Poverty in Modern Europe Spaces, Localities, Institutions

by Gestrich, Andreas; Grüner, Elisabeth; Hahn, Susanne

• ISBN13: 9780192867841
• ISBN10: 0192867849
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2022-10-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Poverty in Modern Europe explores the spatial dimensions of poverty in nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe. Its essays focus on a variety of regional, local, and institutional settings and apply different approaches and methods, such as micro history, historical geography, network analysis, and the study of political and academic expert discourses. They are grouped into four sections. The first concentrates on the question of how it was that within the same national legal framework, poverty could be administered and experienced so differently at regional and local levels. Although the discussion of 'welfare regionalism' has been accepted as an important perspective in both the social sciences and social history, it has not resulted in many comparative studies or produced a valid framework for comparisons. The following three sections ask how urban and rural spaces of poverty were constructed by political, academic, and administrative discourses and how 'localities' of poor relief were experienced by the poor. Many essays look into the spatial dimensions of processes of inclusion and exclusion. They examine the role played by institutions (such as workhouses) and by social networks (such as families and neighbourhoods), and are particularly interested in what has frequently, albeit not uncontroversially, been termed the 'agency' of the poor and its spatial dimensions. The volume tests different approaches in different countries and suggests a number of aspects and yardsticks to consider when comparing regional or local differences. While the main geographical focus is on English-speaking and German-speaking Europe, the volume also contains comparative perspectives on France and Russia.

Author Biography

Andreas Gestrich, Trier University,Elisabeth Grüner, Trier University,Susanne Hahn, Trier University

Andreas Gestrich was appointed to the chair of modern European history at Trier University in 1997. From 2006 to 2018 he served as the director of the German Historical Institute London. His main research interests are the history of childhood, family and youth, the history of media and the
political public spheres, and the history of poverty, poor relief, and the welfare state. He is co-editor with Elizabeth Hurren and Steven King of Poverty and Sickness in Modern Europe (2012) and with Beate Althammer and Jens Gründler of The Welfare State and the 'Deviant Poor' in Europe 1870-1933
(2014).

Elisabeth Grüner is a former Research Fellow in Contemporary History at the interdisciplinary Collaborative Research Centre 'Strangers and Poor People: Changing Patterns of Inclusion and Exclusion from Classical Antiquity to the Present Day' at Trier University. She works in public administration in
the field of integration and equal opportunities. Her research interests include the history of poverty and rural society as well as the history of migration with an emphasis on the second half of the twentieth century.

Susanne Hahn is a Research Fellow in Contemporary History at the Forschungszentrum Europa at Trier University with a research emphasis on rural poverty and policies for rural development in Germany after the Second World War.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction. Spaces, Localities, Institutions: Micro Perspectives on Poverty and Welfare in Modern Europe, Andreas Gestrich, Elisabeth Grüner, and Susanne Hahn
Geographies of Poor Relief
2. Space, Welfare, and Agency in England and Wales, 1780s-1840s, Steven A. King
3. Spatial Patterns of Poor Relief in Ireland, 1800-1914, Mel Cousins
4. New Geographies of the New Poor Law in England and Wales, Douglas Brown
5. Regional Patterns of Poor Relief in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany, Andreas Gestrich
Urban Spaces
6. Pauper Communities and Plebeian Spaces in Mid Nineteenth-Century London, David R. Green
7. Who Owns the City? The Possibilities and Limits of Creating Social Spaces 'From Below': St Petersburg and London in Comparison (1840-1914), Hans-Christian Petersen
8. Poverty Zones and the Production of Knowledge on Urban Marginality in West Germany and France, 1950s to 1960s, Christiane Reinecke
Rural Areas
9. 'Neither Efficient nor Humane?' Social Welfare Practices in Rural Central Switzerland in the Early Twentieth Century, Sonja Matter
10. Social Welfare in Rural Brandenburg: Local Developments in the Aftermath of the Second World War and the Rise of GDR State Socialism, Marcel Boldorf
11. Precarious Lives in an Economic Boom: A Micro Perspective on Rural Poverty in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, Elisabeth Grüner
12. 'Structurally Weak' and 'Backward'? Rural Areas in the West German Poverty Policy Debates of the 1950s and 1960s, Susanne Hahn
Institutions
13. Care and Control. How Families used Asylums and Shaped an Institution: A Glasgow Case Study, 1875-1920, Jens Gründler
14. Detaining the Non-Criminal Poor: Coercive Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Social Welfare Policies towards Socially Deviant Men and Women in the Swiss Canton of Bern, Tanja Rietmann
15. Poor Adolescents during the German Economic Miracle: A Micro Study of a Hessian Reformatory for Girls in the 1960s, Christina Vanja