What's so special about the Mediterranean? Thirty years of research on household and family in Italy

This article discusses the ‘Mediterranean model’ of household formation proposed by Laslett and others in the early 1980s and argues that the notion of a Mediterranean culture area has been used in significantly different ways by family historians and social anthropologists. Drawing its materials mainly from research conducted on Italy, it examines the changing relationships through time between nuptiality and household composition, the extent and structural characteristics of servanthood, and the functions of the family as a welfare agency. It is suggested that some concepts that recent generations of Mediterraneanist anthropologists have tended to question or utterly reject (including female honour) might still prove useful to shed light on a number of perplexing features of family life in Italy and the rest of southern Europe.

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The Conflict of Generations in Ancient Mesopotamian Myths

Comparative Studies in Society and History ◽

10.1017/s0010417500018016 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 34 (4) ◽

pp. 621-635 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Rivkah Harris

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle ◽

Family Life ◽

Intergenerational Conflict ◽

Household Composition ◽

Economic Aspects ◽

Near Eastern ◽

Marriage Patterns ◽

The Family ◽

Work Done ◽

Near Eastern Studies

Recent years have brought a proliferation of studies on the family on such topics as household composition, marriage patterns, childbearing practices, and life-cycle transitions. Scholars in ancient near eastern studies have contributed mainly to the legal and economic aspects of family history. Frequently the work done has centered on philological questions. The cuneiform data on the Mesopotamian family, accidental and all too often limited, is spread over a period of some three thousand years. Nevertheless it is time to broaden the focus despite the inherent problems. In this essay, I treat the question of the dynamics of Mesopotamian family life, more specifically intergenerational conflict, a topic barely touched upon by scholars in the field.

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Similitudes and singularities of higher education systems in the Mediterranean countries: Historical construction, policy and evolution of key indicators

REGION ◽

10.18335/region.v6i1.207 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 25-44

Author(s):

Cláudia Urbano

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Sustainable Development ◽

Supply And Demand ◽

Bologna Process ◽

Southern Europe ◽

Education Systems ◽

Higher Education Systems ◽

Mediterranean Culture ◽

Mediterranean Countries ◽

The Mediterranean

Higher education is one of the most important key values for changes in societies and exchanges among different societies. Analysing higher education systems in Europe, it is clear that Southern Europe has been determining many differences with the rest of the continent, despite the effort of the Bologna Process to ensure comparability in the standards and quality of higher education qualifications. Taking into account four Southern Europe countries – Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece – and regarding their link to a certain Mediterranean culture, our proposal is to analyse these countries’ higher education systems, their growth, using indicators on educational stock, economic growth and development, supply and demand of higher education and economic indicators relating training and the economy such as graduated employment rates. Also education public policies will be considered in the analysis as they interfere in higher education systems’ trajectories. Comparing them we will be able to identify similitudes and singularities in these educational realities, leading us to conclude about the existence of a Southern European way of making higher education a specific value in Mediterranean culture. This topic is even more important as it may be related to the recent key focus of EU activities in Southern Mediterranean region. The Mediterranean Strategy for Sustainable Development (MSSD) recognises that education in the Mediterranean needs strengthening by introducing sustainable development, through a holistic approach, into educational curricula, from primary school right up to higher education. The search for synergies between higher education research and innovation in the Mediterranean area already started. With our post-doctoral research project focusing on higher education and its links to societies, educational policies and national economies, our goal is to share some questions and to contribute to the debate on higher education reinforcing and enriching sociological analysis on higher education between Mediterranean countries.

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Working-Class Household Consumption Smoothing in Interwar Britain

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s002205071200037x ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 72 (3) ◽

pp. 797-825 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

PETER M. SCOTT ◽

JAMES WALKER

Keyword(s):

Working Class ◽

Family Life ◽

Household Income ◽

Household Consumption ◽

Consumption Smoothing ◽

Household Expenditure ◽

Household Formation ◽

Household Expenditure Survey ◽

The Family ◽

Over Time

We examine the strategies interwar working-class British households used to “smooth” consumption over time and guard against negative contingencies such as illness, unemployment, and death. Newly discovered returns from the U.K. Ministry of Labour's 1937/38 Household Expenditure Survey are used to fully categorize expenditure smoothing via nineteen credit/savings vehicles. We find that households made extensive use of expenditure-smoothing devices. Families' reliance on expenditure-smoothing is shown to be inversely related to household income, while households also used these mechanisms more intensively during expenditure crisis phases of the family life cycle, especially the years immediately after new household formation.

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