The 2010 European Social Science History Congress will be held in Ghent, April 13-16.
Find the list of sessions proposed for the Family/Demography Network below.
We need you to pre-register and propose your participation in these or other panels by May 1st.
There will be no deadline extension. Our network has 25 slots so more panels will be welcome,
but panels with at least 4 papers, chair and discussant will be given preference.
You must register yourself at www.iisg.nl/esshc but the organizers have the right to select the papers
they include in their panels.
Network chairs: Mary Louise Nagata, mnagata@fmarion.edu
and Peter Sköld, peter.skold@cesam.umu.se
1. Fertility and Migration
Organizers: Peter Teibenbacher, peter.teibenbacher@uni-graz.at, Karl-Franzens
This panel focuses mainly on the very heavily discussed topic of correlations between socio-economic
development and fertility. The main questions first will deal with labor market and other push and
pull factors like food supply or education, second with marriage hindrances and obstacles and third
with changes in fertility behaviour of inter-cultural/structural migrants, e.g. coming from regions with a high
fertility and going to low fertility regions. Of most concern will be the 19th and 20th centuries. The panel
covers interregional, international as well as global migration, but concentrates on structural,
non-forced and individual migration in general. So, for example, the panel definitely intends not to deal
with "overpopulated" ethnic or other groups migrating as a whole looking e.g. for better pastures etc.
and not to deal with politically motivated migration.
2. Family transmission systems from Customs to Civil codes (1600-2000)
Organizer: Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux fauve@msh-paris.fr
The influence of the French Civil Code (1804) upon legislation all over Europe was massive,
particularly concerning family transmission systems. The Napoleonic Code inspired generations of jurists and raised also many debates out of Europe, as for example in Japan.
Participants in the session will discuss to what extent previous inheritance customs could survive in practice during the 19th century. Were female children better treated than previously? Was egalitarian sharing among inheriting children introduced? Was the well-being of the widow secured? How were family strategies of reproduction affected by new legal dispositions?
Studies providing comparative perspectives between rural and urban families are welcome.
3. European Family and Children's Rights
Organizers: René Leboute,
rene.leboutte@uni.lu and Jean Paul Lehners, jean-paul.lehners.lu
4. Living Outside or Leaving the Parental Home
Organizer: Olof Gardarsdottir, olofgard@hi.is
5. Measles and Other Childhood Diseases
Organizer: Renzo Derosas, derosas@unive.it
6. Making Large Databases Accessible
Organizer: Kees Mandermakers, kma@iisg.nl
7. Environmental History Water Construction and Family
Organizer: Satoshi Murayama, muras@ed.kagawa-u.ac.jp
8. How to Fight Against or How to Pray Away Disease
Organizer: Hiroshi Kawaguchi, kawag@tezukayama-u.ac.jp
Birth, old age, illness, and death are the four basic traditional pains or agonies according ot Buddhism. Certainly peasant strateigies to fight disease through any means, including prayer, is an important topic for historical demography. Methods for healing a disease gradually changed from faith cures to medical treatments. The methods used to fight disease probably reflect the level of medical science and the common sense of hygiene. On the other hand, causes of death have been difficult to determine before the statistics of death causes were established in modern times. I want to focus on the following topics in this session. 1. How peasants fought disease 2. The effects of faith cures compared to medical treatment. 3. Changes in the methods for fighting disease. 4. Regional differences in the method for fighting disease. 5. Causes of death before modern statistics.
9. Obesity in Historical Context
Organizer: Anne Lokke, al@hum.ku.dk
Many health promoters consider obesity the worst health risk in our time. Seen in the long perspective, however, the study of the health effects of body size, under nutrition as well as over nutrition and obesity has just begun. This panel invites papers which examine obesity from all possible historical perspectives, demographic, cultural, economic and other, including such issues as the levels and trends in the development of body size, the health of obese people in former times, perceptions of the preferable body composition in children and adults, the normal weight curve during a lifespan, sources for information on body size, the composition of the food eaten, and the impact of the industrialisation of agriculture on the proportion and quality of fatty acids in meat and dairy products.
10. Birth and Attendance and Birth Outcomes
Organizer: Alice Reid, amr1001@cam.ac.uk
The birth process has always been a risky time for both mothers and infants, and the contribution of obstetrics, midwifery and maternity nursing to the levels, trends and differentials in perinatal, infant and maternal mortality deserves wider study than it has previously been given in historical contexts. This panel invites papers which examine connections between birth attendants, obstetrics or midwifery practices and survival of infants and mothers before, during or after parturition, in historical settings.
11. Family Strategies Under Pressure
Organizer: Elisabeth Engberg, elisabeth.engberg@ddb.umu.se
12. Cohabitation and Economic Cooperation Between Generations
Organizer: Beatrice Mooring, bke.moring@ntlworld.com
The aim of the session is to explore that different ways that family members have co-operated with one another in the past. Papers on cohabitation between generations, pooling of income, running of family enterprises and assisting non-co-resident family members and kin (for example widowed mothers, young siblings etc) are welcomed. The intention is also to include the question of differences in systems of co-operation depending on gender and age (did daughters help more than sons or vice versa). The questions can be addressed within a rural or an urban context or as a comparison of these two.
13. Physical Environment and Shaping of Social Networks, 1500-1900
Organizer: Guido Alfani, guido.alfani@unibocconi.it
Up until now, network analysis applied to historical data has shown very little interest in the way in which physical environment could play a role in shaping social networks. This somehow surprising circumstance is partly due to recurrent characteristics of historical databases (not always allowing for geographic and physical-environmental variables to be taken into account), but sometimes it is seemingly due to a misunderstanding of the important role that physical environment can play in shaping the social space.
The session aims to bring the focus on the interaction between social and physical-environmental variables, and to make it clear how such interaction can exert an influence upon social networks. At this end, the session will privilege research on social networks established in extreme or very particular environments: such as archipelago communities; scatter of villages in mountain valleys; the extreme North of Europe where distance between very small (and demographically not-autonomous) settlements can be huge; and so on. Physical distance is not the only relevant geographic variable and proposals about communities having a complex settlement structure (for example, a main settlement surrounded by a scatter of hamlets) are also encouraged, insofar as the physical environment in the shape of water streams, woods, forests, swamps and other can be shown to have key importance in defining the structure of local social networks.
Papers focusing on years 1500-1900 will be given precedence to ensure a degree of homogeneity in the sources being used, but works on the Middle Ages or the twentieth century will be considered if coherent with the session topic. The session will accept both papers making use of the formal network analysis methods and works characterized by a more qualitative or historical-quantitative approach.
14. The Aging Population
Organizer: Peter Sköld, peter.skold@cesam.umu.se
15. Household Typologies, Co-Residence, and Care across the Life-Course
Organizers: Alice Kasakoff, kasakoff@sc.edu and Mary Louise Nagata,
mnagata@fmarion.edu
There is an on-going methodological debate over theories of family system based on household typologies and co-residence patterns across the life-course. It could be that these differing methodologies that seem to look at household and family system are actually picking up on differences in economic opportunity. In this panel we would like to ask the authors to use both methods to analyze their data and focus on provisions for care across the life-course. For the co-residence analysis, please look at co-residence from the perspective of each ego to examine who lives with what kin across the life-course and who is providing care for the vulnerable members of the household. For household typologies, please consider whether remaining or returning home to pool resources and labour, or going off to find work and other opportunities provided the better possibilities for individual and family survival.
16. Use and Misuse of Household Analysis and Methodologies, Household and Family Revisited
Organizer: Richard Wall, richardw@essex.ac.uk
This session aims to explore the geography of family and household patterns and the association with different economic systems. Much research has relied on the classification of households as solitaries, 'no family', simple, extended or multiple (the Hammel-Laslett classification) but other patterns may be revealed by the use of other classification systems. These could include the particular balance between workers and consumers, limitations on the ability of households to redistribute income between earners and non-earners, family status of household members (living with a family member, other relative only, servant only, lodger only etc.), analysis of the types of kin (parents, grandchildren, siblings etc.) and lodgers in terms of age, gender and shared employment or otherwise with the household head.
17. International Marriages
Organizer: Elena Eskridge-Kosmach, ekosmach@yahoo.com
This panel proposes presentations on causes, motivations and the social consequences of international marriages. The panel will address the unique features of social-cultural communication in international marriages as well as family roles and the "places" of foreign spouses under the conditions of differing social and cultural environments.
18. Care Across the Life-Course in Comparative Perspective
Organizer: Mary Louise Nagata, mnagata@fmarion.edu
This panel proposes to examine provisions for care, both within and without the household, without requiring analysis of household typologies or co-residence. Was care primarily provided by family? If so, by whom? If not, then why not and what other provisions were there?
19. Family Demography Beyond the Household
Organizer: Hilde Bras, haj.bras@fsw.vu.nl
The development of kinship between the Middle Ages and the twentieth century has for a long time been discussed in terms of its contraction towards the modern nuclear family (Parsons, 1943). Moreover, the large-scale existence of household lists in vital registers of various kinds has led family demographers and historians to focus on the composition of household units as an approximation of kin relations in the past. Over the past two decades, however, ever-growing groups of scholars have come to regard kinship - and particularly kin beyond the household - as one of the keys to understanding processes of social change during the transition to an industrialized society in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Sabean et al 2007; Davidoff 2006; Segalen 1991). At the same time, the growth of historical databases with micro data and the introduction of new methods of analysis has initiated research which testifies to the vital importance of family and kinship networks for diverse events in the life course, including marriage, migration, fertility and longevity (e.g. Bengtsson and Mineau, 2008). In this session, we build further on these fresh findings. We welcome papers that focus on the role that blood and affinal relatives, friends, and neighbors played in influencing individuals' social and demographic behavior in the past. We are particularly interested in papers that pay special attention to the mechanisms involved in the influence of social networks and/or in the methods that can be applied to chart and explain the effects of relations beyond the household.
20. Methodological tools for the history of the economic role of siblings in traditional societies
Organizer: Fabrice Boudjaaba, fabrice.boudjaaba@gmail.com
Among the family functions (father, mother, child, uncle, nephew) brothers and sisters have not been the most studied by historians nor by sociologists until now. It must be said that the sibling is often difficult to find and to follow within the sources. Whether one proceeds by reconstituted genealogies or family reconstitution (method of historical demography) or by relations bottom-up/top-down (father / mother) it is easier to identify the types of collateral relations than those of brothers and sisters. Of course, by studying economic and social reproduction of families and individuals, historians became interested in the siblings through the issue of designation of the heir (often the eldest) and the fate of cadets without inheritance. However even in this type of survey, the sibling is always considered through the relationship between parents and children because the central preoccupation concerns intergenerational wealth transmission. What we would like to explore in this session is the siblings in their economic dimension but envisaged for themselves. What are the forms of solidarity (or conflict), on the economic level, between brothers and sisters in traditional societies? Can we identify the forms of collective management of land (even less successful than "frérêches" systems) but also forms of association in the labor market? To what extent do the rank of birth but also the mutuality between brothers and sisters have a significant influence on the social reproduction of individuals and their economic destiny? The geographical and chronological limits are Europe from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.
Beyond these questions, participants are invited to submit papers detailing first methods (and difficulties) used to identify siblings and then the forms of economic solidarity between them.
21. Culture and Demography
Organizer: Bart Van de Putte, bart.vandeputte@ugent.be
In this session we welcome papers that use demographic information as indicators of cultural change and difference. Examples of such indicators are: age homogamy, seasonality of marriage, marriage witnesses, timing between widowhood and remarriage, divorce, naming, etc.