Everyday Life in Late Qajar Iran

The social history of Iran in general and that of the Qajar era in particular, has been little studied. The subject of this paper, private life in the late Qajar period, has barely been touched upon, probably because it is a subject on which there is not much primary material. There are no comprehensive accounts of people's daily lives of any class or occupation. In this article an attempt is made to give an account of the daily domestic life and activities of the household in the Qajar period. As there were major differences between the daily life and households of urban and rural areas, the discussion is limited to urban areas and Shi'i households. The article discusses the roles of the various members of the household as well as the consumption patterns of the family and those from inside or outside the household who catered to its needs.     

Values and assumptions underpinning policy for children and young people in England

This paper provides an account of current ideas about English childhood that seem to underpin policies ‘for’ children. New Labour values the future adulthood of children more than their childhoods, and stresses children's responsibilities over their rights. Generally, child protection and provision for children has higher status than children's participation. Children are excluded from participation in social life. Traditional psychological formulations remain powerful in their stress on childhood as a preparatory stage of life, where children are socialised into conformity with the norms of social life. However, the last 15 years have seen greater respect for children's own views and experiences, for their rights and for the idea that childhood is socially constructed. But the idea that children are contributors to society is still rarely recognised and they continue to suffer from low social status accordingly.     

Playing,parenting and family leisure in parks: exploring emotional geographies of families in Guangzhou Children’s Park,China

ABSTRACT

Children’s leisure activities in parks have attracted increasing scholarly interest in recent decades. However, relatively little attention has been given to the emotional needs and responses of children to their activities within a park’s play spaces. Moreover, what parents perceive, and how they themselves engage within children’s playing spaces, is under-studied. Drawing on fieldwork carried out in the Guangzhou Children’s Park, China, this paper aims to explore the experiences of both children and parents within this particular playing space. Supplementing participant observations with interviews and analysis of reviews on the Internet, the paper finds that children obtain a sense of family and company from their parents’ presence, and parents recall memories of their own childhood and obtain emotional recovery by visiting parks with their children. The findings suggest that play spaces are not only places where children play, but also where family life and childhood are ‘built’. The paper contributes to the existing literature by highlighting and examining the ‘child–parent’ relationship within playing spaces. By conducting a case study of a non-Western society, the paper encourages researchers to examine ‘child–parent’ relationships in a family leisure context, and to explore the everyday and emotional geographies of family life in contemporary China.     

South Africa: a legacy of family disruption

This article draws together unusual characteristics of the legacy of apartheid in South Africa: the state-orchestrated destruction of family life, high rates of unemployment and a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS. The disruption of family life has resulted in a situation in which many women have to fulfil the role of both breadwinner and care giver in a context of high unemployment and very limited economic opportunities. The question that follows is: given this crisis of care, to what extent can or will social protection and employment-related social policies provide the support women and children need?     

Enslaved African Women in Nineteenth-Century Iran: The Life of Fezzeh Khanom of Shiraz

Fezzeh Khanom (c. 1835–82), an African woman, was a slave of Sayyed ‘Ali-Mohammad of Shiraz, the Bab. Information about her life can be recovered from various pious Baha'i histories. She was honored, and even venerated by Babis, though she remained subordinate and invisible. The paper makes the encouraging discovery that a history of African slavery in Iran is possible, even at the level of individual biographies. Scholars estimate that between one and two million slaves were exported from Africa to the Indian Ocean trade in the nineteenth century, most to Iranian ports. Some two-thirds of African slaves brought to Iran were women intended as household servants and concubines. An examination of Fezzeh Khanom's life can begin to fill the gaps in our knowledge of enslaved women in Iran. The paper discusses African influences on Iranian culture, especially in wealthy households and in the royal court. The limited value of Western legal distinctions between slavery and freedom when applied to the Muslim world is noted.     

被拐儿童生命历程变迁与原生家庭融入研究——基于寻亲成功案例的实证

被拐儿童的生命历程变迁与寻亲成功后的原生家庭融入境遇值得关注.本文通过实地调研访谈寻亲成功后的被拐儿童及其家乡社会网络成员,以生命历程理论为指导,揭示被拐儿童的生命历程变化,考察寻亲成功后的原生家庭融入情况.研究发现:被拐儿童的生命历程主要经历被拐、被收养、寻亲与寻亲成功4个重大生命事件.被拐儿童寻亲成功后的原生家庭融...     

Family Man: The Papua New Guinean Children of D. Carleton Gajdusek.

ABSTRACT The name Carleton Gajdusek is familiar to many scholars and those otherwise interested in Pacific anthropology and history. Yet while much has been written about Gajdusek's work on kuru and his achievements in science, little is known about his unusual family life. Addressing this gap, this article examines Gajdusek's adoption of sixteen Papua New Guinean children from among the Fore and Anga peoples. These children form part of Gajdusek's large family adopted from the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Micronesia. Drawing on Gajdusek's extensive personal journals and interviews with his friends, colleagues and children, the paper refutes arguments which explain the adoptions through reference to Gajdusek's sexuality or humanitarianism, demonstrating rather that Gajdusek adopted the PNG children primarily because he wanted to create a family. Highlighting some of the ways in which Melanesian models of kinship suited Gajdusek's preference for an extended family, the article addresses an under‐researched aspect of the life of this important twentieth century figure.     

Cinematic Revolution: Cosmopolitan Alter-cinema of Pre-revolutionary Iran

In the late 1950s, when Iran was witness to the withering away of social norms and everyday practices concomitant with the country's rapid urbanization, a group of young Iranian film directors embarked upon a new cinematic trend, in attempts to screen the ethereal quotidian of Iranian life. Defining itself against what was perceived to be the “cheap” and “repetitive” commercial “Film Farsi” industry of the time, this alternative (alter-)cinema fused the local and global, by incorporating international cinematic elements in socially and politically conscious national films, and projecting them on local and international screens. Problematizing a homogeneous conception of historical time that subsumes the history of cinema into a conventionalized grand narrative of the Iranian 1979 revolution, this article works with a conception of heterogeneous historical time that first interrogates cinematic temporality autonomously and then in relation to the political history of Iran, especially the events of the 1978–79 revolution. This article explores how the distinct cosmopolitan alter-cinema of pre-revolutionary Iran was born from a cinematic rupture in the 1950s, prompted by series of critiques and professional expectations that colored the attention paid to the vernacular and quotidian in film production.     

Poverty,Emigration And Family: Experiencing Childhood Poverty In Late Nineteenth-Century Manchester

The Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuge offered a place of sanctuary for destitute children. It expanded rapidly during the late-nineteenth century and established a number of homes that catered for a range of childhood needs. This article focuses on the experience of children admitted to the Refuge and subsequently emigrated from one of its orphan home. It considers the processes of child migration by examining the relationships between the home and the family. The analysis questions middle-class ideas about the parenting of poor families, the economic motives behind emigration, and introduces a number of case studies to evaluate whether emigration achieved its goal of leading children towards a respectable life away from the city.     

Freedom of the city: Contemporary issues and policy influences on children and young people's use of public open space in England

Following a reflection of childhood experiences of public open spaces in daily life the paper moves on to a discussion about definitions of public open space. Contemporary policy related to children, young people and public open space in England are then identified. This context is addressed as policy which directly affects public open space and policy areas, drawn from other political drivers, which have an indirect influence on children and young people's use of public open space. There is some reference to evidence which has fed into some of these policy areas. Teenagers who are skateboarders are used as an example of one group of young people who experience other—legal, social and physical—controls on their use of public open space.     

Scarcity and prosperity in postwar childbearing: explorations from a life course perspective

An investigation of the role of Depression scarcity and subsequent prosperity on the postwar baby boom using two longitudinal cohorts from the 1920s defined by birth. The study into account variability in Depression experiences and alternative life pathways (ascent, decline and stability across generations) in attempting to explain linkages between the Depression and postwar fertility. Easterlin's relative income theory is explored and found to be an insufficient model for explaining the observed demographic behavior. It fails to take variability in Depression experience and life pathways into account, whereas fertility records of cohort members showed striking differences according to those variables. By relating 2 sets of variations, 1) Depression experience, and 2) subsequent adult status and accomplishments during a period of affluence and economic growth, circumstances were identified that enhanced different imprints of a Depression childhood, the bearing of more children, and fertility constraint. The interdependence of social change and life course is underscored by this study.     

流动人口核心家庭的迁移模式分析——基于家庭生命周期的视角

当前我国的人口流动步入新的发展阶段,流动人口的迁移模式呈现出明显的家庭化趋势,在此背景下迁移选择是否和流动人口家庭的生命周期阶段息息相关呢？未来的市民化政策需要因此而迭代升级为家庭视角吗？文章使用中国25所城市的流动人口调查数据构建Logistic回归模型,从家庭生命周期阶段、个体特征、家庭特征和城市流动特征四个维度探究影响核心家庭迁移模式的具体因素和相关程度,结果显示：家庭的生命周期阶段是流动模式的重要影响因素,核心家庭在新婚期和学龄前期举家流动的概率最大,当孩子步入适龄教育阶段,流动人口的家庭界面面临分散的可能性增加,导致留守子女和留守妇女的社会现象持续,当子女毕业或就业时家庭成员团聚的概率再次增加。未来市民化政策中应当围绕流动人口的家庭出台更全面的实施方案。     

Sanitized Modernity: Rural Public Health in Mid-Twentieth Century Khuzestan

Existing histories of public health in Iran often center on elite or urban narratives. This paper shifts the focus to Iran’s villages by examining the twentieth century public health history of rural northern Khuzestan. It argues that Khuzestani villagers desired, rather than resisted, modern medical services. However, vertical decision-making and the prioritization given by public health planners to economic concerns over social well-being led to the uneven distribution of services and failure to fulfill the expectations of Khuzestan’s villagers. This paper uses memoirs, official reports, correspondence, and other records from the Development & Resources Corporation, along with reports from Iran’s Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health, to bring a richer picture of Iranian villagers’ twentieth century history into focus.     

Childhood in the rural areas of Chile,intergenerational and gendered perspectives

ABSTRACT

This article triangulates intergenerational (childhood, adulthood, and old age) visions on the social representation of childhood in rural areas of Chile. These visions were considered within the framework of identity constructs (perceptions, social behaviours, preferences, and ambitions) and were compared against emerging transformations in the spheres of family, and gender relations. A qualitative methodology was used to analyse 68 individual interviews (41 children; 21 women old age; and 6 adult women). It was concluded that, in a context of globalization, rural boys and girls use modern, urban symbols and conform to traditional gender stereotypes. In a familial environment, rural children have acquired discursive protagonism in alliance with older women, a reality that conflicts with the conservative vision of middle-aged adults who have poor awareness regarding the participation of children. Contrasting visions exist between adult women and seniors concerning the responsibilities assigned to children in general and, particularly, to girls.     

The New Frontier Meets the White Revolution: The Peace Corps in Iran, 1962‒76

The Peace Corps brought an estimated 1,800 Americans to Iran from 1962 to 1976, coinciding with the unfolding of Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi’s Enqelāb-e Sefid, or White Revolution. This article surveys Peace Corps Iran’s fourteen-year history by dividing it into three distinct moments defined by changing social and political conditions in Iran and shifting US?Iranian relations. Initially, the Peace Corps Iran experiment built on earlier American foreign assistance programs, while coinciding with the roll-out of the White Revolution. Second, during its heyday in the mid-1960s, the Peace Corps inevitably became entangled with the White Revolution’s unfolding, both experiencing a phase of expansion and apparent success. Finally, as Iranian social and political conditions moved toward instability by the 1970s, Peace Corps Iran also seemed to have lost its direction and purpose, which ultimately led to a vote by volunteers to terminate the program. Based on accounts by US Peace Corps volunteers and the Iranians with whom they worked, the Peace Corps Agency, and the US State Department, this article argues that, ultimately, the Peace Corps Iran experience left a more lasting legacy on individuals than institutions.     

Gendered Space: A New Look at Turkish Modernisation

This article examines how an understanding of gender has challenged and changed the perception of ‘modernisation’ and its relation to Western culture. In so doing it also shows how the traditional division of disciplines, especially between political and social history and historical demography, has limited insights into beliefs and behaviours of both women and men. The decline in the numbers of children born within a family was accompanied by many shifts in daily living, not least in the way housework was structured as indicated by the spatial patterns of both formal social life and domestic labour. A detailed examination of these issues, including the use of various types of household labour – slave, free, waged and the ‘adopted daughter’(evlatlök), and poor relation – brings into sharp focus how the leading segment in the process of modernisation, the urban middle class, was active in and responded to such major changes. Women's involvement in education, politics and the labour market was intimately intertwined with these aspects of family and domestic life – but so, in very different ways, was men's.     

Excavating Zarathustra: Ernst Herzfeld's Archaeological History of Iran

This article analyzes the work of the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld (1879–1948) and its influence on the writing of Iranian national history in the 1920s and 1930s. Herzfeld's life and work illuminates the relationship between Germany and Iran and between orientalist scholarship and nationalist history in the first half of the twentieth century. Through the method of what he called “archaeological history,” Herzfeld wrote an interdisciplinary history of Iran and its Aryan foundations that contested the assumptions of decades of European orientalist scholarship.     

儿童生活往昔:丰子恺作品之社会史考察

清末民国时代的丰子恺,以艺术的视角观照儿童生活的琐屑与微末,发现:与成人世界不同,生活于特定社群中的儿童,熨贴着亲属和邻里关系,少受自然的支配和社会习惯的束缚,由其本真的生活激活出无限的创造性,而伴随着初始社会化而来的异化生活终结了儿童的本真,同时也斫丧了他们的创造力。透过往昔儿童生活场景,可以依稀发现一个历史时段儿童的生活方式、区域特色、时代特征以及演变痕迹。     

Childhood narratives: adult reflections on encounters with difference in everyday spaces

Research on children and young people commonly focuses on the present experiences of childhood. Yet Philo, C. [2003. “‘To Go Back up the Side Hill’: Memories, Imaginations and Reveries of Childhood.” Children's Geographies 1 (1): 7–24] has argued that we might also access the ‘worlds’ of children and childhood through the memories or recollections of adults, given that we have all been children once. In response, this paper explores the narratives of adults reflecting on their childhood experiences and in particular, on the formation of their attitudes towards difference. The paper offers a means of understanding how adults reflect on their childhood encounters with difference, how their attitudes towards difference are developed over time and the extent to which these childhood narratives are carried into adult lives. This is not to suggest that early experiences are deterministic. Rather, individuals can reflect on their own lives and encounters and choose to change or react to wider social relations in new ways such that they produce and embody new dispositions.     

Generation as a social variable

ABSTRACT

In this short paper, I start with a case study – about how elementary school children in the early twentieth century in England understood their responsibilities vis-à-vis family (and school). This example provides a window into a past which deeply contrasts with present-day children’s and adults’ understandings and lives. I go on to consider (very briefly, for the field is vast) how ideas about childhood changed in the interwar years and how, since then, children have become locked into educational establishments – as well as into families. It seems to me that in these circumstances we are not used to thinking of children as thoughtful and active members of society. So it is no surprise to me that adults do not look to inter-relations with children as key variables towards understanding the social order. I note that my emphasis is on the UK, since I know most about that!