The Laboring Poor and Banditry

Author(s):  
Robert J. Antony

While the archival records reveal little about the psychology of criminals and criminality, they do shed important light on the identities and personal backgrounds of bandits. In Chapter 7 the author examines the social composition of members of bandit gangs and sworn brotherhoods: age, marital status, geographic mobility, and occupations. Significantly, and contrary to the usual interpretation of banditry in the scholarly literature, the evidence from Guangdong demonstrates that banditry was not merely an occupation of younger men but also of older, more mature adults, many of whom were married with families. Most convicted bandits and brotherhood members came from China’s laboring poor, those individuals who were highly mobile, lived on the fringe of respectable society, and earned only a subsistence living. The fact that such a large number of bandits and brotherhood members were mature working family men suggests that they turned to crime in times of desperation or as a necessary supplement to honest work. Unemployment and chronic underemployment, the author maintains, forced many among the working poor to commit crime; stealing became an important, though normally only occasional, part of their livelihoods and life cycles.

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve King

Re-creating the social, economic and demographic life-cycles of ordinary people is one way in which historians might engage with the complex continuities and changes which underlay the development of early modern communities. Little, however, has been written on the ways in which historians might deploy computers, rather than card indexes, to the task of identifying such life cycles from the jumble of the sources generated by local and national administration. This article suggests that multiple-source linkage is central to historical and demographic analysis, and reviews, in broad outline, some of the procedures adopted in a study which aims at large scale life cycle reconstruction.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Zachary Nowak ◽  
Bradley M. Jones ◽  
Elisa Ascione

This article begins with a parody, a fictitious set of regulations for the production of “traditional” Italian polenta. Through analysis of primary and secondary historical sources we then discuss the various meanings of which polenta has been the bearer through time and space in order to emphasize the mutability of the modes of preparation, ingredients, and the social value of traditional food products. Finally, we situate polenta within its broader cultural, political, and economic contexts, underlining the uses and abuses of rendering foods as traditional—a process always incomplete, often contested, never organic. In stirring up the past and present of polenta and placing it within both the projects of Italian identity creation and the broader scholarly literature on culinary tradition and taste, we emphasize that for so-called traditional foods to be saved, they must be continually reinvented.


Author(s):  
Matthew S. Seligmann

As soon as he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, Winston Churchill sought to buttress his credentials as a social reformer by improving conditions for sailors in the Navy and widening the social composition of the officer corps. This chapter examines his efforts towards both of these ends. It shows how he fought against the Treasury and his Cabinet colleagues to offer sailors their first meaningful pay rise in decades. It similarly catalogues the many schemes he introduced to entice people from a wider range of backgrounds, including sailors from the lower deck, to become naval officers. As with enhanced naval pay, this required him to persevere against entrenched interests, but as this chapter will show, his achievements in this area were considerable.


Author(s):  
Irene Fosi

AbstractThe article examines the topics relating to the early modern period covered by the journal „Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken“ in the hundred volumes since its first publication. Thanks to the index (1898–1995), published in 1997 and the availability online on the website perpectivia.net (since 1958), it is possible to identify constants and changes in historiographical interests. Initially, the focus was on the publication of sources in the Vatican Secret Archive (now the Vatican Apostolic Archive) relating to the history of Germany. The topics covered later gradually broadened to include the history of the Papacy, the social composition of the Curia and the Papal court and Papal diplomacy with a specific focus on nunciatures, among others. Within a lively historiographical context, connected to historical events in Germany in the 20th century, attention to themes and sources relating to the Middle Ages continues to predominate with respect to topics connected to the early modern period.


2020 ◽  
pp. 0192513X2094892
Author(s):  
Athira Amira Abd Rauf ◽  
Maizatul Akmar Ismail ◽  
Vimala Balakrishnan ◽  
Loh Sau Cheong ◽  
Novia Indriaty Admodisastro ◽  
...  

The parents of children with dyslexia often experience more parenting stress and depressive symptoms compared to other parents. Studies have shown that supporting and encouraging such parents help in reducing their frustrations, fear, anger, and low self-esteem towards their children. The purpose of this study was to identify and examine the different types of support needed by the parents of children with dyslexia and to explore the relationships between the required support with the parents’ marital status. Fifty questionnaires were distributed to the parents of children with dyslexia and analyzed. The findings showed that the type of support needed for parents of children with dyslexia could be grouped into social, peer-to-peer, financial, and government support. Furthermore, the analysis indicated that there were no significant differences between the social (p = 0.4014), peer-to-peer (p = 0.5020), and government (p = 0.7121) support with parents’ marital status. However, based on one-way ANOVA analysis, there was a significant difference found between the parents’ marital status and financial support (p = 0.0241). Accordingly, it is anticipated that the implication of this research could be used as a guide and a reference for supporting and encouraging parents of children with dyslexia and other learning disabilities.


1989 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Eckersley

The predominantly new middle-class social composition of the green movement has become a matter of increasing interest in the wake of the success of green parties and the growth of an international green movement. This paper considers the concept of the ‘new class' in relation to two explanations for the social composition of the green movement. The class-interest argument seeks to show that green politics is a means of furthering either middle-class or new-class interests while the ‘new childhood’ argument claims that the development of the green movement is the result of the spread of post-material values, the main bearers of which are the new class. Against these arguments a more comprehensive explanation is presented, which focuses on the education of the new class and its relative structural autonomy from the production process.


2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy J Heineke ◽  
Elizabeth Coleman ◽  
Elizabeth Ferrell ◽  
Craig Kersemeier

In this article, we outline the necessary action steps for schools to improve the achievement of bilingual students. We review, summarize, and utilize the pertinent scholarly literature to make suggestions for school-wide, collaborative efforts to support the achievement of bilingual learners through linguistically responsive pedagogy and practice. Our research-based recommendations include the need for school actors to negotiate language policy and mandates, lay the necessary ideological foundations, build effective school structures and systems, and foster meaningful collaboration with families and communities. When teachers, administrators, counselors, families, and community members work together, schools can improve to promote the social, cultural, linguistic, and academic achievement of bilingual students.


1999 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-489
Author(s):  
Andrew Abbott

When one is asked to speak on the past, present, and future of social science history, one is less overwhelmed by the size of the task than confused by its indexicality. Whose definition of social science history? Which past? Or, put another way, whose past? Indeed, which and whose present? Moreover, should the task be taken as one of description, prescription, or analysis? Many of us might agree on, say, a descriptive analysis of the past of the Social Science History Association. But about the past of social science history as a general rather than purely associational phenomenon, we might differ considerably. The problem of description versus prescription only increases this obscurity.


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