Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Tom O’Donoghue ◽  
Judith Harford
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
Secondary Schooling ◽  
Secondary School Education ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Religious Teaching ◽  
The Cost

This chapter provides an overview on the central argument of the book, namely, that the Catholic Church in Ireland, and especially from the time of national independence in 1922 until 1967, resisted questioning by non-clerics of its overall approach to education. As a result, it opposed involving lay people, including parents, in the exercise of what it claimed was its right and responsibility to provide secondary schooling. The State acquiesced willingly, thus allowing priests who were teachers, religious teaching brothers, and female teaching religious to promote unhindered sets of pedagogical, administrative and leadership practices aimed at the salvation of souls and the reproduction of fellow clerics and a loyal middle class. That situation, in turn, led to the promotion of piety and the upholding of class privilege as core characteristics of secondary schooling. Successive governments were pleased with the circumstances, partly because the great majority of the nation’s politicians and public servants were themselves loyal middle-class Catholics. Equally pleasing to them was the fact that the Church, for a fraction of the cost that would need to be paid by the State, was willing to fund secondary school education, and in so doing was prepared to meet the needs of the mercantile class, the public service, and the professions, for educated individuals in their late teenage years.

A Marginalized Laity

2021 ◽  
pp. 142-161
Author(s):  
Tom O’Donoghue ◽  
Judith Harford
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Secondary Schooling ◽  
The Public ◽  
Lay Teachers ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
Major Interest ◽  
The Church

For the period 1922–1967 the Catholic Church opposed any notion of joint responsibility between laity and clergy for primary and secondary schooling. It did so in order to be able to pursue unhindered its major interest in schooling, which was ‘the salvation of souls’ and the production of priests, brothers, nuns, and a loyal middle class. Further, the State cooperated with the Church because in doing so it was able to pursue its own aim of producing a literate and numerate citizenry, pursuing nation building, and preparing an adequate number of secondary school graduates to address the requirements of the public service and the professions without having to provide schools. The Church legitimated the involvement of the teaching religious in associated practices with parents, school inspectors, and lay teachers. Relatedly, it worked to try to ensure that the voices of educationists who were not religious received little hearing in relation to education policy-making. A small number of secondary schools run largely by lay Catholics were able to operate. The individuals in question, in establishing these schools, quietly contested the hegemony of the Catholic clergy and religious in the provision of education, and indicated what might be possible in the future.

Piety and Privilege

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom O'Donoghue ◽  
Judith Harford
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Financial Cost ◽  
The Public ◽  
Secondary School Education ◽  
Major Interest ◽  
The Church

During the period 1922–1967 the Catholic Church in Ireland opposed any notion of joint responsibility between laity and clergy for secondary school education. The State also permitted the Church to pursue its major interest in education in secondary schools. Unhindered, the Church thus was able to promote within the schools sets of practices aimed at ‘the salvation of souls’ and at the reproduction of a loyal middle class along with priests, brothers, and nuns to maintain and expand the institution. The State for its part supported that arrangement as the Church also acted on its behalf in aiming to produce a literate and numerate citizenry, in pursuing nation building and in ensuring the preparation of an adequate number of secondary school graduates to address the needs of the public service and the professions. All of that took place at a financial cost much lower than the provision of a totally State-funded system of schooling would have entailed.

PREREQUISITES FOR THE FORMATION OF A MECHANISM FOR STATE REGULATION OF SOCIAL GUARANTEES IN THE REGION

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vitaly Lobas ◽  
◽  
Elena Petryaeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Well Being ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Periodic Review ◽  
Cost Of Living ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
State Management ◽  
The Cost

The article deals with modern mechanisms for managing social protection of the population by the state and the private sector. From the point of view of forms of state regulation of the sphere of social protection, system indicators usually include the state and dynamics of growth in the standard of living of the population, material goods, services and social guarantees for the poorly provided segments of the population. The main indicator among the above is the state of the consumer market, as one of the main factors in the development of the state. Priority areas of public administration with the use of various forms of social security have been identified. It should be emphasized that, despite the legislative conflicts that exist today in Ukraine, mandatory indexation of the cost of living is established, which is associated with inflation. Various scientists note that although the definition of the cost of living index has a well-established methodology, there are quite a lot of regional features in the structure of consumption. All this is due to restrictions that are included in the consumer basket of goods and different levels of socio-economic development of regions. The analysis of the establishment and periodic review of the minimum consumer budgets of the subsistence minimum and wages of the working population and the need to form state insurance funds for unforeseen circumstances is carried out. Considering in this context the levers of state management of social guarantees of the population, we drew attention to the crisis periods that are associated with the market transformation of the regional economy. In these conditions, there is a need to develop and implement new mechanisms and clusters in the system of socio-economic relations. The components of the mechanisms ofstate regulation ofsocial guarantees of the population are proposed. The deepening of market relations in the process of reforming the system of social protection of the population should be aimed at social well-being.

To the Travelers’ Service or True Stories about Foreigners in the Russian Province (After the PatrioticWar of 1812 until the End of the 1830s)

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-174
Author(s):  
Anastasiya Тikhonova
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Psychological Factor ◽  
The State ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Business Activity ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Life Circumstances

In the article the author mentions some modern publications on this issue in the era of Alexander I and Nicholas I in connection with the description of the travelling theme in the context of everyday life history. As an example of the Russian Province, the article considers Smolensk Governorate which was located at the crossroads of routes from Europe to the center of Russia through Baltic, Belarusian and Ukrainian Provinces. On the basis of the materials of the State Archive of the Smolensk region (GASO) from the funds of the Chancellery of Smolensk Governor, the Smolensk Oblast Duma, metric books of Roman Catholic Church in Smolensk and published memoirs (Eugene Hess’ diary and E. Montulé’s notes) the author of the article reconstructs foreign hotel owners’ biographies (S.I. Chapa, D.K. Nolchini, V.I. Gaber), masters of carriage business (D.I. Graf, K.B. Weber), a city coachman, the owner of a coffee house (H. Podrut). All these people were united by their origin (they came from European countries) and their involvement (due to their professional activities) in servicing travelers who found themselves in the Russian Province. Life circumstances and development of their own business forced them to settle far away from their homeland; most of them became citizens of the empire, having connected themselves with Russia forever. In the article it is underlined that foreigners’ involvement in «tourist business» of the considered epoch testifies not only to the benefit of their business activity, but also to the importance of the psychological factor – the very possibility of meeting with compatriots and representatives of other European countries.

The Self-Undermining State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arjun Chowdhury
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Final Section ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
Central Authority ◽  
Interstate War ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Willingness To Sacrifice ◽  
The Cost

This chapter provides an informal rationalist model of state formation as an exchange between a central authority and a population. In the model, the central authority protects the population against external threats and the population disarms and pays taxes. The model specifies the conditions under which the exchange is self-enforcing, meaning that the parties prefer the exchange to alternative courses of action. These conditions—costly but winnable interstate war—are historically rare, and the cost of such wars can rise beyond the population’s willingness to sacrifice. At this point, the population prefers to avoid war rather than fight it and may prefer an alternative institution to the state if that institution can prevent war and reduce the level of extraction. Thus the modern centralized state is self-undermining rather than self-enforcing. A final section addresses alternative explanations for state formation.

Prologue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Breandán Mac Suibhne
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
The State ◽  
Seasonal Migration ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The People ◽  
The Catholic Church

Observing the abandonment of traditional beliefs and practices in the 1830s, the scholar John O’Donovan remarked that ‘a different era—the era of infidelity—is fast approaching!’ In west Donegal, that era finally arrived c.1880, when, over much of the district, English replaced Irish as the language of the home. Yet it had been coming into view since the mid-1700s, as the district came to be fitted—through the cattle trade, seasonal migration, and protoindustrialization—into regional and global economic systems. In addition to the market, an expansion of the administrative and coercive capacity of the state and an improvement in the plant and personnel of the Catholic Church—processes that intensified in the mid-1800s—proved vital factors, as the population dwindled after the Famine, in the people breaking faith with the old and familiar and adopting the new.

Poland

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Pope John Paul Ii ◽  
National Values ◽  
The Impact ◽  
State Socialist ◽  
The Church

The chapter on Poland focuses on two questions. Why, in contrast to all other state-socialist countries, did the church’s capacity for integration actually increase rather than decrease despite persecution and discrimination during the communist period? And why has this capacity also remained more or less constant (albeit to a lesser extent) in the period since the end of communist rule? The authors have identified four key factors in the remarkable resistance of the Polish Catholic Church during the period of communist persecution: the fusion of religious and national values, the specific conflict dynamics of the church’s struggle with the state, the structural conservatism of agricultural production in Poland, and the actions of Pope John Paul II. Explanations for the surprising stability of religiosity in Poland after 1990 point to the behaviour of the Church itself, to the internal pluralization of Catholicism, and to the impact of a homogeneous religious culture.

The public's view of public health in mid-Victorian Britain

Urban History ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Sigsworth ◽  
Michael Worboys
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Health Reform ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Personal Hygiene ◽  
The Public ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Physical Conditions ◽  
Public Health Reform

What did the public think about public health reform in mid-Victorian Britain? Historians have had a lot to say about the sanitary mentality and actions of the middle class, yet have been strangely silent about the ideas and behaviour of the working class, who were the great majority of the public and the group whose health was mainly in question. Perhaps there is nothing to say. The working class were commonly referred to as ‘the Great Unwashed’, purportedly ignorant and indifferent on matters of personal hygiene, environmental sanitation and hence health. Indeed, the writings of reformers imply that the working class simply did not have a sanitary mentality. However, the views of sanitary campaigners should not be taken at face value. Often propaganda and always one class's perception of another, in the context of the social apartheid in Britain's cities in the mid-nineteenth century, sanitary campaigners' views probably reveal more about middle-class anxieties than the actual social and physical conditions of the poor. None the less many historians still use such material to portray working-class life, but few have gone on to ask how public health reform was seen and experienced ‘from below’. Historians of public health have tended to portray the urban working class as passive victims who were rescued by enlightened middle-class reformers. This seems to be borne out at the political level where, unlike with other popular movements of the 1840s and after, there is little evidence of working-class participation in, or support for, the public health movement.

scholarly journals Deflecting Privilege: Class Identity and the Intergenerational Self

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003803852098222
Author(s):  
Sam Friedman ◽  
Dave O’Brien ◽  
Ian McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Privileged Class

Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify their origins as working class? We address this question by drawing on 175 interviews with those working in professional and managerial occupations, 36 of whom are from middle-class backgrounds but identify as working class or long-range upwardly mobile. Our findings indicate that this misidentification is rooted in a self-understanding built on particular ‘origin stories’ which act to downplay interviewees’ own, fairly privileged, upbringings and instead forge affinities to working-class extended family histories. Yet while this ‘intergenerational self’ partially reflects the lived experience of multigenerational upward mobility, it also acts – we argue – as a means of deflecting and obscuring class privilege. By positioning themselves as ascending from humble origins, we show how these interviewees are able to tell an upward story of career success ‘against the odds’ that simultaneously casts their progression as unusually meritocratically legitimate while erasing the structural privileges that have shaped key moments in their trajectory.

Constructing Images of Deviance: A Look at State Intervention into the Problem of Wife-Battery

1983 ◽  
Vol 31 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 60-76
Author(s):  
Patricia A. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Social Problem ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Structural Position ◽  
Wife Battering ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Context ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cost

Patricia Morgan's paper describes what happens when the state intervenes in the social problem of wife-battering. Her analysis refers to the United States, but there are clear implications for other countries, including Britain. The author argues that the state, through its social problem apparatus, manages the image of the problem by a process of bureaucratization, professionalization and individualization. This serves to narrow the definition of the problem, and to depoliticize it by removing it from its class context and viewing it in terms of individual pathology rather than structure. Thus refuges were initially run by small feminist collectives which had a dual objective of providing a service and promoting among the women an understanding of their structural position in society. The need for funds forced the groups to turn to the state for financial aid. This was given, but at the cost to the refuges of losing their political aims. Many refuges became larger, much more service-orientated and more diversified in providing therapy for the batterers and dealing with other problems such as alcoholism and drug abuse. This transformed not only the refuges but also the image of the problem of wife-battering.

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