Preliminary Programme

Wed 22 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Thu 23 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Fri 24 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Sat 25 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

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Wednesday 22 March 2006 10:45
K-2 GEO01 Spaces of Sexual Citizenship 1. Gender
Room K
Network: Chair: Stuart Basten
Organizers: - Discussants: -
Francesca Moore : Abortion, citizenship and women’s rights in industrial England
Prior to the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, which made it illegal to procure an abortion under any circumstances, the law dictated that those administering remedies were liable to be prosecuted, the woman herself being an accessory. By the end of the nineteenth century the pregnant woman was enmeshed ... (Show more)
Prior to the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, which made it illegal to procure an abortion under any circumstances, the law dictated that those administering remedies were liable to be prosecuted, the woman herself being an accessory. By the end of the nineteenth century the pregnant woman was enmeshed in criminal law: private sexual, reproductive acts and sexual morality were the explicit business of the state. This paper examines the state’s role in defining and regulating female sexual citizenship, drawing on Foucault’s discussion of biopower and the conceptual strength of the
norm, with special reference to the early twentieth-century industrial towns of Lancashire. Little is known about the role of abortion as a method of fertility control in industrial Britain, but the existence of illegal abortion suggests that women asserted a role in determining family size. This paper thus counterposes the view that the individual woman’s control of her own body was a selfish anti-social act with a consideration of attempts at sexual autonomy. This paper asks whether abortion in industrial Britain could be part of an emerging sexual ethic in which women exercised their right to choose and the right to be freed from the burden of childbearing. The paper focuses attention on women’s rejection of the version of sexual citizenship imposed on them by the state. This research describes female networks of knowledge, support and assistance and suggests
that in the face of possible prosecution, moral and social disgrace and religious condemnation, these women set out to reject the regulatory burden of the state, reject legal and social norms, in order to take an active role in redefining their sexual citizenship in Britain. This paper thus attempts to place the idea and practice of abortion in its political, legal and social context. It addresses how illegal abortion, as a method of fertility control, intersects with women’s sexual citizenship. The paper explores how female deviancy and criminality can be interpreted as an effort to recapture control of female sexual citizenship. (Show less)

Christine Petto : 'For the Service of my Husband': The Widow-mapmakers of early modern Europe
My research in the field of terrestrial and hydrographic map printing has yielded evidence that the widows of those involved in the trade could be quite adept at pursuing similar commercial attention as well as compensation (or patronage) from a variety of sources in recognition of their husbands’ services. In ... (Show more)
My research in the field of terrestrial and hydrographic map printing has yielded evidence that the widows of those involved in the trade could be quite adept at pursuing similar commercial attention as well as compensation (or patronage) from a variety of sources in recognition of their husbands’ services. In other words, widows knew well the avenues of power and participated, like their husbands, in the social institution of patronage. Exploiting many of the same methods as their husbands, these widows of booksellers, map sellers, printers, map publishers, and engravers often sought to foster successful businesses. For example, in England the absence of strong centralized state sponsorship led widows, like their husbands before them, to exploit commercial avenues such as subscriptions and printed catalogues as well as more local patronage efforts. Meanwhile in France, the widow-mapmakers often looked for continued crown or state patronage. After the deaths of their husbands, widows in both countries continued to pursue support or patronage—most often as a recognition of the importance of the work produced—in an effort similar to the method that had helped their husbands establish successful businesses. They both, however, added, not surprisingly, the “widow element” that reflected on the committed service of their husbands to valuable commercial efforts as well as local or crown interests, expressed their vulnerable position in the field of geographic production, and all this in an effort to maintain some financial solvency while often at the same time promoting the position of a young son or business heir. This investigation, still in its early stages, utilizes the letters, contracts, wills, published works, and governmental decrees involving widows in France and England primarily from the period of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The material gathered is archival in nature and piecing together the lives of these women is quite a challenge, but research of this nature will help to move the study of women in the geographical field beyond the erroneous idea of little to no participation and helpful but limited lists of names to a greater understanding of the challenges women faced in the commercial (and scientific) arena. (Show less)

Richard Smith : Servile status and extra-marital sex in medieval English rural communities
Unmarried mothers of vilein sttaus in medieval English rural communiities were subject in theory to a fine imposed by manorial lords through their manorial courts. Unfree females who had sexual intercourse outside of marriage were also on some manors liable to pay amercemenbtrs. This ppaer attempts to reconstruct the local ... (Show more)
Unmarried mothers of vilein sttaus in medieval English rural communiities were subject in theory to a fine imposed by manorial lords through their manorial courts. Unfree females who had sexual intercourse outside of marriage were also on some manors liable to pay amercemenbtrs. This ppaer attempts to reconstruct the local controls that manorial lords imposed upon such females and in particular it tests the proposition that such amercements were localy highly variable in their level and incidence from place to place as a function of the servile component in local populations, the degree to which comuniites were socially differentiated and commercialised as well as the extent to which the threat of dearth-induced social and economic crises was ever present. The paper also attempots to show how within the specific context of the early fourteenth century local manorial juries used punishments embeddded in vileinage to discriminate against certain women who through their reeproductive behaviour that posed a threat to the political and economic dominance of leading landholder families and the welfare charges that such elites might be obliged to meet. A comparison is drawn with the situation in rural communities in the early esvententh century when populations had recovered to their pre-Black Death levels and when local puritan village elites in their treatment of sexual misdemeanours were bent upon social control and avoidance of welfare exspenditure in the initial decades of the Old Poor Law (Show less)



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