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4 Sibling economics It must be remember’d that life consists not of a series of illustrious actions, or of elegant enjoyments; the greater part of our time passes in complyance with necessities in the performance of daily duties, in the removal of small inconveniences, in the procurement of petty pleasures; & we are ill or well at ease, as the main stream of life glides on smoothly, or is ruffled by small obstacles & frequent [como]tion. Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1775, extracted by Anne Travell, c.1780s1 On a Monday in
Home economics offers an innovative, comparative history of domestic service in southern Africa’s post-colonial cities. Focusing on Lusaka and drawing wider comparisons, it provides the first in-depth study of domestic service in Black households in the region. Drawing on rich oral histories and diverse documentary sources, it develops a new theoretical approach which, for the first time, brings wage and kin-based domestic labour and child and adult workers into a single frame of analysis. In so doing, it challenges the narrow focus of existing scholarship and policymaking and breaks new ground in the theorisation of work. The book traces how Black employers and workers adapted existing models of domestic service rooted in colonial labour relations and African kinship structures, revealing how waged domestic service was gradually undermined by increased reliance on extended family networks and the labour of young female kin. It demonstrates how women and girls pursued employment in and came to dominate both kin-based and waged domestic service. It also explores efforts to regulate and organise these largely informal and intimate forms of work, and the gendered and generational impacts of such interventions. This rich and timely study provides essential insights into the nature of gender, work, and urban economies across southern Africa. It reveals the strategies that children, women, and men have pursued to support themselves and their dependants in the face of economic decline, precarious employment, and stark inequalities, and shows how gender, age, class, and kinship have shaped work within and beyond the home.
11 The economics of pain: pain in Dutch stock trade discourses and practices, 1600–1750 Inger Leemans In 1720, the first international stock exchange crisis hit the financial markets of Paris, London and the Dutch Republic. The ‘mass hysteria’ seems to have fascinated, bewildered and outraged the public. Hundreds of pamphlets, theatre plays and allegories were printed, translated and distributed across the countries involved in the South Sea Bubble, the Mississippi scheme, or wind trade, as the crisis would be referred to in England, France and the Netherlands
source and the way in which Finzel recorded the payments he received. In the following section, I will highlight the striking religious elements and connotations of his Rationarium and will place them into the context of his strong Protestant faith. My chapter will conclude with an analysis of the economics of Finzel's practice and of the relative importance of the payments he received from patients of different social and economic status. Hiob Finzel Hiob Finzel, or Iobus Fincelius as he latinised his name, was born around
addressed by ‘fundamental research’. 31 It was appropriate for government to make a contribution to general investigations or fundamental research as this would potentially benefit an entire sector of industry. The investigation of issues that were not broad or basic enough to be termed ‘fundamental research’ but were specific to the processes or output of one firm should not benefit from public funds. Government needed to avoid the implication that it favoured any individual company. In the first half of the 1940s, officials in the Economics
3 The audience, economics, and geography of popular science Popular science gripped the imagination of people all over Europe in the eighteenth century and individuals peppered their conversations with facts, allusions, references, and analogies to current scientific discoveries and debates. When John Adams arrived in France to assume his new post as United States ambassador he immediately met scientifically literate people. Adams, who was a bit less versed in the ways of sociability than some of his predecessors, especially Benjamin Franklin, found himself in a
Ch a pter 2 British Politics, Economics and Culture in Fascist Discourse We think with pride to our Mussolinian discipline, which out of a people without an empire, without materials and without resources [coming from] old accumulated wealth, made an ordered and tempered nation, where there are not Laburisti, but everyone is a worker.1 W hile Renzo De Felice argued that Mussolini was convinced the corporative experiment was a long-term one, he also maintained that the Duce was sincerely convinced his new system was the way forward in order to avoid the
In the early years of the twentieth century, Professor Karl Lamprecht was a powerful and controversial figure in German academia, offering a universal interpretation of history that drew on an eclectic mix of politics, economics, anthropology and psychology. This article explores Mark Hovell’s experiences of working with Lamprecht at the Institut für Kultur- und Universalgeschichte [Institute for Cultural and Universal History] in Leipzig between 1912 and 1913, while also situating Hovell’s criticisms of the Lamprechtian method within wider contemporary assessments of Lamprecht’s scholarship.
Since spousal and child-parent relationships have undergone enormous changes, they are subject to weighty legal and religious control, and exert a powerful influence on people's cultural imagination. The emphasis on marriage and parents and children has generated a rich and deep historiography. This book outlines the contours of Georgian siblinghood to understand its specific advantages and disadvantages because it was in this period that lived siblinghood began to lose the public recognition of its meaning and function while fictive siblinghood increased its abstract reach. It suggests that couples and parents had other important and demanding family relations, relations they had to negotiate and combine with spousal and parental duties. In particular, it draws attention to the sibling relationships that supported, supplemented, and even supplanted marital and parental relations. The book considers siblings as children and how they learned the role of sibling in both familial and social settings. Parental advice literature and parents' own accounts demonstrate that mothers and fathers were expected to teach morals and class- and gender-specific behaviour and to treat their children fairly. The book explores injunctions about friendship, affection, and love between siblings, revealing that that for siblings, love, affection, and friendship meant ideas of unity, solidarity, and unwavering support. Discussing sibling economics, the book focuses on the familial, material, social, and financial work done by siblings, particularly within and between households. Shifting attention to sibling relations reveals the essential labour of and contribution of siblings to early modern family economics and politics.
This book explores the appropriation of science in French society and the development of an urban scientific culture. Science underwent a process of commodification and popularization during the eighteenth century as more and more individuals sought to acquire some knowledge of scientific activities and as more and more people entered public debates on science. Popular science took many forms in the eighteenth century. While books, periodicals, universities, and academies all provided a breadth of scientific popularization at different levels and for different audiences, this book focuses on popular science within urban culture more generally. More than ever before, public lectures and demonstrations, clubs, and other activities arose in the eighteenth century as new opportunities for the general population to gain access to and appropriate science. These arenas for popular science were not restricted to people of a certain education. In fact, popular science, and public lecture courses in particular, was often set at a level that could be understood by pretty much anyone. This was a bone of contention between popularizers and their critics who felt that in some cases popular science lacked any sort of real scientific content. In reality, some popularizers had specific theoretical content in mind for their courses while others were admittedly more interested in theatrics. Identifying the audience, cost, and location of popular science helps reveal its place in urban culture. The book looks at the audience, identified through advertisements and course descriptions, as well as the economics of courses.