Author: Christopher H. Johnson
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857450468
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
Recently considerable interest has developed about the degree to which anthropological approaches to kinship can be used for the study of the long-term development of European history. From the late middle ages to the dawn of the twentieth century, kinship - rather than declining, as is often assumed - was twice reconfigured in dramatic ways and became increasingly significant as a force in historical change, with remarkable similarities across European society. Applying interdisciplinary approaches from social and cultural history and literature and focusing on sibling relationships, this volume takes up the challenge of examining the systemic and structural development of kinship over the long term by looking at the close inner-familial dynamics of ruling families (the Hohenzollerns), cultural leaders (the Mendelssohns), business and professional classes, and political figures (the Gladstones)in France, Italy, Germany, and England. It offers insight into the current issues in kinship studies and draws from a wide range of personal documents: letters, autobiographies, testaments, memoirs, as well as genealogies and works of art.
Sibling Relations and the Transformations of European Kinship, 1300-1900
Author: Christopher H. Johnson
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857450468
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
Recently considerable interest has developed about the degree to which anthropological approaches to kinship can be used for the study of the long-term development of European history. From the late middle ages to the dawn of the twentieth century, kinship - rather than declining, as is often assumed - was twice reconfigured in dramatic ways and became increasingly significant as a force in historical change, with remarkable similarities across European society. Applying interdisciplinary approaches from social and cultural history and literature and focusing on sibling relationships, this volume takes up the challenge of examining the systemic and structural development of kinship over the long term by looking at the close inner-familial dynamics of ruling families (the Hohenzollerns), cultural leaders (the Mendelssohns), business and professional classes, and political figures (the Gladstones)in France, Italy, Germany, and England. It offers insight into the current issues in kinship studies and draws from a wide range of personal documents: letters, autobiographies, testaments, memoirs, as well as genealogies and works of art.
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857450468
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
Recently considerable interest has developed about the degree to which anthropological approaches to kinship can be used for the study of the long-term development of European history. From the late middle ages to the dawn of the twentieth century, kinship - rather than declining, as is often assumed - was twice reconfigured in dramatic ways and became increasingly significant as a force in historical change, with remarkable similarities across European society. Applying interdisciplinary approaches from social and cultural history and literature and focusing on sibling relationships, this volume takes up the challenge of examining the systemic and structural development of kinship over the long term by looking at the close inner-familial dynamics of ruling families (the Hohenzollerns), cultural leaders (the Mendelssohns), business and professional classes, and political figures (the Gladstones)in France, Italy, Germany, and England. It offers insight into the current issues in kinship studies and draws from a wide range of personal documents: letters, autobiographies, testaments, memoirs, as well as genealogies and works of art.
Visions of Kinship in Medieval Europe
Author: Hans Hummer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192518305
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404
Book Description
What meaning did human kinship possess in a world regulated by Biblical time, committed to the primacy of spiritual relationships, and bound by the sinews of divine love? In the process of exploring this question, Hans Hummer offers a searching re-examination of kinship in Europe between late Roman times and the high middle ages, the period bridging Europe's primitive past and its modern future. Visions of Kinship in Medieval Europe critiques the modernist and Western bio-genealogical and functionalist assumptions that have shaped kinship studies since their inception in the nineteenth century, when Biblical time collapsed and kinship became a signifier of the essential secularity of history and a method for conceptualizing a deep prehistory guided by autogenous human impulses. Hummer argues that this understanding of kinship is fundamentally antagonistic to medieval sentiments and is responsible for the frustrations researchers have encountered as they have tried to identify the famously elusive kin groups of medieval Europe. He delineates an alternative ethnographic approach inspired by recent anthropological work that privileges indigenous expressions of kinship and the interpretive potential of native ontologies. This study reveals that kinship in the middle ages was not biological, primitive, or a regulator of social mechanisms; nor was it traceable by bio-genealogical connections. In the Middle Ages, kinship signified a sociality that flowed from convictions about the divine source of all things and which wove together families, institutions, and divinities into an expansive eschatological vision animated by 'the most righteous principle of love'.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192518305
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404
Book Description
What meaning did human kinship possess in a world regulated by Biblical time, committed to the primacy of spiritual relationships, and bound by the sinews of divine love? In the process of exploring this question, Hans Hummer offers a searching re-examination of kinship in Europe between late Roman times and the high middle ages, the period bridging Europe's primitive past and its modern future. Visions of Kinship in Medieval Europe critiques the modernist and Western bio-genealogical and functionalist assumptions that have shaped kinship studies since their inception in the nineteenth century, when Biblical time collapsed and kinship became a signifier of the essential secularity of history and a method for conceptualizing a deep prehistory guided by autogenous human impulses. Hummer argues that this understanding of kinship is fundamentally antagonistic to medieval sentiments and is responsible for the frustrations researchers have encountered as they have tried to identify the famously elusive kin groups of medieval Europe. He delineates an alternative ethnographic approach inspired by recent anthropological work that privileges indigenous expressions of kinship and the interpretive potential of native ontologies. This study reveals that kinship in the middle ages was not biological, primitive, or a regulator of social mechanisms; nor was it traceable by bio-genealogical connections. In the Middle Ages, kinship signified a sociality that flowed from convictions about the divine source of all things and which wove together families, institutions, and divinities into an expansive eschatological vision animated by 'the most righteous principle of love'.
Sex, Gender, and Illegitimacy in the Castilian Noble Family, 1400-1600
Author: Grace E. Coolidge
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 149623362X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408
Book Description
Sex, Gender, and Illegitimacy in the Castilian Noble Family, 1400-1600 looks at illegitimacy across the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and analyzes its implications for gender and family structure in the Spanish nobility, a class whose actions, structure, and power had immense implications for the future of the country and empire. Grace E. Coolidge demonstrates that women and men were able to challenge traditional honor codes, repair damaged reputations, and manipulate ideals of marriage and sexuality to encompass extramarital sexuality and the nearly constant presence of illegitimate children. This flexibility and creativity in their sexual lives enabled members of the nobility to repair, strengthen, and maintain their otherwise fragile concept of dynasty and lineage, using illegitimate children and their mothers to successfully project the noble dynasty into the future--even in an age of rampant infant mortality that contributed to the frequent absence of male heirs. While benefiting the nobility as a whole, the presence of illegitimate children could also be disruptive to the inheritance process, and the entire system privileged noblemen and their aims and goals over the lives of women and children. This book enriches our understanding of the complex households and families of the Spanish nobility, challenging traditional images of a strict patriarchal system by uncovering the hidden lives that made that system function.
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 149623362X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408
Book Description
Sex, Gender, and Illegitimacy in the Castilian Noble Family, 1400-1600 looks at illegitimacy across the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and analyzes its implications for gender and family structure in the Spanish nobility, a class whose actions, structure, and power had immense implications for the future of the country and empire. Grace E. Coolidge demonstrates that women and men were able to challenge traditional honor codes, repair damaged reputations, and manipulate ideals of marriage and sexuality to encompass extramarital sexuality and the nearly constant presence of illegitimate children. This flexibility and creativity in their sexual lives enabled members of the nobility to repair, strengthen, and maintain their otherwise fragile concept of dynasty and lineage, using illegitimate children and their mothers to successfully project the noble dynasty into the future--even in an age of rampant infant mortality that contributed to the frequent absence of male heirs. While benefiting the nobility as a whole, the presence of illegitimate children could also be disruptive to the inheritance process, and the entire system privileged noblemen and their aims and goals over the lives of women and children. This book enriches our understanding of the complex households and families of the Spanish nobility, challenging traditional images of a strict patriarchal system by uncovering the hidden lives that made that system function.
Stepfamilies across Europe and Overseas, 1550–1900
Author: Lyndan Warner
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003846874
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
This book emphasizes diverse perspectives on the new and expanding history of stepfamilies in Europe and some of its overseas territories from 1550 to 1900. The chapters examine the life stages within stepfamilies from the half-orphans and illegitimate children who experienced the introduction of a stepparent to how parent–child and step or half-sibling relationships shifted and changed with living arrangements and mobility within villages or to towns and overseas. Several historical demography chapters establish the frequency and types of stepfamilies in Western and East Central Europe – whether a father-stepmother couple, a mother-stepfather union, a parent with an illegitimate child. Other themes include the effect of parental loss on child survival; how a stepparent influenced a child’s wellbeing with caregiving and contributions to the household economy; emotional bonds through letters and gift-giving; step–relatives who marry their close kin; and how property and inheritance regimes shaped stepfamily patterns. Stepfamilies across Europe and Overseas, 1550–1900 will appeal to researchers and students interested in the history of family, marriage, and society. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The History of the Family.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003846874
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
This book emphasizes diverse perspectives on the new and expanding history of stepfamilies in Europe and some of its overseas territories from 1550 to 1900. The chapters examine the life stages within stepfamilies from the half-orphans and illegitimate children who experienced the introduction of a stepparent to how parent–child and step or half-sibling relationships shifted and changed with living arrangements and mobility within villages or to towns and overseas. Several historical demography chapters establish the frequency and types of stepfamilies in Western and East Central Europe – whether a father-stepmother couple, a mother-stepfather union, a parent with an illegitimate child. Other themes include the effect of parental loss on child survival; how a stepparent influenced a child’s wellbeing with caregiving and contributions to the household economy; emotional bonds through letters and gift-giving; step–relatives who marry their close kin; and how property and inheritance regimes shaped stepfamily patterns. Stepfamilies across Europe and Overseas, 1550–1900 will appeal to researchers and students interested in the history of family, marriage, and society. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The History of the Family.
The Politics of Making Kinship
Author: Erdmute Alber
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800737858
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448
Book Description
The long tradition of Western political thought included kinship in models of public order, but the social sciences excised it from theories of the state, public sphere, and democratic order. Kinship has, however, neither completely disappeared from the political cultures of the West nor played the determining social and political role ascribed to it elsewhere. Exploring the issues that arise once the divide between kinship and politics is no longer taken for granted, The Politics of Making Kinship demonstrates how political processes have shaped concepts of kinship over time and, conversely, how political projects have been shaped by specific understandings, idioms and uses of kinship. Taking vantage points from the post-Roman era to early modernity, and from colonial imperialism to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond this international set of scholars place kinship centerstage and reintegrate it with political theory.
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800737858
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448
Book Description
The long tradition of Western political thought included kinship in models of public order, but the social sciences excised it from theories of the state, public sphere, and democratic order. Kinship has, however, neither completely disappeared from the political cultures of the West nor played the determining social and political role ascribed to it elsewhere. Exploring the issues that arise once the divide between kinship and politics is no longer taken for granted, The Politics of Making Kinship demonstrates how political processes have shaped concepts of kinship over time and, conversely, how political projects have been shaped by specific understandings, idioms and uses of kinship. Taking vantage points from the post-Roman era to early modernity, and from colonial imperialism to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond this international set of scholars place kinship centerstage and reintegrate it with political theory.
Blood and Kinship
Author: Christopher H. Johnson
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857457500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
The word “blood” awakens ancient ideas, but we know little about its historical representation in Western cultures. Anthropologists have customarily studied how societies think about the bodily substances that unite them, and the contributors to this volume develop those questions in new directions. Taking a radically historical perspective that complements traditional cultural analyses, they demonstrate how blood and kinship have constantly been reconfigured in European culture. This volume challenges the idea that blood can be understood as a stable entity, and shows how concepts of blood and kinship moved in both parallel and divergent directions over the course of European history.
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857457500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
The word “blood” awakens ancient ideas, but we know little about its historical representation in Western cultures. Anthropologists have customarily studied how societies think about the bodily substances that unite them, and the contributors to this volume develop those questions in new directions. Taking a radically historical perspective that complements traditional cultural analyses, they demonstrate how blood and kinship have constantly been reconfigured in European culture. This volume challenges the idea that blood can be understood as a stable entity, and shows how concepts of blood and kinship moved in both parallel and divergent directions over the course of European history.
A Delicate Choreography
Author: David Sabean
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111014541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1092
Book Description
The origins of the incest taboo have puzzled many of the most influential minds of the West, from Plutarch to St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, David Hume, Lewis Henry Morgan, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Edward Westermarck, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. This book puts the discussion of incest on a new foundation. It is the first attempt to thoroughly examine the rich literature, from philosophical, theological, and legal treatises to psychological and biological-genetic studies, to a wide variety of popular cultural media over a long period of time. The book offers a detailed examination of discursive and figurative representations of incest during five selected periods, from 1600 to the present. The incest discussion for each period is complemented with a presentation of dominant kinship structures and changes, without arguing for causal relations. Part I deals with the legacy of ecclesiastical marriage prohibitions of the Middle Ages: Historians dealing with the Reformation have wondered about the political and social implications of theological debates about the incest rules, the Enlightenment opted for sociological considerations of the household and a new anthropology based on the passions, Baroque discourse focused upon sexual relations among kin by marriage, while Enlightenment and Romantic discussions worried the intimacy of siblings. The first section of Part II deals with the six decades around 1900, during which European and American cultures obsessed about the sexuality of women. Almost everyone concurred in the idea that mother made the family what it was; that she configured the household, kept the lines of kinship vibrant, and stood at the threshold as stern gatekeeper, and many thought that she managed these tasks through her sexuality and an eroticized relationship with sons. Another story line, taken up in the section "Intermezzo," this one about the physical and mental consequences of inbreeding, appeared after 1850. To what extent do close-kin marriages pose risks for progeny? At its center, lay the incest problematic, now restated: Is avoidance of kin genetically programmed? Do all cultures know about risks of consanguinity? As for the twenty-first century, evolutionary and genetic assumptions are challenged by a living world population containing roughly one billion offspring of cousin marriages. Part III deals with one of the perhaps most remarkable reconfigurations of Western kinship in the aftermath of World War I: The shift from an endogamous to an exogamous alliance system centered on the "nuclear family." An historical anomaly, this family form began to dissolve almost as soon as it came together and, in the process, shifted the focus of incest concerns to a new pairing: father and daughter. By the 1970s, when the father/daughter problematic swept all other considerations of incest aside, that relationship had come to be modeled, for the most part, around power and its abusive potential. As for "incest," its representations in the last three decades of the twentieth century no longer focused on biologically damaged progeny but rather on power abuses in the nuclear family: sexual "abuse." By the mid-1990s, Western culture at least partly redirected its gaze away from father and daughter towards siblings, especially towards brothers and sisters and the sexual boundaries and erotics of their relationships. Correspondingly, siblings became a "model organism" for psychotherapy, evolutionary biology, and the science of genetics.
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111014541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1092
Book Description
The origins of the incest taboo have puzzled many of the most influential minds of the West, from Plutarch to St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, David Hume, Lewis Henry Morgan, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Edward Westermarck, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. This book puts the discussion of incest on a new foundation. It is the first attempt to thoroughly examine the rich literature, from philosophical, theological, and legal treatises to psychological and biological-genetic studies, to a wide variety of popular cultural media over a long period of time. The book offers a detailed examination of discursive and figurative representations of incest during five selected periods, from 1600 to the present. The incest discussion for each period is complemented with a presentation of dominant kinship structures and changes, without arguing for causal relations. Part I deals with the legacy of ecclesiastical marriage prohibitions of the Middle Ages: Historians dealing with the Reformation have wondered about the political and social implications of theological debates about the incest rules, the Enlightenment opted for sociological considerations of the household and a new anthropology based on the passions, Baroque discourse focused upon sexual relations among kin by marriage, while Enlightenment and Romantic discussions worried the intimacy of siblings. The first section of Part II deals with the six decades around 1900, during which European and American cultures obsessed about the sexuality of women. Almost everyone concurred in the idea that mother made the family what it was; that she configured the household, kept the lines of kinship vibrant, and stood at the threshold as stern gatekeeper, and many thought that she managed these tasks through her sexuality and an eroticized relationship with sons. Another story line, taken up in the section "Intermezzo," this one about the physical and mental consequences of inbreeding, appeared after 1850. To what extent do close-kin marriages pose risks for progeny? At its center, lay the incest problematic, now restated: Is avoidance of kin genetically programmed? Do all cultures know about risks of consanguinity? As for the twenty-first century, evolutionary and genetic assumptions are challenged by a living world population containing roughly one billion offspring of cousin marriages. Part III deals with one of the perhaps most remarkable reconfigurations of Western kinship in the aftermath of World War I: The shift from an endogamous to an exogamous alliance system centered on the "nuclear family." An historical anomaly, this family form began to dissolve almost as soon as it came together and, in the process, shifted the focus of incest concerns to a new pairing: father and daughter. By the 1970s, when the father/daughter problematic swept all other considerations of incest aside, that relationship had come to be modeled, for the most part, around power and its abusive potential. As for "incest," its representations in the last three decades of the twentieth century no longer focused on biologically damaged progeny but rather on power abuses in the nuclear family: sexual "abuse." By the mid-1990s, Western culture at least partly redirected its gaze away from father and daughter towards siblings, especially towards brothers and sisters and the sexual boundaries and erotics of their relationships. Correspondingly, siblings became a "model organism" for psychotherapy, evolutionary biology, and the science of genetics.
The Routledge History of the Domestic Sphere in Europe
Author: Joachim Eibach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429633238
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 619
Book Description
This book addresses the multifaceted history of the domestic sphere in Europe from the Age of Reformation to the emergence of modern society. By focusing on daily practice, interaction and social relations, it shows continuities and social change in European history from an interior perspective. The Routledge History of the Domestic Sphere in Europe contains a variety of approaches from different regions that each pose a challenge to commonplace views such as the emergence of confessional cultures, of private life, and of separate spheres of men and women. By analyzing a plethora of manifold sources including diaries, court records, paintings and domestic advice literature, this volume provides an overview of the domestic sphere as a location of work and consumption, conflict and cooperation, emotions and intimacy, and devotion and education. The book sheds light on changing relations between spouses, parents and children, masters and servants or apprentices, and humans and animals or plants, thereby exceeding the notion of the modern nuclear family. This volume will be of great use to upper-level graduates, postgraduates and experienced scholars interested in the history of family, household, social space, gender, emotions, material culture, work and private life in early modern and nineteenth-century Europe.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429633238
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 619
Book Description
This book addresses the multifaceted history of the domestic sphere in Europe from the Age of Reformation to the emergence of modern society. By focusing on daily practice, interaction and social relations, it shows continuities and social change in European history from an interior perspective. The Routledge History of the Domestic Sphere in Europe contains a variety of approaches from different regions that each pose a challenge to commonplace views such as the emergence of confessional cultures, of private life, and of separate spheres of men and women. By analyzing a plethora of manifold sources including diaries, court records, paintings and domestic advice literature, this volume provides an overview of the domestic sphere as a location of work and consumption, conflict and cooperation, emotions and intimacy, and devotion and education. The book sheds light on changing relations between spouses, parents and children, masters and servants or apprentices, and humans and animals or plants, thereby exceeding the notion of the modern nuclear family. This volume will be of great use to upper-level graduates, postgraduates and experienced scholars interested in the history of family, household, social space, gender, emotions, material culture, work and private life in early modern and nineteenth-century Europe.
A History of Stepfamilies in Early America
Author: Lisa Wilson
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469618427
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 172
Book Description
History of Stepfamilies in Early America.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469618427
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 172
Book Description
History of Stepfamilies in Early America.
Brothers and Sisters in Medieval European Literature
Author: Carolyne Larrington
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 190315362X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
A wideranging and groundbreaking investigation of the sibling relationship as shown in European literature, from 500 to 1500.
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 190315362X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
A wideranging and groundbreaking investigation of the sibling relationship as shown in European literature, from 500 to 1500.