese Jews, being integrated European citizens, were aware of these ideas and tried to adapt them to their own environment. They were also influenced by spiritual and religious currents in Jewish thinking. They banded together in societies that, in addition to studying, tried to atone and repent for sins with charitable work. Ultimately, they evinced a highly developed notion of expiation that not only sprang from tendencies within Judaism but also reflected the Catholic background of the former New Christians.

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