1st Edition

The Locus of Care Families, Communities, Institutions, and the Provision of Welfare Since Antiquity

Edited By Peregrine Horden, Richard Smith Copyright 1998
    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    The care of the needy and the sick is delivered by various groups including immediate family, the wider community, religious organisations and the State funded institutions. The Locus of Care provides an historical perspective on welfare detailing who carers were in the past, where care was provided, and how far the boundary between family and state or informal and organised institutions have changed over time.
    Eleven international contributors provide a wide-ranging examination of themes, such as child care, mental health, and provision for the elderly and question the idea that there has been a recent evolutionary shift from informal provision to institutional care. Chapters on Europe and England use case studies and link evidence from ancient and medieval periods to contemporary problems and the recent past, whilst studies on China and South Africa look to the future of welfare throughout the world.
    By placing welfare in its historical, social, cultural and demographic contexts, Locus of Care reassesses community and institutional care and the future expectations of welfare provision.

    Introduction, Peregrine Horden, Richard Smith; Part 1 Informal Care: From Ethnography to Ancient History, Sandra Burman, Patricia van der Spuy; Chapter 1 Household Care and Informal Networks, Peregrine Horden; Part 2 Networks and Institutions in Western Europe c. 1500–c. 1800, Sandra Burman, Patricia van der Spuy; Chapter 2 Networks of Care in Elizabethan English Towns, Marjorie K. McIntosh; Chapter 3 Family Obligations and Inequalities in Access to Care in Northern Italy, Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries, Sandra Cavallo; Chapter 4 Self-Help and Reciprocity in Parish Assistance, Martin Dinges; Chapter 5 Community Sponsorship and the Hospital Patient in Late Eighteenth-Century England, Amanda Berry; Part 3 Beyond the Asylum Mental Health in Britain c. 1700–1939, Sandra Burman, Patricia van der Spuy; Chapter 6 The Household and the Care of Lunatics in Eighteenth-Century London, Akihito Suzuki; Chapter 7 Familial Care of ‘Idiot’ Children in Victorian England, David Wright; Chapter 8 Community Care and the Control of Mental Defectives in Inter-War Britain, Mathew Thomson; Part 4 Children and the Elderly in the Twentieth Century, Sandra Burman, Patricia van der Spuy; Chapter 9 Safeguarding the Health of the Community, Lara Marks; Chapter 10 Communities, ‘Caring’, and Institutions, Sandra Burman, Patricia van der Spuy; Chapter 11 Demographic Conditions, Microsimulation, and Family Support for the Elderly, Zhongwei Zhao;

    Biography

    Peregrine Horden, Richard Smith