Social Science History recent issues

Aging Women and Family Wealth

Bourdieu, J., Postel-Vinay, G., Suwa-Eisenmann, A. — 2008-06-17

Population aging in France in the nineteenth century concerned mainly women, as men's life spans increased only after World War I. The article assesses the impact of this gender-differentiated aging process on wealth distribution, using individual data on bequests collected for the period 1800-1939. Over time, more women died without assets. But those who owned assets were richer. As a result, women's aging contributed both to a more unequal wealth distribution and to narrowing the gender gap between asset owners.

Kin Networks, Marriage, and Social Mobility in Late Imperial China

Campbell, C., Lee, J. — 2008-06-17

To assess claims about the role of the extended family in late imperial Chinese society, we examine the influence of kin network characteristics on marriage, reproduction, and attainment in Liaoning Province in Northeast China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We compare the influences on outcomes of the number and status of different types of kin as well as the seniority of the individual within each type of kin group. We find that the characteristics of kin outside the household did matter for individual outcomes but that patterns of effects were nuanced. While based on our results we concur that kin networks were important units of social and economic organization in late imperial China, we conclude that their role was complex.

Paying the Price of Citizenship: Gender and Social Policy on Venereal Disease in Stockholm, 1919-1944

Lundberg, A. — 2008-06-17

This article studies how policy on venereal disease participated in the construction of twentieth-century Swedish citizenship. Contact tracing and mandatory medical treatment, the two cornerstones of the Swedish attempt to eradicate venereal disease, became part of the contemporary citizenship discourse. Policy on venereal disease in Sweden was administered by infectious disease officers in every county and provincial physicians in every district. These civil servants were helped by the local police, who searched for recalcitrant patients. To be fully entitled to the rights of free medical care required extensive cooperation from the ill, some of whom found it impossible to comply. In Stockholm women were more frequently targeted by this legislation and were often treated more severely.

Eurasian Historical Comparisons: Conceptual Issues in Comparative Historical Inquiry

Little, D. — 2008-06-17

The article discusses the conceptual and methodological challenges of comparative economic history, focusing on recent debates concerning alternative pathways of development in Europe and Asia, the agricultural systems of early modern England and the lower Yangzi region in China, and the historical demography of Eurasia. The article concludes that such debates support the perspective that there is substantial path dependency and contingency in economic history and that alternative development paths can be discerned across and within Europe and Asia.

Strange Parallels across Eurasia

Perdue, P. C. — 2008-06-17

Victor Lieberman's Strange Parallels is the culmination of an extended effort to compare many major polities of the Eurasian continent in the early modern age. Lieberman finds common cycles of administrative integration and disintegration that were increasingly synchronized over time. Although he does not give a single-factor explanation for this synchronization, his model provides a common vocabulary for political, economic, and cultural analysis that can inspire all comparative world historians. China, however, is missing from this analysis, even though its dynastic cycles share much with the other polities. China's ambivalent position in Eurasia deserves comparative study because of divergent interpretations of Chinese dynastic relations with frontier warriors, the strong influence of Chinese trade and power on its neighbors' polities, and China's long-lasting cultural and bureaucratic tradition.

The Qing Dynasty and Its Neighbors: Early Modern China in World History

Lieberman, V. — 2008-06-17

Peter C. Perdue's China Marches West argues that the Qing dynasty's ability to break through historical territorial barriers on China's northwestern frontier reflected greater Manchu familiarity with steppe culture than their Chinese predecessors had exhibited, reinforced by superior commercial, technical, and symbolic resources and the benefits of a Russian alliance. Qing imperial expansion illustrated patterns of territorial consolidation apparent as well in Russia's forward movement in Inner Asia and, ironically, in the heroic, if ultimately futile, projects of the western Mongols who fell victim to the Qing. After summarizing Perdue's thesis, this essay extends his comparisons geographically and chronologically to argue that between 1600 and 1800 states ranging from western Europe through Japan to Southeast Asia exhibited similar patterns of political and cultural integration and that synchronized integrative cycles across Eurasia extended from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries. Yet in its growing vulnerability to Inner Asian domination, China proper—along with other sectors of the "exposed zone" of Eurasia—exemplified a species of state formation that was reasonably distinct from trajectories in sectors of Eurasia that were protected against Inner Asian conquest.

Contributors

2008-06-17

The Census, Audiences, and Publics

Anderson, M. — 2008-02-05

Visual and oral, video and audio evidence are brought to bear to examine the history of the U.S. census and the practice of social science history. The article explores how artists have appropriated and depicted census taking in America and how census takers used "artistic" forms of evidence to advertise and promote the census and explicate census results to the public. The article also suggests how social science historians have understood and used the new electronic environment of the Internet and the World Wide Web to present their data and findings.

Household Enumeration in National Discourse: Three Moments in Modern Japanese History

Winther, J. A. — 2008-02-05

Enumeration, even the contemporary census, cannot be characterized as neutral and objective data collection; official categories both shape and are shaped by national cultures. This article examines the forms, laws, and procedures of Japanese household registration (koseki) and national censuses in three cases from the modern period (1868 to post-World War II). Each case isolates a particular time period to show how broad political cultures, such as Westernization, the development of state welfare, and democratization, were codified or reflected discursively in enumerative programs. In each case, categories shifted the substantive and practical meanings of individuals in families and of household heads in relation to the state. In the early Meiji period (1868-1912), an aristocratic, head-centric social order was imposed on all classes through household registration. By the late Meiji and through the Taisho (1912-36) and early Showa periods (1936-89), census categories reflected a new household model based on economic and spatial relations. In the reconstruction period following World War II, the household register embodied the dramatic changes to the civil code that established equality of sexes and the nuclear family as the fundamental social unit. By the 1960s, however, census forms reflected a return of national cultural discourse to hierarchical, extended-stem family households.

Toward a History of Education Markets in the United States: An Introduction

Beadie, N. — 2008-02-05

The recent shift away from the idea of centrally planned public systems and toward market-based models of schooling opens new territory for scholarship in the history of education. What is the history of education markets? How has the structure of education markets changed over time? This article addresses these questions by surveying existing literature, with an emphasis on the early national and antebellum periods. In the process it brings new perspectives to standard narratives of the history of education in the nineteenth century, particularly regarding the development of state-based educational systems. It then proposes areas for future research and concludes by introducing two examples of new work in this field.

Music Teachers in the North Carolina Education Market, 1800-1840: How Mrs. Sambourne Earned a "Comfortable Living for Herself and Her Children"

Tolley, K. — 2008-02-05

Social historians have demonstrated that although men comprised the majority of teachers in North Carolina schools and academies during the early national period, women predominated by the end of the nineteenth century. This study concludes that among the music teachers who taught in academies and venture schools, women gained a majority decades earlier. In an effort to understand some of the underlying social processes that contributed to this shift, the following discussion analyzes the changing proportion of men and women in a sample of 65 music teachers, tracks the tuition they charged in a free market, and compares this to the tuition charged by teachers of Latin and Greek. The shift to women among music teachers in North Carolina presents an intriguing case, because it does not fit well with some earlier theoretical models of feminization among nineteenth-century teachers. The data suggest that women came to predominate among music teachers because a changing market for music instruction in venture schools and academies triggered a process of occupational abandonment and succession.

Tuition Funding for Common Schools: Education Markets and Market Regulation in Rural New York, 1815-1850

Beadie, N. — 2008-02-05

Funding for schools of all kinds was largely market-based until the Civil War. Parents in New York and other northern states continued to pay tuition, or rate bills, in addition to taxes to support common schools. Previous research relied on aggregate state-level data to estimate the amount of funding from public and nonpublic sources for common schools, while existing case studies of local school practices focus exclusively on Massachusetts or on urban locations and thus on exceptions to the rule. This study looks at local practices of school funding for multiple types of schools in one unexceptional rural town in western New York from 1815 to 1850. The results reveal considerable in-state variation in the proportion of public and private funding for common schools that is otherwise obscured by state-level data. The proportion of school funds that came from tuition was much higher for rural areas than for urban areas. The article also compares tuition funding for common schools with that for other types of market-based schooling, including two local venture schools and one local academy. The results show that, although tuition prices for academies and venture schools were predictably higher than for common schools, the overall structure of school funding for rural common schools and academies was more similar than different in New York in the antebellum era.

Market Forces and Market Failure in Antebellum American Education: A Commentary

Mitch, D. F. — 2008-02-05

Contributors

2008-02-05

Inequality in the West: Racial and Ethnic Variation in Occupational Status and Returns to Education, 1940-2000

Tolnay, S. E., Eichenlaub, S. C. — 2007-10-31

The western region of the United States has exhibited racial and ethnic diversity that rivals that found in any other part of the country. Yet the socioeconomic differences among western racial and ethnic groups have been studied much less intensively than corresponding differences in other regions of the United States. In this article we use data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series from 1940 through 2000 to describe the recent history of occupational inequality in the West. We find evidence of a persistent and significant occupational disadvantage for African Americans, Native Americans, and Mexicans. In contrast, the two Asian groups included in our analysis, Chinese and Japanese, frequently enjoyed an actual occupational advantage relative not only to other racial and ethnic minority groups but also to the majority native-born white population. Controlling for group differences in educational attainment explains much of the racial and ethnic variation in occupational inequality, but further analysis shows that it is inaccurate to assume that all groups enjoy the same occupational benefits from additional schooling. As a result, controlling for education without considering such differential occupational returns to schooling can yield a misleading picture of occupational inequality. Finally, we interpret these findings in relation to different theoretical perspectives on racial and ethnic inequality in the United States.

The Transformation of the Canadian Domestic Servant, 1871-1931

Sager, E. W. — 2007-10-31

This article uses the national sample of the 1901 census of Canada to compare the earnings of live-in domestic servants with the earnings of women in other occupations and to examine the ethnoreligious backgrounds of domestic servants. The hypothesis that domestic service offered relative material advantages, when room and board are taken into account, is rejected. The hypothesis that female domestic servants came from a narrow range of specific ethnoreligious backgrounds is also rejected. The changing backgrounds and expectations of female domestic servants in the early twentieth century exacerbated class tensions in the service sector, helping ensure that domestic service remained an occupation of short duration and high turnover. The conclusion is that domestic service did not simply decline; rather, a work process was transformed. Demographic changes combined with changes in family and individual strategies to limit the supply of labor. When efforts to increase labor supply failed, bourgeois employers attempted to replace labor with new household technology; the wage-paid occupation of the domestic servant declined and was replaced by that of the unpaid housewife.

Temporary Internal Migrations in Spain, 1860-1930

Silvestre, J. — 2007-10-31

Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century industrialization provoked quantitative and qualitative changes in traditional European migratory patterns. Most of the economic and social history literature concerning the study of European internal migration during the industrializing period has emphasized permanent migration. This article shows, however, that temporary internal migration was common not only in preindustrial societies but in industrializing ones too. The article also examines the causes and the consequences of the persistence of temporary internal migrations in Spain from the mid-nineteenth century to the period leading up to the outbreak of the Spanish civil war (1936-39). Aggregate data sources are used in depth for this purpose. The information derived from aggregate sources is supplemented by reference to secondary sources, mainly comprising local and regional studies.

A Time-Series Analysis of War and Levels of Interpersonal Violence in an English Military Town, 1700-1781

Warner, J., Gmel, G., Graham, K., Erickson, B. — 2007-10-31

More than 7,000 assaults were reported to the magistrates of Portsmouth, England, between 1700 and 1781. Time-series analyses were run to see (1) what effects, if any, war had on levels of aggression and (2) whether overall levels of aggression decreased over time. Aggression was measured in two ways: (1) the extent to which assailants ganged up on adversaries and (2) levels of violence in individual confrontations (whether a weapon was used, and if so, what type; whether assailants refrained from using a weapon; and whether they stopped short of physical violence and instead merely insulted or threatened their enemies). Neither measure showed a significant variation over time. The participation of women in brawls decreased, but the aggressiveness of those who continued to brawl actually increased. Complaints about insults and threats declined, while complaints of a more serious nature showed a modest increase, reflecting, among other things, the emergence of new definitions of actionable behavior.

The Evolution of Republican and Democratic Positions on Cold War Military Spending: A Historical Puzzle

Fordham, B. O. — 2007-10-31

The domestic politics of American military spending during the Cold War confronts scholars with an important but often overlooked puzzle: the two major parties appear to have switched positions on the issue. During the early Cold War era, Democrats were generally supportive of increased military spending, while Republicans were critical. After the mid-1960s, Democrats increasingly tended to oppose larger military budgets, while Republicans more often favored them. This article presents evidence about the process through which this change took place. It identifies several developments in the domestic and international environments that may have contributed to this party switch and evaluates preliminary evidence about each of them.

Contributors

2007-10-31

Acknowledgments

2007-10-31

The Effect of Religious Denomination on Wealth: Who Were the Truly Blessed?

Di Matteo, L. — 2007-08-20

The wealth of probated decedents from late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century Ontario is analyzed for evidence of the impact of religious affiliation on the level of wealth and rate of wealth accumulation. After controlling for age, birthplace, occupation, gender, urbanization, and other factors, the results suggest that relative to Anglicans, the wealth of Methodists and Roman Catholics was significantly lower. Moreover, when religious denomination and birthplace are interacted, Canadian-born Anglicans emerge as the dominant wealth group, while the English-born of any denomination and Methodists of any birthplace seem to fare the worst. When wealthage profiles are examined by denomination, Baptists have the steepest profiles, followed by Anglicans and Presbyterians. The data do support the hypothesis that religious affiliation, particularly when interacted with birthplace, has an impact on wealth, though the exact nature of the mechanism is unclear.

Churches as Organizational Resources: A Case Study in the Geography of Religion and Political Voting in Postwar Detroit

Stepan-Norris, J., Southworth, C. — 2007-08-20

Employing a historical dataset on Detroit in the 1950s, this article uses geographic models to show the political impact of churches and religious populations on presidential voting. Multilevel models separate the relative impact of individual denomination, the effect of congregants in neighborhoods, and the importance of the physical presence of a church. Existing studies of geography and religion examine a few denominations; here a full set of religious denominations is compared on support for Democratic Party voting and "social movement-like" voting for the Progressive Party. Mainline Protestant churches are associated with support for a conservative social agenda. The presence of synagogues and Catholic churches in neighborhoods is positively related to progressive electoral outcomes. Black Protestant churches are positively related to Democratic Party voting but did not alter the Progressive Party vote. The effect of denomination on political behavior and the geographic extent of a church's influence on surrounding urban communities are shown to be spatially segregated and to depend on the class structure of neighborhoods.

The Origins of the Public Sphere and Civil Society: Private Academies and Petitions in Korea, 1506-1800

Koo, J.-W. — 2007-08-20

This article explores an East Asian parallel to the "structural transformation" of the European public sphere and civil society by studying private academies and Confucian literati petitions in Choson Korea from 1506 to 1800. During this period, the Confucian literati emerged as the new public and challenged royal authority, engaging in a broad range of public activities through the academies and petitions. Voluntaristic and nongovernmental connections of private academies reveal aspects of a nascent civil society, whereas the rational-critical nature of petitioning indicates the formation of the public sphere in Choson Korea. This analysis demonstrates a close historical association between the evolution of private academies and the development of petitions. This historical interplay confirms Jürgen Habermas's thesis that the public sphere arises from civil society.

"Pure Milk Is Better Than Purified Milk": Pasteurization and Milk Purity in Chicago, 1908-1916

Czaplicki, A. — 2007-08-20

This article explains how pasteurization—with few outspoken political supporters during this period—first became a primary milk purification strategy in Chicago and why eight years passed between pasteurization's initial introduction into law and the city's adoption of full mandatory pasteurization. It expands the current focus on the political agreement to pasteurize to include the organizational processes involved in incorporating pasteurization into both policy and practice. It shows that the decision to pasteurize did not occur at a clearly defined point but instead evolved over time as a consequence of the interplay of political interest groups, state-municipal legal relations, and the merging of different organizational practices. Such an approach considerably complicates and expands existing accounts of how political interests and agreements shaped pasteurization and milk purification policies and practice.

A Local Analysis of Early-Eighteenth-Century Cherokee Settlement

Gragson, T. L., Bolstad, P. V. — 2007-08-20

Results of an original analysis of Cherokee town placement and population c. 1721 are presented. Period and contemporary information were analyzed using local statistics to produce multivalued, mappable characterizations of the intensity of the processes of town placement and population. The analysis focuses on the scale and the space in which these processes took place among the Cherokee in order to open the way for examining the legacy of human-induced environmental change in southern Appalachia.

Contributors

2007-08-20