Suchergebnisse

What did early-modern and nineteenth-century Italians mean when they used the expressions tener casa aperta or aver casa aperta, literally to keep open house and to have an open house? In this article I will try to answer this question, which is far less trivial than one might imagine. Before tackling the topic, a premise is necessary. In some previous works, I used an etic category of 'open houses', i.e. a category I elaborated to interpret the implications of the presence, in many households, of domestic staff from different classes, places, races than their masters/employers. Such a presence made those houses open. The border between different peoples and cultures was inside the houses themselves that were places of exchanges, confrontations and clashes. In this article, I will develop a different approach: I will map the emic uses of the 'open-house' category, i.e. I will analyse how early-modern and nineteenth-century Italians used the expressions tener casa aperta or aver casa aperta. While some uses had to do with hospitality and sociability, others had legal meanings, referring to citizenship rights and privileges, the status of aristocrats, the differences between foreigners and local people and taxpaying. I will pay particular attention to the latter, also suggesting possible geographical differences and changes over time. This will present an opportunity to delve into the cultural and legal world of early-modern and nineteenth-century Italians, and to unveil the importance of houses for one's status.

AbstractA crucial aspect of the regulation of domestic service is the regulation of people's status. Because of its emphasis on freedom and equality, the French Revolution is particularly interesting. "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on considerations of the common good." These principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (26 August 1789) did not seem to leave room for slavery and master/servant hierarchies. Yet, their impact on slaves and servants was ambivalent, as I shall show by focusing on France and its Caribbean colonies. Dependency, race, and gender are crucial in my analysis. After sketching the features of servants, serfs, slaves, and indentured servants at the end of the Ancien Régime, I will analyse how the Revolution affected them, focusing on serfs and servants in metropolitan France, on black colonial slaves, and on female slaves and servants. While I investigate the "French imperial nation-State", I will also provide some comparison with the American case. The Revolution led to a feminization of dependence both in metropolitan France and in the French Caribbean, making dependence more gendered. It abolished serfdom and slavery, and enfranchised male domestiques. Thus, on the one hand, it was really revolutionary; on the other, colonial slavery was first replaced by bonded labour and then reintroduced. Male domestiques were enfranchised briefly and only on paper; they would be enfranchised when slavery in the French colonies was abolished (1848). Women were excluded: mistresses and maids had to wait until 1944 to become full citizens. This makes it impossible to establish clear-cut distinctions between pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary times, and in part challenges the difference between metropole and colonies.

Muovendosi tra filosofia politica, storia politica, storia culturale, storia di genere, storia sociale, demografia storica e sociologia, questo libro, composto di due volumi, anzitutto ripercorre sul lungo periodo, a partire da Aristotele e con un focus sull'età moderna, i modi di concepire il rapporto servo-padrone, cercando di valutarne l'influenza sulla costruzione della categoria di cittadinanza (vol. I, cap. I). L'attenzione si sposta poi sulla Prima Rivoluzione inglese e la Rivoluzione francese, due momenti fondamentali nell'elaborazione delle moderne categorie di cittadinanza, ricostruendo il tortuoso percorso che trasformò i domestici da esclusi in cittadini (vol. I, cap. II): un percorso mai del tutto concluso, come mostra l'analisi della persistente influenza delle asimmetrie costruite dentro la sfera domestica. Balza qui in primo piano il ruolo del genere nella costruzione della dipendenza, così come quello della "razza", dell'etnicità, della condizione migrante (vol. I, cap. III). Il primo volume dell'opera mostra il rapporto servo-padrone dal punto di vista della vischiosità dei modi di concepire la dipendenza nell'ambito della sfera domestica in un'ottica di lungo periodo, pur documentando, al contempo, le profonde trasformazioni dei soggetti coinvolti in tale rapporto. Questa è solo una parte della storia: accontentarsi di questa prospettiva implicherebbe una lettura parziale e fuorviante (vol. I, Conclusione). Il secondo volume presenterà le categorie di servo e padrone come terreno di una microfisica del potere fatta di incessanti contrattazioni e lotte quotidiane, individuali e collettive, nelle quali anche le elaborazioni teoriche, le leggi e la letteratura normativa costituiscono armi utilizzate in un duro scontro, in cui l'oggetto del contendere è (banalmente?) il potere.

AbstractHistorical research on domestic servants has a long tradition. Research, however, has become more systematic from the 1960s onwards thanks to social historians, historians focusing on the family, historical demographers and (particularly from the 1970s) women's and gender historians. For a long time, scholars assumed that domestic service (especially by live-in workers) would decline, or even disappear, because of household modernization, social progress, and development of the welfare state. The (largely unexpected) "revival" of paid domestic and care work in the past three decades has prompted sociologists and other social scientists to focus on the theme, opening new opportunities for exchange between historians and social scientists. This article provides a review of the research on these issues at a global level, though with a focus on Europe and the (former) European colonies, over the past fifty years, illustrating the different approaches and their results.

Este artigo analisa a preparação da comida na Europa ocidental (séculos XVI a XIX), enfocando sua dimensão de gênero. São consideradas três principais variáveis: estratificação social, geografia e tempo. Sugere que na Itália, Espanha e França, no início do período moderno, os cozinheiros empregados nas cortes e pela aristocracia eram geralmente homens; a feminização da preparação da comida começou na França a partir do século XVIII. Na Europa central e do norte, as mulheres das classes mais altas estavam muito mais envolvidas na preparação da comida, embora a moda da cozinha francesa nos séculos XVII e XVIII tenha implicado no recurso crescente de homens cozinheiros. O artigo sugere explicações para essas diferenças e tendências através dos tempos, e discute o papel da nutrição e cozinha na definição da identidade feminina em contextos diferentes.

This article, after providing readers with a short review of studies on male domestic workers, focuses on male domestics in the twentieth- and twenty-first-century Italy via both a qualitative and quantitative approach. It shows, among other things, that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, male domestic workers underwent a symbolic castration in that they were prevented from growing moustaches which at the time were a sign of virility. Significantly, this prohibition provoked several protests. The article, therefore, investigates the historical background of servant de-virilization. It shows furthermore how domestic service became an almost exclusively female job and was culturally constructed as such. Broadly speaking, this happened in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. In Italy, however, between the 1950s and the 1980s, domestic service experienced a slight re-masculinization which became more noticeable in the following years, when there was a kind of ''revival'' of recourse to domestic workers made possible by the arrival of large migration flows. While investigating how domestics perceive/perceived themselves and which strategies they pursue/ pursued to protect their male identity both a century ago and today, the article analyzes how working in a feminized sector may affect masculinity.