Preliminary Programme

Wed 4 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 5 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30
    19.00 - 20.15
    20.30 - 22.00

Fri 6 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 7 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.00 - 17.00

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Wednesday 4 April 2018 16.30 - 18.30
F-4 RUR10 Consumption, Food and Social Change
MAP/OG/017 Maths and Physics
Network: Rural Chair: Rosa Congost
Organizer: Rosa Congost Discussant: Julie Marfany
Gérard Béaur : Patterns of Food Consumption and Social Changes in the Long Run. The Postmortem Inventories of Meaux and the Brie Countryside (1600-1790)
Despite their well-known shortcomings and their biases, the post mortem inventories provide an overview of households' living standards and patterns of consumption. In the long run, they may give an idea of the changes that may affect these practices and hence provide indices of social change. Among a lot of ... (Show more)
Despite their well-known shortcomings and their biases, the post mortem inventories provide an overview of households' living standards and patterns of consumption. In the long run, they may give an idea of the changes that may affect these practices and hence provide indices of social change. Among a lot of items, the issue of food consumption should be relevant to reach this aim. We propose to examine this point by building on the inventories of the region of Meaux in the Brie, in the Paris region, over a period of 2 centuries, since we may use a more than 1000 PMI database from 1600 to 1790. We will rely on three indices. On the one hand, stocks of vegetable-based commodities, notably the different cereals, not so much their volume as the composition of the cocktail of products; on the other hand, the livestock of cattle, pigs and poultry which was likely to bring meat or protein (meat, eggs, milk); finally, the presence of more sophisticated " products such as either spices, pepper, sugar, nutmeg, or coffee, tea, tobacco and alcohol, which could reveal the introduction of new, exotic and more expensive products into the household’s consumption. These three indices will provide tools to characterize the dietary changes carried out by the various social groups and consequently to infer the evidence of social dynamics. (Show less)

Laurent Heyberger, Laurent Herment : Male Breadwinners’ Food Intakes and Estimations and Height of Conscripts in Nineteenth-century Rural France
Numerous studies have demonstrated that the height of Europeans has decreased during the first half of the nineteenth century (Komlos, 1998, Steckel, 2009). For France, in some rural regions the trend was reversed at least until the great depression of the end of the nineteenth century (Heyberger, 2007). Nevertheless, if ... (Show more)
Numerous studies have demonstrated that the height of Europeans has decreased during the first half of the nineteenth century (Komlos, 1998, Steckel, 2009). For France, in some rural regions the trend was reversed at least until the great depression of the end of the nineteenth century (Heyberger, 2007). Nevertheless, if the anthropometric trends are now well known for these regions, this is not the case for the food intake of the French rural population. It is here assumed that the animal protein intake during the three first years of life and the adolescence played a crucial role in the determination of the height of young men. Historians usually use the food intake estimations provided by the published part of the agricultural survey of 1852 (Demonet, 1992, Heyberger, 2014). Yet, the unpublished part of the agricultural survey of 1862 provides several thousands rural male breadwinners’ food intake estimations for the middle of the Second Empire. In this paper we then intend to cross two types of data collected at the individual level to assess the link between height of conscripts, and the food-intake data provided by the survey of 1862. Firstly we want to assess the link between height of conscripts and the protein intake at a local level. Secondly, as the survey provides food intake only for male breadwinners, it is possible to question the repartition of the global food intake within the household. In which region of France and for which age does the food intake estimations of the male breadwinners in 1862 explain the best the height of conscripts? (Show less)

Rosa Lluch-Bramon, Maria Soler-Sala : The Imposition of Bread in the Catalan Countryside in the Middle Ages
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Rosa Ros, Rosa Congost & Enric Saguer : Consumption and Social Change. The Humble Social Groups in Rural Catalonia (the Girona Reggion, Eighteenth Century)
This paper shall consider and review certain topics that are rooted in historiography: that proletarianization is the only type of social change that affected humble social groups in Ancien Régime societies and that it was the elite who had a decisive role as engine of social change. We will analyse ... (Show more)
This paper shall consider and review certain topics that are rooted in historiography: that proletarianization is the only type of social change that affected humble social groups in Ancien Régime societies and that it was the elite who had a decisive role as engine of social change. We will analyse the case of treballadors (literally workers, although they were not only wage earners) of the Girona region (Catalonia) in the eighteenth century. This period was characterized by a clear process of structural change, with an increase of the treballadors percentage over the whole population, that it can be already observed in the mid-eighteenth century. Our previous research, based on marriage contracts and post-mortem inventories, has suggested that this structural change coexisted in a first phase (the first half of the century) with a process of proletarianization, but treballadors’ wealth levels, measured through the same sources, seem to have improved in the last decades of the century. In these paper we will deal with the evidence from treballadors’ land access and consumption (including food consumption), in order to explain, not only the opportunities of improvement, but also the active role of this group in the diffusion of new crops and new consumption patterns. These hypotheses would bring into question the topics on proletarianization and the role of elites we have mentioned above. (Show less)

Ulrich Schwarz-Graeber : Variation in Food Consumption Practices in Austria during the Crisis of the 1930s
On the basis of household budget data this paper explores effects of the economic turbulence during the 1930s on diets and consumption practices of different social groups in Vienna and its hinterlands. By comparing data from workers, salaried employees, unemployed workers and small annuitants from 1925 to 1934 it becomes ... (Show more)
On the basis of household budget data this paper explores effects of the economic turbulence during the 1930s on diets and consumption practices of different social groups in Vienna and its hinterlands. By comparing data from workers, salaried employees, unemployed workers and small annuitants from 1925 to 1934 it becomes clear, that not only occupational status, forms of employment or income situation, but also a bundle of other factors like social networks, family ties to the rural hinterlands, social policy, public welfare, cultural capital, food environments and foodscapes determined the food consumption patterns of households. Therefore, a first aim of this paper is to investigate the variation of consumption practices and to identify groups based on lifestyle characteristics, especially patterns of food consumption, using factor analyses and cluster analysis. In a second step, the impact of the economic crisis on food consumption and the different social trajectories of the identified groups are analyzed in order to describe different degrees of vulnerability towards external shocks as well as characterize the different strategies and resourceful maneuvers to overcome hardship. This allows us also to take a closer look at the social dynamics in Austria induced by the economic upheavals of this time through the lens of different patterns of food intake. In order to deepen the understanding of the specific features of the 1930s, the data are compared to Austrian survey data before World War I and after World War II. Furthermore, the findings are compared to data on food consumption and living standards from other European countries and the United States at this time to situate the Austrian case in a wider context. (Show less)



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