Preliminary Programme

Wed 11 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 12 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.00 - 18.30

Fri 13 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 14 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

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Wednesday 11 April 2012 14.00 - 16.00
U-3 SOC03 New Perspectives on Poor Relief and Poverty
Maths Building: 326
Network: Social Inequality Chair: Susannah Ottaway
Organizers: - Discussant: Henk Looijesteijn
Christos Desyllas : Microfinancial Structures and Strategies of Social Policy
This study will try to analyse how a microcredit and firstbanking character structure, the Monte di Pieta (MdP), had an important role of social policy and specially in the sustainability of the poor classes of Corfu (17th -19th cent.).
The history of solidaristic microfinance, which also belongs to today’s system of ... (Show more)
This study will try to analyse how a microcredit and firstbanking character structure, the Monte di Pieta (MdP), had an important role of social policy and specially in the sustainability of the poor classes of Corfu (17th -19th cent.).
The history of solidaristic microfinance, which also belongs to today’s system of microcredit has ancient origins. The Monte di Pieta, developed in the name of piety, as a provider of microcredit is representative of the history of the social policy and economy of Corfu (Greece). In founding the MdP in Corfu the Authorities was more interested in preventing poverty than relieving it and the prevention was the aim of institutionalized charity forms.
The MdP has always pursued two fundamental missions: 1) to collect deposits from small savers, granting security, adequate interest and high liquidity of investment: 2) to lend loans to poor citizen.
Was destined to aid those were only needed economic help in order to leave a condition of necessity relying on personal ability related to the economic situation.
The primary goal was to enable the creation of wealth by the individual and reinforces indirectly the economic potential of the citizens. Was an advantageous economic venture for the clients, but also for the city. The city was alleviated from obligation to assist men and women who risked becoming really poor. For the city, the risk of potentially dangerous behaviors inspired by poverty diminished.
Throughout its long life, MdP was used as a tool of economic, financial and social policy of the Treasury. It always played a significant role. It was promoter of innovative solidaristic finance, it took part in the promotion of social initiatives. It has always been present, active and supportive in the fortunes and the misfortunes of the Corfiot society. The MdP has crossed all the institutional political regimes of Corfu, receiving greater or less autonomy from the central State. Its activity has never been interrupted and has always, more or less, been protagonist of the life of the Corfiot society from its foundation in 1630 to the 1900.
The method of historical research is based on documents, laws and financial statements, kept in the MdP’s archives.
The MdP was relevant for a variety of valuable social and economic reasons:
• Because it recognized in the economic activity a possible field of solidaristic action (a special kind of charity)
• Because it aimed to enable the less poor opportunity to free themselves from a marginal economic state
• Because it choose to operate at the level of the citizen, connecting the destinies of the rich with those of the less affluent
• Because had an important social contribution (donations, funds for widows and orphans, pensions, bequests, dowries, benefits to poorhouse etc.).
and also was:
• convenient economically, socially and ethically
• convenient to individuals as a collective and
• convenient to less affluent but also to the rich (Show less)

Kaat Louckx : The Classification of the Poor in Great Britain and Belgium at the End of the 19th Century. A Socio-historical Approach on Changing Classification Patterns
Our paper will focus on the classification of the poor in Great Britain and Belgium at the end of the 19th century. To that end I will compare the classification of poverty made by Charles Booth in his survey into Life and Labour of the People in Londen (1886-1903) with ... (Show more)
Our paper will focus on the classification of the poor in Great Britain and Belgium at the end of the 19th century. To that end I will compare the classification of poverty made by Charles Booth in his survey into Life and Labour of the People in Londen (1886-1903) with the classifications made in Belgian population censuses. I will focus on Booth’s ‘lowest class’ A (which consists of some occasional labourers, street sellers,…) and look how the professions that are linked with the description of this class are reflected in Belgian censuses. Interesting in this context is the question whether there is a connection between the definition and classification of the poor and the idea of social assistance and social security in both countries. (Show less)

Inge Mønster-Kjær : The Poor Behind Barbed Wire
The Danish poorhouses spread throughout the country during the 19th century. Later the development has been named the poorhouse movement, but in fact there was no coordinated national effort to promote poorhouses as the solution towards the increasing problem with poverty. Individual actors argued pro- or con the poorhouse solution, ... (Show more)
The Danish poorhouses spread throughout the country during the 19th century. Later the development has been named the poorhouse movement, but in fact there was no coordinated national effort to promote poorhouses as the solution towards the increasing problem with poverty. Individual actors argued pro- or con the poorhouse solution, by legislation the government drew a framework for the creation of the poorhouses (but did not enforce it), the city counsels based their poverty eradication services on previous experience in the local community and volunteer work was based on different programmes developed by individual actors and not by the state.

I compare local and state initiatives, in my attempt to understand how the poorhouse concept evolved. What puzzles me, is, that the concentration of poorhouses in time and place easily leads to the assumption that one collective and coordinated effort was made to secure this particular way of dealing with the challenge of unsupported people. In fact the poorhouses were made possible by law, but not dictated. Instead local actors all over the country chose this method in fighting poverty locally.

The main question for my PhD. is:

If the state controlled the process, why then do the local solutions differ so much, and if the initiatives were local, why did it happen at the same time all over the country?
Was the poorhouse the lowest common denominator? Or was there a given essence in the debate, an agreement behind the disagreement that made the poorhouse the most obvious solution?

In this paper, I will analyze a small corner of this problem: I will describe, analyze and discuss the regulations of the individual poorhouses at the Danish island Funen, and try to decide to what extend the state regulated the local solutions? (Show less)

Klas Nyberg, Mats Hayen & Håkan Jakobsson : Credit, Trust and Financial Networks in 18th and 19th Century Stockholm
In the mid 19th century, the Swedish credit market was still dominated by private financial networks and by a private supply of capital. Banks, discounts and other public financial institutions played a minor role as financers of trade and industry. In spite of these circumstances private financial networks were embedded ... (Show more)
In the mid 19th century, the Swedish credit market was still dominated by private financial networks and by a private supply of capital. Banks, discounts and other public financial institutions played a minor role as financers of trade and industry. In spite of these circumstances private financial networks were embedded in public financial institutions and legislation. Swedish financial legislation had been improved since the early 18th century and especially the Bankruptcy institute became more efficient in the late 18th century. These legal reforms diminished risks and losses for merchants and private bankers during bankruptcies. The reform of the Bankruptcy institute played a crucial role in the development of the financial market and in the increase of supply of capital during the period of early industrialisation in the early 19th century. Previous research by Philip T Hoffman, Gilles Postel–Vinay and Jean–Laurent Rosenthal suggests that public financial institutions, such as the notary institution in southern Europe, supported private financial networks and reduced risk during the transition from early modern to modern time. The aim of the paper is to examine the role of lawyers and notaries during the legal change of the bankruptcy institution in Sweden, c. 1734-1862. Preliminary results indicate that civil servants such as prosecuting counsels from the Board of Commerce and lawyers from different courts in the city of Stockholm played a crucial role in the reconstruction of financial private networks when cases of bankruptcy were treated in the city council (Stockholm's Rådhusrätt) and higher courts. The method is based on careful investigation of a sample of different types of bankruptcies in Stockholm during three periods marked by changed bankruptcy legislation: 1734-1772, 1773-1830 and 1830-1862.

The results are based on data in
a relational database covering cases of bankruptcy in Stockholm between 1687 and 1849. (See session proposal) (Show less)

Olga Salamatova : On the Way to Nowhere: The Interpretation and Adaptation of Poor Relief Foreign Patterns by the Russian Public Men, 1890s – 1917
For the first time a foreign experience of poor relief became a subject of the public discussion in Russia at the turn of the 19th century in connection with the public assistance system reforms and ‘the charity boom’ caused by rapid rise of capitalism.
The first steps to the purposeful ... (Show more)
For the first time a foreign experience of poor relief became a subject of the public discussion in Russia at the turn of the 19th century in connection with the public assistance system reforms and ‘the charity boom’ caused by rapid rise of capitalism.
The first steps to the purposeful study of the foreign patterns were made by the Commission established in 1892 for the revision of the public assistance legislation. Evidence drawn from the commissioner’s memoranda and the public writings reveals a deep interest of the Russian authors above all in the English Poor Law practice.
The paper seeks to explain the theoretical and practical importance of English Poor Law practice including its moral and political value components for Russian well-educated and socially active elite.
The analysis of the views of Russian public men shows that the considerable part of them suggested to adopt the essential traits of the English system such as aiding ‘only in case of extreme need’, ‘satisfaction of the most necessary humane wants’, poor rate, charity organization etc. However their intention ‘to transplant’ English experience on the Russian ground evoked heated debates between the commissioners themselves and in the press. In the public mind English experience inevitably had to compete with German one, first of all as a contraposition between English working house or C.S. Lock’s principles of charity organization and the Elberfeld system. Before the First World War sympathies to the different systems sometimes gained the political implications.
The study of foreign experience had a profound effect on the Russian charitable activity and caused to appearance of similar relief institutes such as e.g. houses of industry (Russian analogue English labour test and working house simultaneously). After the long debates the Commission for revision of the public assistance legislation worked out the fourth agreed-on project to reform this sphere. The paper argued that Russian intellectual elite was opened to the English experience (and the foreign one as a whole) and called to organize the public assistance system which could be founded on the sense of civicism and combined centralization with the local government. However there was a dramatic disparity between their feelings and the self-preservation positions of the tsarist regime and the Orthodox Church. The Commission was dissolved as early as 1897 in spite of the completed reforms project. Further ‘charity boom’ absorbed only separate elements of the efficient public assistance and couldn’t reduce the social tension in Russia before the forthcoming ordeals of the World War and the revolution. (Show less)



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