Preliminary Programme

Tue 26 February
    14.15
    16.30

Wed 27 February
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

Thu 28 February
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

Fri 29 February
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

Sat 1 March
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

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Tuesday 26 February 2008 16.30
T-2 FAMII Construction of Blood II : Genealogies, Rules of Succession and Representations of Rules of Heredity
Room 9
Network: Family and Demography Chair: Christopher H. Johnson
Organizer: David Warren Sabean Discussant: Francesca Trivellato
Bernard Derouet : Blood in Law and Jurisprudence in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century France
This paper will try to examine when and how the concept of blood became an important means of dealing with kinship matters during the early modern period in France, in law, jurisprudence and comments about the "coutumes". As this question is partly linked to the representations about heirship and identity, ... (Show more)
This paper will try to examine when and how the concept of blood became an important means of dealing with kinship matters during the early modern period in France, in law, jurisprudence and comments about the "coutumes". As this question is partly linked to the representations about heirship and identity, a special stress will be put on possible changes concerning the commonly agreed conception about the right to inheritance and succession. (Show less)

Michaela Hohkamp : “Consanguinitas as a concept of power in early modern European historiography”.
Historiographical texts of the early modern period (16th until 18th century) such as histories of dynasties, chronicles of towns and countries, and world histories present very different narratives about the origins of the European royal houses. This paper illustrates how those narratives are based upon different conceptions regarding the coherency ... (Show more)
Historiographical texts of the early modern period (16th until 18th century) such as histories of dynasties, chronicles of towns and countries, and world histories present very different narratives about the origins of the European royal houses. This paper illustrates how those narratives are based upon different conceptions regarding the coherency of kinship and the transmission of power and possession. Seen in this light, "consanguinitas" may be viewed not only as a concept of blood relationship but as a concept of power. (Show less)

Simon Teuscher : Flesh and Blood in Medieval Treatises on the 'Arbor Consanguinitatis'
Between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries, there appeared several successive versions of treatises on the arbor consanguinitatis–a kinship diagram that was used to determine rights of inheritance, to calculate degrees of kinship, and to define the limits of incest. Many of these treatises digress into more general reflections on ... (Show more)
Between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries, there appeared several successive versions of treatises on the arbor consanguinitatis–a kinship diagram that was used to determine rights of inheritance, to calculate degrees of kinship, and to define the limits of incest. Many of these treatises digress into more general reflections on the nature and meaning of kinship. The paper examines such treatises in a comparative perspective in order to trace shifts in the understanding of kinship. Although the treatises deal with consanguinity, it is not before the 15th century that they begin to address the topic of sanguis. The paper presents the hypothesis that metaphors of flesh—that had dominated earlier—harmonized with concepts of kinship stressing the importance of marriage, of connections between living people, and of horizontal networks. In contrast, blood metaphors came with concepts that placed stronger emphasis on decent, connections between the living and the death, stable hierarchies, and coherent kin-groups. (Show less)

John Waller : Ideologies of Bloodlines from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century
This paper examines the reasons why notions of heredity were frequently employed between the early 1500s and mid-1700s. It considers (a) the perceived importance of biological inheritance in determining a child's paternity (in the contexts of royal succession, identifying the fathers of bastards, and vindicating accusations of adultery); (b) the ... (Show more)
This paper examines the reasons why notions of heredity were frequently employed between the early 1500s and mid-1700s. It considers (a) the perceived importance of biological inheritance in determining a child's paternity (in the contexts of royal succession, identifying the fathers of bastards, and vindicating accusations of adultery); (b) the use of the concept of hereditary disease by physicians and their clients; (c) the emergence of the ideology of the bloodline as a form of social hereditarianism; and (d) the challenges to ideas about blood and social status in the writings of political radicals such as the Levellers. Heredity was clearly a protean concept. But a central theme of this paper is that the 'hard' hereditarianism of the late nineteenth century was to a large extent anticipated in the hereditarianism of previous centuries (Show less)



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