Poverty in Modern Europe. Micro-Perspectives on the Formation of the Welfare State in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Conference, 10-12 May 2012, London

SFB 600 "Fremdheit und Armut", Teilprojekte B4 und B5; in Kooperation mit dem Deutschen Historischen Institut London 10.05.2012-12.05.2012, London, German Historical Institute, 17 Bloomsbury Square

Zum Abschluss der dritten und letzten Förderphase des SFB 600 laden die Teilprojekte B4 "Armut und Armenpolitik in europäischen Städten im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert" und B5 "Armut im ländlichen Raum im Spannungsfeld zwischen staatlicher Wohlfahrtspolitik, humanitär-religiöser Philanthropie und Selbsthilfe im industriellen Zeitalter (1860-1975)" zu einer internationalen Konferenz ein. Die beiden Teilprojekte haben sich in den vergangenen Jahren intensiv mit den Ausprägungen und Bearbeitungsformen von Armut im Zeitraum von ca. 1830 bis ca. 1975 befasst. Dabei fokussieren sie weniger auf die inzwischen gut erforschten nationalstaatlichen Entwicklungslinien, sondern nehmen die 'Mikroperspektive' lokaler und regionaler Fallstudien ein. Unter dem Schlagwort der 'Mikroperspektiven' geht es um regionale und lokale Wahrnehmungen von Armut, die Alltagspraxis von gewährter bzw. verweigerter Unterstützung sowie das Verhältnis zwischen öffentlicher Fürsorge, privater Wohltätigkeit und Solidarnetzwerken. Damit einher geht die Frage nach Modernisierungs- und Professionalisierungsprozessen in der Fürsorge auf lokaler bzw. regionaler Ebene. Gleichzeitig fragen wir nach Armutsbiographien und den Handlungsmöglichkeiten und Erfahrungen der Armen selbst.

Die Tagung soll eine Kontextualisierung der Projektergebnisse in zweifachem Sinn ermöglichen. Zum einen wird ihre Einbettung in breitere geographische Kontexte angestrebt. Zum anderen geht es uns um die Rückbindung der Ergebnisse an den Kontext der methodisch-theoretischen Forschungsdiskussion.

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Thursday, 10 May

Registration from 12.30pm

13.00-13.30 Introduction

13.30-15.15 Spatial Patterns
Comment: Lutz Raphael (University of Trier)
Chair: Beate Althammer (University of Trier)

Douglas Brown (King's College London): New Geographies of the New Poor Law in England and Wales

Mel Cousins (Caledonian University, Glasgow): Spatial Patterns of Poor Relief in Ireland, 1800-1914

Hans-Christian Petersen (University of Mainz): Who Owns the City?
Possibilities and Limits of Creating Social Spaces 'from below' - St.
Petersburg and London in Comparison (1840-1914)

Christiane Reinecke (Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte, Hamburg):
Geographies of Poverty: Representing Marginality in Urban Space in West Germany and France, 1960-1990

15.15-15.45 Coffee

15.45-17.30 Rural Areas
Comment: Josef Ehmer (University of Vienna)
Chair: Tamara Stazic-Wendt (University of Trier)

Sonja Matter (University of Bern): "Neither Efficient nor Humane?"
Social Welfare Practices in Rural Central Switzerland in the Early 20th Century

Elisabeth Grüner (University of Trier): Precarious Living in Times of Economic Boom. A Microperspective on Rural Poverty in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s

Susanne Hahn (University of Trier): "Structurally Weak" and "Backwards"?
- Rural Areas in the Poverty-Policy Debates of the 1950s and 1960s

Marcel Boldorf (Ruhr-University Bochum): Social Welfare in Rural Brandenburg. Local Studies between the Legacy of World War II and the Rise of GDR-State Socialism

17.30-18.00 Coffee

18.00 Keynote
Serge Paugam (EHESS): Filiation, Organic Participation and Citizenship:
Social Ties and Norms of Poverty Policies in Modern Welfare Regimes.

Friday, 11 May

9.00-10.45 Languages of Poverty
Comment: Gabriele Lingelbach (University of Bamberg)
Chair: Inga Brandes (University of Trier)

Paul André Rosental/Elodie Richard (ESOPP): Assistance and Protection of 'Vulnerable Populations': A Lexicometric Comparative Project

Hubertus Jahn (University of Cambridge): Voices from the Lower Depths:
Russian Poor in their Own Words

Dorothee Lürbke (University of Freiburg): Seen with their Own Eyes:
Self-Presentations of the Poor in Freiburg and Schwerin, 1950 - 1975

Andreas Gestrich/Daniela Heinisch (German Historical Institute London):
"... They sit for days and have only their sorrow to eat". Old Age Poverty in German Pauper Narratives

10.45-11.15 Coffee

11.15-13.00 Unemployment
Comment: Matthias Reiss (University of Exeter)
Chair: Susanne Hahn (University of Trier)

Tamara Stazic-Wendt (University of Trier): An Unbearable Social Existence. The Unemployed in (Rural) Poor Relief (Germany, 1918-1933)

Irina Vana (University of Vienna): The Unemployed and those Ineligible for Further Assistance. The Re-Assessment of Unemployment and Material Needs in the Process of the Establishment of Public Labour Offices (Austria, 1918-1938)

Elizabeth A. Scott (University of Saskatchewan): Unite Idle Men with Idle Land: The Evolution of the Hollesley Bay Training Farm Experiment for the London Unemployed, 1905 - 1908

Wiebke Wiede (University of Trier): The Poor Unemployed. Diagnoses of Unemployment in Britain and West Germany 1964-90

13.00-14.00 Lunch Break

14.00-15.30 Vagrancy and Homelessness
Comment: Sylvia Hahn (University of Salzburg)
Chair: Elisabeth Grüner (University of Trier)

Beate Althammer (University of Trier): Controlling Vagrancy. Germany, England and France, 1880-1914

Sigrid Wadauer (University of Vienna): Tramps on Trial (Austria,
1920-1938)

Tehila Sasson (UC Berkeley): The Politics of Home: Homeless Families and Public Welfare in Post-War Britain

15.30-16.00 Coffee

16.00-17.45 Pauper Children
Comment: Alysa Levene (Oxford Brookes University)
Chair: Jens Gründler (IGM Stuttgart)

Katharina Brandes (University of Trier): Orphans, Pauper Children or Wayward Children? The Lives of Children Cared for by Public Institutions in Hamburg, 1892-1914

Ernst Guggisberg (State Archive Thurgau/ University of Basel): Reducing Poverty Starts with Children: the Swiss Societies for Educating the Poor
(Armenerziehungsvereine) in the 19th/20th century

Friederike Kind-Kovacs (University of Regensburg): Save the (Hungarian)
Children: WW I as a Trigger of Children's Social In/Exclusion

Nicoleta Roman ("Nicolae Iorga" Institute of History): Living at the Edge of Society: Wallachian Orphans in the first half of the 19th Century

17.45-18.15 Coffee

18.15 Keynote
Steve King (University of Leicester): Why are the 'Unworthy' not Excluded from Poor Relief?

19.45 Dinner in the Library of the German Historical Institute

Saturday, 12 May

9.30-11.15 Institutions
Comment: Peter King (University of Leicester)
Chair: Katharina Brandes (University of Trier)

Jens Gründler (IGM Stuttgart): Care and Control. How Families Used Asylums, Glasgow 1875-1920

Tanja Rietmann (University of Bern): Detaining the Non-Criminal Poor.
Coercive 19th and 20th Century Welfare Policies Towards Socially Deviant Men and Women in Switzerland

David R. Green (King's College London): Working the System: Pauper Communities and Plebeian Spaces in Mid-Nineteenth-Century London

Christina Vanja (Landeswohlfahrtsverband Hessen): The Juvenile on the Margins of Society - Public Education in Reformatories in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1950s and 1960s

11.15-11.45 Coffee

11.45-12.30 Final Discussion

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Katharina Brandes

SFB 600 "Fremdheit und Armut"
Teilprojekt B4
Universität Trier
54286 Trier

brandesk [at] uni-trier.de

Homepage des SFB 600: http://www.sfb600.uni-trier.de

[Cross-posted, with thanks, from H-Soz-u-Kult]