The Golden Chain: Family, Civil Society and the State 9780857454713

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The Golden Chain

STUDIES ON CIVIL SOCIETY Editors: Dieter Gosewinkel and Holger Nehring Civil Society stands for one of the most ambitious projects and influential concepts relating to the study of modern societies. Scholars working in this field aim to secure greater equality of opportunity, democratic participation, individual freedom, and societal self-organization in the face of social deficits caused by globalizing neo-liberalism. This series deals with the multiple languages, different layers, and diverse practices of existing and emerging civil societies in Europe and elsewhere and asks how far the renewed interest in the concept can contribute to the gradual evolution of civil society in the wider world. Volume 1 The Languages of Civil Society Edited by Peter Wagner Volume 2 Civil Society: Berlin Perspectives Edited by John Keane Volume 3 State and Civil Society in Northern Europe: The Swedish Model Reconsidered Edited by Lars Trägårdh Volume 4 Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives Edited by Karen Hagemann, Sonya Michel, and Gunilla Budde Volume 5 Markets and Civil Society: The European Experience in Comparative Perspective Edited by Victor Pérez-Díaz Volume 6 The Golden Chain: Family, Civil Society and the State Edited by Jürgen Nautz, Paul Ginsborg, and Ton Nijhuis

THE GOLDEN CHAIN FAMILY, CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

Edited by Jürgen Nautz, Paul Ginsborg, Ton Nijhuis

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2013 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2013 Jürgen Nautz, Paul Ginsborg, and Ton Nijhuis All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The golden chain : family, civil society, and the state / edited by Jurgen Nautz, Paul Ginsborg, Ton Nijhuis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-85745-470-6 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-85745-471-3 (ebook) 1. Families. 2. Civil society. 3. State, The. 4. Social institutions. I. Nautz, Jürgen P., 1954– II. Ginsborg, Paul. III. Nijhuis, Ton. HQ503.G614 2012 306—dc23 2011051710 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper. ISBN 978-0-85745-470-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-85745-471-3 (institutional ebook)

CONTENTS

List of Figures and Tables

vii

Acknowledgements

ix

Editor’s Preface Dieter Gosewinkel, Jürgen Kocka

x

Part I. Introduction and Overview Introduction Jürgen Nautz, Paul Ginsborg and Ton Nijhuis Chapter 1.

Uncharted Territories: Individuals, Families, Civil Society and the Democratic State Paul Ginsborg

3

17

Part II. Feminist Historical Views Chapter 2.

Chapter 3.

Chapter 4.

Gendered Boundaries: Civil Society, the Public/Private Divide and the Family Karen Hagemann

43

The Family, Civil Society and Social Policy: A US Perspective Sonya Michel

66

Feminist Mobilisation and Family Change: A Case Study of a Grassroots Women’s Organisation in Quebec: The AFEAS (1966–1989) Anne Revillard

86

vi • Contents

Part III. Family and Society in South and Western Europe: Case Studies Chapter 5.

Chapter 6.

Chapter 7.

Chapter 8.

Corporate Birthmarks of Civil Society: Kinship and Kinship Networks in Voluntary Associations, 1800–1848 Carola Lipp State, Society and Family Change in Twentieth-Century Spain: The Evolution of the ‘Strong Family Model’ Elisa Chuliá The Foundation of Civilised Society: Family and Social Policy in Britain and Italy between 1946 and 1960 Stefania Bernini Children and Civil Society John Keane

101

120

144

169

Part IV. State and Changing Families in Eastern Europe and the Middle East Chapter 9.

The Failures of Modernity: Family, Civil Society and State in the Passage from Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic Ays,e Saraçgil

197

Chapter 10. Israel and Palestine through Family, Civil Society and State: An Overview Marcella Simoni

219

Chapter 11. Gendered Boundaries between the State, Family and Civil Society: The Case of Poland after 1989 Elz˙bieta Korolczuk

240

Chapter 12. Family Structures and Civil Society Perspectives in Present-Day Serbia Dragica Vujadinovic´

260

Notes on Contributors

280

Index

287

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures 2.1.

Habermas’s public sphere

5.1.

Kinship network within the Civic Society of Esslingen, 1838–1842

105

Diagram of kinship relations within the Civic Society of Esslingen, 1838–1843

105

5.3.

Kinship relations within charity association: Suppenküche

109

5.4.

Kinship relations within the workers support charity organisation

109

5.5.

Kinship relations within the Garland of Songs

112

5.6.

Kinship relations within the Citizens’ Choral Society

112

5.7.

Kinship relations within the social democratic Bruderbund, 1848

114

Kinship as mobilising factor of the petition movement, comparison of two petitions

115

5.2.

5.8.

11.1. Percentage of adult Poles undertaking voluntary work between 2001 and 2007

51

247

Tables 6.1.

Opinion of different societies on important aspects in life

123

6.2.

Educational levels by age cohorts of Spanish-born residents (2004)

131

6.3.

Female employment rates in different European countries

132

6.4.

Female employment rates in Spain by age groups

133

6.5.

Mean age of women at first marriage and at childbearing in different European countries (2002)

134

viii • List of Figures and Tables

6.6.

Total fertility rates in different European countries

134

6.7.

Importance attributed to the family by age groups

135

6.8.

Live births outside marriage (as percentage of all live births) 136

6.9.

Total divorce rate

6.10. Time-use structure of employed women and men in different European countries

137 139

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All the chapters of this book, except the chapters written by Ays,e Saraçgil and Marcella Simoni, have emerged from papers presented at the European Civil Society Network (CiSoNet) conference ‘Family and Civil Society’, held at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in Wassenaar, The Netherlands. CiSoNet was financed by the 5th Framework Programme of the European Union and focused on the emergence, dynamics and perspectives of a European-wide civil society. It is our pleasant duty to acknowledge the people who helped make the conference and this book possible. The conference was generously supported by the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), the Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam (DIA) and the Austrian Research Association (ÖFG) in Vienna. The DIA gave an outstanding organisational support to the conference and made the participants feel comfortable during their stay in the unusual wintery Wassenaar. We are especially grateful to Jürgen Kocka and Dieter Gosewinkel for publishing our volume within the series ‘European Civil Society’. The editorial work was financially supported again by the DIA and the WZB. We would also like to thank all of the others who helped us during the long process of preparing this volume.

EDITORS’ PREFACE

Is there a ‘European civil society’ which cuts across national borders and spreads, though unevenly, through the continent? Does it help to form a European identity from below? Can it be seen as an answer to the obvious democratic deficit of the European Union? For two and a half years, more than forty political scientists, sociologists, historians, and other scholars from fifteen research institutions in ten different countries have worked together on the project ‘Towards a European Civil Society.’ They were supported within the 5th Framework Programme of the EU. The network was coordinated by the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). The results of the project are published in the five to six volumes of this series, which include studies by other authors as well. ‘Civil society’ means many things—the concept varies and oscillates. To give a working definition: civil society refers to (a) the community of associations, initiatives, movements, and networks in a social space related to but distinguished from government, business, and the private sphere; (b) a type of social action that takes place in the public sphere and is characterized by nonviolence, discourse, self-organization, recognition of plurality, orientation towards general goals, and civility; (c) a project with socially and geographically limited origins and universalistic claims, which changes while it tends to expand, socially and geographically. Civil society is a deeply historical concept. For a quarter of a century, it has experienced a remarkable career, in several languages. Having a long tradition of many centuries, it had nearly disappeared during most of the twentieth century before being rediscovered and reinforced in the 1970s and 1980s, when the concept became attractive again in the fight against dictatorship, particularly against communist rule in East Central Europe. But in non-dictatorial parts of the world, the term and its promise responded to widely spread needs as well. Western Europe can be taken as an example. Civil society as a political concept of our time has come to formulate a critique of a broad variety of problems in contemporary society.

Editors’ Preface • xi

To name three tendencies: First, the concept emphasizes social selforganization as well as individual responsibilities, reflecting the widespread skepticism towards being spoon-fed by the state. Second, civil society, as demonstrated by the phrase’s use by present-day antiglobalization movements, promises an alternative to the unbridled capitalism that has been developing so victoriously across the world. The term thus reflects a new kind of capitalism critique, since the logic of civil society, as determined by public discourse, conflict, and agreement, promises solutions different from those of the logic of the market, which is based on competition, exchange, and the maximization of individual benefits. Third, civic involvement and efforts to achieve common goals are specific to civil society, no matter how differently the goals may be defined. In the highly individualized and partly fragmented societies of the present time, civil society promises an answer to the pressing question of what holds our societies together at all. On the basis of broad empirical evidence, the project has analyzed a large number of core problems of civil society, among them the complicated relation between markets and civil society, the impact of a European civil society on a European polity and vice versa, and the importance of family and household for the ups and downs of civil society. The project has dealt with resources, dynamics, and actors of civil society. It has dealt with questions of gender and other forms of inequality. It has compared developments in different European regions. It has begun to open up the perspective towards the non-European conditions, consequences, and correlates of European civil society. It has reconstructed the language of civil society, including different semantic strategies in the context of tradition, ideology, and power, which explain the multiple uses of the concept for different practical purposes. These are some of the topics dealt with in the volumes of this series. The authors combine a long historical perspective with broad and systematic comparison. What does it mean to speak of a ‘European’ civil society? It implies a certain common European development, a parallel or even convergent trend towards the emergence of civil society in Europe. Such a development may be based on the activities of civil society groups. From the eighteenth to the twentieth century, civil society circles, associations, networks, and institutions largely evolved in local, regional, and national frameworks. However, transnational variants, which might contribute to the emergence of transnational coherence and similarities, remained secondary. It is in the second half of the twentieth century that the quality of the process changed. In this phase, the development of civil society in Europe increasingly assumed transnational, ‘European,’ and sometimes global dimensions. This is a basic hypothesis of research in this series of studies. ‘European Civil Society’ will concentrate on transnational di-

xii • Editors’ Preface

mensions of civil society in Europe, by comparing and by reconstructing interrelations. The evolution of a European civil society in the process of transnationalization is based on actors as well as on mobile concepts. The ideas and practices of civil society have evolved in a very uneven way, starting to emerge mainly in Western Europe, where it was initially restricted to a few proponents and to specific circles. In the course of its development, civil society spread to other parts of Europe (and into other parts of the world) and gained support within broader social spheres. As they expanded into widening social and spatial environments, the ideas and realities of civil society changed. Thus, the potential of an approach is explored which takes civil society as a geographically and socially mobile phenomenon with a good deal of traveling potential and with the propensity to become a European-wide concept. ‘European Civil Society’ focuses on Europe in a broad, not merely geographical sense. This includes comparing European developments with developments in other parts of the world, as well as analyzing processes of mutual transfer and entanglement. Europe in this sense transcends the institutional and spatial realm of the European Union. Yet, studying the emergence and dynamics, the perspectives and problems of civil society in Europe may produce insights into the historical process of European integration, which is underway, but far from complete, and presently in crisis. ‘European Civil Society’ is a common endeavor of European and nonEuropean scholars. It centers on a topic that is the object of both scientific analysis and political efforts. The political success cannot be taken for granted. Scientific analysis, however, may help to work out the conditions under which the utopia of civil society in Europe has a chance of realization. Dieter Gosewinkel and Jürgen Kocka

PART I

Introduction and Overview

INTRODUCTION

Jürgen Nautz, Paul Ginsborg and Ton Nijhuis

Civil Society and the Family As a first approximation, civil society can be described as a societal space, which lies between the state, the economy and the private sphere, characterised by voluntary collective activities which are usually organised around shared values, interests and purposes (Cohen and Arato 1992: 74; Habermas: 1989). But this is only one dimension of the – not uncontested – concept of civil society used by the Civil Society Network (CiSoNet), which was responsible for the workshop on family, civil society and the State which took place in 2005 at the NIAS in Wassenaar in the Netherlands (www.cisonet.wzb.eu). The CiSoNet has worked with a rather more elaborate conceptualisation of civil society: The abovementioned spatial and organisational aspects of civil society are complemented by a normative component, which draws civil society towards the designation as a special area of society. In this understanding, civil society is an interaction of non-governmental institutions, characterised as non-violent, self-organising and self-reflexive. Jürgen Kocka points out that civil society as a specific type of societal action is ‘characterised by the fact that it (1) is oriented towards conflict, discourse, compromise, and understanding in public: civil society is realized in the public sphere; (2) stresses individual independence and collective self-organization; (3) recognizes plurality, difference and tension as legitimate; (4) operates non-violently; and (5) is related to general issues: it is frequently oriented towards something like the ‘common good’, even if different actors and groups usually have different opinions about what constitutes the common good’ (2006: 40). Civil-society activities are not ‘totally absent from government administration and politics, and commercial business and their relationships

4 • Introduction and Overview

with each other; nor is it completely absent from family and kinship relations either’ (Kocka 2006: 40). Thus constructed, civil society is a social sphere characterised by specific types of social action carried out by specific actors. Finally, civil society can be seen as a project, as a goal to be reached. The normative dimensions of the civil society concept are not uncontested, and produce inevitably analytical problems. But without them, the concept makes no sense and cannot be distinguished from the more general term society (Adloff 2009: 25). As Stefania Bernini points out in chapter 7 of this volume it is not only the term civil society which combines descriptive and normative connotations. What is true for civil society is also true for the family: ‘Dominant definitions of what constitutes a family are the result of changing cultural contexts and shifting power relations; the tensions and the resistances that inform the creation and transformation of such dominant definitions are easily lost in commonplace references to the family.’ The family, too, clearly contains normative concepts. The structural concept of family, implicitly or explicitly referred to by many authors of this volume, is sketched out by Sonya Michel: Family does not mean a ‘natural’, transhistorical biological unit but rather ‘a social formation that emerges at the intersection of law, institutions, economic and demographic trends, ideologies, custom, convention and practice’ and changes over time (chapter 3 in this volume). The boundaries between civil society and other societal spaces are often complex, blurred or negotiated, and the distinction between these spheres poses a number of problems. Whereas a great part of the literature on civil society deals with the relationship between civil society and the state, almost no attention has been paid to the complex of relations linking civil society and the family. Indeed, the literature about the relations and delimitations of civil society on the one hand, and family on the other, is quite insignificant. The need to overcome this shortcoming was at the basis of our original workshop at Wassenaar. During it, we took into account the ongoing feminist critical discourse about the definition and the distinction of public and private spheres as a central assumption of the civil-society concept (for the feminist critique, see especially chapters 2 and 3 in this volume). In particular, feminist criticism has delivered empirical and theoretical arguments against a hermetic separation of family and civil society (see Hagemann, Michel and Budde 2008). It should also be noted that the designation of civil society as a multidimensional societal sphere has connections with Jürgen Habermas’s concept of the public sphere as a pluralistic and self-organising public which functions as a mediator between society and state. However, the two concepts are not synonymous and it is as well to keep them distinct. The relationships between family, civil society and the state are still both under-theorised and under-researched. There are almost no works

Introduction • 5

which assume these relationships as their central methodological point of departure, or utilise this framework in their reconstruction of societies or phases in history. In earlier discourse on civil society it was common to categorise civil society and family as occupying different areas of society, but this was hardly a satisfactory solution. Another reason for neglecting the problems regarding the civil-society–family borderlines was probably that civil-society activities were mistakenly understood as an alternative program to family and kin-based agenda setting, distribution of power (see chapters 5 and 10 in this volume) and use of economic resources. In this version, family–civil-society relations were often narrowly reduced to nepotism, corruption and a lack of transparency. An important point of departure is to recognise that the possibilities of civil society are strongly co-related to specific family structures and cultures. Habermas famously emphasised the role of middle-class families in the formation of a specific middle-class Western European public sphere in the eighteenth century. In Central and Eastern Europe prior to the revolutions of 1989, certain forms of family solidarities and kinship supplied important conditions for the rise of civil society. In these societies, so the argument runs, family bonds did not weigh negatively upon civil society but rather provided sustenance which encouraged civic activity. Some chapters of this volume examine in detail these possibilities and correlations and elaborate upon Habermas’s assumptions. In thinking about the interactions between family, civil society and the state, the obligatory point of departure in terms of political theory is the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel’s legacy is a deeply contested one, in this field as in others, and this is not the place for a fullblown discussion (see chapters 1 and 5 in this volume for some further reflection). But it is worth pointing out one or two basic points. The ethical life of the family and its deep affections are confined in Hegel’s view (2002: § 158) to the ideal of the loving marital couple: ‘The unity of the family is one of feeling, the feeling of love. The true disposition here is that which esteems the unity as absolutely essential, and within it places the consciousness of oneself as individuality.’ Within the family, Hegel states in the same paragraph, individuals ‘are not independent persons but members’. He, on the contrary, presents civil society as constituting in many ways the antithesis of the family. It is the realm where men act within the civic community (bürgerliche Gesellschaft) as rational, self reflective, economically and socially independent ‘free-floating individuals’. It is difficult today to accept such a view of civil society and indeed the term Zivilgesellschaft has been coined precisely to establish a distance from Hegel’s predominantly negative definition of civil society. Yet what makes Hegel unique is his invitation to concentrate on family–civil society relations, the intensity of the gaze that he brings to bear, and his isolation of the moment when family and civil society come to touch each

6 • Introduction and Overview

other. Few, if any, later thinkers return to these themes with the same depth of vision.

Aims of this Book The editors of this volume understand families, defined obviously in much wider terms than Hegel’s, to be one element of a possible ‘golden chain’ linking individuals, the private sphere, civil society and the democratic state. Family life, far from being viewed in primarily negative and excluding terms, can be seen instead as potentially enriching, above all if placed in constant relationship to civil society. In other words, the two spheres – family and civil society – can inter-relate in virtuous, not merely negative terms. They have the power to constitute a central element in democratic development and culture, to form a counterweight to some of the worst aspects of modernity – the excessive privatisation of home life, the influence of unregulated commercial television and its advertising, the unceasing work-and-spend routines of modern life. A central question of this volume thus concerns the role of families and their members in the creation processes of a liberal and democratic civil society. This volume addresses the problems outlined above in a number of different ways. It contains both historical and contemporary case studies, compares different time periods and regions and tries to provide an introduction to some central theoretical problems. The focus is on the United States and Europe, but with two exceptions: The chapter on family culture and structures in Turkey and the comparative chapter on Israeli and Palestinian attitudes to family and civil society. These serve as valuable counterpoints to the European and American examples. When starting this discussion and book project the organisers and editors delivered a catalogue of questions to the contributors. A first group focuses on borderlines: Do families stay outside civil society or should we consider them as elements of civil society? Where, when and how is the boundary between civil society and family to be drawn and to be contested? How is the interaction between family and civil society conceived of in different societies, and to what extent can it be considered a fruitful field of inquiry deserving serious investigation? However, the question of boundaries and intersections of the private and public domains is only one way to study the relationship between family, civil society and state. A second group of questions was devoted to the influence of family structures and the performance of civil society: Can we identify an ‘elective affinity’ between specific kinds of family structures and civil society institutions? For example: Is the breeding ground for civil society better in regions where nuclear middle-class families are predominant? What are the effects, by contrast, of long-standing clan structures? When we

Introduction • 7

look at the map of Europe, can we discover a connection between different family structures and the kind of civil society structures, their ‘thickness’ and effective functioning? We cannot discuss the interference of different spheres by looking only in one direction. Therefore, thirdly, we asked our contributors to consider interventions of state institutions as well as civil society actors with relation to families. In this context welfare state provisions are obviously of prime importance, but so too are questions regarding the constructions of morality and the promotion of special ideals of ‘the family’. Potentially, the family can form an important source of energy for civil society activity, but many kinds of family structures and cultures in the contemporary world may also pose a hindrance for the emergence and well-being of civil-society institutions. Family may or may not be the primary institution that socialises and diffuses values and norms which are of fundamental importance for civil society. In families, children may or may not develop specific competences and values essential for participation in civil society. Finally, in families children may or may not receive their first social capital and the first networks that enable them to express trust in others and later to join civil society associations. It is thus of great importance, as John Keane explains in his chapter, to examine not only the position of women but also that of children.

Organisation of this Book This volume is organised in four parts: The first part contains this introduction and Paul Ginsborg’s chapter with an overview about the state of the art and the main theoretical positions in the discourse about the relationship between family, civil society and the state. In part II Karen Hagemann, Sonya Michel and Anne Revillard propose central feminist and historical views on the links and the interaction between family, civil society and the state. Part III follows with case studies about the relation of family and civil society in South and Western Europe. The authors of these chapters are Carola Lipp, Elisa Chuliá, Stefania Bernini and John Keane. Ays,e Saraçgil, Marcella Simoni, Elz˙bieta Korolczuk and Dragica Vujadinovic contribute an overview of the influence of the state on changing family structures and functions in Eastern Europe and the Near East in the last part of this volume. Paul Ginsborg (chapter 1) underlines the necessity not just of looking at family-civil society relations, but also of placing them in the wider context of relations between individuals, families, civil society and the state. He proposes the comparison of various national experiences – Italy, Britain and Sweden in particular – in order to bring out the striking dissimilarities of different national cultures with regard to these systems

8 • Introduction and Overview

of connections. He has no doubts that families are separate from civil society, but also knows that they interact – in positive or negative ways – with civil society. Ginsborg warns that we should not necessarily collate family with home, and both with the private or intimate sphere. There exist important overlaps but also distinctions between these institutions. Ginsborg ends by positing the need for a ‘golden chain’ of connections: families that are not too secluded in their own privacy, home living and consumerism; individuals who have acquired increasingly a consciousness of their role in (world) society; civil society that is welcoming, plural and reasonably regulated; and a renovated democratic state able to combine both representation and participation.

Feminist Historical Views Karen Hagemann’s chapter (2) is marked by a gender analysis which stresses the inadequacy, as well as the deleterious consequences, of a traditional public-private divide. She emphasises that the ‘hollowing out of the family’ in Habermas’s concept of public (and private) sphere is the focus of many feminist critiques. Authors like Sheila Benhabib, Nancy Fraser, Carol Pateman, and Iris Marion Young point out that Habermas’s bourgeois public sphere cannot make a valid claim to universalism given the implicit assumption of the exclusion of women from it. They criticise Habermas for implicitly accepting Hegel’s account of the gender division within the bourgeois family, which rationalises the position of men as the ‘sole representatives of their households in the public sphere’ and exclude women from (formal) political rights.1 Despite her critique of mainstream scholarship and its ignorance of the importance of gender and the family for the constitution of civil society, Hagemann does not automatically follow the critical thought of Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato. They had proposed, controversially, to place the family as a central institution of civil society: ‘We … believe that it would have been better [for Habermas] to include the family within civil society as its first association. … For then the family could have taken its place as a key institution in civil society, one that … could have provided an experience of horizontal solidarity, collective identity, and equal participation to the autonomous individuals comprising it’ (Cohen and Arato 1992: 631). Like Ginsborg, Hagemann instead separates the family sphere from civil society in analytic terms, but she insists on the importance of the gender system of power, with its attendant exclusions and hierarchies, which underlie both spheres. Hagemann also emphasises that the family – like civil society – needs to be historicised and suggests a series of possible predispositions of family life towards civil society, which need to be examined. Among these are not only the

Introduction • 9

economic and social background, and the strength or absence of kinship networks, but also the nature of family education and the way family time is organised. The discussion of borderlines and intersections between family and civil society can obviously be treated historically as well as theoretically: Sonya Michel (chapter 3) looks at families, civil society and social policy in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She also refers to Habermas’s concept of the bourgeois public sphere and the feminist critique of it. Michel elaborates her own theses based on historical processes in the United States. She concentrates on the nature of US families in the nineteenth century, and the interventionist nature of early social policy, and shows how American women gained entry into civil society through their benevolent work, deploying a rhetoric that has come to be known as maternalism. By the early twentieth century, the relationship between families, civil society and social policy in the Unites States had been radically reconfigured, with reformers abandoning the idea of using social policy to strengthen families so that they could produce good citizens. This strategy did not lead directly to political or civil rights for women. However, women became influential in several policy fields and philanthropic organisations. Habermas did not recognise these crucial processes, so Michel’s argument runs, because his concept of public sphere includes literary clubs but does not refer to philanthropic organisations. This exclusion of charity and social service organisations turns out to be highly problematic, not only for the definition of gender roles but also for the development of families. Social policies and institutions obviously exerted considerable influence upon family development and attitudes, as Michel demonstrates for the North-American case – other countries’ experiences of these problems are analysed further on in this volume. Anne Revillard’s chapter (4) on feminist mobilisation and the family draws on a case study of Quebec grassroots women’s organisation, the Association Féminine d’Education et d’Action Sociale (AFEAS), in order to analyse the dynamics of family change and civil society. Her study is based on social movement theory and the concepts of feminism, familialism and materialism. It examines the evolution of AFEAS, whose collective identity successfully mingles gender and family aspects. Revillard argues that beneath its seemingly unchanging family-values rhetoric, this association shifted between the 1960s and the 1990s from familialism to feminism. During this period the meaning of the organisation’s focus on the family changed dramatically. In the beginning, when the association was under strong Catholic influence, AFEAS promoted conservative family values. Over the years, it gradually asserted a more feminist standing, using the same rhetoric to make claims for reforms that resulted in improving women’s rights. Revillard’s case study offers an explanation

10 • Introduction and Overview

for this evolution by exploring the link between the experience of divorce and the rise of a feminist consciousness. The experience of divorce was one of the elements that spurred the development of a feminist attitude among the AFEAS membership, which led to a shift from a collective identity grounded on the family to a collective identity primarily built upon the defence of women’s autonomy. Thus, the AFEAS case provides a valuable example of how the dynamics of family change and the mobilisation process within civil society can interlink in positive and innovative ways.

Family and Society in South and Western Europe In modern social theory and historiography, a mainstream proposition is that the individual was set free from its traditional bonds during the period which saw the growth of democratic representative bodies and of modern forms of social cooperation like voluntary associations. In this view, kinship is often portrayed as the antithesis of modern civil-society structures. In chapter 5 Carola Lipp takes her distance from this oftrepeated assertion and argues instead that ‘kinship was a potent operator and organiser of associational life in the early nineteenth century’. It should therefore be properly integrated into any analysis of civil society. She delivers much evidence to support her plea for a modification of the prevailing idea of an automatic antagonism between kin relations and civil society. The empirics of Lipp’s chapter demonstrate that at the beginning of the nineteenth century – especially in German cities – kinship alliances were a lively force and important institution in communal politics and not a relic of the corporative past. In the city’s executive bodies, Lipp locates long kinship chains stretching over time. ‘Voters frequently attributed political competence and representational rights to persons who gained their social capital from … their identification with their individual kin networks and their activity within … civil society. … The public sphere and civil society drew emotional qualities like trust and the allocation of power from … the recognition of kinship’. The historical evidence provided in this chapter enables Lipp to identify kinship as ‘a potent operator of social life’ in the first half of the nineteenth century, and to make a special plea for examining family and civil society in all their historical complexity rather than ascribing predetermined roles to either one or the other. Elisa Chuliá’ chapter (6) is dedicated to the relationship of state, society and family change in twentieth-century Spain. She demonstrates that while families in Spain have not been immune from global trends towards the transformation of their form and composition during the

Introduction • 11

last decades of the twentieth century, their fidelity to the ‘strong family model’ of South Europe has not been seriously brought into question. One is tempted to argue, as Chuliá does, that this is the expression of a historically deep-rooted culture. For most of the twentieth century predominant norms in Spanish state and society encouraged a type of family that was rigid, patriarchal, highly unbalanced from a gender perspective and clearly at odds with the idea of civil society. Nevertheless, from the mid 1950s young families began to adopt strategies which produced changes in their modes of internal functioning and in moral attitudes. The old rigidities eased and intra-family change contributed to the making of a new Spanish civil society. Families expanded the space and content of conversations between generations and sexes, and acquired fundamental skills of social interaction and civil relationships, which had been lost in the early years of the Franco regime. It may be claimed that the family, together with other social institutions, was a prime, albeit hidden, actor in the incubation period of civil society (something similar, though not identical, was the case in early nineteenth-century Germany; see chapter 5). Women benefited significantly from the family strategies of the 1950s since they gained more and better access to the education system. They could improve their position vis-à-vis other family members as well as embracing new options regarding the organisation of their life cycle and the activities of everyday life. Encouraged by the transition to democracy and in the context of a rapidly modernising and more open society, women have been able in recent years to increase their participation in the labour market substantially, competing with men for qualified jobs. They have also notably enhanced their standing in public life. The contribution of Spanish families to the building of a modern and progressive society must be placed alongside their noteworthy role in the welfare system, where families often substitute for public welfare provision. Chuliá shows that ‘familialism’ − in the welfare literature typically deemed as an obstacle to women’s integration into the labour market and to their full emancipation – seems not to have aroused great antagonism in Spain. Demands for policies geared to ‘de-familiarisation’ have rarely been voiced in the public sphere. In Spain, family, civil society and the welfare state appear to have struck a certain balance in their relation to each other, a balance which also contains a significant measure of gender equality. The next chapter (7), by Stefania Bernini, concentrates on the ways in which state policy functioned with regard to families in Italy and Britain in the fifteen years after the Second World War. In her analysis, she uses family not as a tightly descriptive term, but rather as a set of expectations. Bernini discusses how civil society – this time in the form of specialist associations – has contributed to shape dominant ideas of family

12 • Introduction and Overview

life, and the extent to which such ideas constituted the basis for social intervention in Britain and Italy. Welfare politics after World War II was marked by an extensive rethinking of the responsibilities for individual welfare, and with it of the role of the family as a care provider. Post-war British and Italian democracies provide ample examples of policies that, while condemning the manipulation of family life and the invasion of privacy adopted by authoritarian regimes, fostered nonetheless a specific norm of family life through legislative intervention and social policy. Bernini raises the following questions: On what knowledge is state intervention based? How does it operate in reality? Who implements the intervention? What part – if any – does civil society and its institutions (defined here as professional bodies of doctors, psychologists, social workers, etc.) play in shaping the understanding of the family, its role and social function, and what part does civil society play vis-à-vis the state? Bernini notes that in both countries the dominant public policy discourse from 1946 to 1960 concentrated on the involution of moral behaviour and its causes, as well as the theme of increased individualisation. Whereas responses in Italy were left to a great extent to the Roman Catholic Church and its affiliated and related associations, in Britain it was the ‘experts’ who were crucial in the evolution of state policy. British welfare policy endowed the state with responsibilities and powers on social questions that had no parallel in Italy. The Anglican and the Catholic Churches expressed different strategies towards families, which resulted not only from different political and social conditions but also from different concepts of civil society. It is not only women who often find themselves distant from civil society or impeded from participating; the same is true of children. John Keane dedicates his highly innovative essay (chapter 8) to this problem. He discusses whether children can become full members of a civil society. This raises the question of whether they have the capacity to enjoy the rights of association and property, legal protection and citizens’ powers to vote in free and fair elections. As minors they are represented by their parents in public life, a position not far from Hegel’s idea of the duties of male heads of households. Keane discusses the difficult relationship along a time line, starting with the ‘Great Quarantine’, which was then followed by the ‘age of welfare regulation’. As a third, most recent period, he identifies the ‘Coming Enfranchisement’. He characterises this period as one in which the ‘principle that children are capable of living within civil societies serves as a ‘rallying point’ for many civil-society organisations as well as the ‘focus of conduct and policymaking’ in state policies and civil society. John Keane sees a ‘de-colonisation’ of children and childhood going on: a transition from a Victorian picture of children as little animals in need of good thrashing to one of children as full members of civil society with equal rights.

Introduction • 13

State and Changing Families in Eastern Europe and the Middle East The difficulties of democracy lie at the heart of chapter 9, by Ays,e Saraçgil. She deals with the inability of the Ottoman and Turkish modernising elites of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to put the three elements – family, civil society and state – in a virtuous relationship, which could have permitted the growth of a public sphere, free institutions and democracy. Saraçgil analyses the interactions between Ottoman imperial structures and institutions on the one hand, and the way Islam conceived individuals, families and communities on the other. In a second moment, she looks at the radical proposals of the Kemalist revolution and the Turkish Republic regarding the structure, culture and religion of families. Under the stipulations of the Civil Code of 1926, women gained juridical and social status for the first time and received personal and political rights. The Constitution of 1924 established the semblance of a representative democratic system and provided opportunities for the articulations of a plural society, but in reality did not lead to a flourishing public sphere. Saraçgil identifies three reasons for this failure: First, cultural, religious or ethnic pluralism was not a goal of Kemalism, founded as it was on a profoundly militarist culture. Secondly, the Kurdish revolt of 1925 signalled the end of all organised forms of opposition and protest. Thirdly, the Turkish modernising discourse did not make many inroads into the culture of the Anatolian peasantry, with its traditional societal and family structures and its fidelity to Islam. The majority of Turkish society thus formed a passive but weighty counterbalance to the new secular Republic. In chapter 10 Marcella Simoni gives an overview of the complex net of interaction between the three spheres which accompany the processes of political, social and economic transformation in Israel and Palestine during the twentieth century. She describes why the family remained a strong basic institution of the Palestinian society as well as of the Israeli society and state, though in very different ways and with different structures. Both the Zionist/Israeli and the Palestinian approaches converged on the central role of the family in their respective and conflicting national quests. However, they had different roots and trajectories: In the beginning, the Zionist movement tried to break with the traditional and overbearing position occupied by the Jewish family. Within the new society, it stood instead in favour of demoting the importance of the family and stressing new communication and interaction structures, above all in its rural communes. For the Palestinians – on the other hand – the family was a large kinship structure, over-strong in relation to the possibilities of civil society, but functional as the ultimate stronghold of resistance against the progressively more widespread Zionist presence in the coun-

14 • Introduction and Overview

try. After the founding of the state of Israel, however, the family rapidly reassumed its central position as one of the core Israeli institutions in the making of the new state. To some extent this ‘comeback’ of the family after 1948 in Israeli society and politics can be seen as a national project guided from the top downwards. The various attempts at forming civil society structures which developed among the Palestinian middle and upper classes remained subordinate to the influence of the extended family in the private as well as in the public spheres. In Palestinian society after 1948, the family and the clan were the first and ultimate safety net for a population of refugees, as they were for those living under military occupation since 1967. In exile, it was the family which functioned as a ‘shock absorber’. After this date an emerging Palestinian organised civil society undertook some of the functions of the desired-for but non-existent Palestinian state. ‘A civil society had been born, but its democratic flowering was still hindered by the strength of family traditions and hierarchies’, Bernini states. Elz˙bieta Korolczuk scrutinises in chapter 11 the interplay between the concepts of family and state to demonstrate how the Catholic Church and its alliance with the state mediate discourses on gender in contemporary Poland. The focus on women’s rights and on women’s participation in public life lead to an understanding of gender relations as well as to a deeper insight into the relations between state, civil society and family. To this end, Korolczuk analyses the development of civil society networks in Poland since the collapse of state socialism. The examples discussed in this chapter suggest that civil-society networks may emerge in neo-democratic countries, even if they are discouraged by state policies. People can challenge the notions of gendered citizenship and make use of their ‘private’ identities in order to reach certain political goals. Nonetheless, these examples also reveal the limitations of such struggles. The imbalance of power between the state and civil-society activists in Poland is enormous. Without solid and substantial resources and built-in mechanisms of support, the mobilisations of the latter often ended in frustration and failure. In Poland, the roots of the newly established democratic order remain deeply patriarchal, and the sphere of formal politics is shaped by the idea of a country as a nation rather than as a democratic society.2 This Polish nation is often imagined as a patriarchal family where women and men occupy their ‘natural’ places: women within the private sphere, bearing and rearing children, and men in the public sphere, protecting women and children and taking all the vital political decisions. Dragica Vujadinovic examines changes in family structures in another post-Socialist state in her chapter (12) on family structures and civil-society perspectives in contemporary Serbia. She emphasises that changes in family structures have been determined by controversial influences: Between the 1960s and 1990s, former Yugoslavia underwent a strong mod-

Introduction • 15

ernising process, which resulted in the emergence of some initial elements of civil society. The discourse and the practice of this (frequently suppressed) civil society spread over the country, crossing borders in an attempt to fight the authoritarian communist (Titoist and post-Titoist) regime. These movements contributed to the diminishing and internal restructuring of the dominant patriarchal framework of gender relations. However, the ethno-nationalist reversal of these trends, which took shape under the Milosevic regime and during the tragically violent break-up of Yugoslavia, resulted in the processes of re-traditionalisation, re-patriarchialisation and re-clericalisation. The process of the decomposition of Serbian society and its negative impact on family structures as well as its thwarting of civil-society development is particularly relevant. In contemporary Serbian politics and society exist dialectical relations and clashes between manifestations of re-patriarchialisation on the one hand, and recovered elements of emancipation in gender relations, especially since the establishment of a democratic regime after 2000. In spite of all the retrograde processes, there are strong indications of emancipatory changes in family, cultural and political life, and of mutual re-enforcement between civil society development and democratic transformations of previously patriarchal structures and culture. Civil-society actors, feminist groups and individual feminist intellectuals have made great efforts to considerable effect in the fight to change the patriarchal matrix in public discourse, media, political life, state policies and legal regulation. However, NGOs with anti-emancipatory ideas on gender issues are also springing up in Serbia. The falling fertility rates provide a strong stimulus to extreme-right NGOs and clerical campaigns against women’s reproductive rights and generally against gender equality and the democratisation of family structures.

Notes 1. For a detailed overview of feminist scholarship see Hagemann, Michel and Budde 2008 and in this volume the chapters 2 and 3. 2. This may prompt a comparison with the role of the nation for Turkish society under Kemalism.

References Adloff, Frank. 2009. ‘Kirchen, Religion und Zivilgesellschaft – soziologischkomparative Perspektiven’. Zwischen Fürsorge und Seelsorge. Christliche Kirchen in den europäischen Zivilgesellschaften seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Arnd Bauerkämper and Jürgen Nautz. Frankfurt/M.: 25–46.

16 • Introduction and Overview

Cohen, Jean A., and Andrew Arato. 1992. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA. Habermas, Jürgen. 1990. Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Reprint. Neuwied and Berlin. ———. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Private Sphere. Cambridge, MA. Hagemann, Karen, Sonya Michel and Gunilla Budde, eds. 2008. Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. New York and Oxford. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 2001. Philosophy of Right. Translated by S. W. Dyde. London. Kocka, Jürgen. 2006. ‘Civil Society in Historical Perspective’. Civil Society. Berlin Perspectives, ed. John Keane. New York and Oxford: 37–50.

Chapter 1

UNCHARTED TERRITORIES INDIVIDUALS, FAMILIES, CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE DEMOCRATIC STATE1

Paul Ginsborg

The Analytical Deficit The relationships between family and civil society are both under theorised and under researched. There are almost no works which take these relationships as their methodological point of departure, or which utilise them systematically in their reconstruction of given societies or historical periods. While there are a plethora of studies which concentrate on civil society–state relations, and very many which treat of the relationship between states and families (above all in the realm of public policy), there are few which deal with family–civil society relations, and even fewer which try to keep in the forefront of their explanatory apparatus the connections between individuals, families, civil society and the state.2 To move onto this largely uncharted territory is potentially a very exciting task, precisely because it opens up unexpected vistas and leads us to ask new questions of the historical, sociological or social anthropological material that we have in front of us. But before trying to offer some indications of pathways and pitfalls, it is as well to ask why the analytical deficit existed in the first place. There are many explanations. The first and most obvious is that if civil society as an analytical category has, as we all know, a long and variable history, it was not systematically employed in academic studies on an international scale until the 1990s. Even then it encountered considerable opposition. It is especially significant that a civil society framework

18 • Introduction and Overview

was and still is very little adopted by sociologists of the family, who might well be considered the most obvious candidates to put relations between civil society and the family firmly on the research agenda. If we take a sample of widely used general introductions to family sociology in various countries – Michael Anderson’s Sociology of the Family in Britain, first published in 1971; Chiara Saraceno’s Sociologia della famiglia in Italy (1988); François de Singly’s Sociologie de la famille contemporain in France (1993) – we see with some surprise that there are practically no pages at all dedicated to the relationship between family and society, let alone civil society. Even Martine Segalen’s Historical Anthropology of the Family (1986) includes only a last chapter (out of ten) on Family and society and in it there is nothing about those problems which are likely to exercise us most here – the connections (or lack of them) of families to civil society, and of both to the democratic state (1986: 286–306). Family sociologists and anthropologists, then, wrote a great deal about the family but little about civil society. In a diametrically opposite way, scholars and theorists embracing a civil society framework wrote a great deal about associationism, but simply left out the most powerful and complex association of them all – the family. It remains somewhat of a mystery to me why this has been so. In particular, I find it difficult to understand why Habermas’s suggestions about the role of the family in the creation of a public sphere, which date back to 1962 (with an English translation in 1989) were not more widely received and elaborated in the wave of civil society studies (Habermas 1962). Perhaps public sphere and civil society were competitors for the same analytical space; perhaps the private-public divide continued to exercise its hold upon the mainly male scholars of civil society, with the result that the private sphere was simply not considered a topic that was relevant to civil society studies. Nothing could have been more mistaken (Ginsborg 1995). A third category of scholars – feminists and those in gender studies – should also be considered. The last thing they could be accused of is ignoring the private sphere. Their denunciations of the public-private divide, insistence on the personal being political and concentration on unequal and gendered family power and family training have all been of fundamental importance for the topic under discussion here. But two things, I would suggest, have prevented them from making more substantive contributions in this particular field. One was their concentration upon female liberation from the patriarchal family, with its necessary emphasis on gendered individuality rather than the family as an institution.3 The second was the subsuming of family studies into the general and all-embracing category of gender studies. Both these methodological inclinations, especially the second one, meant that the need to study the family in its own right, as an institution and in its connections to civil society, emerged very little. The late Susan Moller Okin, in her outstanding

Uncharted Territories • 19

Justice, Gender and the Family, was one of the very few feminist scholars who made explicit the family’s centrality: ‘We refuse to give up on the institution of the family’, she wrote in 1989, and not by chance she asked (though she did not answer) one of the key questions which now concern us as civil society scholars: ‘Unless the household is connected by a continuum of just associations to the larger communities within which people are supposed to develop fellow feelings for each other, how will they grow up with the capacity for enlarged sympathies such as are clearly required for the practice of justice?’ (1989: 100, 125). Behind the absence of systematic enquiry into the relations between family and civil society in the various academic disciplines lies a greater gap – that in political theory. In neither of the two dominant political traditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Liberal and Marxist, do we find any serious or extended consideration of families as political institutions or of the nature of their connection and contribution to civil society. In the liberal tradition, the systematic relegation of the family to the sphere that lies outside of politics, to the private rather than the public, ensured that it received only marginal attention. Occasionally, as with John Stuart Mill in his Subjection of Women (1869), there was fleeting recognition of the family’s great formative importance (Mill 1991: 510).4 But this was not an insight which he developed, and it was largely ignored by those who came after him. John Rawls is a further case in point. Not only is his treatment of moral development a gendered one, as has been often pointed out, but the family remains passive and its influence implicit in the structuring of his theory of justice (Moller Okin 1989: 89–109; Nussbaum 2000: 270–283; Rawls 1997: 765–807).5 As for the Marxist tradition, the young Marx noted in his critique of Hegel that ‘family and civil society make themselves into the state. They are the active force’.6 Quite soon though in his intellectual development this view of the family as an active and independent subject disappears. It is subsumed instead into civil society, and becomes one of the many expressions of economic relations. In his letter of 28 December 1846 to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov, Marx is entirely explicit on this point: ‘If you assume given stages of development in production, commerce or consumption, you will have a corresponding form of social constitution, a corresponding organisation, whether of the family, of the estates or of the classes – in a word, a corresponding civil society’ (Marx and Engels 1982: 96). The Bolsheviks, including Lenin, shared this view of the family as belonging to the superstructure, and to different degrees thought it would be rendered obsolescent by future economic development and socialist planning. Only Trotsky questioned the schema. His article of 1923, suitably entitled ‘The Old Family and the New’, is remarkable for the primacy it ascribes to family relations in a causal sequence of change.

20 • Introduction and Overview

Trotsky noted that domestic life had revealed itself ‘more conservative’ than economic or political life, more resistant to reorganisation. To change it had become the most difficult of Communist tasks, but also the most important: ‘It is quite obvious that unless there is actual equality of husband and wife in the family, in a normal sense as well as in the conditions of life, we cannot speak seriously of their equality in social work or even in politics’ (Trotsky 1924: 48−49). This intuition – that changes in intrafamily relations and culture were a necessary precursor of social and political transformation, and that, consequently, families were subjects in history, not merely objects – was one to which he never returned. While the Liberal and Marxist traditions, for different reasons, thus had little to say about the relations between family and civil society (and the Marxists increasingly less about civil society), it is Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right, especially paragraphs 158–181, which offers the most suggestive treatment of the relations between individuals, families, civil society and the state. In particular, the moment of ‘dissolution’ (Auflösung) of the family when it confronts civil society is as extraordinary as it is neglected in current debates. Hegel’s treatment of this moment bears the analytic weight of a triple-layered process: first, the negation in civil society of the previous ethical life of the family; secondly, the dismemberment of the family of origin as its children procreate and make new families of their own; finally, the entry of only male heads of households into modern civil society (Hegel 1991: 241ff.). Naturally, neither Hegel’s version of gender relations nor his famous definition of civil society as that which ‘affords a spectacle of extravagance and misery as well as of the physical and ethical corruption common to both’ (Hegel 1991: 222) are ones that we are likely to accept today. Hegel’s legacy is an unusually contested one. Even within this series of volumes dedicated to European civil society, we can discern radically different ways of viewing his relevance and utility. Jean Terrier and Peter Wagner’s judgement in The Languages of Civil Society is essentially negative: Hegel reacted to the rise of individualist thinking by advocating essentially non-liberal institutions as a counterpart to the freedom of individuals. For them, Hegel ‘escaped the very modern question of selfdetermination and self-rule’ (2006: 19–20). Lars Trägårdh, on the other hand, in State and Civil Society in Northern Europe (2007: 12–14, 29–30) is less concerned with self-determination. He celebrates instead Hegel’s vision of the state as the reconciliation of the particular and the universal, and identifies just such aspirations in the Swedish welfare model. According to this argument, the powerful Swedish state exists precisely to protect the individual from the ‘excesses’ of civil society, which is taken to include families, churches and the market. A third point of view is Carola Lipp’s in this volume (chapter 5). She notes that Hegel makes no room for extended kinship within civil society, and indeed treats the

Uncharted Territories • 21

family as an essentially nuclear unit, with familial love confined to the relationships between parents and children. Her research into German associationism in the nineteenth century shows, on the contrary, that extended kinship relations were a ‘solidifying substructure of civil society’, guaranteeing the continuity of associations and the structuration of generational change. Each of us selects the Hegel that seems most relevant, either to celebrate or to castigate. Perhaps, though, we can all agree on the power and fascination of his methodological invitation – to examine individuals in relation to a triad of social spheres (families, civil society and the state), and to render our enquiry into the relations between family and civil society at least equal in its intensity to more habitual ones regarding the state and the family, and the state and civil society. A last question which derives from Hegel concerns the shape of the chain of connections that we wish to establish. In The Elements of the Philosophy of Right, the shape, though subject to considerable dialectical turbulence, is undoubtedly linear and ascending. At the end of the work, the state makes its majestic entrance. It is the reconciler of the universal with the particular, the force capable of resolving all previous contradictions. Nowadays, such a nineteenth-century view of human history’s capacity to achieve positive resolution is not an easy one to share. It makes more sense to conceive of our chain of connections in terms of a circle rather than a line, with no specific endpoint in view. There is no hierarchical ordering of its elements, nor is there a linear progression. Analytically, it is possible to enter the circle at any point, without necessarily beginning with the family, or conceiving of it as some sort of kernel from which will grow the great tree of state. What remains of paramount importance in methodological terms is the systematic examination of all the elements in the chain and the connections between them.

The Separation of Family and Civil Society How might we go about filling the gap, both in theory and method, outlined briefly above? Very recently Gunnilla Budde (2008), in an interesting essay, has referred to the family in the context of middle-class social life in Wilhelmine Germany as being the ‘core institution of civil society’. I understand what she means, but to place families at the heart of civil society is highly problematic in theoretical terms.7 To do so means to miss the unique weight of families as institutions and to underestimate the specificities of family life. Families distinguish themselves from other associations by the closeness of their ties, the passions and emotions that they generate, their unparalleled influence over the young, the extraordinary repetitiveness of their routines, and the physical separateness of

22 • Introduction and Overview

home living, both by day and by night. It is difficult indeed to claim that the family is a voluntary association similar to that found in civil society. We cannot choose our parents, but we may well choose to belong to Amnesty International. Only by keeping family and civil society separate analytically can such distinctions be accorded their proper place. It is certainly true that families can have public or semi-public faces, as both Gunilla Budde and Jürgen Kocka have recently stressed (2006: 41). They acquire such an aspect in what may be described as a two-way process: that of certain members of the family entering civil society, or else elements of civil society ‘entering’ the family. Let me deal with these in turn. In the first case, one or more members of a family become part of civil society, are involved in its associationism and bring the discourses of civic action back into the family circle. This is a gendered process. Although there are many instances in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European history of women – especially middle-class women – being civic protagonists, overall the associations of civil society have been predominantly male enclaves. Certainly, the gender imbalance has lessened dramatically in the last fifty years, and some statistics suggest that in the last two decades of the century the number of women active in civil society actually overtook the number of men (Baer 2007: 99). However, time and again, even in families with a heightened sense of gender justice, it is women who send their men to meetings and choose or are obliged to stay at home to look after children or aging parents, or fulfil domestic duties.8 If we think about the possible connections between individual life cycles and active presence in civil society, then we see immediately that women who are most active in civil society are either those who are pre– or post–child rearing, or those who have consciously chosen to limit their family obligations in one way or another. Just this observation by itself should make us very wary of any casual insertion of families en bloc into civil society. The second case, that of civil society ‘entering’ the family, boasts many variants. A generic one is that of domestic space being particularly porous or open, either through the nature of its architecture, or of neighbourhood practices which encourage social intermingling, or through a family culture used to ‘comings and goings’.9 In certain historical situations, especially under authoritarian regimes or among oppressed minorities, it is the family and domestic space themselves which constitute a besieged or nascent civil society. Domestic, closed space has always been vital in the organisation of political solidarities. Very often, it is the first moment of civil society, with a meeting in a living room or a salotto giving rise to a discussion group, an association or local movement. However, even in this case family and civil society remain distinct, for a nascent civil society will soon outgrow domestic space and seek public

Uncharted Territories • 23

meeting places. We have to understand that the requirements of family life and those of civil society do not necessarily coincide. On the contrary, they are often in conflict with one another. Those, for instance, who work for a major NGO like Amnesty International, recount their enormous difficulty in reconciling the two spheres – family life and civil society – with the first often being sacrificed to the voracious requirements of the second.10 Time made for civil society is time stolen from the family, usually from the weaker members of the family. The whole, largely unwritten, intimate history of male militancy in trade unions, left-wing political parties, social movements and so on, is a history of partial or total abandonment of women, children and the home. We may wish for families to develop in a certain way so that they and civil society become mutually supportive, but there is a very long historical record to suggest that there are deep structural tensions between the two, rather than any easy coincidence. In separating the two spheres conceptually, none of us is obliged to adopt a traditionally gendered private-public divide. Rather the path is wide open to examine the ways in which families and civil society connect, could connect or fail to connect.

Home, Family and the Private Sphere Separation is only the first of our problems. Another is the relationship between a triad of overlapping terms – private (or intimate) sphere, family and home. Even to the most casual observer it must be clear that they do not necessarily mean the same thing, though they are very frequently used as if they do. Most of us go home at night, but home does not necessarily coincide with family. The household has often included within its walls beings who are not relatives: slaves in the ancient Greek oikos; servants of one sort or another in wealthier families; and animals – not just domestic pets, but farm animals in peasant households all over the world. Family, on the other hand, can certainly refer to those with whom we do not live, and to whom we do not go home at night. The term includes our parents, who may very well not live in the same household as ourselves, or more broadly those to whom we are related, either by blood or by marriage. Although each of us has a fairly precise idea of who it is we have in mind when we talk of our family, our criteria of inclusion and exclusion vary enormously.11 Many people in North Europe and in the U.S.A. think that their dog is more important than their cousin. Family is thus not a precise analytical category. A useful preliminary distinction can be drawn between the ‘family of origin’, from which we have come, and the ‘family of procreation’, which we will make. But not all individuals ‘make’ families. Increasing numbers of people are choosing to live together but not to have children, and increasing numbers are living alone.

24 • Introduction and Overview

The connection of family and household (or home) cannot therefore be taken for granted, nor is family itself easily defined. None the less, the two terms family and home, taken together, have a very strong hold on a common-sense idea of what family life is. They strongly denote intimate space, a legitimate claim to separation of an inside from an outside. Life where there is no such separation, where community incessantly pokes its inquisitive nose into internal space, or the state its eagle eye, is life without an essential dimension. However modest, an inside is essential, as a place of domestic sociality, of freely expressed beliefs and conscience, of intimate sexual acts.12 However, not all privacy or intimacy, thank goodness, is familial. Privacy may often be construed as ‘the inside of the inside’, a necessary separation of the individual from the family. An individual’s ‘intimate sphere’ may be constructed of acts and meanings which are entirely consistent with family life, or those which are not; those which serve a family and its interests, or those which are separate from, or even in conflict with it. It is as well to remember that very rarely do families as a whole move onto the terrain of civil society. Usually, it is individuals who compose civil society, and they may well experience civil society commitment in conflict with their families (or parents). In these cases, belonging to civil society forms part of an individual’s own ‘intimate sphere’. The triad of family, home and private sphere, is thus a more complicated one than may appear at first sight. We often use the terms interchangeably, but each boasts multiple layers of significance, and there is no easy fit between the three.

A System of Connections Having pointed out these preliminary difficulties of demarcation and of language, I would now like to explore in a little more detail the variable nature of connections between individuals, families, civil society and the democratic state. Connecting circles of this sort will be of differing strengths and texture in different cultures and nations, with each displaying its own particular configuration. Let me immediately offer a clarificatory example, based upon the single country that I know best. Historically, Italy has been characterised by accentuated individualism, heavily gendered families centring upon a powerful maternal figure,13 weak civil society, especially in the South, and a late-formed, often ineffective, democratic state. The four elements are thus combined in a very distinct way. Norberto Bobbio once commented that in Italy ‘a quantity of energy, commitment and courage is squandered [by individuals] on the family, but little is left for society or

Uncharted Territories • 25

for the state’ (1990: 107). In other words, the key connection in Italy was, and still is, that between the family and the individual. In other European societies, it would be possible to suggest a rather different shape for these relations. In Britain, for instance, the dominant connection would still seem to be that between the individual and the state. Indeed, as José Harris has recently pointed out, in British political thought the very term civil society has traditionally been used to mean ‘effective governing institutions’ rather than an autonomous sphere of associationism (2002: 18–21). British families in general display a much less controlling attitude towards individuals than in Italy, and kinship networks, though far from absent, are much less tightly woven. A gendered reading of the British picture would further suggest a greater distancing of women from the routines of family life, fewer obligations upon them with regard to aging parents and a much greater participation than in Italy in the labour force (McRae 1999: 3–7). For Sweden it is possible to suggest that the dominant linkage is different again, being that between the state and the individual. In contrast to the British liberal tradition’s wariness of an over-powerful state and its possible interference in private life, the long-standing Swedish socialdemocratic tradition has firmly put the democratic state in first place. It is seen as the provider on a universal basis of de-commodified welfare services which elsewhere, especially in southern Europe, have been delegated historically to families (Esping-Andersen 1996). The Swedish state has also acted as the champion of individuals, especially women, against the encroachments of the market and the demands of the family. Sweden also differs from both Britain and Italy in having a remarkably robust civil society, both in terms of older associations like trade unions, and new social movements concerned with peace and the environment. Though not without its negative sides, Sweden is thus able to boast an unusually balanced ‘system of connections’ (Trägårdh 2007). This comparative framework can be expanded and refined in many ways, both in its quantitative and qualitative aspects. Here, though, I want to underline how it may also help to illuminate a wider political point concerning modern democracy. At the moment, European society is marked by a profound disconnection between families and democratic culture. Politics has become a separate sphere. It belongs to the politicians and the parties, and inspires widespread passivity, indifference and even cynicism among large sections of the population. Membership of mass parties is steadily on the decline. Diffidence towards democratic institutions has increased markedly. Nor are the associations of civil society, however precious and significant their presence, themselves able to constitute an alternative school of democracy (Ginsborg 2008a: 49–56).

26 • Introduction and Overview

Instead, families and individuals have everywhere sought comfort, protection, distraction and entertainment in the joys of home living, and in the purchase of the commodities of every sort which go to create it. There is nothing intrinsically wrong in this at all. Indeed, if one thinks of the great material deprivations of most of the European population less than one hundred years ago, then today’s prosperity is cause for great celebration. Modern consumption can also generate increasing civic action, such as that dedicated to the protection of vital common resources like water, or to what constitutes fair trade and a proper relationship between consumers in the North of the world and producers in the South. In overall terms, though, the daily routines of the families which belong to the consuming classes all over the democratic world contain all too few spaces for discussion, democratic debate and participation. Instead, families are overwhelmingly privatised in their habits, thoughts and daily practices. Against so negative a view, it can be argued that education levels are rising and that the Internet and other instruments are constantly democratising access to information. Yet the countervailing forces – commercial television, consumerism, work-and-spend routines – easily have the upper hand. A gulf has been created between the first two elements of the ‘golden chain’, individuals and families, and the last two, civil society and the democratic state. The average citizen, even if educated and aware, tends to renounce any time-consuming commitment to activities which extend beyond the narrow circles of home, work, family and friends. It is as if, by a sleight of hand, she or he has been separated from democratic politics, in the widest sense of that term. How to break through that separation is the great rebus of modern politics. In the remainder of this chapter I would like to make a contribution to this problem by mapping some of the most difficult and delicate features in a possible system of connections: first the structure and culture of families themselves; then the definition of civil society; and finally the role of the democratic state.

Families: Structures, Geography, Culture The key question of what sort of family structure and culture lead individuals towards an active role in civil society has been little examined. Initially, this is a debate about the relative merits of nuclear and extended families. One of the hypotheses of Edward Banfield in his path-breaking work on ‘amoral familism’ in rural southern Italy in the 1950s was that the nuclear structure of poor peasant households was a major contributory factor to the peasants’ incapacity to ‘come together for their own good’. Banfield (1958) compared unfavourably the weak and atomised

Uncharted Territories • 27

nuclear groups of the Italian South with the far more prosperous and vital extended families of central Italy, as well as the strongly linked families of St. George, Utah, which he depicted proudly as pullulating with associationism.14 At a similar time and in a similar way, Michael Young and Peter Willmott, in their classic study of Bethnal Green, London, in the 1950s, showed how the families of this working-class neighbourhood were nuclear in formal structure, but extended in reality, thanks to the constant daily contact between mothers and daughters (1990). Such contact cut across the physical separations caused by small and cramped homes. When Young and Willmott asked ‘Mrs. Landon’ to keep a diary of all the people she said ‘hallo’ to in the street during the course of a week, they found that she greeted no less than sixty-three persons, of whom thirty-eight were relatives of at least one other person out of the sixtythree (1990: 107). Here was a tight-knit working-class community where the strength of families was a crucial contributory factor to the strength of community. It was to be contrasted, according to the authors, to the new working-class estate of Greenleigh, where families kept themselves to themselves and were anchored in front of the television. In the new council (public) housing, the connectedness of Bethnal Green had been effectively dissipated. Both these famous studies, therefore, heavily emphasised the link between strong and, if possible, extended families (or ‘modified extended families’, to use Litwak’s expression15) and vibrant community life. Small, nuclear families, on the other hand, tended to be regarded as being more self-enclosed and isolationist. However, theirs was a dangerous assumption. There is no necessary connection between strong family structures and the ‘healthy’ networks of associationism that are commonly taken to characterise civil society. If we extend our gaze to the Arab Middle East, the traditions of the endogamous community family, characterised by frequent marriage between first cousins, the cohabitation of married sons with their parents and equal inheritance between brothers, have had a fundamental influence upon social formation. No family could be stronger, but at the same time more ‘closed’ than one in which the marriage partners of the next generation are chosen from within its midst. These are over-strong families. Their influence, and that of the wider family clans to which they belong (the hamulas in Palestine, for instance), has been of fundamental importance in limiting historically the possibilities of civil society in that part of the world. Individuals remain first and foremost family members, parts of an overall family strategy. In recent times families have become less patriarchal, increasingly nuclear and more subject to internal debate, but they still remain the essential point of social reference (Doumani 2000: 1–19; Singerman 1995; Simoni 2002: 125–146; Muslih 1995: 243–268).16

28 • Introduction and Overview

Weak, more open family structures may, on the contrary, favour the formation of a strong civil society. It is well known that in contemporary Europe young ‘singles’ are some of the most assiduous joiners of civil society associations. They are individuals freed from family commitments – at least those of the family of procreation if not those of the family of origin – who pour considerable energy into the creation of what Moller Okin called a network of ‘just associations’. Helmut Anheier and Sally Stares have recently published international statistics on membership and volunteering in four different areas of civil society organisation – community action, Third World and human rights’ associations, environmental groups and the peace movement. In the year 2000, Sweden and the Netherlands were the countries with the highest percentage of citizens involved in civil society groups of these sorts. Major parts of Sweden and the Netherlands have had a long tradition of rural stepfamilies of a certain complexity, but their urban areas today are characterised by small nuclear units which encourage strong individual liberties for their component members (Anheier and Stares 2002: 245, table 1.1, 363).17 There are thus conflicting positions on the role of family structure in the creation of a favourable terrain for civil society. Overall, it would be safe to conclude that over-strong and patriarchal families, used to controlling individuals and communities, are unlikely to contribute greatly. Weaker and less hierarchical family structures, on the other hand, provided that they are not socially and culturally atomised, or over-demanding in terms of time (as with many lone-parent mothers), are more likely to leave individuals free to experiment and to explore. However, structure by itself is not enough in explanatory terms, and to family structures we must now say something about family systems. In European terms, there is a first and famous division to be made between East and West. It was John Hajnal who first suggested that a line could be drawn from St. Petersburg to Trieste (1965: 101–143; 1982). On either side of it were to be found different family systems. To the West, with the exception of Ireland, and the southern portions of Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, individuals married late (men at 26–27, women at 23–24), and a significant proportion of the population (10–20 per cent) never married at all. Neolocal residency patterns – that is the setting up of autonomous households on marriage – were also common. To the East, by contrast, marriage took place at a significantly earlier age, few individuals failed to marry, and the practice of patrilocality – that is continuing to live in the same household with the groom’s parents – was much more widespread. What, if any, are the implications of this contrast in family systems for the question here under discussion – the connections between families and civil society? Any attempt to draw rigid causal connections would

Uncharted Territories • 29

be out of place, but it can certainly be suggested that the family system to the West of Hajnal’s line offered greater possibilities of escape from patriarchy and from the suffocating influence of over-strong families. The flourishing of civil society in the West is certainly not dependent solely on its family system, but the latter may well have been a necessary precondition. Recently, the historical demographer David Reher (2004) has suggested a further subdivision, dividing Western Europe into weak and strong family systems. In the first it is the individual who counts for more, in the second the family. The first system comprises, unsurprisingly, Scandinavia, Great Britain, Holland and Belgium, as well as great parts of Germany and Austria; the second, Mediterranean Europe. The two systems differ over time in relation to two principal factors. The first concerns the longevity of the family of origin. In historical terms there is much more evidence of girls and boys in rural northern Europe leaving the family home to enter service in another household, and later of them leaving home to become independent factory workers. In southern Europe children tended to leave the family home only when they married. It is interesting to note how these trends have continued to the present time; in the mid 1990s, almost two thirds of young men age 25–29 were still living with their parents in Spain, Greece and Italy, while in Germany, France and Great Britain only a quarter did so. The corresponding statistics for young women were 40 per cent in the South, and only 11 per cent in the North (Fernandez-Cordon 1997). The validity of this broad geographical division is further confirmed if we look at family solidarities, in particular in relation to the older generation. In the South this type of solidarity is very marked – in Spain in 1990 nearly half of the population over age 65 lived with one or other of their children. In the North provision was collective rather than familial, and the abandonment or semi-abandonment of the older generation to old people’s homes has been much more common. Differing family solidarities also express themselves in other ways in the two systems. Extended kinship networks are more important in the South, whereas in the North it is the individual couple that counts, with marriage being seen strongly in partnership terms.18 Once again, we need to be careful about attributing too great an explanatory force to such broad distinctions. Reher himself warns that ‘the family is an institution that is far more complex than we might suspect when using straightforward empirical indicators reflecting certain types of behavior’ (2004: 68). Yet the broad co-relation between the flourishing of civil society and a family system where the individual counts for more is obviously not to be ignored. There can be little doubt – all the statistics demonstrate it – that civil society has been much more developed in the first, northern group of countries than in the second, southern one.

30 • Introduction and Overview

In Southern Europe the dependence of various family members, young and old, upon kinship solidarities has always assumed a gendered form. Women, most often mothers in the prime of life, are those who shoulder the complicated inter-generational burdens of a strong family system, and who have the least time to develop themselves as individuals, to go out to work or to form part of civil society associations. In the last third of the twentieth century, one answer that southern European women gave to their dilemma was to reduce radically their fertility rates. It has led to the much-noted paradox of the family-oriented countries of southern Europe being least able to reproduce their populations (Dalla Zuanna and Micheli 2004). Differentiations by family structures (nuclear or extended) and by family systems (marriage patterns, the strength of patriarchy, the longevity of the family of origin, nature of family solidarities, fertility rates, etc.) are thus two long-term, structural ways of looking at connections between families and civil society. But they are not enough. The culture of families is equally, if not more, crucial, and does not necessarily follow the geographical dividing lines of the historical demographers. I have explored in another context the distinction between open and closed families, those which, on the one hand, have developed within their family traditions an openness towards society and its problems, a willingness of family members to get involved in associations and movements, and an idea of home space as being porous and inviting; and those, on the other, who adopt a fortress mentality, who view the precious nature of family life as taking place within a general context of menace, and whose homes reflect these assumptions in their architecture and protective apparatuses (Ginsborg 2008b). These differing cultural assumptions are not easily reduced to questions of family systems, or even differences of class. Families in the same country or region with broad similarities of income, culture and status may well have quite different responses to the question of civic engagement. Giovanni De Luna’s close study of a group of middle-class, antiFascist families in Italy in the 1930s, alone in a sea of Fascist supporters, is enlightening in this respect (1996). Time and again, particular family traditions or even the single transmitted experience of a powerful and charismatic elder figure can push families in one direction rather than another. Methodologically speaking, the only way to confront this complexity is to try and maintain a constant sensibility to the micro-culture of individual families, while at the same time not losing sight of wider patterns in which to insert them. In contemporary Europe, families’ overall cultural conformity and civic passivity can hardly be understated. To use John Stuart Mill’s evocative image, they appear for the most part to be ‘a flock of sheep innocently nibbling the grass side by side’ (1977: 412).

Uncharted Territories • 31

Civil Societies If families are to connect to civil society, what exactly is it that they are likely to find? It is as well to have a firm idea of the complexity of the second of our terms as well as that of the first. Civil society is most often used today in a general way, to describe both an analytical space and an associational practice. In terms of the first part of such a definition – analytical space – civil society is most often seen as an intermediate area distinct from the private sphere, the economy and the state. Civil society relates to government, to businesses, to family life, but is separate from them. In terms of the second part of the definition – associational practice – it is characterised by a myriad of self-forming and self-dissolving voluntary organisations, circles, clubs, rank-and-file networks, social movements and so on. Some of these may acquire great stability and force, such as international non-governmental organisations such as Greenpeace, Oxfam and Amnesty International. Others, the majority, may have briefer and less influential lives, founded at a local level in a moment of enthusiasm and general mobilisation but soon destined to disappear. However, civil society cannot only be defined in terms of analytical space and associational practice. It has also always had strong normative content, though the precise nature of that content is modified from one generation to another. Jürgen Kocka has suggested convincingly that its origins are in the European Enlightenment and that the project of civil society, however variegated and developed over time, is still an Enlightenment one (2006). In contemporary terms civil society can be said to harbour specific ambitions within the general conditions of modern democracy: to foster the diffusion of power rather than its concentration, to use peaceful rather than violent means, to work for gender equality and social equity, to build horizontal solidarities rather than vertical loyalties, to encourage tolerance and inclusion, to stimulate debate and autonomy of judgement rather than conformity and obedience. If we choose to define civil society in this triple way – analytical space, associational practice and normative values – then we have an analytical tool of some sharpness and use. The culture of families can be measured against it, and the two terms – civil society and family – put in fertile relation to each other. Conversely, the more indeterminate our definition of civil society is, the more difficult it becomes to make meaningful statements about the possible connections between family life and the associations of civil society. Let me take another Middle Eastern example briefly to illustrate this point. In a recent and trenchant anthropological essay about Jordanian families and tribal process, Richard Antoun argues that the strong family structures of Jordan and the traditional ways of resolving conflict through home-based meetings of male elders are clear evidence of an indigenous

32 • Introduction and Overview

and deep-rooted civil society, in contrast to superimposed Western models. But his definition of civil society goes little beyond generic and gender-biased ‘mechanisms of conflict resolution’ and ‘specific patterns of generating trust in human communities’ (2000). In this way he avoids completely the problem of over-strong families limiting the possibilities of civil society and the autonomous development of individuals. Such an approach also conveniently avoids the necessarily outward-looking nature of contemporary civil society, its interest in gender equality and its wish to construct horizontal solidarities rather than vertical loyalties. Only if we hold firm to these defining elements is it possible to enquire meaningfully into the contribution of different family types, structures and cultures to the creation of civil society. Flabby or over-generic definitions of civil society stop us asking hard questions about the nature of families.

The Role of the Democratic State To one side of civil society lie the dynamics, daily schedules and hierarchies of family life, which play a significant role, as we have seen, in influencing the degree to which individuals are willing to enter civil society, and the gender of those who can do so. But on the other side lies the state, which also has a crucial role in encouraging or discouraging family members to play an active role in civil society. It is the democratic state that can guarantee civil society, encourage it and give it space to breathe; or else limit it, and thus stunt its own citizens. All too often in modern democracies participation is left to chance, with the presence of civil society associations being regarded as largely fortuitous – or even as a disturbance to the hegemony exercised by political parties. In this way democracy is not strengthened but weakened. We need, therefore, to ask of every historical situation the degree to which public policy is civil society oriented, and how that orientation is translated also into a sensitivity towards families and family policy – not just in terms of material benefits, but in the encouragement of outward-looking attitudes and actions. Let me take a single historical example – that of Britain after the Second World War – in which to locate this discussion.19 In post-1945 British debates about the nature of democracy, the term civil society was itself very rarely used, and a number of other words enjoyed much greater resonance. Privacy and the home stood on one side, neighbourhood and community on the other. The Labour government was extremely active in terms of interventionist public policy, but the connection between its extensive welfare reforms and the growth of a vital civil society was rarely posed as a problem. Labour politicians tended instead to extol

Uncharted Territories • 33

the virtues of traditional working-class communities and the networks of close kinship contact that they contained. Both, they thought, were threatened by an increasingly individualist society. Labour’s harking after a distant workerist past and its failure to elaborate a modern system of connections can be shown at various levels. One was family life on the new council (public) housing estates, constructed for the most part on the peripheries of the great cities after the war. Although little historical work has yet been done on these estates, it is clear that community and neighbourhood were in great difficulty there, let alone civil society. The reasons were many – a disparate social mix, lack of collective amenities (meeting halls, sports facilities, public gardens) and the breaking-up of extended kinship networks. Increased affluence, leading to new privatised consumer habits and attention to home living, was also a key factor (Langhamer 2007: 171). But what is very striking is the poverty of reflection in British political circles of the time about the ways in which public policy could help to foster the connection between families and civil society. Attention to public libraries was one important exception, but for the most part local governments seemed to think that the pub and the launderette fulfilled their obligations to the construction of a new society.20 It is striking to compare these attitudes with the strength of debate about municipal civic action in late Victorian Britain. In spite of the fact that the formal requisites of their democracy were relatively narrow and highly gendered, the Victorians seem to have grasped a central element of the relationship between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ which was later lost. Their systematic creation of urban parks was one clear instance of this (Conway 1991). A key element which can help to foster fruitful relations between families, civil society and the democratic state is that of participative or deliberative democracy.21 The idea that representative democracy needs to be bolstered by mechanisms which involve citizens in the decisionmaking process was not one that the Victorians espoused, convinced as they were of the perfectibility of representative institutions, both at a local and national level. Today, by contrast, there is a growing international awareness that representative and participatory democracy, civil society and local-government good practices have to be genuinely and variously combined. Over the past twenty years experiments in this direction have taken a wide number of forms – there are the German Planungszelle, American and British Citizens’ Juries, Electronic Town Meetings, Consensus Conferences, James Fishkin’s proposal in the United States for a national deliberation day, Chicago’s experimentation in citizens’ governance in policing and public education, the e-the-People web, Danish empowerment of parents in primary schools and so on.22

34 • Introduction and Overview

In trying to distinguish between them, we can isolate at least two major groups. The first is that which has at its core a process of random sampling. A citizens’ jury, for example, as its name implies, is a microcosm of a given community brought together, usually by local administrators, to deliberate upon an issue of public interest. It will express its opinion on the basis of informed discussion and then dissolve. Mechanisms of this sort tend to be auxiliary to representative democracy, valuable but of a one-off nature. They offer few guarantees of continuity of participation, and as such are unlikely to foster a democratic culture favourable to civil society associations. A second group of participatory practices tries to operate an ‘opendoor’ policy. It differs from the first because, rather than relying on random sampling, it appeals to the whole of the population of a locality or territory to become involved in decision-making processes on certain issues. Here the deliberative process is not auxiliary, but cumulative and tries to combine representative and participative democracy. The participatory budget process in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre has been the most famous example of this type of democratic experiment. In considering this recent wave of experimentation, I would like to introduce two yardsticks by which to judge the relevance of deliberative practices to the question under discussion here – that of the relations between civil society and the democratic state. The first is the degree to which these various practices contribute to creating widening circles of critical, informed and participating citizens, who dialogue with politicians and administrators on some basis of equality and mutual respect. The second, closely linked, is how far deliberative practices contribute to changing the way politicians themselves behave and how they view their prerogatives and duties. The first has to do with the growth of civil society, the second with the cultural transformation of the political class in contemporary democratic states. In the absence of adherence to one or other of these yardsticks, it is unlikely that deliberative experimentation will contribute much to the long-term renewal of democracy. In other words, the parameters of politics have to change significantly, with the previously separate political sphere becoming, at the very least, more porous and receptive to civil society organisations. It is no good, to put the question in its most simple and brutal form, politicians offering the old model of representative democracy with a sprinkling of consultation or the odd public assembly added on.23 Sadly, we are still far away from any lasting, innovative model which satisfies the two criteria outlined above. In spite of widespread political rhetoric about participation and ‘the citizen’s voice counting for more’, recent trends within political parties – still the repositories of inordinate amounts of power in modern democracies – go in a diametrically different direction, towards the simultaneous decline of membership

Uncharted Territories • 35

participation and the reinforcing of increasingly autocratic and charismatic leaderships (Mair 2006). Democracy, far from being constructed on a solid system of connections, is instead an increasingly easy prey for populist predators. A final word about relations between families and contemporary democratic states: In terms of this delicate connection, the democratic state is poised between the devil and the deep blue sea. On the one hand, too vigorous a series of interventions will lay the state open to accusations of an invasion of privacy, an excess of demagogy, and an unjustifiable desire to control family life. These were the themes of Jacques Donzelot’s famous book, La Police des familles (1977). On the other hand, too little intervention may well signify passivity or even surrender before all those fiercely present factors – of which markets and the media take pride of place – which do condition choice in modern family life. Faced by this dilemma, probably the most important role the state can play is a facilitating one. Families can be encouraged in numerous ways to develop that outward-looking culture which is so important for the future of modern civil society. State action can make a considerable difference in a whole number of areas: in temporal terms, providing adequate child care so that mothers, as well as fathers, feel able to attend meetings; in informational terms, providing citizens with detailed and reasonably impartial information which can serve as the basis for pondered choices; in spatial terms, making sure that halls or meeting rooms are available at minimum charge, are clean and welcoming, equipped with a microphone that works, and heated in winter; finally, in terms of their own procedures at municipal and other levels, ensuring that grass roots’ committees and other civil society groups are not kept waiting without replies, or are fobbed off with promises. And behind all such facilitating functions there must lie a strong public domain which can support, but not determine, the activities of civil society (Marquand 2004). These, then, are the possible (but not actual) bases of a contemporary chain of connections, a series of relationships conducive to the formation of a virtuous circle: families that are not too closed in their own privacy, home living and consumerism; individuals who have acquired increasingly a consciousness of their role in (world) society; civil society that is welcoming, plural and reasonably regulated; finally, a renovated democratic state able to combine both representation and participation, anxious to connect individuals and families to its own institutions as well as to the vital associations of civil society.

Notes 1. This chapter and an earlier essay, ‘Only Connect: Family, Gender and Civil Society in Twentieth Century Europe and North America’, in Civil Society and

36 • Introduction and Overview

2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

Gender Justice (eds. Hagemann, Michel and Budde), should if possible be read as a pair. They cover some common ground but develop different aspects of the same argument. For the wider political framework in which they lie, see my The Politics of Everyday Life: Making Choices, Changing Lives. See my chapter and that of David Ruceman in Skinner 2011. For some evidence that this has begun to change, see Michel 2004 (passim). ‘The family is a school of despotism, in which the virtues of despotism, but also its vices, are largely nourished. Citizenship, in free countries, is partly a school of society in equality; but citizenship fills only a small place in modern life, and does not come near the daily habits or inmost sentiments. The family, justly constituted, would be the real school of the virtues of freedom’ (Mill 1991: 510). Moller Okin refers to Rawls’ ‘barely visible family’ (1989: 93). Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843), ed. J. O’Malley, Cambridge, 1970: 7–8. In a recent article Jude Howell (2006: 38–63, esp. 51) first argues, following Carol Pateman, that the family is ‘at the heart of civil society’, but then goes on to analyse separate sites of power (state, market, household and civil society), each ‘galvanised by distinct dynamics’. Thus the household is the expression of the ‘dynamic of material and affective provisioning’ and civil society that of ‘voluntary solidarity’. This second position seems to me much closer to the mark. This last sentence is based upon my experiences in Italian civil society over the last fifteen years. It may well be that elsewhere, especially in northern Europe, gendered behaviour on the family–civil society edge is different, with more space made for women to participate. But taking Europe as a whole, the Italian experience is probably much closer to the norm than the Swedish, German or Dutch one. For some fascinating comments on the architectural differences between ancient Greek and Roman households, with the first opening the ‘internal’ directly to the ‘external’, and the second protecting intimate family space through a series of semi-public rooms used to receive clientes and others. See Zaccaria Ruggiu 1995: 289–292. For more details, with reference specifically to Amnesty International, see Hopgood, Keepers of the Flame. For a sensitive and thorough treatment of this problem, see Finch 1989. Privacy is crucial because it marks, as Jürgen Habermas has written, ‘the confines of an invulnerable zone of personal integrity, the site for the autonomous formation of conscience and judgement’. Habermas, ‘Società civile e sfera pubblica’, ed. Mauro Magatti, Per la società civile, Milan 1997: 90 (extracted from Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats, Frankfurt/M. 1992). Not by chance does Italy still have one of the lowest European percentages of women active in the labour force. Banfield’s ‘predictive hypothesis’ was that the villagers acted as if they were following this rule: ‘Maximise the material, short-run advantage of the nuclear family; assume that all others will do likewise’ (83). Edward Litwak’s argument was that in many urban American contexts the pattern of daily family life was not determined by isolated conjugal households, but by frequent contacts and visiting by different parts of a ‘modified extended family’. See Litwack 1960a, 1960b.

Uncharted Territories • 37

16. See especially the thoughtful introduction by Beshara Doumani to Doumani 2000: 1–19. 17. For long-term family structures in Sweden and the Netherlands, see E. Todd, L’Invention de l’Europe, Paris, 1990: 62, fig. 12. 18. See also Finch 1989: 96: ‘In Australia and Britain for instance, in sharp contrast with Italy, married couples seem to have a particularly “self-contained” view of the household; they rely on each other conspicuously more than they do on even their closest contacts outside the family unit.’ 19. Stefania Bernini will have more to say about Britain later in this volume. 20. Thus the publications of the Central Housing Advisory Committee, such as Design of Dwellings (London, 1944) had little to say about how people could be brought together, and what might be the content of that togetherness. For a recent and illuminating comparative reflection on some of these problems, see Bernini 2007, as well as her article in this volume. 21. Among the many collections, see Elster 1998 and Kahn 1999. 22. A useful recent compendium is Gastil and Levine 2005. 23. For a much longer discussion of the models and experiences of combined democracy – representative and participatory – see my Democracy: Crisis and Renewal (2008).

References Anderson, Michael, ed. 1971. Sociology of the Family. Harmondsworth. Anheier, Helmut, and Sally Stares. 2002. ‘Introducing the Global Civil Society Index’. Global Civil Society, ed. Marlies Glasius, Mary Kaldor and Helmut Anheier. Oxford: 241–255. Antoun, Richard. 2000. ‘Civil society, tribal process, and change in Jordan: an anthropological view’, Journal of Middle East Studies 32: 441–463. Banfield, Edward. 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Glencoe, Ill. Baer, Douglas. 2007. ‘Voluntary association involvement in comparative perspective’. State and Civil Society in Northern Europe. The Swedish Model Reconsidered, ed. Lars Trägårdh. New York and Oxford: 66–125. Bernini, Stefania. 2007. Family Life and Individual Welfare in Post-war Europe. Britain and Italy Compared. London. Bobbio, Norberto. 1990. ‘La fine della prima Repubblica’, Europeo 52, 28 December: 107. Budde, Gunilla F. 2008. ‘The Family − A Core Institution of Civil Society: A Perspective on the Middle Classes in Imperial Germany’. Civil Society, Public Space, and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Karen Hagemann, Sonya Michel and Gunilla Budde. Oxford and New York: 171−195. Conway, Hazel. 1991. People’s Parks: The Design and Development of Victorian Parks in Britain. Cambridge. Dalla Zuanna, Gianpiero, and Giuseppe A. Micheli, eds. 2004. Strong Family and Low Fertility: a Paradox? Dordrecht. De Luna, Giovanni. 1996. Donne in oggetto. L’antifascismo nella società italiana, 1922–39. Torino. De Singly, François. 1993. Sociologie de la famille contemporaine. Paris.

38 • Introduction and Overview

Donzelot, Jacques. 1977. La Police des familles. Paris. Doumani, Beshara, ed. 2000. Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property and Gender. Albany. Elster, John, ed. 1998. Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge. Esping-Andersen, Gosta. 1996. Welfare States in Transition: Social Security in a Global Economy. London. Fernandez-Cordon, Juan Antonio. 1997. ‘Youth residential independence and autonomy: a comparative study’, Journal of Family Issues VI, 16: 567–607. Finch, Janet. 1989. Family Obligations and Social Change. Oxford. Finch Janet. 1989. ‘Kinship and friendship’. British Social Attitudes: Special International Report, ed. Roger Jowell et al. Aldershot. Gastil, John, and Peter Levine, eds. 2005. The Deliberative Democracy Handbook. Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the XXIst Century. San Francisco. Ginsborg, Paul. 2001. Italy and its Discontents: Family, Civil Society and State. London and New York. ———. 2005. The Politics of Everyday Life. Making Choices, Changing Lives. London and New Haven. ———. 2008a. Democracy. Crisis and Renewal. London. ———. 2008b. ‘Only connect: Family, Gender and Civil Society in Twentieth Century Europe and North America’. Civil Society, Public Space, and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Karen Hagemann, Sonya Michel and Gunilla Budde. Oxford and New York: 223−249. Habermas, Jürgen. 1992. Faktizität und Geltung. Beitrage zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats. Frankfurt/M. ———. 1997. ‘Società civile e sfera pubblica’. Per la società civile, ed. Mauro Magatti. Milan. ———. 1962. Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, Darmstadt and Neuwied (English trans. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge). Hagemann, Karen, Sonya Michel and Gunilla Budde, ed. 2008. Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Oxford and New York. Hajnal, John. 1965. ‘European marriage patterns in perspective’. Population in History. Essays in Historical Demography, ed. David Victor Glass and David Edward Charles Eversley. London: 101–143. ———. 1982. ‘Two kinds of pre-industrial household formation system’. Population and Development Review 8, 3: 449–494. Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1991. Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A.W. Wood, Cambridge. Hopgood, Stephen. 2006. Keepers of the Flame. Understanding Amnesty International. Ithaca and London. Jude, Howell. 2006. ‘Gender and civil society’. Global Civil Society, 2005 – 2006, ed. Marlies Glasius, Mary Kaldor and Helmut Anheier. London: 38–63. Kahn, Usman, ed. 1999. Participation beyond the Ballot Box. London. Kertzer, David, and Marzio Barbagli, eds. The History of the European Family. Vol. 3, Family Life in the Twentieth Century. New Haven and London. Kocka, Jürgen. 2006. ‘Civil society from a historical perspective’. Civil Society. Berlin Perspectives, ed. John Keane. New York and Oxford: 37–50. Langhamer, Claire. 2007. ‘Love and courtship in mid-twentieth century England’, Historical Journal 50, 1: 173–196. Litwak, Edward. 1960a. ‘Occupational mobility and extended family cohesion’, American Sociological Review XV, 1: 9–21.

Uncharted Territories • 39

———. 1960b. ‘Geographic mobility and extended family cohesion’, American Sociological Review XV, 3: 385–394. McRae, Susan. 1999. Changing Britain. Families and Households in the 1990s. Oxford. Mair, Peter. 2006. ‘Ruling the void’, New Left Review 42, November–December: 25–52. Marquand, David. 2004. The Decline of the Public. Cambridge. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1982. Collected Works, vol. 38. London. http:// www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1846/letters/46_12_28.htm Michel, Sonya. 2004. ‘Il “ritorno alla famiglia” negli studi femministi’ [The family turn in feminist studies], Contemporanea: rivista di storia dell ‘800 e del ‘900 2, April: 177–200. Mill, John Stuart. 1977 [1861]. ‘Considerations on Representative Government’. Collected Works, vol. 19. Toronto. ———. 1991 [1869]. ‘The subjection of women’. On Liberty and Other Essays. Oxford. Moller Okin, Susan. 1989. Justice, Gender and the Family. New York. Muslih, Muhammad. 1995. ‘Palestinian civil society’. Civil Society in the Middle East, vol. 1, ed. Augustus Richard Norton. Leiden: 243–268. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2000. Women and Human Development: the Capabilities Approach. Cambridge. Rawls, John. 1997. ‘The idea of public reason revisited’, University of Chicago Law Review 64: 765–807. Reher, David. 2004. ‘Family ties in Western Europe: persistent contrasts’. Strong Family and Low Fertility: a Paradox? ed. Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna and Giuseppe A. Micheli. Dordrecht: 45–76. Saraceno, Chiara. 1988. Sociologia della famiglia. Bologna. Segalen, Martine. 1986. Historical Anthropology of the Family. Cambridge. Simoni, Marcella. 2002. ‘La costruzione di due nazioni. Famiglia e società civile in Palestina (1900–1948)’, Passato e Presente 57: 125–146. Singerman, Diane. 1995. Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo. Princeton. Skinner, Quentin R.D., ed. 2011. Families and State in Western Europe. Cambridge. Terrier, Jean, and Peter Wagner. 2006. ‘Civil society and the problématique of political modernity’. The Languages of Civil Society, ed. Peter Wagner. New York and Oxford. Therborn, Göran. 2004. Between Sex and Power. Family in the World, 1900–2000. London and New York. Todd, Emmanuel. 1990. L’Invention de l’Europe. Paris. Trägårdh, Lars, ed. 2007. State and Civil Society in Northern Europe. The Swedish Model Reconsidered. New York and Oxford. Trotsky, Leo. 1924. ‘From the old family to the new’. Problems of Life. London: 48–49. Young, Michael, and Peter Willmott. 1990 [1957]. Family and Kinship in East London. Zaccaria Ruggiu, Annapaola. 1995. Spazio privato e spazio pubblico nella città romana. Rome: 289–292.

PART II

Feminist Historical Views

Chapter 2

GENDERED BOUNDARIES CIVIL SOCIETY, THE PUBLIC/PRIVATE DIVIDE AND THE FAMILY1

Karen Hagemann

The dichotomy between the public and the private is central to almost two centuries of feminist writing and political struggle; it is ultimately what the feminist movement is about. – Carol Pateman, The Disorder of Women, 1989

With this statement, Carol Pateman began the chapter on ‘Feminist Critique of the Public/Private Dichotomy’ in her 1989 classic, The Disorder of Women. Since then, two decades of intensive debate about this dichotomy and its political functions have passed. Feminist critiques were and are directed primarily at the separation and opposition between the public and the private sphere in liberal theory and practice, which – in the words of one Enlightenment writer – assigned ‘man the public and woman the domestic sphere, man the universal and woman the particular, man the business of the world and woman the affairs of the family’ (Ehrenberg 1822: 11–12). The Enlightenment divide between the public and the private is – at least implicitly – a basic structure of nearly all definitions of civil society currently under discussion. For historian Jürgen Kocka this concept refers to a model for ordering social and political life that arose as a utopian project in the European Enlightenment, and nowadays stands for the ideal of an open society – that is, a society that follows the guiding principles of pluralism, tolerance, democracy, public scrutiny, legal equality and justice. The core of the Enlightenment model of a ‘society of citizens’ is ‘the vision’ – the unfulfilled promise – ‘of a pluralist, secularised society of free and autonomous individuals’ who

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‘regulate their relationships with each other in a peaceful and rational manner through competition, voluntary cooperation and association’. This programmatic model claimed, and continues to claim, ‘universal validity’ (Kocka 2000, 2004; Gosewinkel and Rucht 2003; Reichardt 2004). It is precisely this claim that stands at the centre of feminist critiques of the concept and project of civil society. It was and remains controversial whether the concept and project were potentially open – even for women – from the beginning (see Engelhardt 1995: 140–163), or whether they were structurally based on the mechanism of mutually dependent inclusion and exclusion, with the groups of those who were included or excluded and the forms of inclusion and exclusion changing in the course of historical development. In regard to gender relations, the question most often asked is whether the systematic organisation of civil society along the gendered boundaries of the public/private divide – and the accompanying exclusion of women from many areas of the economy, society and politics – should be interpreted as a fundamental ordering principle or as the expression of a limited capacity for innovation (Frevert 1988: 15). The discussion of this question began in the context of the flourishing women’s and gender studies of the 1980s, but never was taken up by mainstream scholarship on civil society, which tends to ignore the gender dimension.2 Doubts about the openness of the concept and project of civil society and thus about its usefulness for women were one reason why the concept of civil society – as political scientist Anne Philips recently emphasised in her article ‘Does Feminism need a Conception of Civil Society?’ – played a minimal part in the feminist division of the world. Feminists do use the phrase: they use it when discussing women’s confinement to the family and exclusion from the public activities of the wider worlds, they use it in discussions of women’s citizenship. But while the discussion between public and private sphere has been central to feminist analysis, feminists have remained oddly silent on the subject of civil society (see Phillips 2002: 71–72).3 In the following, I will try to explain this reticence and discuss the central points of feminist criticism. My focus is on the construction of the public and the private in the concept of civil society and its consequences for the place of the family in civil society.

Defining Civil Society Much has been written about the history of civil society, in particular about its invention in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe as a key concept of enlightened political theory. Political theorists and phi-

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losophers like John Locke, Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith in Britain, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu and Denis Diderot in France and Immanuel Kant in Germany all discussed intensively concepts of civil society, société civile and Zivilgesellschaft or Bürgergesellschaft, alongside terms like civility, civilization and the public (see Kocka 2004; Kaldor 2003: 2ff.; Bermeo and Nord 2000; Gordon 1994). In this early modern European discourse the term civil society had a positive connotation. It stood, as Kocka underlines in his article ‘Civil society from a historical perspective’, for what at the time was a utopian plan for a future civilisation in which the people would live together in peace as politically mature, responsible citizens – as private individuals in their families and as citizens in public. They would be independent and free, independently cooperative under the rule of law but without being spoon-fed by authoritarian state; there would be tolerance for cultural, religious and ethnic diversity but without great social inequality – in any case without the traditional form of corporate inequality (Kocka 2004: 66). This utopian plan was one mainly developed by men for men – women were only marginally involved in the debates as either interlocutors or subjects. The ‘politically mature, responsible citizen’ who acted ‘independent and free’ was without any doubt thought of as a man (even though Kocka, like other mainstream authors, does not discuss this gender bias in the article just cited). The enlightened contemporaries persistently defined civil society in contradistinction to the absolutist state. This anti-absolutist and anti-corporatist thrust stood at the centre of their utopian plans. They aimed for social self-organisation by male individuals whom they defined as ‘worthy’ of inclusion – mainly educated white men of Christian faith from noble or middle-class backgrounds (property owners), and by groups made up of the same. This early understanding of civil society went through important changes under the influence of the emerging capitalism and nationalism in the nineteenth century. The German philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as the French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville, all developed the term further. In their writings civil society became ‘even more clearly distinguished from the state than it had been’. They understood it as ‘a system of needs and works, of the market and particular interests’, even more in the sense of a middle-class society (bürgerliche Gesellschaft) than as a civil society of (male) citizens (Staatsbürger) (Kocka 2004: 67). In the German discourse, as a part of this change, the older terms Bürgergesellschaft or Zivilgesellschaft were increasingly replaced by the term bürgerliche Gesellschaft, which more and more lost the older utopian quality and was used critically or even polemically. In the English and French discourse, particularly in Tocqueville’s writings, the term retained its positive utopian connotations

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longer, but here too lost its importance during the second half of the nineteenth century (Kocka 2004: 67). Much has been written also about the marginalisation of the concept of civil society in twentieth-century western political theory only to regain prominence in the last two decades of the century. Indeed, since the 1980s it has become a key category in the anti-dictatorial critique in socialist Eastern Europe, but has also been deployed by liberation movements in Latin America and South Africa (Reichardt 2004: 35–55). Nowadays the term is widely used in political discourses all over the world by exponents of very different Weltanschauung, such as political centrists, neo-liberals and anti-colonial leftists, by communitarians and anti-globalisation activists. The existing body of academic literature reflects these developments. For more than two decades, political and social scientists and philosophers have engaged in an intensive debate, yet the concept of civil society remains ambiguous and contested, its definition is still unsettled (see Ehrenberg 1999; Gellner 1994; Habermas 1989; Hall 1995; Keane 2003, 1999, 1988; Walzer 1995). According to historian Dieter Gosewinkel two central problems have given rise to the many paradoxes and differences: first, the tensions between the ambiguous use of the concept of civil society as a utopian political norm, a descriptive term for concrete historical practices and an analytical concept; and second, the idea that separate spheres or systems with different and separable logics define civil society (see Gosewinkel and Rucht 2003). Both problems influence and limit the usefulness of the concept – not only for feminist scholars. This becomes evident if we examine the three most widespread approaches to define civil society: the ‘field-logical’, the ‘normative’ and the ‘action-logical’ approach (Kocka 2004). According to Kocka in the field-logical approach, civil society refers to the ‘largely self-regulated space of civic engagement between the state, the economy, and the private sphere’. Associated with this is a particular type of individual and collective action in civil society characterised by personal initiative, communicative competence, openness and pluralism, the ability to engage in constructive conflict and avoid violence, as well as the systematic linking of particular and universal interests (2004: 65−68). In this definition civil society includes the self-organised initiatives, associations, federations, movements and networks that are attributed neither to the state sphere and its institutions nor to the market, and are also not located in the so-called private sphere, which generally refers in this approach to the family. Civil society is understood here as a public, non-private sphere, which is connected with other social spheres. This ‘inbetween’ sphere is according to this approach ruled neither by the economic norms of the market, i.e. by competition and profit maximisation, nor by the patronising and alienating norms of the state, i.e. bureaucratic power and the monopoly of physical violence, or by the particular interest

Gendered Boundaries • 47

of the family and the private sphere with its intimate, personal relations (see Kocka 2003: 32). Social order is rather achieved through cooperation, communication and deliberation (Gosewinkel and Rucht 2003: 12). The field-logical approach is highly problematic, not only because it generates significant difficulties of distinction between the three spheres, but also because it does not differentiate clearly enough between the three possible usages of civil society as a descriptive term of historical practices, an analytical concept and a utopian political norm. One reason for this amalgamation is that the field-logical approach is closely related to the normative approach, which defines civil society ‘as the core of a draft or project that still has some utopian features’ (Kocka 2004: 68). For Kocka, as for many other historians and political and social theorists, involved not only in the research on, but also the current practice of civil society, it refers to the ‘future project of human coexistence in the tradition of the Enlightenment, which remains to be realized’. It is a ‘promise that has yet to be entirely fulfilled, even if European reality today corresponds much more closely to this plan, this utopia, than it did in the past’ (Kaldor 2003: 22). For the normative approach, civil society is, in short, a utopian vanishing point for the democratisation of states and societies, formed after the western liberal model. This ‘Western-centrism’ of the normative approach is highly problematic for the analysis of nonWestern civil societies. Recent scholarship on civil society therefore prefers the action-logical approach, which focuses on the actors of civil society and their types of social action. The characteristics usually associated with civil society in this approach are, first, self-organisation and autonomy, i.e. the voluntary commitment of individuals and groups who are free to engage in civil society action, a criterion that in itself implies a whole series of political, economic and social preconditions. Among other things, it entails an anti-totalitarian thrust and presupposes sufficient resources, not least sufficient free time, for such an involvement. The second characteristic is action in public space. This comprises activities requiring communication, the willingness and ability to deal with conflict, and publicity. In ideal-typical terms, it implies the acknowledgment of differences, a variety of opinions and pluralism. Third, civil society action should be ‘peaceable’, i.e. non-violent. In the prevailing understanding this does not mean dispensing with conflicts and protest. On the contrary, from the beginning social and political protests have been important forms of civil society action for women and men alike. It does, however, mean avoiding physical violence and military intervention of all kinds. Fourth, according to the action-logical approach, civil society social action, while proceeding from individual, particular interests and experiences, should at the same time also refer to the so-called ‘common good’, however this may be defined by the various actors.

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In the action-logical approach, civil society thus refers to a specific form of social interaction, which is supposed to be different from others, such as state administration and politics, dominance and all types of hierarchical relationships, violence, fighting and war, exchange and the market and personal relationships in non-public spaces. But the action-logical approach, also, offers – and this is evident even at first sight – significant problems of distinction, and it does so because in the analysis of historical and present-day practice neither the arenas nor the forms of action of civil society manifest themselves in such an ideal-typical fashion. What we find are, rather, for the most part historically specific, not infrequently ambivalent mixed forms (Trentmann 2003: VII). The gendered separation between the public and the private sphere in the different concepts of civil society is one important reason for these ambiguities.

Constructing Separate Spheres The separation between the public and the private sphere was invented as a fundamental structure of the bourgeois gender order during the Enlightenment, and was legitimated in terms of the trope of ‘nature’. Traditional, genuinely Christian-corporatist legitimations of gender difference, which had to be relinquished in the context of the Enlightenment program, were replaced in the second half of the eighteenth century by an ‘anthropological’ mode of explanation. Gender differences were now generally regarded as rooted in men’s and women’s different physiology and reproductive functions. This then led to an assignment to men and women of tasks defined as complementary in the state, the military, the economy, society and the family (see Honegger 1991: 186–199; Hausen 1981). This new gender order was enforced during the period of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. For the first time, the patrioticnational propaganda for these ‘national wars’, which were fought with mass armies, assigned the duty to defend family, home and country to all men (see Hagemann 1997, 2009). Only men who fulfilled their obligation to protect the fatherland were regarded as citizens and worthy of citizenship rights. This stereotypical argument reinforced in turn the exclusion of women from state affairs on all levels, even in the community. At the same time, the propaganda that assigned women the primary task of being housewives and mothers, regardless of social differences, intensified in the context of war – not least because in wartime society, their scope of public activities necessarily extended beyond the home. They needed to ensure their families’ livelihoods and support wartime charitable and medical services (Hagemann 2004). In the early nineteenth century, though, the division of tasks defined by the late-Enlightenment gender order did not mean that the household

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and family tasks assigned to women were considered unimportant – on the contrary. There was a broad consensus in European Enlightenment literature that household and family were the foundation, the ‘nursery’, of the existing states and emerging nations, which were envisioned as ‘Volk families’ (see for example Kohlrausch 1814: 160ff.; for more, see Colley 1992: 237–321; Hunt 1992; Hagemann 2000a: 179–205). Early modern notions of social order were taken up here and integrated into the new concepts of state and nation. For the majority of contemporary European writers, despite all national and political differences, ‘domestic life’ – they usually did not yet use the term private life – was the foundation and source of ‘public life’. In their view, public virtues and values could develop only on the basis of domestic ones. Relationships within a people reflected the relationships in the family. Just as the ties of marriage and love united household and family, the people and the nation were strengthened by their concurrence with the state, and connected by love of country. Domestic and public lives alike were created by all members working together, each with specific tasks according to their social position, marital status, age and sex (see for example Jahn 1810: 354–357; Hagemann 2000b). Women were thus assigned a task that was regarded in the contemporary discourse of that time as politically significant and central to the common good. They were to fulfil it, however, not in the arena defined as public but primarily in the domestic realm. Their task was to perform their duties as spouses, housewives and mothers in a manner consistent with the honour, manners and culture of the nation. Domesticity was henceforth elevated to the foremost ‘patriotic female duty’ (i.e. Gleim 1814: 18−19; for a more general account, see Hagemann 2000b). Nevertheless, in this discourse civil society was most often presented in terms that make it seem a place where women are absent: this is most apparent when it is contrasted to the sphere of ‘nature’, the ‘domestic’ or as a middle term between the state and the family. Anne Philips has summarised the discourse as follows: ‘Early social contract theorists employed civil society (usually used synonymously with political society) as a way of making the transition from a state of nature to one regulated by ‘man-made’ obligations and laws, and in the contrast they drew between a natural state and a civil society, women turned out to be less visible and more subordinated to men in the latter’ (2002: 72). Feminist scholarship has sought to demonstrate that and how pioneers of the concept of civil society such as Locke, Ferguson, Montesquieu or Kant structurally discriminated against women from the beginning.4 The aim of Enlightenment thinkers was, according to Carol Pateman, to limit the application of the rhetoric of the universal equality of free and independent citizens in civil society to their own sex. She emphasises in her 1988 classic The Sexual Contract that the Enlightenment theorists

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thus performed extraordinary contortions in order to include women in civil society just enough so that they were bound by the laws of the state and the regulations of the newly founded associations of civil society, yet made sure that they were sufficiently outside the political power centres of state and civil society to be subordinate to men (1988). Pateman has also analysed how, at a later stage, Hegel employed the concept of civil society to generate a tripartite distinction between the family, civil society and the state. He was even more explicit than his predecessors in placing women in an earlier, ‘more primitive’ and sub-natural stage. Hegel saw man as having his ‘actual substantive life’ in the state, labour and in struggle with the external world, and women as having ‘her substantial destiny’ in the family (see Hegel 1967: 166). Other authors have shown that this highly gendered understanding of civil society was by no means unique (Ginsborg 1995). Civil often implied a contrast with natural on the one hand, and private and familial on the other. And these in turn were associated with the female sex. Because of this history, Pateman interprets the story of civil society as a story of ‘masculine political birth’ (1988: 102). But even in later times when the concept of civil society had become more welcoming towards women, it was formulated in seemingly ‘gender-neutral’ terms, which in practice privileged male interests. Female interests were often explicitly or implicitly defined by the theorist as ‘particular’, above all when they originated in the home and the family (Phillips 1999). It is important in this context to reflect on the definition and place of civil society, because it tended to be equated with the public sphere, which entailed an implicit exclusion of women from both. A gendered analysis thus needs to differentiate between them. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas offered one possible approach in his 1962 classic Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (1989). He rejects the Greek model of a citizenry acting in common to administer the laws and to ensure the community’s military survival. Instead he locates the specificity of the modern public sphere in the civic task of a society engaged in critical public debate to protect a commercial economy. In contrast to the older res publica, he deems the ‘bourgeois public sphere’ (bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit) to be the site for the political regulation of civil society, and credits its willingness to challenge the established authority of the monarch. For him the bourgeois public sphere can neither be abstracted from the unique development of the civil society (bürgerliche Gesellschaft) in Western Europe, nor can his model be transferred from the period of Enlightenment or ideal typically generalised, to other historical situations that represent formally similar constellations. Moreover, he emphasises that his concept is limited to the structure and function of the ‘liberal model of the bourgeois public sphere’, to its emergence and transformation. He writes: ‘thus it refers to those features of historical constellation that

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attained dominance and leaves aside the plebeian public sphere as a variant that in a sense was suppressed in the historical process’ (Habermas 1989: xviii). For Habermas the ‘bourgeois public sphere’ is both private and political from the outset. To be able to reveal this he distinguishes three different types of Öffentlichkeit: ‘political public sphere’ (politische Öffentlichkeit) or sometimes the more cumbersome ‘public sphere in the political realm’; ‘literary public sphere’ (literarische Öffentlichkeit) or ‘public sphere in the world of letters’; and ‘representative publicness’ (repräsentative Öffentlichkeit), i.e. the display of inherent spiritual power or dignity before the audience (1989: xv, 27–56). For him the ‘blueprint of the bourgeois public sphere in the eighteenth century’ might be best presented graphically as a ‘schema of social realms’ (1989: 30): Habermas avers that the line between state and society is fundamental in this context, because it divided the ‘public sphere’ from the ‘private realm’. The ‘public sphere’ is for him co-extensive with ‘public authority’ (and he considers the court as part of it). Included in the ‘private realm’ was the ‘authentic public sphere’, for it was a ‘public sphere constituted by private people’. Within the realm that was the ‘preserve of private people’ he distinguishes again between private and public spheres: ‘The private sphere comprised civil society in the narrower sense, that is to say, the realm of commodity exchange and of social labour; imbedded in it was the family with its interior domain (Intimsphäre). The public sphere in the political realm evolved from the public sphere in the world of letters; through the vehicle of public opinion it put the state in touch with the needs of society.’ (Habermas 1989: 30–31). The feminist discussion of the English translation The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, which was published in 1989, reflected critically on his position and developed it further. One major point of feminist criticism was that Habermas isolates the public sphere as a Figure 2.1. Habermas’s public sphere

Source: Habermas 1989: 30.

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structure within civil society. One reason for this conflation of the public sphere and civil society is, for critics like the historian Joan Landes, that in Habermas’s thinking, the most important institutions of the Enlightenment middle-class public sphere were informal and formal associations of private persons, which he defined as the core actors of civil society, which connect and conciliate the economy (or sphere of commodities, exchange and social labour), the state (or the realm of police, state administration and the courts) and the family (see Landes 1992: 110; 1998; Calhoun 1992; Fraser 1992a). Yet, the family plays an important role in Habermas’s model. He dedicates a whole chapter to the ‘bourgeois family and the institutionalisation of a privateness oriented audience’. Here he assumes that ‘the experiences about which a public passionately concerned with itself sought agreement and enlightenment through rational-critical public debate of private persons with one another’ flowed from the wellspring of a specific subjectivity. This subjectivity had its home, ‘literally, in the sphere of the patriarchal conjugal family’, which consolidated itself as the dominant type within the bourgeois strata. The ‘sphere of the family’ is for him the core of the private sphere, which he defines as the ‘intimate sphere’. In his thinking the family was closely related to and depended on the market (which too was part of the private sphere). In addition he emphasises the ‘ambivalence of the family as an agent of society yet simultaneously as the anticipated emancipation from society’. This ambivalence manifested itself in the situation of the family members: ‘On the one hand, they were held together by patriarchal authority; on the other, they were bound to one another by human closeness.’ As a privatised individual, the bourgeois was for him two things in one: ‘owner of goods and persons and one human being among others, i.e. bourgeois and homme’ (Habermas 1989: 55). Habermas underlines that ‘women and dependents’ were factually and legally excluded from the ‘political public sphere’, whereas ‘female readers, as well as apprentice and servants’ often took a more active part in the ‘literary public sphere’ than the owner of private property and family heads themselves. But because in the educated (male) classes both forms of public sphere were considered to be identical – in their understanding public opinion and public sphere were one and indivisible – the fully developed bourgeois public sphere was based on the fictitious identity of the two roles assumed by the privatised individuals who came together to form the public: the role of ‘property owners’ and the role of ‘common human beings’ (1989: 56). In his path-breaking model Habermas mentions thereby the gender differences, but does not discuss them systematically. He neither asks which role gender, as an important category of difference, played for the development of the bourgeois public sphere

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and civil society nor does he reflect on the consequences of the implicit gender order of his model of the public sphere and civil society for his theory. Instead of critically deconstructing the enlightened concept of a dichotomy between the public and the private his model reinforces this highly gendered dichotomy.

Deconstructing the Public/Private Divide The concepts of civil society and public sphere share – despite all differences – the same basic assumption of a separation between the public and the private (see Fraser 1992a, 1992b; Landes 1992: 106−127; 1998, Elshtain 1990a; Hausen 1992: 81−88; Davidoff 1993, 2003, 1998). This gendered separation has played a crucial role in liberal theory, and remains important for theories of civil society. The private is used to refer to a sphere of social life in which intrusion upon or interference with freedom requires special justification, and the public is used to refer to a sphere regarded as more generally or more justifiably accessible – at least for propertied and educated men of acceptable race and faith. All too often, however, both terms were also used with little clarity. Political scientist Susan Moller Okin has pointed to at least two ambiguities in most Enlightenment theories. The first results from the use of the terminology to indicate at least two major conceptual distinctions, with variations in each. Public/private is used to refer to both the distinction between state and society (as in public versus private ownership, for example), and the distinction between non-domestic and domestic life. In both dichotomies, the state is (paradigmatically) public and the family domestic, and intimate, personal life is (again paradigmatically) private. The crucial difference between the two is that the first dichotomy includes the intermediate socio-economic realm in the category of the private, while the second dichotomy places it in the private realm (Moller Okin 1998: 117). This ambiguity is often overlooked. If we focus only on the second and more common usage of the public/ private dichotomy as public/domestic, an ambiguity remains, which results directly from the patriarchal practices and theories of the Western European past, which have serious practical consequences even nowadays. The division of labour between the sexes has been fundamental to this dichotomy from its theoretical beginnings. Men – viewed from the perspective of the Enlightenment gender order – are assumed to be chiefly preoccupied with and responsible for occupations in the sphere of economic and political life, and women with those in the private sphere of domesticity and reproduction. Women were regarded as ‘by nature’ both unsuited to the private realm and properly dependent on men

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and subordinated within the family. These assumptions, not surprisingly, have had pervasive effects on the structuring of the dichotomy and both of its component spheres. As feminist scholarship has revealed, since the inception of liberalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both political rights and the rights pertaining to the modern liberal conception of privacy and the private have been framed as individual rights; but these individuals were assumed, and often explicitly stated, to be adult, male heads of household. Thus the rights of these individuals to freedom from intrusion by the state, or society, were also these individuals’ rights not to be interfered with as they controlled other members of their private sphere – those who, whether by reason of age, or sex, or condition of servitude, were regarded as rightfully controlled by them and existing within their sphere of privacy. There is no notion that these subordinate members of households might have privacy rights of their own. In short, the autonomous private individuals as actors in the public sphere and in civil society were constructed as men who were set free, by virtue of female or servitude labour, from all work in the household and the family, and from all forms of caretaking. They were thereby constructed as ‘independent’, but their independence was based de facto on the work of their dependants. These ambiguities are still inherent in common definitions of civil society, because they do not reflect the public/private dichotomy systematically (Kocka 2004: 66−68). Extending this argument, historian Geoff Eley contends in his critical discussion of Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere that gender exclusion from the so-called public sphere was linked in all Western European civil societies to other exclusions rooted in processes of class formation. These exclusions were part of the elaboration of a distinctive culture of civil society and of the associated public sphere. Gender exclusion was implicated in the process of male-dominated bourgeois class formation; its practices and ethos were markers of ‘distinction’ in Pierre Bourdieu’s (1988) sense, ways of defining an emergent elite, setting it off from the older aristocratic elites, on the one hand, and from the various popular and plebeian strata over which it aspired to rule, on the other. This process of distinction, moreover, helps explain the exacerbation of sexism characteristic of this liberal concept of the public sphere; new gender norms enjoining feminine domesticity and a sharp separation between public and private spheres functioned as key signifiers of bourgeois difference from both higher and lower social strata (Eley 1992). Feminist scholars therefore demand a historicisation of civil society and assume the existence of competing publics (see Ryan 1990, 1998: 195−222; Landes 1988). Political scientist Nancy Fraser, for example, speaks of the ‘multiple publics of civil society’. She criticises Jürgen Habermas because he is only concerned with one public sphere – the

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male-dominated bourgeois (Fraser 1998; see also Rabinovitch 2001). An alternative concept is the ‘fragmented public sphere’ introduced by Jeffrey Alexander (1989).

Gendering Citizenship Civil society does not equal citizenship, but engagement in civil society is an important form of citizenship, because it implies the exercise of citizenship rights. Feminist scholars have pointed to the structural difference between the gradual inclusion of adult men from the lower classes in the community of citizens during the nineteenth century and the abolition of women’s exclusion from citizenship rights. They emphasise that even women’s path towards greater citizenship rights differed from that taken by men. Sociologist Thomas H. Marshall introduced already in 1954 the distinction between civil, political and social citizenships rights. He deduced from his analysis of the development of the British and other European welfare states that, firstly, civil citizenship rights were necessary because they secured individual freedom, which was generally followed by the recognition of the right to political participation. Social citizenship rights were only granted in a third step. To each type of rights he ascribed a different century; most modern were for him the social citizenship rights of the twentieth century welfare state (see Marshall 1992: 3–54). Marshall’s differentiation between the three forms of citizenship rights is also widely used in feminist studies of citizenship rights, but they point to an important gender difference. For women, political rights were followed by social rights, and finally by the same civil rights as men. This is a significant structural difference between men and women in civil society and their path to full citizenship (see Gerhard 1997: 404–405). Because of the importance of the gender order as a fundamental structure for the ordering of the economy, society and politics and the value that was attached to the family as a basic institution of the state and the nation, it took more than 150 years to give women the same civil rights status as men – despite all of the feminist critiques and struggles since the end of the eighteenth century in most modern western states. The exclusion of women from politics and their inclusion in the private sphere was therefore not an accidental Enlightenment act, but the invention of a tradition which was intended to secure male supremacy not only in the family but also in the economy, society and politics (see Gerhard 1997: 406−407). After the French Revolution, all over Europe politics meant in contemporary discourse not just state politics but included also major segments of the public sphere and civil society. It was taken for granted that women were excluded from the political public sphere. They were at best accepted in the literary public sphere. They were, as political sci-

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entist Iris Marion Young points out, welcomed at least in some – in literary, cultural and civic associations of civil society – but not in all and most importantly not in the explicitly political ones. Her distinction helps us to understand the gender differences in civil society and comprehend all the informal and formal public activities of women that took place in the so-called private sphere (see Young 1999: 145−146). How it was historically possible to lend the program of civil society the veneer of the universal, at least as a utopia, despite its gender order, is an important question. A retrospective interpretation of the Enlightenment program of civil society as a utopian vision of universalist development tailors the ambiguous and contradictory historical developments and manifestations of civil society since the eighteenth century to fit a history of the realisation of this program. We should be asking instead: what possibilities and means did women have, despite their relegation to non-presence and non-involvement in the public sphere, of envisioning a utopia of human equality and of fighting for its practical realisation? Women who devoted themselves very publicly to this project in the nineteenth century were well aware of the many unavoidable paradoxes. They constantly ran the risk of losing their public reputations because of these activities as soon as they violated the rules of ‘natural’ and wellmannered femininity, which of course they had to do if they wished to make a political impact (see Scott 1996). Once we ask this question it becomes evident that, despite the fact that civil society is so often conjured up as a masculine realm, the relatively unregulated nature of voluntary associations as the main collective for actors of civil society made them attractive for feminist activists from the very beginning. Their pluralism, their looseness, and even their indeterminacy meant that they were particularly hospitable to feminist politics. For the middle-class activist of the first women’s movement of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, engagement in civil society was, moreover, very often the first step towards political engagement in the state (see Phillips 1999). They frequently legitimated this engagement using the slogan ‘equal but not the same’. They wanted equal rights and quite vehemently demanded the total abolition of all discrimination against the female sex, whether legal, political, economic or social. At the same time, they justified these demands in terms both of the universal principles of human and civil rights and the difference between and equal value of the sexes (see Offen 2000; Paletschek and Pietrow-Ennker 2004; Budde 2004). The question of equality and difference has remained important for activists of the second women’s movement, which started in the late 1960s and has been a civil rights movement par excellence. Activists publicly cast doubt on the much-trumpeted blessings of familial privacy; they demanded an end to the criminalisation of abortion as part of their

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full right to individual self-determination; they initiated a debate on wages for housework; they added new bite to the labour movement’s inert and unsuccessful calls for ‘equal pay for equal work’; and they were unwilling to be men’s compliant assistants in politics any longer. For them, ‘the personal was political’. Nowadays, despite all other differences, this is common knowledge not only for feminist scholars. They agree that because of the standard contrast between the state, civil society and the so-called private sphere, domestic life often disappears from political view, and all the discussions of public versus private are diverted to what, from many women’s perspective, is already a public realm – such as concern for the needs of families, women and children. For them, the domestic subordination of women, sexual violence against women or the right to control their own bodies, for example, are eminently political questions of common concern and importance. They interpret the feminist struggle for equal rights in marital and family law, particularly the rights to free determination of domicile, to dispose freely of one’s own property, to choose one’s occupation, but also for equal parental rights in child-rearing and the right to divorce, as a struggle that has affected regulations of the ‘private sphere’ and the gendered division of labour and thereby the gender hierarchy inside the family, and yet has been at the same time an eminently political struggle, not just for the women who fought these battles, but also for the men who sought to prevent legal equality at all costs. These battles were fought in the home, the political sphere and also in the institutions of the state. Thus from a gender perspective, the boundaries separating civil society and the private sphere – and with it the family – are highly problematic (Fraser 1992a, 1997).

The Gendered Division of Labour and the Family The conceptualisation of the ‘the personal as political’ also helps us to understand the relationship between civil society and the family and its underlying gendered division of labour. The family is not merely a place beyond or even cut off from the public sphere in which one can pursue private or personal life. The earlier notions and defence of the private sphere were conceived of in terms of the individual. For nineteenthcentury theorists, this individual was always an adult man, who returned home from his economic, political or cultural duties in the public sphere in order to enjoy his private life, or his power, in his home with his family. His wife was responsible for the indispensable daily physical and mental labour of caring for a family and organising the household. The mainstream concepts of civil society seem to ignore this, and presuppose that people are already adults and, despite the need for house

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and family work and paid employment, have sufficient time and energy to act autonomously in the arena of civil society. To that extent, the ‘sexual contract’ was not merely self-evident, but also necessary for the civil society project of (in the name of nature) placing the female sex in the familial private sphere and assigning it the work of caring for others that took place there. In Western societies, the production and reproduction of human beings was relegated to the private sphere, along with women. But they remained nevertheless the basic precondition for any civil society. That is why during the nineteenth century, women’s public political commitment was very often portrayed as the collapse of morality, family and household, and in the twentieth century, female aspirations towards professional careers were depicted as ‘unnatural’ and incompatible with female family duties. Even today, any involvement in civil society beyond the occasional event is often not compatible with these duties, as long as the family has to care for people in need of help, such young children and elderly adults. This is one major reason for the finding of historical research that many leading activists of the first and second women’s movement were either single women or married women with older children, or in particular in the past could afford the support of domestic service (see Offen 2000; Schulz 2002). Even nowadays, the concept and project of civil society are implicitly based upon a gender-hierarchical division of labour, because its active subject in all common definitions is the ‘independent and free private individual’ (Kocka 2004: 66). This is de facto the male citizen, who is also independent and free of every form of work in the household and the family. The unpaid female work of caring for children, the sick and the elderly frees him to pursue not only his professional work, but also every form of political engagement in civil society as well as state politics. By conceptually devaluing the private as non-political, as not touching on the common good, the male theorists and actors of civil society tend to strengthen this gender-hierarchical division of labour in theory and practice. They are inclined not simply to ignore the structural economic and social prerequisites for women’s opportunities for equal participation in civil society, but to make these conditions more difficult to meet by removing them from the state and calling for an increase in civic responsibility. Celebrations of an active citizenry or a vibrant civic culture in the recent past have signalled policy shifts that seek to transfer responsibility from the state to the community. In practice, because of the predominant division of labour, this has meant delegating more unpaid caregiving work to women. Therefore it has been and is more often men who celebrate ‘a vibrant civil society’ as an alternative to state-provided care (Banaszak, Beckwith and Rucht 2003: 7; Phillips 1999: 59–60; Young 1999: 153−157). Feminists have continued to look to the state as one of the sources of gender justice, believing that public provision of child care,

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health care and care for the aged is an intrinsic part of the ‘feminisation’ of policy and will help to create a sexually egalitarian world and a more just division of labour in the family, society, the economy and politics (see Pateman 1998: 241–274; Sauer 1999). The conceptualisation of the personal as political furthermore helps us to see the family as an important part – a private association – of civil society, not only because of the importance of family and kinship networks for the organisation of civic and political associations, but also because of its potential importance as one basic institution for a ‘civic’ education, inculcating all the virtues that civil society actors need and encouraging them to be engaged in civil society (see Budde 2003; Miller 2002; Kocka 2004: 74–75). Up until now, only a few theorists of civil society – mainly liberal communitarians – have recognised the importance of the family for civil society (see Schnabel 2003: 92–95).5 Most influential were political theorists Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, who have suggested integrating the family into civil society as a ‘core component’ (Cohen and Arato 1992: 538; Cohen 1994). In their Civil Society and Political Theory (1992) they proposed to think of the family ‘as a key institution in civil society’, one that, if conceived of in egalitarian terms, could have provided an experience of horizontal solidarity, collective identity and equal participation to the autonomous individuals comprising it – a task deemed fundamental for the other associations of civil society and for the ultimate development of civic virtue and responsibility with respect to the polity (631). They thus consider the family ‘the voluntary association par excellence’ (Cohen and Arato 1992: 631). This proposal is fascinating at first glance, but problematic when differentiated and historicised.6 One major problem of the concept introduced by Cohen and Arato is that they implicitly posit as the norm one type of family, the heterosexual middleclass family with its gendered division of labour. Another problem is that families are not voluntary associations at least for some key members like children, who do not get to choose their parents. They moreover ignore that the term family had and has in the past and present different meanings. Before the trend towards single living and the phenomenon of the patchwork family became increasingly apparent and recognised in Western industrial societies beginning in the 1970s, the family was indeed commonly understood to be an institution and group based on legitimate and permanent marriage with a monopoly on sexuality, which ensured that children would be born and raised in wedlock, and that the people belonging to the family would, if possible, live together and be provided with all the necessities of daily life. But this hegemonic middleclass definition of the Normalfamilie (‘normal’ family), which during the nineteenth and twentieth century became more and more the standard for other social strata, was and could never be lived by the majority in

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the normative way.7 Finally, the approach of Cohen and Arato elides the very different consequences of the gendered division of labour in family and society not only for men and women, but also for different groups of women, separated by class, race and ethnic background (see Elshtain 1990b; Ostner 1997: 378−380).

Conclusion The main point of feminist criticism of the concept and project of civil society is the unsatisfactory attention that mainstream approaches have commonly paid and continue to pay to the gendered boundaries of civil society and the public sphere, in particular to processes of inclusion and exclusion not just in discourses, but also in social, political and cultural practices. Through processes of inclusion and exclusion, the groups, movements and organisations active in civil society also defined and continue to define in practice both membership – that is, a person’s internal position – and his or her subjective identity. These processes create ambiguities, asymmetries and hierarchies.8 Because of these processes of inclusion and exclusion as an inherent part of civil society, it is necessary to pay far more attention to the highly gendered ‘boundary problems’ of civil society (Keane 1996: 14; 1999; Tester 1992). One of the most problematic of the constructed demarcations for the concept and project of civil society is the dichotomous separation of the public from the private. This construction was the basic structure of the Enlightenment’s gender order and its ‘sexual contract’ and secured longlasting male dominance in the economy, society and politics as well as in the family. We need instead to develop a non-normative, comparative and historicising perspective on civil society, which is open to differences in economic, political and social structures and experiences. Only if we enhance the concept and practice of civil society in this direction can men and women be integrated on an equal basis, and the family recognised as a key institution of civil society.

Notes 1. This chapter is partly based on Hagemann 2008. For more on the theoretical debate of feminist scholars about the concept of civil society and a gendered interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of past and present of civil society, see Hagemann, Michel and Budde 2008. I would like to thank Pamela Selwyn for her support with the translation. 2. Important mainstream publications include: Tester 1992; Gellner 1995; Hann and Dunn 1996; Ehrenberg 1999; Keane 1988, 1999, 2003, 2006; Trentmann 2003; Gosewinkel and Kocka 2003.

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3. The most important feminist publications on the subject are Pateman 1989; Elshtain 1990; Fraser 1990: 65−68; Dean 1995; Phillips 1999; Young 1999, 2000; Ostner 1997; Gerhard 2000; Appel 2003. 4. On the Enlightenment discourse on civil society, see Bermeo and Nord 2000. 5. Walzer, Toward a Global Civil Society (1995), has been very influential. 6. For a more critical position, see Ginsborg 1995 and Ostner 1997. 7. For an overview of the history of the family, see Gestrich et al. 2003: esp. 364–652. 8. For a recent discussion, see Trentmann 2003, in particular his ‘Introduction: Paradoxes of Civil Society’, 3–46; see also Randeria 2004 and Reichardt 2003.

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Habermas, Jürgen. 1989 [1st German ed. 1962]. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA. Hagemann, Karen. 1997. ‘Of “Manly Valor” and “German Honor”: Nation, War and Masculinity in the Age of the Prussian Uprising against Napoleon’, Central European History 30: 187–220. ———. 2000a. ‘“A Valorous Volk Family”: The Nation, the Military, and the Gender Order in Prussia in the Time of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars, 1806–15’. Gendered Nations. Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Ida Blom, Karen Hagemann, and Catherine Hall. Oxford: 179–205. ———. 2000b. ‘Familie – Staat – Nation: Das aufklärerische Projekt der “Bürgergesellschaft” in geschlechtergeschichtlicher Perspektive’. Zivilgesellschaft in Ost und West. Begriff, Geschichte, Chancen, ed. Manfred Hildermeier, Jürgen Kocka and Christoph Conrad. Frankfurt/M.: 57–84. ———. 2004. ‘Female Patriots: Women, War and the Nation in the Period of the Prussian-German Anti-Napoleonic Wars’, Gender & History 16, 3: 396–424. ———. 2008. ‘Feminism and Civil Society: Gendering Civil Society and the Public Space’. Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Karen Hagemann, Sonya Michel and Gunilla Budde. Oxford and New York: 19–60. ——— 2010.‘Military and Masculinity: Gendering the History of the French Wars, 1792–1815’. War in an Age of Revolution: The Wars of American Independence and the French Revolution, 1775–1815, ed. Roger Chickering and Stig Förster. Cambridge and New York: 331–352. Hagemann, Karen, Sonya Michel and Gunilla Budde, eds. 2008. Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. European Civil Society, vol. 5, ed. Dieter Gosewinkel and Jürgen Kocka. Oxford and New York. Hall, John A. 1995. Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison. Cambridge. Hann, Chris, and Elizabeth Dunn, eds. 1996. Civil Society: Challenging Western Models. London. Hausen, Karin. 1981. ‘Family and Role Division: The Polarisation of Sexual Stereotypes in the Nineteenth Century – An Aspect of the Dissociation of Work and Family’. The German Family: Essays on the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany, ed. Richard J. Evans and William R. Lee. London: 51–83. ———. 1992. ‘Öffentlichkeit und Privatheit: Gesellschaftspolitische Konstruktionen und die Geschichte der Geschlechterbeziehungen’. Frauengeschichte – Geschlechtergeschichte, ed. Karin Hausen and Heide Wunder. Frankfurt/M.: 81–88. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1967. The Philosophy of Right. Oxford. Honegger, Claudia. 1991. Die Ordnung der Geschlechter. Die Wissenschaft vom Menschen und das Weib 1750–1850. Frankfurt. Hunt, Lynn. 1992. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. Berkeley. Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig. 1810. Deutsches Volksthum. Lübeck. Jessen, Ralph, et al., eds. 2004. Zivilgesellschaft als Geschichte. Studien zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden. Kaldor, Mary. 2003. Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. Cambridge. Keane, John, ed. 1988. Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives. London. ———. 1996. Reflections on Violence. London. ———. 1999. Civil Society: Old Images. New Visions. London. ———. 2003. Global Civil Society? Cambridge. ———, ed. 2006. Civil Society: Berlin Perspectives. New York.

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Kocka, Jürgen. 2000. ‘Zivilgesellschaft als historisches Problem und Versprechen’. Zivilgesellschaft in Ost und West. Begriff, Geschichte, Chancen, ed. Manfred Hildermeier, Jürgen Kocka and Christoph Conrad. Frankfurt/M.: 13–40. ———. 2003. Zivilgesellschaft in historischer Perspektive. WZB Discussion Papers. Berlin. ———. 2004. ‘Civil Society from a Historical Perspective’, European Review 12, 1: 65–79. Kohlrausch, Friedrich. 1814. Deutschlands Zukunft. In sechs Reden. Elberfeld. Landes, Joan B. 1988. Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution. Ithaca, NY. ———. 1992. ‘Jürgen Habermas: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. A Feminist Inquiry’, Praxis International 12: 106–127. ———, ed. 1998. Feminism, the Public and the Private. Oxford. Marshall, Thomas H. 1992. Citizenship and Social Class. London. Miller, Melanie L. 2002. ‘Male and Female Civility: Towards Gender Justice’, Sociological Inquiry 72, 3: 456–466. Moller Okin, Susan. 1998. ‘Gender, the Public, and the Private’. Feminism, the Public and the Private, ed. Joan B. Landes. Oxford: 116–141. Offen, Karen. 2000. European Feminism 1700–1950: A Political History. Stanford, CA. Ostner, Ilona. 1997. ‘Familie und Zivilgesellschaft’. Zivile Gesellschaft. Entwicklung, Defizite und Potentiale, ed. Klaus M. Schmals and Hubert Heinelt. Opladen: 369–383. Paletschek, Sylvia, and Bianca Pietrow-Ennker, eds. 2004. Women’s Emancipation in the Nineteenth Century. Stanford, CA. Pateman, Carol. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge. ———. 1989. The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Oxford. ———. 1998. ‘The Patriarchal Welfare State’. Feminism, the Public and the Private, ed. Joan B. Landes. Oxford: 241−274. Phillips, Anne. 1999. ‘Who Needs Civil Society? A Feminist Perspective’, Dissent 46, 1: 56–61. ———. 2002. ‘Does Feminism need a Conception of Civil Society?’ Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society, ed. Simone Chambers and Will Kymlicka. Princeton, NJ: 71–89. Rabinovitch, Eyal. 2001. ‘Gender and the Public Sphere: Alternative Forms of Integration in Nineteenth-Century America’, Sociological Theory 19, 3: 344–370. Randeria, Shalini. 2004. ‘Zivilgesellschaft in postkolonialer Sicht’. Neues über Zivilgesellschaft aus historisch-sozialwissenschaftlichem Blickwinkel, ed. Jürgen Kocka et al. WZB Discussion Paper P01-801. Berlin. Reichardt, Sven. 2003. ‘Gewalt und Zivilität im Wandel. Konzeptionelle Überlegungen zur Zivilgesellschaft aus historischer Sicht’. Zivilgesellschaft national und transnational, ed. Dieter Gosewinkel and Jürgen Kocka. Berlin: 61–82. ———. 2004. ‘Civil Society: A Concept for Comparative Historical Research’. Future of Civil Society, ed. Annette Zimmer and Eckard Priller. Wiesbaden: 35–55. Ryan, Mary P. ‘Gender and Public Access: Women’s Politics in NineteenthCentury America’. Feminism, the Public and the Private, ed. Joan B. Landes. Oxford: 195−222. ———. 1990. Women in the Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825−1880. Baltimore.

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Sauer, Birgit. 1999. ‘Demokratisierung mit oder gegen den Staat? Sieben Thesen zu einer feministischen Revision staatstheoretischer Ansätze’. Demokratie als Projekt. Feministische Kritik an der Universalisierung einer Herrschaftsform, ed. Gabriele Abels and Stefanie Sifft. Frankfurt/M.: 79−103. Schnabel, Christa. ‘(Werte-)gemeinschaften in der Zivilgesellschaft: Konzepte, Aufgaben und Verortung’. Zivilgesellschaft – ein Konzept für Frauen?, ed. Margit Appel et al. 2003. Frankfurt/M: 87–111. Schulz, Kristina. 2002. Der lange Atem der Provokation: Die Frauenbewegung in der Bundesrepublik und in Frankreich 1968−1976. Frankfurt/M. Scott, Joan W. 1996. Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man. Cambridge. Tester, Keith. 1992. Civil Society. London. Trentmann, Frank, ed. 2003. Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History. 2nd ed. New York. Walzer, Michel, ed. 1995. Toward a Global Civil Society. Providence, RI. Young, Iris Marion. 1999. ‘State, Civil Society, and Social Justice’. Democracy’s Value, ed. Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordón. Cambridge: 141–162. ———. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. New York.

Chapter 3

THE FAMILY, CIVIL SOCIETY AND SOCIAL POLICY A US PERSPECTIVE

Sonya Michel

Thinking about the question of the family, civil society and social policy is likely to begin – as do many questions regarding civil society – with Jürgen Habermas. In a well-known section of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, he offers a bleak account of the impact of the modern welfare state on the family, and, in turn, on the public sphere (1991: 157, 155).1 Under late capitalism, the family’s loss not only of its productive but also of its reproductive capacities, ‘the functions of upbringing and education, protection, care, and guidance – indeed, of the transmission of elementary tradition and frameworks of orientation’ – have led to what he calls the ‘surreptitious hollowing out of the family’s intimate sphere’ (1991: 30).2 As the economy shifted from small-scale production to commerce and industry, according to Habermas, ‘the family became ever more private and the world of work and organisation ever more public’ (1991: 152).3 Once the family ‘withdrew back upon itself’, yielding its role as provider of its own welfare to the growing welfare state, it became ‘deprivatized by the public guarantees of its status’ (1991: 154–156).4 Having lost its inner core and its authority, the family could no longer serve as the source of subjectivity that had once allowed individuals to participate effectively in the public sphere. The result is the erosion of the public sphere (1991: 158–159).5 Much of what Habermas has to say about the impact of the welfare state in this work and elsewhere sounds convincing.6 Yet my work as a feminist scholar and historian leads to a certain degree of scepticism. For

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example, a number of feminist theorists, including Seyla Benhabib, Nancy Fraser and Iris Marion Young, have pointed out that the bourgeois public sphere Habermas celebrates could not make a valid claim to universalism since it excluded women (Benhabib 1992; Fraser 1992; Ryan 1992; Young 2000: chap. 5). Habermas implicitly accepts – or fails to point out the inequities in − Hegel’s account of the gender division within the bourgeois family, whereby ‘man has his actual substantive life in the state, in learning, and so forth … [while] woman … has her substantive destiny in the family’ (Hegel 1952: 114).7 This division is crucial, for it rationalises men’s position as the sole representatives of their households in the public sphere and women’s exclusion from formal political rights. Another feminist contention, one that has been advanced more by historians than by social theorists, is that civil society did in fact include women, who gained entry by means of their benevolent work, deploying forms of rhetoric that have come to be known as ‘maternalist’ (Koven and Michel 1993; Bock and Thane 1991). Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and across Western Europe, North America and the Antipodes, female philanthropists and reformers, focusing primarily on the needs of women and children (as the reformers defined them), built significant networks of voluntary organisations which in many instances became the foundation of modern welfare states. Although this work did not lead directly to political or even civil rights for women, it did give them a public presence that had otherwise remained elusive, and thus, arguably, worked to loosen the hold of patriarchy. Because his public sphere includes literary clubs but not philanthropic organisations, Habermas’s theory cannot acknowledge such activities. Thus while Habermas takes a distinctively pessimistic view of the implications of the advance of social policy, feminists tend to be somewhat more sanguine, or at least ambivalent. They concede the negative consequences of maternalist social provision, not only because it weakened family autonomy but also because it often discriminated against specific populations on the basis of race, ethnicity and class (consequences that Habermas’s broadside critique of social policy overlooks). But they also point out that reform work, in addition to its material benefits to those in need, offered women an avenue into civil society and the realm of politics.8 I am not trying to sidestep the conflict between these two perspectives; rather, I see it as an instance of productive tension whose complexities will, upon examination, lead us to a deeper understanding of the historical relationship between the family, social policy and civil society. My focus here will be on the United States. But before pursuing this tension further, some clarification is in order. First, a few definitions: By family, I do not mean a ‘natural’, transhistorical biological unit but rather a social formation that emerges at the intersection of law, institutions, economic and demographic trends, ideologies,

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custom, convention and practice − one that changes over time, and thus may or may not coincide with kinship, either biological or legal (Cohen and Arato 1994: 628−631, n. 48). By civil society, I am not adopting Habermas’s specific usage in Structural Transformation (following Hegel, to refer primarily to the market or the economy) but rather the one I take to be more common, namely the space between the private sphere (of the family) and the state, a space that includes the Habermasian notion of ‘the public sphere’ as well as voluntary organisations, churches and ‘associational life’.9 Finally, by social policy I am referring not only to the regulations and provisions of the welfare state, but also, importantly, to the principles and practices of voluntary organisations; in other words, I am conceiving of social policy as a public-private mix. My reasons for all of these stipulations will soon become clear. Second, a note on periodisation: American chronology does not quite fit the one laid out by Habermas, which is largely based on developments in Europe, and Germany in particular (Habermas 1991: 14−27). In the US, I would argue, civil society emerged about half a century later than in Europe, coming into its own in the second half of the eighteenth century, in the years just before and after the American Revolution. But the break-up of the private sphere produced by the emergence of commerce and industrialisation occurred about half a century earlier in the US than in Europe (or at least Germany). At the same time, also as a result of the Revolution and the widespread perception that families had to be mobilised to ensure order in the new nation, the scope of social policy, of the public-private sort I just mentioned, was beginning to expand. Although a ‘welfare state’ as such did not emerge until the twentieth century (indeed, one may argue, in the US it never became fully formed and is now in great danger of disappearing once again), public-private social policy was already beginning to penetrate American family life by the early nineteenth century. This reconceptualisation of Habermas’s scheme in light of feminist critiques and historiography raises three sets of questions, which form the basis for this chapter: (1) How were US families conceived in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries? Did they, in fact, fit the model of the patriarchal bourgeois family, in the Habermasian sense? And what was their relationship to civil society? (2) What form did social policy take in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? How did women’s benevolence affect their status? And how did the advance of social policy affect families and their ability to participate in civil society? (3) How did the rise of a bureaucratic welfare state in the twentiethcentury US affect women’s participation in civil society? And did this state, weak as it was (and is), lead to the ‘hollowed-out’ family described by Habermas?

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The Meanings of Family Most scholars of the US family divide its history into three rough periods, each characterised by an ideal type: the colonial era, when the family constituted a ‘little commonwealth’; the long nineteenth century, when industrialisation brought about the ‘new democratic family’; and the modern era, which witnessed the rise and decline of ‘companionate marriage’ and the ‘child-centred family’.10 The term little commonwealth was coined by historian John Demos (1970) to describe the male-headed, selfcontained, agriculturally based New England household that served as a model for society as a whole. The democratic family, also a heuristic term, refers to an urban, privatised household organised around reproductive, as opposed to productive, activities, in which fathers’ control over such matters as children’s marriages or sons’ occupational choices was declining and women’s roles as wives and mothers was coming to the fore. Progressives pointed to companionate marriage, an intensely emotional and sexual relationship, along with child-centeredness, as the distinguishing features of early twentieth-century families. In reality, however, divorce rates were rising and the child-centred family frequently depended upon (or was subject to) a great deal of professional intervention. Indeed, in all three eras, the forms of actual families varied considerably, often bearing little resemblance to these ideal types (Mintz 2004). Also variable was the relative strength of the forces determining family formation. In the American colonies and then the young American nation of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, cultural factors were prominent. Before the Revolution, these included religious prescriptions as well as a range of literary and philosophical treatises that revealed the influence of Locke, Rousseau and the Scottish Enlightenment (Fliegelman 1982: chap. 1; Zagarri 1992). After the Revolution, prescriptions took more popular forms such as housekeeping and childrearing manuals, women’s magazines and ‘mother’s books’ (Ryan 1982). This trend signals, among other things, a shift of emphasis in discourses of family governance from fatherhood to motherhood and is in fact regarded by some as a symptom (or perhaps a cause) of the decline of patriarchy in US. Whether or not patriarchy was already waning at the time of the Revolution is the subject of much debate among US historians. Jay Fliegelman, in his pioneering study Prodigals and Pilgrim: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority, 1750–1800, argues that throughout this period Americans were using Lockean discourses to challenge the authority not only of actual fathers but also of their political ‘father’, George III. Thus revolt had as much to do with throwing off stringent Calvinist precepts about childrearing as it did with denying the infantilising political and economic demands of the king. Fliegelman’s critics contend that the patterns he describes were neither widespread nor enduring and Fliegelman himself concedes that, soon after the Revo-

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lution, a ‘search for order’, coupled with anxieties sparked by the French Revolution and a rapid rise in immigration, led to a familial ‘counterrevolution’, with reformers and cultural leaders seeking ways to restore paternal authority (Fliegelman 1982: chap. 7; Brown 2001). The counterrevolution lasted at least as long as the initial revolt. In her 1838 book Letters to Mothers, popular author Lydia Sigourney, warning American women about the danger posed by ‘the influx of untutored foreigners’, offered this advice: ‘Obedience in families, respect to magistrates, and love of country, should … be inculcated with increased energy by those who have earliest access to the mind. … Let her come forth with vigour and vigilance, at the call of her country … like the mother of Washington, feeling that the first lesson to every incipient ruler should be, “how to obey”’ (1838: 8−9, emphasis in the original). Sigourney believed that women had a particular role to play in producing good citizens: ‘A barrier to the torrent of corruption, and a guard over the strong holds of knowledge and of virtue, may be placed by the mother, as she watches over her cradled son … [note the gendered references here]. The degree of her diligence in preparing her children to be good subjects of a just government, will be the true measure of her patriotism’ (1838: 9). Sigourney was but one of a long line of commentators and civic leaders who produced a discourse that historian Linda Kerber (1980) has called ‘Republican motherhood’, linking women directly to the political health of the new nation and imbuing their domestic labours with a significance that extended well beyond the home.11 In addition to raising virtuous sons, Republican mothers could wield influence as wives by regulating and ‘softening’ the ‘passions’ of their husbands, again in the interest of making them good citizens. The discourse of Republican motherhood reflected Americans’ more general understanding of the connection between families and the health of the polity, one that came into sharper focus after the Revolution. Whether the well-ordered family was seen as the wellspring of citizenship, as in Sigourney, or a model, both literal and metaphorical, for a good society, American elites regarded it as an essential component of the new political order. In 1821, for example, three years before he was elected president, John Quincy Adams asserted, ‘The sympathies of men begin with affections of domestic life. They are rooted in the natural relations of husband and wife, of parent and child [and then] spread [to] countryman and fellow-citizen; terminating only with the circumference of the globe. … [In] the common Government that constitutes our Country … all the sympathies of domestic life and kindred blood … are combined.’12 Adams’ successor, Andrew Jackson, expressed similar principles in 1837: ‘The foundations [for Constitutional stability and the security of the Union] must be laid in the affections of the people; … in the fraternal attachments which citizens … bear to one another as

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members of one political family.’13 But the very centrality of the orderly family to the polity made civic leaders and reformers anxious about those that appeared to be disorderly, and it was at this point that social policy entered the relationship between the family and civil society in the US.

In the Name of Social Order From a historian’s perspective, the root cause of American family disorder appears to lie in social and economic inequality; from the outset, slavery, indenture and inequalities of wealth divided the colonists. These differences became more pronounced around the time of the Revolution, owing to the growing fortunes of some (such as planters, traders and merchants) and the stagnant prospects of others (wage-earners, servants, casual labourers). Even among the wealthy, and especially among the ‘middling’ classes, financial stability was tenuous; a bad crop, a lost ship, a downturn in the price of commodities, an economic ‘panic’, could lead to financial turmoil not only for prominent businessmen but also for artisans and tradesmen who depended upon the custom of the well-to-do; a war or an epidemic could lead to the disability or death of a family’s major breadwinner. Families that were no longer self-supporting had to throw themselves upon the mercy of local charities, whether public or private, and with this gesture, yield their claims to autonomy, at least temporarily. The families of wage earners, particularly immigrants who arrived with neither skills nor capital, seldom achieved economic security but instead usually teetered on the brink of poverty and often fell into it (Nash 2004). But contemporaries explained poverty in moral and political, rather than economic and social, terms. The increase in the depth and especially the visibility of poverty in the decades following the Revolution prompted responses ranging from humanitarian concern to fears of disorder and unease about the political implications. For political elites, the health and order of the new Republic rested upon the shoulders of independent, self-sufficient propertied heads of households ‘who considered their obligations to the state to be greater than their obligations to landlords, creditors, and employers’ (Rockman 2003: 8). Many of the poor were propertyless wage earners, yet the men among them still had the right to vote. The chief problem, as historian Seth Rockman puts it, was this: ‘Whereas the dependence of wives, children, and slaves attested to a well-ordered society, the nation stood imperiled when too many adult white men rented land instead of owning it, paid interest on debts, labored for wages, or relied on the government [or private charity] to feed their families’ (2003: 8).

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During the colonial period, much of what might be called social policy in the American colonies followed the pattern of British provision for the poor; that is, overseers of the poor used tax proceeds to provide ‘outdoor relief’ to local residents in need. Public officials carefully determined who could legitimately claim ‘settlement’ and who should be ‘warned away’ to seek help elsewhere. With regard to family autonomy, outdoor relief was relatively non-interventionist; its main goal was to ensure that families could survive in situ; however, when a family was considered incapable of supporting itself (for example, when a widow or unmarried woman had young children to support), town fathers commonly saw fit to remove the children for indenture or apprenticeship, on the assumption that this would set them upon the path to self-sufficiency while leaving their mother free to support herself. It is important to note that at this time maternal employment was not only accepted but encouraged; public officials did not regard a mother’s role in childrearing so highly that they saw fit to support her and allow her to keep and socialise her children (Wulf 2004). As concerns rose about maintaining social order, welfare measures intensified, aiming as much at disciplining and reforming the poor as at relieving their penury. Starting in the late eighteenth century, public officials began expressing a marked preference for ‘indoor relief’ – incarceration in some type of institution – over outdoor relief. This attitude also prevailed among private benefactors – the men and increasingly women who built and ran scores of charities devoted to individuals in distress. The consensus throughout much of the nineteenth century was that the poor should not simply be cared for but rehabilitated or reformed, so that they could become self-sufficient citizens, not ‘paupers’ dependent upon charity.14 For our purposes here, several characteristics of indoor relief should be noted. First, social policy in the form of incarceration clearly made deeper incursions into family life than outdoor relief. Under the new system, families who applied for public assistance were routinely sent to a poorhouse or almshouse, where they would be broken up, with members separated and housed according to age and gender. While most able-bodied adults were set to work, mothers with small children were excused on the assumption that supervision of their own children was the equivalent of employment (Clement 1992). As before, however, older children (age five or six and up) were generally taken from their parents and ‘placed out’. Private charities, which were not obliged to take all comers, often restricted aid to particular categories of applicants, such as the widows of sea captains, war orphans or the like. To qualify for aid, family members had to fit themselves into such categories (even though this might entail becoming separated), thus – however involuntarily – endorsing the criteria of their benefactors.

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These policies reflected a dramatic shift in reformers’ views about the relationship between families and institutions from the colonial to the early national periods. According to historian David Rothman, whereas the colonial family (Demos’s ‘little commonwealth’) had been regarded as the model for institutional organisation, disorderly families in the early republic were now instructed to ‘emulate the institution as constituted’ on the assumption that doing so would ‘ensure the nation’s stability’ (Rothman 1971: 42−43). At first, reformers regarded institutions as temporary props that would disappear once they had done their work, leaving the family on its own once again (Samuels 1986: 386). Eventually, however, anxieties about the state of families, especially the poor, led them conclude that permanent institutions were required not only to compensate for families’ inadequacies but in some cases to replace them altogether.15 Such beliefs rapidly eroded any remaining compunctions on the part of poverty officials about intervening in private households. Families applying for poor relief exposed themselves to judgment and risked ongoing supervision or surveillance. Although most applicants were chronically poor, there were always some who had fallen precipitously from the ranks of the middle class. In itself, however, bourgeois status could not shield families from intervention; public officials seeking to maintain social order were likely to regard any man lacking financial means as incapable of heading his own household. By the same token, the presence of an able-bodied man might guarantee family integrity. Claims about the virtues of indoor relief did not sit easily with persistent concerns about the dangers of pauperism – the idea that the poor were likely to become dependent upon relief. Poorhouses resolved this conflict by working out a gendered compromise: they released ablebodied men and women without children as soon as they were deemed capable of earning a living (having recovered from the disease, disability or drunkenness that had landed them in the poorhouse in the first place). But they tended to keep non-married women with young children longer, apparently in the belief that households should be headed by men and that, absent a male provider, women should not be encouraged to try to fend for themselves (Stansell 1982: chap. 2). Any sign of disorder (including persistent poverty) justified removing children from a family and placing them out through indenture or apprenticeship on the assumption that this would not only protect them from unwholesome influences but also teach them a useful trade. Such policies indicate that by the second quarter of the nineteenth century, reformers and political elites no longer regarded families as the cornerstones of civil society. Instead of devoting resources to maintaining the integrity of families in distress, officials preferred to subject them to the technologies of the poorhouse, reordering family members and, if

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necessary, substituting public authority for that of the pater familias. Positioned as instruments or vehicles of social control when they were not eliminated altogether (Samuels 1986: 387), such families lost the sort of autonomy (if they ever had it in the first place) that would have made them an effective foundation for the public sphere. This does not mean, however, that families, or individual members within them, were entirely helpless in their encounters with public officials and philanthropists. As noted above, those in need often made conscious decisions about where they would apply for assistance, although they often had to adhere to predetermined criteria in presenting themselves to officials (Wilkinson 1999). Poor women approached a range of charities in order to gather the various resources needed by their families, often combining work and assistance on a seasonal basis (Clement 1992; Michel 1999: chap. 1).16 In Heroes of their Own Lives, her dramatic study of gender and poverty in a somewhat later period, historian Linda Gordon describes how individual family members (usually wives and daughters) proactively used the coercive powers of voluntary agencies as well as the state to defend themselves against violence on the part of other relatives (Gordon 2002).17 While it would be a mistake to exaggerate or romanticise the impact of such actions, the historical record does reveal that the agency of the poor took many different forms. In some instances, according to one scholar, encounters with clients even compelled elite reformers to change their fundamental views about class, democracy and poverty (Posey 2007). Overall, however, public respect for family integrity declined over the course of the nineteenth century, with the most marked implications for the poor and working-class families who constituted roughly a third of the American population during this period, but also affecting those of the middle class who, through illness, misfortune or the loss of a male breadwinner − the Civil War claimed many, in both North and South (Skocpol 1992: chap. 2) − were also compelled to seek outside assistance. Insofar as public assistance also entailed moral reform or rehabilitation, individual family members, particularly male household heads, could not claim the recognition needed to participate actively in civil society.18

Maternalist Politics and the Gender Transformation of Civil Society It is not coincidental that this trend occurred at the same time that primarily white middle- and upper-class women were beginning to gain visibility in civil society on the basis of their contributions to social reform. Deploying maternalist rhetoric, these women contended that their capacity for sympathy and virtue – the same qualities that fitted them for motherhood – were also needed to help reform society at large. In

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addition, many argued that they had a religious duty to perform charitable works. In this way, women were able to slip through the barrier of liberal political ideology that had thus far excluded them from the public sphere. The guardians of male prerogative argued that women should be denied political rights because of their inherent inability to reason, and also because contact with the political realm would corrupt them. Maternalists, however (unlike their feminist contemporaries), were not demanding formal political rights, but rather quietly claiming a place at the public table through their good works (Dorsey 2002; Isenberg 1998: chaps. 2–4). A clever ploy – for who, in that still highly religious society, could deny them the right to fulfil their God-given obligations? Women’s presence in the ranks of voluntary organisations, many of which they had founded, led to greater gender integration of civil society, but it did little to alleviate other forms of inequality. Despite lofty statements of their goals, most women’s associations devoted to poor relief were based on principles of exclusivity and discrimination (according to class, religion, ethnicity and race) with regard to both their membership and their beneficiaries. Male-run organisations were, of course, no better, and together, this male/female public/private system of social welfare promulgated searing distinctions between the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’, the moral and the illegitimate, the sober and the intemperate. While not all of the marginalised or excluded groups would have – or could have – voiced their objections, the fact that such distinctions were both public and widely accepted belies the notion of a unified public sphere at this moment in American history. Nevertheless, women’s entry into the public sphere represented an important shift in the political culture of the new nation. Benevolent societies allowed women – at least white, middle-class women – to become members of collectivities which, in turn, provided avenues into the public sphere (Isenberg 1998: 41–48). ‘By incorporating’, historian Nancy Isenberg notes, benevolent societies … expanded women’s ability to exercise certain legal rights, allowing them to own and manage property, to make legally binding contracts, and to control their finances. In essence, the benevolent society constituted a private association of educated citizens who shared common public interests. Such societies permitted married women to meet the requirement of the bourgeois public sphere as property owners. Finally, almost all of these societies engaged in the domain of letters by publishing their constitutions, reports of meetings, and circulars in an attempt to persuade the educated public to donate funds and to support their efforts. … The benevolent society was called a society because women served ‘the interests of civil society. (1998: 59)

Moreover, within themselves such organisations constituted civil societies in miniature.

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We must consider carefully these societies’ organisational techniques and publications, for the ways in which they conducted themselves and expressed their pleas for funds often served to reinforce women’s dependency and vulnerability and implicitly paid obeisance to male-imposed restrictions. Historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg (1971) found, for example, that the women of the New York City Mission Movement hired male agents to comb the city’s less respectable precincts for prostitutes whom they would then try to ‘rescue’. According to Isenberg, the fundraising fairs and bazaars where women sold their own ‘fancy goods’ or handwork ‘allowed women to preserve [their] demeanor of respectability and modesty within the context of bourgeois publicity’ (Smith-Rosenberg 1971: 60; see also Michel 1994–1995). But whether such displays also served to raise women’s political status is open to question. Historian Mary Ryan, examining women’s (self-)representations in public ceremonies (parades, commemorations and the like) in the decades following the Civil War, claims that they merely drew attention to women’s domesticity and lack of rights. ‘As long as women represented some transcendent other and projected ideals of domestic seclusion onto public ceremony,’ she writes, ‘their civic actions had the dialectical effect of affirming exclusion from the sphere of democratic participation’ (1990: 251). The democratisation of American cities in the second half of the nineteenth century was, in Ryan’s view, a democratisation of and for white men only (1990: 251). Still, women’s benevolent work allowed them to move outside the private sphere into a different kind of public – not the male-dominated public of streets and saloons, but a women’s public that was often still physically sited in domestic space yet clearly oriented beyond the benefactors’ own homes – what one might call a ‘public of parlours and kitchens’. Women’s benevolent work in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, in the US and elsewhere, became one of the key building blocks of emerging welfare states (Koven and Michel 1993: 1–42; Bock and Thane 1991). At the same time, as I have argued elsewhere, this work also helped to build civil society, broadly defined (Michel 2008). That is, civil society did not precede and allow the establishment of the myriad philanthropies and other voluntary organisations devoted to poor relief that became hallmarks of civil society; rather, the emergence of such associations helped to produce what we would identify as civil society. In the US, decades of philanthropic work on the part of Northern women culminated with their contributions to the Civil War effort, which ended in crisis when the women accused the male administrators of national relief of running a ‘swindling concern’ that took advantage of them and prevented the supplies and funds they had collected from reaching their intended beneficiaries (Attie 1998). All too painfully, this experience brought home to women the limitations of their political power. After the war, many prominent female reformers joined in the

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general campaign to promote greater regularisation, rationalisation and professionalisation of poor relief, but this too had negative consequences for women. The shift ended up largely extruding amateur charity workers from the social policy establishment, though for a growing number of college-educated women, it did open up new roles in the ‘helping professions’ emerging in the midst of the fledgling American welfare state (Ginsberg 1990: chaps. 5 and 6).

The Shrinking of Civil Society By the late nineteenth century, professionalisation was occurring not only in the realm of social policy but in politics more generally. Debates over public policy still occurred in print, but increasingly, political parties and trade unions took on the work of mobilising mass support for predesignated policies, laws and candidates (McCormick 1986). This minimised the impact of individual political participation (either directly or through local membership organisations) and eliminated the need for strong-willed citizens to voice their opinions within the public sphere (Skocpol 2003). At the same time, discussions of social policy increasingly took place within the labyrinths of governmental bureaucracies or in the ‘sub-public’ spaces of professional conferences and journals, where admission was limited to those with specialised credentials. Women continued to predominate in the lower ranks of the newly constituted social or helping professions, but they tended to work under male supervision. Even female-headed federal agencies like the US Children’s Bureau (the first permanent American agency devoted to social welfare) and the US Women’s Bureau had little power; passage of women’s suffrage did not prevent the male-dominated Congresses from keeping them on a short fiscal leash, with limited mandates (Muncy 1991; Lindenmeyer 1997). Similar patterns occurred at the state and local level, where social assistance agencies increasingly took on police functions (see, for example, Odem 1995; Alexander 1995; Appier 1998).19 And the growing psychologisation of the social services not only privileged psychiatrists, who were overwhelmingly men, over social workers, primarily women, but also allowed for greater – albeit more subtle – penetration of family life at all class levels.20 The dramatic transformation of social services took its toll on women’s reform, stripping older organisations of both purpose and resources. Many simply disappeared, but a few managed to survive by adapting, and one, the National Congress of Mothers (NCM), evolved into one of the largest membership organisations in the country, the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA). Founded in 1897 by two wealthy female civic leaders to promote child protection and development, the NCM’s strength, like

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that of many maternalist organisations of the period, lay in its numerous local chapters, which worked assiduously both to educate women to become better mothers and to mobilise their support for specific policies at the local, state and national levels. One of its most successful efforts, the campaign for mothers’ pensions, led to what one contemporary called ‘the wildfire spread’ of legislation across dozens of states by the 1920s (Ladd-Taylor 1994: chap. 5; Skocpol 1992: chap. 8). The NCM’s dual focus on self-education and reform eventually led the organisation to split. At the outset, members used local chapters of the NCM as a kind of public sphere in which they could discuss their own experiences of childrearing, but they were also eager to learn about child study and obtain the latest advice on ‘scientific motherhood’.21 In this way, they opened themselves to the growing movement towards the professionalisation of family life, with many members going on to join the Parent Education movement (Schlossman 1976). Meanwhile, the organisation continued to seek ways to improve institutions and policies affecting parents and children. In addition to the campaign for mothers’ pensions, NCM also promoted juvenile courts, child health and an end to child labour. Eventually it came to focus on public education and, as the PTA, established chapters in nearly every public school in the nation.22 Boasting millions of members, PTAs became and continue to be, arguably, one of the most significant venues for women’s civic participation in the United States, their effectiveness sustained by the fact that school governance has largely resisted centralisation in this country.23 Historians have yet to provide us with a systematic study of the impact of the PTA on school policy, but its longevity and vigour suggest that professionalisation, at least in this one area concerning children and families, did not completely close off public discussion.24 The PTA stands out as an anomaly in a period stretching from the Progressive Era through the 1960s during which family services became increasingly professionalised, bureaucratised and closed off to civil society oversight and intervention. This shift not only reduced the political space available for civic participation, particularly on the part of women, but it also extended the reach of social policy across families at all class levels, thereby curtailing their ability to produce effective civil society actors along the lines that Habermas envisioned.

Conclusion The history of families and social policy in the US suggests that while Habermas’s lament over the hollowed-out family should not be discounted, his account of its emergence requires some revision, at least for the American case. First, as this chapter has shown, reformers’ incursions

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into the family began much earlier than Habermas seems to suggest (1991: chap. 6). This is important because it reperiodises his implicit contention that the bourgeois family was completely self-contained until the moment it was penetrated by corporate welfare. In his account, there is no mention of conditions such as unemployment, illness and economic downturn, which regularly beset families of all classes and compelled them to seek outside assistance. As a result, the modern welfare state that Habermas regards as a threat to the bourgeois family seems to arise out of nowhere, when it was in fact a continuation of policies that had originated in the nineteenth century in response to the needs of the bourgeoisie as well as the poor and the working class. Moreover, one should bear in mind that these policies came about at the behest of women seeking to break out of the confines of the bourgeois family and use their work as a means of entering civil society. Second, Habermas seems to cling to the bulwark of the bourgeois family because he cannot imagine individuals being able to exert much power outside of it (other than as participants in the public sphere). It would, of course, be a mistake to romanticise individuals’ leverage in encounters with the reform establishment, precisely because they were positioned as supplicants, and often acting alone. But the poor were not completely passive in the face of public officials. In addition to visible popular mobilisations such as strikes and bread riots, social historians have now turned up distinctive patterns of resistance and agency on the part of individual clients in the nineteenth century (though the formation of client groups by welfare recipients, the disabled, the mentally ill and the like were yet to come). Thus while these early incursions into the family might be taken as a harbinger of the eventual hollowing-out of the family, this process did not occur as seamlessly as Habermas suggests. And finally, Habermas’ lament sounds a nostalgic note for a bourgeois family whose vitality depended greatly on the unpaid labours of otherwise restricted women. In order for women to advance, socially and economically as well as politically, much of this work would have to be organised outside the family. To be sure, transferring reproductive functions to public institutions runs the risk of losing control and exposing family members to possible harm; the history of modern American social policy hardly inspires great confidence in this regard (see, for example, Sealander 2003). But the presence of a strong, vibrant civil society can act as a buffer between social policy (now almost completely embodied by the state, broadly construed) and the intimate sphere. Pointing to the inaccuracies in Habermas’s account is not an exercise in mere pedantry but an attempt to show how they prevent Habermas (and those who seek to build on his work) from coming to grips with the major dilemma of modern social welfare: since families are never really self-sufficient, the need for outside help is virtually inevitable. How can policies be

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designed and implemented without compromising individual or familial autonomy and the ability to participate effectively in the public sphere? And how can civil society ensure that social provision is distributed fairly, equitably and with respect for the rights and dignity of recipients?25 Resolving this dilemma clearly depends upon building – or sustaining – a robust civil society in the first place. Yet, as Paul Ginsborg has pointed out, modern families – modern individuals – are often too hard-pressed by employment and personal responsibilities to participate actively and consistently in public debate and civic action, with the result that participation these days often consists of little more than ‘checkbook activism’ (Putnam 2000; Ginsborg in this volume). If a renewed civil society is to emerge, it will have to draw upon new social formations (some of which many now consider family) – friendship networks, extended households, workplace groups, community associations and local chapters of national movements (Weston 1991; Lynch 2012). While the mass social movements of the 1960s and 1970s have more or less dissolved, the kind of direct activism they fostered lives on in the form of situation- or clientbased groups such as Welfare Warriors, ACT-UP and various disability rights organisations.26 Unlike maternalist organisations, such groups are distinguished by – and gain power from – the fact that members are seeking rights in their own name, not on behalf of others. Resolving the welfare state dilemma also depends upon creating social services in which clients, as both individuals and as families, have a voice. The PTA, described above, is one model; the New Left, particularly the feminist movement in the US and elsewhere, devised a number of others, such as the women’s health movement (Morgen 2002) or the communitybased cooperative child-care centres pioneered in Australia in the 1970s (Brennan 1998). Though highly popular, the latter, run with substantial funding from the state secured by well-placed ‘femocrats’ within the government, fell victim to sharp budget cuts in the 1990s and have largely disappeared (Brennan 1998). Such developments remind us that, whatever its virtues, civil society cannot obviate the need for states,27 since only states can assume fiscal responsibility for the kinds of largescale redistributive welfare policies such as child care needed to bring about social justice and assist families in their reproductive tasks. Insisting that welfare states be both generous and responsive is the continuing task of civil society – a civil society that must constantly seek ways to renew itself from the means at hand.

Notes 1. The section is entitled ‘The Polarization of the Social Sphere and the Intimate Sphere.’

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2. Habermas’s starting point was the bourgeois public sphere that emerged within the eighteenth-century monarchies of Europe. According to his diagram, the ‘social realms’ at that time were divided between a ‘private realm’ and a ‘sphere of public authority’. The private realm comprised civil society (commodity exchange and social labour), the conjugal family’s ‘internal space’, a public sphere divided between politics and ‘the world of letters’ and a ‘market of cultural products’. The sphere of public authority comprised the state (‘police’) and the court. Of course, as he argues throughout the book, these divisions changed over time. In the modern era, the intimate sphere becomes merely a vestige of the private realm. 3. In this passage, Habermas is quoting the German sociologist Helmut Schelsky. 4. As he developed his theory of ‘communicative action’, Habermas elaborated on the specific techniques of what he calls the ‘colonization of the lifeworld’ through the ‘bureaucratic rationality of the state’; these include depersonalisation, dehumanisation, pacification, neutralisation, etc. See Habermas 1984: 303−374. Here, in contrast to Structural Transformation, he is more concerned about the loss of class consciousness than the erosion of the family. 5. The argument here is in part that in order to participate effectively in the public sphere, individuals must have solitude; ‘private reading has always been the precondition for rational-critical debate’ (158). The historian Christopher Lasch, in his controversial book Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Beseiged (1977), makes a similar argument about the implosion of the family in modern times, although his major concern is not the weakening of the public sphere but the collapse (or lack) of resistance against capitalism. Surprisingly, Lasch relies much more heavily on a Freudian understanding (via the Frankfurt School) of the family than does Habermas, who is widely regarded as the rightful heir of Horkheimer and Adorno. In Structural Tranformation, Habermas’ argument is more sociological than psychoanalytic; he mentions Freud only once, more or less in passing (47), although he does discuss him extensively in his next major book, Knowledge and Human Interests (Erkenntnis und Interesse), 1968. Equally surprising, in Haven, Lasch does not cite Habermas, although the German version of Structural Transformation (Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit), first appeared in 1961. (I do not know if Lasch read German, although, given his deep and longstanding interest in the Frankfurt School, it is likely that he did. In Haven, however, all German works are cited by their English titles. Lasch died in 1994, three years after Strukturwandel was published in English.) Nor does Habermas cite Lasch in the English version of Strukturwandel (it is not clear from either the Introduction or Translator’s Note whether Habermas revised his original text as it was being translated). Although a number of critics and analysts have pointed out similarities between their arguments (they appear together frequently on college syllabi), it seems that neither Lasch nor Habermas ever explicitly discussed the work of the other, at least in print. 6. Indeed, surprisingly, it resonates with Foucault’s writings about ‘bio-power’ and ‘governmentality’; see Burchell et al. 1991. 7. For a historical account of how this process unfolded in France, see Landes 1988. 8. For critiques of maternalist policies, see Michel 2008. 9. For a useful discussion of changing definitions, see Young 2000: 157−158. 10. Key works in this literature include Demos 1986, 2000; Mintz and Kellogg 1988; and Grossberg 1985. Useful studies of individual family roles include Mintz 2004; Griswold 1993; and Apple and Golden 1997.

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11. Dorsey argues that images of motherhood (republican or otherwise) were not as prominent in reform rhetoric as Kerber and others contend (2002: chap. 1). The distinction he is making seems overly narrow and insignificant. 12. Adams, ‘Address … on the Occasion of Reading the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1821’ (City of Washington: Davis and Force, 1821), quoted in Samuels 1986: 385−386. 13. Andrew Jackson, ‘Farewell Address’, reprinted in Memoirs of Andrew Jackson (Auburn, NY: James C. Derby & Co., 1845), quoted in Samuels 1986: 386. 14. An important gloss on these terms may be found in Fraser and Gordon 1994. 15. According to Michel Foucault (1991: 99−100), ‘Prior to the emergence of population [his term for the nexus of individual sexuality and reproductivity with national interests], it was impossible to conceive of the art of government except on the model of the family’. But by the mid eighteenth century, ‘the family becomes an instrument for the government of the population, and not the chimerical model of good government’. 16. Both studies deal with antebellum Philadelphia, but the same pattern no doubt appeared in other cities of the period. 17. Gordon does not, of course, deny that the agencies had far greater power than family members, either individually or together, but she is at pains to show that the relationships were not one-sided. It should be noted that she is dealing with a later period (the turn of the twentieth century) than that under discussion here, but there is reason to assume that the same patterns could be found earlier as well. 18. Skocpol (1992), among others, has noted that because the pensions and other forms of assistance provided to veterans and their families were premised on military service, they did not carry the same stigma that poor relief did. 19. It is worth noting that most of the policies these historians discuss targeted young women. 20. For the Progressive Era, see Lunbeck 1994. Lunbeck notes that the primary focus of such services was young women. For the post–World War II period, see Herman1996. 21. They were particularly keen on the theories of pioneering child psychologist G. Stanley Hall, and indeed, helped to launch his career. 22. One of the few studies of this transition is Wayshiner 2003. 23. Ironically, under the ‘Leave No Child Behind’ policy advocated by the great antigovernment advocate George W. Bush, US schools have become more centralised than ever. 24. Unfortunately, this may be due to the fact that public education in the US (except at the high-school level) is largely feminised, poorly paid and generally lacking in prestige. 25. Interestingly, British social theorist T. H. Marshall (1992) thinks of social policy the other way around, arguing that without the benefits of social citizenship, some individuals may be deprived of their access to political and civil rights. Iris Marion Young (2000: chap. 5) makes a similar point, using the terms social justice and self-development. 26. In recent years, such organisations have varying success; with passage of ‘welfare reform’ in 1996, public assistance laws have become increasingly draconian, but the federal government has been investing much more in AIDS research since ACT-UP staged its dramatic demonstrations in the 1990s, and the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990. See, for example, Shapiro 1993. 27. Iris Marion Young (2000: 180–195) makes this point very well.

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References Alexander, Ruth. 1995. The Girl Problem: Female Sexual Delinquency in New York, 1900–1930. Ithaca, NY. Appier, Janis. 1998. Policing Women: The Sexual Politics of Law Enforcement and the LAPD. Philadelphia. Apple, Rima, and Janet Golden, eds. 1997. Mothers and Motherhood: Readings in American History. Columbus, OH. Attie, Jeanie. 1998. Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the American Civil War. Ithaca, NY. Benhabib, Seyla. 1992. ‘Models of Public Space: Hannah Arendt, the Liberal Tradition, and Jürgen Habermas’. Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun. Cambridge, MA: 73−99. Bock, Gisela, and Pat Thane, eds. 1991. Maternity and Gender Politics: Women and the Rise of European Welfare States, 1880s−1950s. London and New York. Brennan, Deborah. 1998. The Politics of Australian Child Care: Philanthropy to Feminism and Beyond, rev. ed. Cambridge. Brown, Gillian. 2001. The Consent of the Governed: The Lockean Legacy in Early American Culture. Cambridge. Burchell, Graham, et al., eds. 1991. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago. Calhoun, Craig, ed. 1992. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA. Clement, Priscilla. 1992. ‘Nineteenth-Century Welfare Policy, Programs, and Poor Women: Philadelphia as a Case Study’, Feminist Studies 18, 1: 35−58. Cohen, Jean L., and Andrew Arato. 1994. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA. Demos, John. 1986. Past, Present, and Personal: The Family and the Life Course in American History. New York. ———. 2000 [1970]. A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony. New York. Dorsey, Bruce. 2002. Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City. Ithaca, NY. Fliegelman, Jay. 1982. Prodigals and Pilgrim: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority, 1750–1800. Cambridge and New York. Foucault, Michel. 1991. ‘Governmentality’. Studies in Governmentality with two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller. Chicago: 87−104. Fraser, Nancy. 1992. ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere. A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’. Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun. Cambridge, MA: 109−142. Fraser, Nancy, and Linda Gordon. 1994. ‘A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State’, Signs 19, 2: 309−336. Ginsborg, Paul. 2008. ‘Only Connect: Family, Gender and Civil Society in Modern Europe’. Civil Society, Public Space, and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, eds. Karen Hagemann, Sonya Michel and Gunilla Budde. Oxford and New York: 223−249. Ginzberg, Lori D. 1990. Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States. New Haven, CT.

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Gordon, Linda. 2002. Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence—Boston, 1880-1960. Champaign, IL. Griswold, Robert. 1993. Fatherhood in America: A History. New York. Grossberg, Michael. 1985. Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in NineteenthCentury America. Chapel Hill, NC. Habermas, Jürgen. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action. Boston. ———. 1991. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1952. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox. Oxford. Herman, Ellen. 1996. The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts. Berkeley, CA. Isenberg, Nancy. 1998. Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill, NC. Kerber, Linda K. 1980. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel Hill, NC. Koven, Seth, and Sonya Michel, eds. 1993. Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States. New York. Ladd-Taylor, Molly. 1994. Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890−1930. Urbana, IL. Landes, Joan. 1988. Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution. Ithaca, NY. Lasch, Christopher. 1977. Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Beseiged. New York. Lindenmeyer, Kriste. 1997. A Right to Childhood: The U.S. Children’s Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912–1946. Urbana, IL. Lunbeck, Elizabeth. 1994. The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender and Power in Modern America. Princeton, NJ. Marshall, Thomas Humphrey. 1992. Citizenship and Social Class. London. McCormick, Richard L. 1986. The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era. New York. Michel, Sonya. 1994–1995. ‘Dorothea Dix, or “The Voice of the Maniac”’, Discourse vol. 17, no. 2: 48–66. ———. 1999. Children’s Interests / Mothers’ Rights: The Shaping of America’s Child Care Policy. New Haven. ———. 2008. ‘The Rise of Welfare States and the Regendering of Civil Society’. Civil Society, Public Space, and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Karen Hagemann, Sonya Michel, and Gunilla Budde. Oxford and New York: 361−91. ———. Forthcoming. ‘Maternalism and Beyond’. Maternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare and Social Policies in the Twentieth Century, ed. Rebecca Plant et al. New York. Mintz, Steven. 2004. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA. Mintz, Steven, and Susan Kellogg. 1988. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. New York. Morgen, Sandra. 2002. Into Our Own Hands: The Women’s Health Movement in the United States, 1969–1990. New Brunswick, NJ. Muncy, Robyn. 1991. Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935. New York. Nash, Gary. 2004. ‘Poverty and Politics in Early American History’. Down and Out in Early America, ed. Billie G. Smith. University Park, PA: 1−37.

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Odem, Mary. 1995. Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885−1930. Chapel Hill, NC. Posey, Trisha. 2007. ‘Poverty Encounters: Unitarians, the Poor, and Poor Relief in Antebellum Boston and Philadelphia’. PhD dissertation, Department of History, University of Maryland at College Park. http://www.lib.umd.edu/drum/ bitstream/1903/6766/1/umi-umd-4248.pdf Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York. Rockman, Seth. 2003. Welfare Reform in the Early Republic. Boston and New York. Rothman, David. 1971. The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic. Boston. Ryan, Mary P. 1982. The Empire of the Mother: American Writing about Domesticity, 1830−1860. New York. ———. 1992. ‘Gender and Public Access: Women’s Politics in Nineteenth Century America’. Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun. Cambridge, MA: 143−163. Ryan, Mary. 1990. Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825–1880. Baltimore. Samuels, Shirley. 1986. ‘The Family, the State, and the Novel in the Early Republic’, American Quarterly 38, 3: 381−395. Schlossman, Steven. 1976. ‘Before Home Start: Notes toward a History of Parent Education in America, 1897−1929’, Harvard Educational Review 46: 436−467. Sealander, Judith. 2003. The Failed Century of the Child: Governing America’s Young in the Twentieth Century. New York. Shapiro, Joseph P. 1993. No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement. New York. Sigourney, Lydia. 1838. Letters to Mothers. Hartford, CT. Skocpol, Theda. 1992. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Cambridge. ———. 2003. Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life. Norman, OK. Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. 1971. Religion and the Rise of the American City: The New York City Mission Movement, 1812–1870. Ithaca, NY. Stansell, Christine. 1982. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789−1860. New York. Wayshiner, Christine. 2003. ‘Race, Gender, and the Early PTA: Civic Engagement and Public Education, 1897−1924’, Teachers College Record 105, 3: 520−544. Weston, Kath 1991. Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. New York. Wilkinson, Patrick. 1999. ‘The Selfless and the Helpless: The Maternalist Origins of the U.S. Welfare State’, Feminist Studies 25, 3: 571−597. Wulf, Karin. 2004. ‘Gender and the Political Economy of Poor Relief in Colonial Philadelphia’. Down and Out in Early America, ed. Billy G. Smith. University Park, PA: 163−188. Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford. Zagarri, Rosemarie. 1992. ‘Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother’, American Quarterly 44, 2: 192−215.

Chapter 4

FEMINIST MOBILISATION AND FAMILY CHANGE A CASE STUDY OF A GRASSROOTS WOMEN’S ORGANISATION IN QUEBEC: THE AFEAS (1966–1989)

Anne Revillard

Family issues are a target of mobilisation for various organised groups within civil society. Some explicitly label themselves as ‘family movements’. Others, such as some women’s groups, tackle family issues without identifying themselves primarily as family based. The focus of this chapter is on the border between family movements and feminist movements. While familialism and feminism are often theoretically defined as contradictory values (Commaille 1993), my aim is to shed light on their possible coexistence in actual social movements. A single women’s organisation may shift from a conservative promotion of family values to a defence of women’s rights as individuals, as the example of the Association Féminine d’Education et d’Action Sociale (AFEAS) in Quebec shows us. The AFEAS, a federation of grassroots women’s groups created in 1966, has a twofold mission of permanent education and ‘social action’, which implies both community-level activities and political mobilisation aimed at state intervention, mainly on family-related issues. As a women’s group focused on family issues, the AFEAS was for many years the site of a dilemma over its definition as a ‘family’ or a ‘women’s’ organisation (Lamoureux, Gélinas and Tari 1993: 74–78; Lemieux and Comeau 2002: 9). Along with other women’s organisations which value the family and domestic labour, AFEAS is often seen by more radical feminists as a rather traditional, conservative organisation (Cohen 1992). Yet, I argue

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that under the seemingly unchanged surface of the family-values rhetoric used by the AFEAS since its creation, a revolution has taken place. The meaning of this focus on the family has dramatically changed over the years. Under strong Catholic influence, the AFEAS originally promoted conservative family values that did not favour women’s autonomy. However, throughout the years, it gradually asserted a more feminist position, using the same rhetoric to make claims for reforms that, while still in the field of family policy, resulted in improving women’s rights. Beyond the description of this evolution, the aim of this chapter is to suggest an explanation for this discreet but revolutionary transformation of this women’s organisation, in relation with family change. My claim is that the experience of divorce is one of the elements that spurred the development of a feminist consciousness among AFEAS members, leading to a shift from a collective identity grounded on the family to a collective identity primarily built upon the defence of women’s autonomy. This case thus provides an example of the dynamics of family change and mobilisation processes within civil society. Further, these phenomena (family change, mobilisation processes and the definition of collective identities within civil society) do not happen in a political vacuum. The state is ubiquitous in these dynamics, and its role will be stressed throughout this chapter, notably through the role of the law as both an influence on social change and a target of political mobilisation. First, I will define the key concepts of this study, and present the general organisation of the AFEAS. Then I shall describe its evolution from familialism to feminism, before showing how the claims made by the organisation favour my assumption of the role played by the experience of divorce in this evolution.

Conceptual Framework The present analysis of the AFEAS ideological shift over the years will draw on the concepts of feminism, familialism and maternalism in order to account for the change in the frame of collective action, as well as the concepts of gender consciousness and feminist consciousness, in order to seize this cognitive dimension at a more individual level (Snow et al. 1986).

Familialism, Feminism and Maternalism In order to make sense of the way the AFEAS frames its actions and grievances, I will resort to three concepts: familialism, feminism and maternalism. While these are the subject of important debate over their definition, for the purpose of this study, I will use Jacques Commaille’s

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heuristic opposition between familialism and feminism (1993), and Sonya Michel and Seth Koven’s definition of maternalism (1990). Commaille theorises an opposition between the values of familialism, or the defence of the family as an institution, and feminism, broadly defined as the defence of women’s rights and interests as individuals (1993). While these concepts, so defined, help us understand the potential conflict between these two components of the AFEAS collective identity, the concept of maternalism enables us to analyse how these they may combine in a less conflictive manner. Based upon the study of women’s movement activism in Western countries at the turn of the twentieth century, Michel and Koven developed the concept of ‘maternalism’ to refer to ‘ideologies that exalted women’s capacity to mother and extended to society as a whole the values of care, nurturance, and morality. Maternalism always operated on two levels: it extolled the private virtues of domesticity while simultaneously legitimating women’s public relationships to politics and the state, to community, workplace, and marketplace’ (1990: 1079). This concept is particularly heuristic for analysing the possible nonconflictive defence of family values and women’s interests. This theoretical innovation indeed has been crucial to the study of some women’s movements initially neglected by feminist scholarship because of their reluctance to challenge the gendered division of labour.1 While stressing the importance of the family for these movements, research on maternalism has shown their potentially feminist character, insofar as women used the defence of traditional values as a stepping-stone to enter the public sphere and claim for their rights. As will be illustrated below, AFEAS discourse, which mingles women’s interests and family values, provides us with a good example of maternalism. Further, its evolution reflects the diversity of maternalism, ranging from a prevalence of family values at the detriment of women’s interests (in this case, maternalism takes a familiarist tone), to a defence of women’s interests within the family (i.e. the feminist frame prevails). At stake here is the rise of a feminist consciousness among AFEAS members.

From Gender Consciousness to Feminist Consciousness Feminist consciousness was initially defined by Ethel Klein as a form of group consciousness resulting from a three-stage process, enabling mobilisation to occur: the ‘recognition of group membership and shared interests’, the ‘rejection of the traditional definition for the group’s status in society’ and the blame for the consequent problems put on the system instead of individual responsibility (1984: 3). Later works insisted on the need to distinguish gender consciousness from feminist consciousness, in order to account for the possibility of a

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gender identification that does not necessarily entail feminist opinions (Tolleson Rinehart 1992). While gender consciousness, or the ‘awareness of one’s self as having certain gender characteristics and an identification with others who occupy a similar position in the sex-gender structure’ (Chow 1987: 285), may be a ‘precursor’ of feminist consciousness, the former does not necessarily entail the later. Identifying the conditions that favour such a shift is an important task in view of the broader understanding of women’s movements. While gender and feminist consciousness are generally measured by means of quantitative methods, a qualitative approach enables a more detailed analysis of the processes by which one can turn into the other (Klatch 2001). Hence this study of the AFEAS’s shift from familialism to feminism is based upon the content analysis of the AFEAS archives, comprised of news bulletins, research and advisory reports, as well as information leaflets, from 1966 to 1990. Jocelyne Lamoureux, Michèle J. Gélinas and Katy Tari’s monograph of the association (1993) has also been a very useful second-hand resource for this research.

The AFEAS and its Women Quebec is a great ‘laboratory’ for studying the interaction between family change and civil society. Indeed, family change has been particularly quick in Quebec in the past fifty years, with for example the divorce rate rising from 8.8 per cent in 1969 to 51.2 per cent in 1987, the total fertility rate dropping from 3.8 in 1960 to 1.4 in 2000 and women’s employment rate rising from 25.3 per cent in 1961 to 51.8 per cent in 2001 (Institut de la Statistique du Québec). This rapid social change coincided with growing state intervention, as well as the development of a dense network of ‘community groups’ (groupes communautaires) targeting, at the local level, a broad range of social issues such as education, health, employment or consumption (Bélanger and Lévesque 1992). Prominent in this dynamic civil society are women’s groups, which constitute a strong women’s movement (in terms of membership, resources and political influence) (Collectif Clio 1992; Corbeil and Descarries 1997; Dumont 1992; Lamoureux 1986, 2001). AFEAS is one of the two main national women’s organisations in Quebec, along with the Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ). It was created in 1966 by means of the merger of two women’s organisations initiated by the Catholic Church, the Union Catholique des Femmes Rurales (Catholic Rural Women’s Organisation; UCFR) and the Cercles d’économie domestique (Household Economics Circles; CED).2 The AFEAS is a mass organisation: its membership has been steady at around 35,000 members, at least between the end of the 1960s and the end of the 1980s (which is the time period I shall focus on in this study). Ac-

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cording to a 1981 poll conducted with 932 members (Houle and AFEAS 1981), women of all ages belonged to the organisation, with an over-representation of women aged 35–55. Also, 86.4 per cent of them were married; the majority of them (56.8 per cent) were full-time homemakers; and only 9.5 per cent were working full-time in the labour market. Half of the members (49.1 per cent) lived in a rural area, and three-quarters of them lived in cities of 16,987 residents or less. Therefore, its membership departed from the profile commonly associated with the women’s movement: AFEAS women were not urban professional women, but farmers, homemakers or women working for their husbands’ businesses in the crafts or retailing. In 1967, AFEAS was comprised of an executive board and eight provincial committees: urban, rural, education, finance, propaganda and advertising, homemaking, popular education, resolutions (AFEAS 1967b: 9). The structure of the organisation was pyramidal: the AFEAS was composed of an ‘association’ at the provincial level, thirteen federations at the level of the main cities in Québec, and around six hundred ‘circles’ at the local level. Given this type of structure, there was of course a top-down dynamic in the flow of information: the executive board exerted some influence on the members at the local level, notably by means of the organisation’s ‘educational’ mission. The AFEAS news bulletin played a key role in this respect, defining the topics of discussion and providing educational material for the local groups’ meetings. Yet the dynamic was not only top-down, but also, to a large extent, bottom-up. Indeed, members of the AFEAS provincial executive were concerned about the compliance of their statements with local members’ aspirations and opinions, which were channelled to them by delegates chosen in each local circle. The AFEAS also often organised polls and surveys among its members on the different subjects it tackled. Therefore, the AFEAS was strongly linked to its members: the provincial executive was cautious not to be perceived at odds with its local members’ aspirations, while conversely playing a crucial consciousness-raising role by means of its educational mission.

From Familialism to Feminism The First Years (1966–1972): The Hold of Religion and Traditional Family Values The AFEAS’s link to the Catholic Church, and religious preoccupation, was initially very strongly asserted. This can be illustrated by the role played by the clergy in the association, the official ties to other catholic organisations, the religious tone of the discourse and the nature of the values endorsed, and especially the defence of traditional family values.

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Up until 1972, the Church had a very important role in the everyday life of the association. A priest (the only man in this women’s-only organisation) attended to the AFEAS meetings in each federation (AFEAS 1967a: 12–13) and gave moral advice. It was also a priest, George-Etienne Phaneuf, who signed the leading article of the news bulletin every month. Similarly, each meeting of AFEAS members at all levels had to begin with a prayer (AFEAS 1967b: 11–13). Moreover, the AFEAS was affiliated to the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations (AFEAS 1968: 3). In compliance with the role of Catholicism in the identity of the AFEAS, the defence of traditional family values was one of the first political standpoints adopted by the association: in an article entitled ‘The mutual rights and duties of family and society’, Cécile Bédard, ‘general propagandist’, asserted the need to fight ‘for the defence of the family and the recognition of its rights’, referring to a 1958 press release by the religious authorities which denounced the damage caused by the increase in divorce rates and women’s work outside of the home (Bédard 1967). The AFEAS consequently asserted a certain number of ‘family rights’, among which are ‘the right to unity’, ‘the right to fertility’, ‘the right to educate its children and supervise their education’ (parents being attributed a primary role over teachers) and ‘the right to economic security, grounded on its members’ work, and mainly the father’s’ (Bédard 1967: 12–15). This stand clearly was familialist, in the sense that the AFEAS promoted the family as an institution, in a specific way that may turn out at the expense of individual rights (for example, the ‘family rights’ described above tend to imply a stand against women’s reproductive rights, against divorce and against an autonomous income for women). Nevertheless, in a typical example of maternalism, women were assigned a primary role in this defence of family values. Moreover, the organisation’s conservatism was not inconsistent with some form of gender consciousness, based upon the defence of a particular vision of women’s identity, the homemaker. Indeed, homemaking was, along with religious and educational issues, the main topic of the news bulletin, be it in the form of knitting, cooking, or decoration. In 1967, the AFEAS justified the need for a homemaking committee by stressing ‘the importance and wealth of her mission as a homemaker’ (AFEAS 1967a: 15). However, because it was not accompanied by a questioning of relationships of power between men and women, this gender consciousness was not, at this stage, a feminist consciousness.

The Gradual Rise of a Feminist Consciousness In the first years of its existence, the AFEAS was confronted with the very fast social changes that occurred in what is commonly referred to

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in Quebec as the ‘quiet revolution’, which included, beside the very fast demographic changes mentioned above, a fast secularisation of society. Along with these changes came the rise of the second-wave women’s movement, and the institutionalisation of women’s interests in Quebec, in Canada and worldwide. At the federal level, a Royal Commission on the Status of Women was created in 1967 to investigate women’s social and legal status. This Commission, chaired by journalist Florence Bird, had an important effect in structuring the women’s movement’s thinking and action (Collectif Clio 1992: 469). In Quebec, a Council on the status of women (Conseil du statut de la femme) was created in 1973. Finally, at the supra-national level, the activities surrounding the 1975 United Nations International Women’s Year had an important influence on the AFEAS’s rising awareness of women’s rights issues.3 These social and political changes converged in promoting a new image of women as autonomous, working on the labour market – an image about which the AFEAS was ambivalent. On the one hand, it opened the possibility of improving women’s rights and status, a focus that was initially secondary for the AFEAS, but yet corresponded to the interests of its constituencies. On the other hand, the value put on women working outside of the home tended to discredit the homemaker. This put the organisation on the defensive, since the very identity it was built upon was questioned. This ambivalence was well reflected in the AFEAS’s participation on the Bird Commission. Although it had been asked to document ‘woman’s work outside of the home’, the AFEAS, in its final report, promoted women’s role as homemakers: ‘We shouldn’t neglect the problem faced by a woman who has chosen to stay home; she has the right to be taken care of. Isn’t the real woman, above all, a wife and a mother who devotes herself entirely to her family and her home? Doesn’t her contribution to society deserve to be highlighted?’ (Bédard 1968). Another example of the AFEAS’s disagreement with the new women’s movement of the 1970s is its opposition to any furthering of abortion rights (AFEAS 1973; Marchand 1974b). While these stands may seem in clear opposition to feminism as it redefined itself in the 1970s, the organisation’s relationship to feminism was in fact more complex. For example, in a 1974 editorial, AFEAS president Azilda Marchand denounced women’s ‘independence crisis [as a] teenage crisis’, and yet asserted that coming to terms with one’s condition does not mean accepting injustice. … To achieve this human and spiritual development, a woman needs to be helped by favourable laws, that depend more on the environment than on individuals. No one can be liberated without legal and institutional stability, without sufficient security in everyday life, without economic ease, without a family and work spirit. All economic injustice, all social discrimination against women, is an assault against justice and peace. Even if women are non-violent, they

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can and will become aggressive to defend their rights and make sure justice is ensured. (Marchand 1974a)

This denunciation of injustice and discrimination appears in stark contrast to the previous ideal of a subordination of women to the good of their families. This shift from gender consciousness to feminist consciousness went along with a gradual secularisation of the association. In its ‘constitution’, the article regarding the priest’s presence was subtly changed from ‘the association must ask a priest for advice’ to ‘the association can ask a moral counsellor for advice’ (AFEAS 1972, emphasis added). In September, 1972, the AFEAS bulletin takes on a ‘new profile’ (Marchand 1972), which results in a decrease in the space allocated to Church discourse4 and homemaking advice, to the profit of information dealing with the organisation’s political action. How can we explain this gradual shift from familialism to feminism?

Explaining the Shift The choice finally made by the AFEAS to endorse feminist ideas was not an obvious one. As some aspects of its discourse show, the organisation might as well have reacted defensively, reinforcing its conservative agenda and rejecting feminism as a whole.5 In order to explain the feminist shift, it is essential to analyse how AFEAS feminism expressed itself: What type of gender issues did the organisation fight for, and what do these struggles tell us about the roots of feminist consciousness within the organisation?

The AFEAS’s Fight for the Recognition of Women’s ‘Invisible Labour’ The red thread of the AFEAS feminist agenda ever since the 1970s has been the demand for recognition of women’s ‘invisible labour’ – that is, all the work that is performed by women within the family, be it care work, domestic labour or work performed for the family business. The AFEAS started by questioning the lack of social, economic and legal recognition of the labour accomplished by women working for their husbands’ businesses (in farming, as well as in the crafts and retailing). Thanks to a 1974 survey among 1,800 AFEAS members, the provincial executive realised how little these ‘femmes collaboratrices’ knew about their rights, and launched legal information campaigns within the organisation while lobbying in favour of an improvement of these women’s social rights. This entailed a broader questioning of women’s work within

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the family, which was at the basis of other campaigns that aimed at improving homemakers’ rights. After its unsuccessful claim to retirement benefits for homemakers, the AFEAS received some form of compensation from the government by means of a 1989 family law reform that imposed equal sharing of property and belongings commonly used by the spouses (the ‘family patrimony’) in case of divorce or death of one of the spouses (Revillard 2006). These claims made by the AFEAS in favour of a recognition of women’s ‘invisible labour’ in family law and social legislation had one thing in common: they all tended to insure some form of economic individual security for women in case of divorce (by ensuring individual entitlement to social rights, or through the sharing of the family patrimony). Beyond those claims made in favour of recognition of domestic labour, it should also be noted that the AFEAS was a leader in the campaign in favour of an improvement in the child support system, by means of a demand for a system of automatic perception of child support as early as 1975. Therefore, it would seem rational to hypothesise that the experience or the fear of divorce was one of the key motivations behind the claims that crystallised the AFEAS’s new feminist identity. How can we validate this explanation?

AFEAS Women Facing Divorce: Family Change and the Rise of a Feminist Consciousness Up until the end of the 1960s, divorce was very rare in Quebec, partly because it was legally very hard to obtain: the only way to get a divorce was by means of a federal private bill. In 1968, a federal decision created provincial divorce courts and extended the available motives for divorce, thereby removing the previous legal restrictions (Dandurand 1988: 30). In a context of fast social change, a sharp increase in the number of divorces followed, with the divorce rate rising from 8.8 per cent in 1969 to 36.1 per cent in 1975 (Institut de la Statistique du Québec). However, in compliance with the AFEAS’s endorsement of traditional family values, the need to improve women’s economic independence in a context of rising divorce rates was not a prominent argument in the organisation’s claims. When divorce was referred to, it often was mingled with other rationales. A good illustration comes from the 1976 report on the status of women working for their husbands’ businesses: ‘For the past few years, the AFEAS has been witnessing the hardships endured by many women who take part, with their husbands, in the well-being of the family business. These women, after working hard and with practically no pay for many years, often find themselves very deprived when the business is sold or in case of bankruptcy, or when the husband dies,

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or, more and more frequently, in case of parting or divorce’ (Gervais 1976: 6). Here, divorce was mentioned along with many other reasons for the rising awareness of women’s ‘hardships’, but it was the only phenomenon that had evolved significantly among the different ones that were referred to. Therefore it can be assumed that the increase in divorce rates played a significant role, even though, because of their attachment to a traditional vision of the family, AFEAS members did not easily admit to it at the time. Hard to demonstrate solely based on the organisation’s archives, this assumption finds clearer validation in interviews with AFEAS leaders. For example, Lamoureux, Gelinas and Tari quote former president Lise Drouin-Paquette: We became aware of women’s poverty. … We lived those years when there were many divorces of women of our age: finding themselves naked on the street because of our marriage contracts under separate ownership of goods. We became aware of the fact that we did not have any financial security. That was a big shock. Every single woman in the AFEAS experienced it: her sister, her sister-in-law, her neighbour. … We thought: we’ve always been virtuous, love recognition, emotional recognition. … But we had never thought, or at any rate we hesitated to think, that it could happen to our relatives as well. (1993: 111–112)

This quotation, with its focus on the ‘relatives’, suggests that members themselves were not that affected by divorce. In fact, according to the 1981 poll, only 1 per cent of them were divorced (Houle and AFEAS 1981: 3). However, this figure should be taken cautiously since some divorcees might not have answered, given that divorce was still seen in rather negative terms. Moreover, the divorce rate within the AFEAS may have increased during the 1980s. This should be the subject of further inquiry. At any rate, the fear of divorce, derived from the experience of relatives and neighbours, definitely had a consciousness-raising effect. A former local AFEAS leader I interviewed also mentioned the impact of divorce on the AFEAS’s claims: [AFEAS women] are at the origins of a very progressive law, the law on the family patrimony. They started off with very concrete examples; and the first examples that came up were always a type of story with a farm on which a woman had spent all her time, all her energy, and one day the husband decided he had had enough, and he ditched her without anything. So all the examples that came up were examples of women working for their husbands in the family business. This movement really came from the regions, the countryside.

Of course, more interviews should be conducted to really establish this explanatory link between the experience of divorce and the rise of

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a feminist consciousness. Moreover, it should be stressed that the rise in divorce rates in itself did not mechanically entail the mobilisation (such was not the case in other countries where the divorce rate increased). Mobilisation happened only because there was a grassroots structure – the ‘local circles’ of the AFEAS – that enabled women to share their experience of divorce, or their fear of it, and translate it into political terms, with the help of the cognitive frame provided by the AFEAS provincial executive which read the experience of divorcee women in terms of injustice, lack of recognition of domestic labour and denial of women’s rights, and promoted the right to autonomy for women. In this perspective, another aspect that should be the subject of further inquiry is the extent of the role played by the AFEAS provincial executive, relative to the initiatives coming from the ‘basis’ of the organisation.

Conclusion The evolution of the AFEAS provides us with a good example of the dynamics of family change and political mobilisation. While the organisation has always defended family values, the meaning of this endorsement has shifted over time, along with the gradual rise of a feminist consciousness. Traditional family values were initially promoted to the expense of women’s rights, but in a way that still enabled some form of participation of women in civil society, based on their role in the family. In a broader context of assertion of women’s individual rights, and by means of a questioning of the status of the work performed by women within the family, the AFEAS gradually endorsed a demand for women’s autonomy within the family. I suggest that the experience of divorce, or the fear of it, played an important role in this rise of a feminist consciousness. However, divorce in itself was not enough to foment a mobilisation. It yet had to be read in terms of gender inequality and the need for women’s autonomy, a cognitive frame that was provided by the head of the organisation, and was made available to these women because they were initially members of local AFEAS circles. Therefore the existence of a very dense network of grassroots women’s organisations in Quebec is a key factor that enabled the link between family change and feminist consciousness and mobilisation to be made. This resulted in a strong feminist intervention on family issues. Expressing themselves from their particular standpoint – that of rural women working in the ‘private sphere’ and attached to family values – AFEAS women defined their own kind of feminism. While deeply attached to the family, their claims tried to make it more ‘civil’.

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Notes 1. For a recent example of a study of such movements in France and Italy, see Della Sudda 2010. 2. The Catholic Church initiated these two organisations in the 1940s in order to take hold of local women’s groups that had spread throughout Quebec since the beginning of the century, the Cercles de fermières, or Farmers’ Circles (Cohen 1990). Upon incitement and, in some cases, threats from the parochial hierarchy, many women left the Farmers’ Circles to join the UCFR and CED. As a result, there were in 1966 two main rural women’s organisations, the secular Cercles de fermières and the Catholic AFEAS. 3. During 1975, a column was devoted to this event in every issue of the AFEAS’s news bulletin. 4. The priest who had a leading article in each issue does not publish his own work anymore. 5. In the rest of Canada, the organisation ‘REAL women’ (Realistic, Equal, Active, for Life) represents such a stand.

References AFEAS. 1967a. AFEAS 2, 1, September. ———. 1967b. AFEAS 1, 1, January. ———. 1968. AFEAS 2, 5, January. ———. 1972. AFEAS 7, 3, November. ———. 1973. ‘L’AFEAS dit NON à l’avortement sur demande.’ AFEAS 7, 8, April: 11. Bédard, Cécile. 1967. ‘Les droits et les devoirs réciproques de la famille et de la société’, AFEAS 1, 2, February: 10–14. ———. 1968. ‘Le statut de la femme’, AFEAS 2, 6, February: 3. Bélanger, Paul R., and Benoît Lévesque. 1992. ‘Le mouvement populaire et communautaire: de la revendication au partenariat (1963–1992)’. Le Québec en jeu: comprendre les grands défis, eds. G. Daigle and G. Rocher. Montréal: 713–747. Chow, Esther Ngan-Ling. 1987. ‘The development of feminist consciousness among Asian American women’, Gender and Society 1, 3: 284–299. Cohen, Yolande. 1990. Femmes de parole. L’histoire des Cercles de fermières du Québec, 1915–1990. Montréal. ———. 1992. ‘Du féminin au féminisme: l’exemple québécois’. Histoire des femmes en Occident. Tome V: Le XXème siècle, eds. George Duby and Michelle Perrot. Paris: 521–537. Collectif Clio. 1992. L’histoire des femmes au Québec depuis quatre siècles. Montréal. Commaille, Jacques. 1993. Les stratégies des femmes. Travail, famille et politique. Paris. Corbeil, Christine, and Francine Descarries. 1997. ‘Egalité, solidarité et survie: les pratiques du mouvement des femmes au Québec’, Nouvelles pratiques sociales 10, 1: 19–28. Dandurand, Renée B. 1988. Le mariage en question. Quebec. Della Sudda, Magali. 2010. ‘Politics despite themselves. Catholic women’s political mobilization in France and Italy, 1900–1914’, Revúe française de science politique 60, 1: 31–55.

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Dumont, Micheline. 1992. ‘The Origins of the Women’s Movement in Québec’. Challenging Times: The Women’s Movement in Canada and the United States, eds. C. Backhouse and D. H. Flaherty. Montréal and Kingston: 72–89. Gervais, Solange. 1976. ‘La femme collaboratrice du mari dans une entreprise à but lucratif. Recherche scientifique de l’AFEAS’, AFEAS 11, 1, September: 6–9. Houle, Lise, and AFEAS. 1981. Sondage: les femmes de l’AFEAS, leurs caractéristiques et leurs opinions. Québec. Klatch, Rebecca E. 2001. ‘The Formation of Feminist Consciousness Among Leftand Right-Wing Activists of the 1960s’, Gender and Society 15, 6: 791–815. Klein, Ethel. 1984. Gender Politics: From Consciousness to Mass Politics. Cambridge. Lamoureux, Diane. 1986. Fragments et collages. Montréal. ———. 2001. L’amère patrie. Féminisme et nationalisme dans le Québec contemporain. Montréal. Lamoureux, Jocelyne, Michèle J. Gélinas and Katy Tari. 1993. Femmes en mouvement. Trajectoires de l’Association féminine d’éducation et d’action sociale (AFEAS), 1966–1991. Montréal. Lemieux, Denise, and Michelle Comeau. 2002. Le mouvement familial au Québec, 1960–1990. Québec. Marchand, Azilda. 1972. ‘“Profil nouveau” de la revue AFEAS’, AFEAS 7, 1, September: 2–3. ———. 1974a. ‘Assume ta condition de femme’, AFEAS 9, 1, September: 2–3. ———. 1974b. ‘La question de l’avortement est-elle réglée?’, AFEAS 8, 5, January: 12–13. ———. 1980. ‘Les femmes au foyer, hier et demain’, Canadian Women’s Studies/Les cahiers de la femme 2, 2. Michel, Sonya, and Seth Koven. 1990. ‘Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880–1920’, American Historical Review 95, 4: 1076–1108. Perreault, Muguette. 1976. ‘La “femme collaboratrice du mari”: qu’en ferons-nous?’, AFEAS 11, 1, September: 2–4. Revillard, Anne. 2006. ‘Du droit de la famille aux droits des femmes: le patrimoine familial au Québec’, Droit et société 62: 95–116. Snow, David A., et al. 1986. ‘Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation’, American Sociological Review 51, 4: 464–481. Tolleson Rinehart, Sue. 1992. Gender Consciousness and Politics. New York. Online resources AFEAS: http://www.afeas.qc.ca Institut de la Statistique du Québec: http://www.stat.gouv.qc.ca/ Archives AFEAS archives, which can be consulted at the organisation’s headquarters in Montreal, have also, for the most part, been scanned and are available online at the Bibliothèque virtuelle du patrimoine documentaire canadien francophone: http://www.bv.cdeaf.ca

Part III Family and Society in South and Western Europe: Case Studies

Chapter 5

Corporate Birthmarks of Civil Society Kinship and Kinship Networks in Voluntary Associations, 1800–1848

Carola Lipp

Cultural meaning very often reveals itself through misunderstandings in everyday interactions. When I first presented an earlier version of this essay to the organisers of the CiSoNet conference, it bore the title ‘Kinship, Kinship Networks and Civil Society’. On the program, however, it appeared as ‘Family, Family Networks and Civil Society’. This adaptation of the key word family points directly to a central problem in the theory and practice of civil society: the denial of kinship (Harrison 2002). Kinship seems to be antithetical to the structures of civil society. In social theory, kinship is usually ascribed to pre-modern societies, while modern forms of social cooperation like voluntary associations or democratically elected representative bodies were thought to have overcome these traditional forms of corporate recruitment and particularism. This perspective ignores the important differences between the system of kinship relations and the concept of family as part of the self-description of civil society and, furthermore, it eliminates the important function kinship relations fulfil within civil society. To explain my argument I have to go back to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s theory of bourgeois society. Philosophers like Hegel have contributed to the intellectual elimination of kinship by conceptualising civil society as an ‘arena of free-floating individuals’ (Johnson 2002) who were rational, self-reflective and economically as well as socially independent. In Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’ the individual had the ‘potential for and propensity to liberty’ and was only in a moral sense ‘as an ethical person’ (Hegel §162) − bound

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by love for his family. As a romantic opponent to Roman law, Hegel despised the rights of kinship in Roman patriarchy1 and spoke in favour of the children’s personal freedom to ‘hold free property of their own and found their own families’ (Hegel §177). In Hegel’s concept, family was condensed to the ideal of the loving marital couple and their offspring. Hegel referred to the family of origin and descent only in the context of property transmission; yet in the same breath he refused any right claimed in the name of lineage or kinship (Hegel used the German word Stamm; §177). Hegel’s thinking followed a thought common at the end of the eighteenth century, when, at the dusk of absolutism, political thinkers like Thomas Paine regarded the ‘arbitrary exercise of power by fathers’ – especially in the process of bequeathing property to heirs – as a form of ‘tyranny and injustice’ that was typical of and enforced by a despotic state.2 These ideas had social consequences. As Carol Pateman (1988: 112) remarked, in modern civil society, the dominant and patriarchally integrating father who exercised power over kin and other household members was replaced by the male spouse who was backed up by his cooperation with his fellow citizens. As a private person with private interests the male individual met with his equals, thus creating a social formation and cultural realm where the ‘system of needs’ could unfold: the bürgerliche Gesellschaft, as Hegel called it, a term which is only insufficiently translated as ‘civil society’ because the latter is far more politically defined (for details, see Keane 1988: 35−71; Alexander 1998: 1−19). For Hegel, the bourgeois society represented the ‘general’ in contrast to the particular embodied in the family. We find a parallel dichotomy in Jürgen Habermas’s idea of separate private and public spheres (1974), of which the latter was seen as mediator between society and state and therefore as fundamental to the emergence of civil society. This is one reason why Geoff Eley places Habermas in the nineteenth century (1993). In Hegel’s concept, bourgeois society marks ‘the difference that enters between family and state’ (Hegel §182). There was no room for other social formations in this triad of family, civil society and state (Keane 1998: 8). The only extension of the family Hegel could think of and accepted was the notion of people (Volk as a generic term) and nation because, in his opinion, both were of ‘natural origin’ (Hegel §181). Kinship as social formation and concept of self-perception and identity evaporated when the idea of civil society was born, and only a close analysis of the innerstructure of civil society is able to reveal the corporate birthmarks that accompanied the emergence of civil institutions. In the further development of thinking on civil society, kinship, since it was thought to belong to ‘nature’, was seen as contradictive to the cultural achievements of civility. Social expectations associated with kinship were allegedly relinquished in the course of the political enculturation

Corporate Birthmarks of Civil Society  •  103

and education the enlightened civilised individual underwent. Instead of ‘primordial obligations of kinship’ (Salazar 2004: 16−23) and familial commitment, rational norms were supposed to guide social action, acknowledged by an individual’s free will. Not genealogical descent or inherited privileges should determine a person’s social position but education and work (Hegel §187 and §199); not hierarchy and social dependence but freedom and equality should dominate the citizens’ interactions. Kinship was regarded as the ‘incarnation’ of aristocratic principles and social exclusiveness and thought to be opposed to the postulated openness of civil society. Kinship was even considered an obstacle, a hindrance on the way to modern civil society. A further consequence of ‘naturalising’ the family was the ‘naturalisation’ of women as its emotional centre and their theoretical (though not practical) exclusion from public life (Paletschek 1996; Hauch 1998). In theory, participation in civil society, especially in voluntary associations as key institutions, demanded the ‘liberation from the family’ (Johnson 2002). The moral obligation of kinship was thus transformed into ethical expectations of a utopian construct of male bourgeois equality and democracy (Hall 2000: 47).3 Here lies, according to Frank Trentmann, one of the ‘paradoxes of civil society’, because ‘the project of extending civil society went hand in hand with an identification of “lower” types of relations’ (2000: 4). Kinship ties and kin-oriented marriage strategies as backward means of social placement and (economical) association were devaluated and made invisible behind the front stage (Goffman) of interacting autonomous citizens. In civil society, theoretical and political emphasis was therefore put on self-organisation, on the independent individual articulation of interests far from kin obligations, family and home.4 Yet, if we look more closely at kinship relations and familial ties within different forms of social and political institutions of civil society in the first half of the nineteenth century, a huge gap between theory and social practice opens up. The separation of spheres in the everyday life of a German community proves to have been far less distinct than theory would predict. In many associations, kinship relations among the members were a common phenomenon and often an outcome of certain forms of socialising and recruitment. The density of these kinship networks depended on the social constellation of an organisation and changed in the course of the political development. The character of associations varied considerably over time and was very often shaped by certain generations and age cohorts and their idea of political culture,5 if I may use this term to sum up attitudes, practices and political as well as symbolic references civil society produced. The following examples are drawn from a micro-study and a network analysis of Esslingen, a former free imperial and protestant city in the German southwest, which in 1802 during the Napoleonic wars fell under

104  •  Family and Society in South and Western Europe

the rule of Wuerttemberg. In 1849 Esslingen had a population of 13,000 people and was one of the industrial centres of the region. The results presented here are based on a family reconstitution of the whole population between 1780 and 1860 as well as on a prosopographical analysis of municipal institutions and voluntary associations. Nearly 110 clubs, committees and citizens’ initiatives founded between 1803 and 1849 have been investigated. The sample also includes details on ten years of election procedures, many local petitions to the city council and various forms of political mobilisation during the revolution (Lipp and Krempel 2001), varying from spontaneous protest to formal petitions and the rise of political parties. Our analysis thus covers the whole arena of bourgeois civil society, residual corporate structures and worker’s movement whiles the reconstitution of kinship reaches as far as to second-grade cousins and nephews or uncles respectively. Unlike demographical family reconstitutions or ethnological approaches (Fischer 1996; Parkin 1997; Stone 1997) we do not treat kinship as a genealogical construct but as a system of practised and recognised relations (Carsten 2000: 9) in everyday situations and actions. Being another member’s nephew could make the decisive difference in circumstances where two people tried to gain access to an association or civil board. What kinspeople did together is socially far more relevant than the reconstruction of kinship ties using complex descendancy maps which are just abstract representations of kinship, construing a cultural form of relatedness that might not have been socially recognised and practised. Therefore, the project presented here applies the method of structural network analysis (see fig. 5.1) based on documented relations in given situations. That the institutions of civil society were exclusive is another one of the ‘paradoxes of civil society’ Frank Trentmann has outlined. In Esslingen the associations excluded agrarian groups, who lived in special quarters and in surrounding villages which also belonged to the political community. Only some of the political representatives of these small landholders, people who were integrated into civil society through their communal function, participated in associational life. The membership of the different organisations consisted of the old middle classes as well as of academic and new economical bourgeoisie, industrial entrepreneurs, merchants and many wealthier artisans. In regard to educated professionals, Esslingen showed the typical mixture of an administrative district capital (Oberamtsstadt), where the personnel of courts and district government, administrators, jurists, teachers and persons in medical professions represented the educated classes. The members of the Criminal Court and teachers of higher education in particular, were a highly mobile group who maintained their right of citizenship in other communities. Consequently, this educated elite was less prone to have kinship links in Esslingen than were local residents. The same applied

Corporate Birthmarks of Civil Society  •  105

Figure 5.1.  Kinship network within the Civic Society of Esslingen, 1838–1842

Total: 264 persons in the Civic Society, thereof 206 permanent and regular members (118 with relationships, 88 without relationships)

Figure 5.2.  Diagram of kinship relations within the Civic Society of Esslingen, 1838–1843 Figure 2: Kinship Relations within the Civic Society of Esslingen, 1838-184 3 and regularand members) (kin relations(permanent between permanent regular members) consanguinal connubial

5 father – son

8 father-in-law – son-in-law

21 42

brothers

brothers-in-law 15 43

cousins

cousins-in-law 16 25

uncle – nephew

uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law 10 uncle – nephew, 2nd grade

1 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law, 2nd grade

6 cousins, 2nd grade

13 co-fathers-in-law

Total: 206 Total: 206 persons persons 165 with 118 with relationships relationships 41without without relationships relationships 88

106  •  Family and Society in South and Western Europe

to the managers of the local industrial plants. These – for the most part technically or academically trained – persons met in a highly exclusive association named Museum, where they represented more than half of the members and mingled with the Esslingen elite consisting of old patrician families, leading civil servants and newly rich sons of local entrepreneurs. Very often their membership lasted only two to six months and, hence, bore resemblance to a social visit. Short-time members were appreciated, yet treated as paying guests; it was a utilitarian exchange of fees and social pleasantry. Many of the associations reflected the transient status of the abovementioned professional groups by differentiating between regular and extraordinary – i.e. temporary – members. The liberal Civic Society or Citizens’ Society of Esslingen, called Bürgergesellschaft, is an interesting example of how different membership types corresponded to different social networks. In this association, founded in 1830, a third category existed: so-called permanent membership was bestowed upon long-term fellows in leading positions. Among the 264 people the Bürgergesellschaft attracted in the 1840s there were 58 extraordinary members who had no kin relations within their group and only sparse familial bounds outside of it. Not even 28 per cent of them held citizenship, and nearly threequarters of them came from other cities in Wuerttemberg or from South German countries. To put it in Hegelian terms: to these extraordinary members the association was their ‘universal family’, a forum to establish social contacts, to join local communication and families. In contrast to the elitist Museum association, the Civic Society of Esslingen was socially far more open and attracted the traditional middle classes, artisans, merchants and smaller businessmen who dominated among the regular and permanent members. Together with the industrial entrepreneurs and their employees they formed the majority of the membership and were united by a common interest in economical progress and political liberalisation. Esslingen was a fast-developing industrial city with a rather extended textile and metal industry. The largest group among the extraordinary members consisted of civil servants and teachers of the middle ranks. Taking into account the quota of modern classes in all associations, one may conclude that these new groups, comprising members of the developing state and communal bureaucracies as well as industrial employees and entrepreneurs, built the central core of civil society. The difference in the status of membership was clearly connected to kin relations. While 58 extraordinary members had 19 kinship relations within the Civic Society, 52 permanent members had 101 and the 154 regular members had 321 kinship relations among their fellow members. Within the city as a whole, permanent members were the group with the densest kinship networks: 90 per cent of them had kin ties within town, compared to only 77 per cent of the regular members. Together these

Corporate Birthmarks of Civil Society  •  107

ties sum up to 3200 relations. It was obviously not the general absence of kin integration that led the latter groups to rally but, as the statutes of the association stipulated, common interest and desire for entertainment, motives they shared with their kinspeople. Family was exported into public associational life. Figure 5.1 shows some tightly interwoven kinship clusters within the liberal Civic Society. For each regular member related within the association, the number of kinship links averaged out at 3.6. The most remarkable feature of this network and a phenomenon characteristic of all kinship networks, however, is the preponderance of affilial ties (marked by broken lines). Partially, this is a result of the numerical effects of the kinship system itself. If we have families with several marrying siblings, connections based on marriage alliances will always outnumber agnatic ones. These types of in-law relations being difficult to trace and tending to be overlooked in historical analysis helped to foster the illusion that kinship had been overcome by new ways of bonding in civil society. Kinship diagrams (see fig. 5.2) show the contrary: Within the Civic Society of Esslingen there were forty-two couples of brothers-in-law, eight of fathers- and sons-in-law6 and thirteen of co-fathers-in-law, the latter being linked through their children’s marriage. These findings illustrate that liberal organisations like the Civic Society, which proclaimed to foster patriotism, enhance self-education and provide decent cultural entertainment,7 also served as local marriage markets. Political affiliation motivated familial forms of bonding, or – vice versa – existent marriage alliances encouraged political cooperation in public. In either case kinship relations seem to have produced the trust necessary for common activities. In addition to the above-mentioned in-law constellations (fig. 5.2), 21 couples of brothers, 52 first- and second-grade uncle-nephew constellations and various types of relations between cousins (43 on the affilial side and 15 on the consanguinal side) completed the picture of the widespread kinship network within the Esslingen Civic Society. In historical discourse, civil associations were considered an exclusively male domain, and it was argued that especially the more formalised and structured early nineteenth-century institutions debarred women. This assertion was made about England as well as about Germany (Davidoff and Hall 2002: 10) and is certainly true for the political parties which developed from 1848–1849 onwards. But, as Frank Trentmann has pointed out, this view ignores women’s role in the realm of ‘sociability’, and, one may add, it overlooks women’s function in regard to kinship networks (Trentmann 2000: 19; see also Moran 2000). The associations were places where men and women could meet each other, where they took part in social life, attended musical performances and scientific lectures or amused themselves at parties and balls. Research on civil society very often ignores the gains families made out of this new field of interaction.

108  •  Family and Society in South and Western Europe

Especially when there were limited family funds to finance expensive festivities and social events, it was the associations that could provide opportunities and an elegant environment for social gatherings and balls which otherwise could have not been afforded and arranged by single families of the bourgeois or middle classes. Contrary to many assumptions (Frevert 1988), women, especially widows, were admitted into various associations (e.g. the Civic Society of Esslingen) where they were allowed to use the library and took part in public events. Women in Esslingen and other Wuerttembergian towns sang in church choirs or founded their own choral societies. They participated in public performances at the regional singers’ festival in Esslingen when four thousand people attended.8 Their presence was a means to ensure polite and civilised manners among the audience. Everyone in town was allowed to visit these performances provided they were ‘decently clad’,9 behaved well and respected that the chairs in front were reserved for the members’ wives. In some ways, this joint activity of men and women could be interpreted as the acting out of the private family as public family (Lipp 2002). And it is reminiscent of the Hegelian remark that civil society ‘has the character of the general family’ (Hegel §239). During the 1848 revolution this public family was celebrated in many festivities, especially in the context of militia organisation and the protection of women and home (Citovics 2002; Tacke 1998; Grau and Guttmann 2002). Gender solidarity was also publicly displayed in 1848 and 1849, when women founded their own political associations to support the national and democratic movements pursued on by their husbands (Lipp 1992). It is true that very often the sphere and subject of women’s associations were ‘demarked’ from male organisations (Davidoff and Hall 2002), but it is not to be underrated that women developed their own organisational frames within which they dealt, for example, with child rearing, education and servant promotion. Associations were places where women’s role in society was publicly acknowledged, this being important in a community that considered itself based on the family (Lipp 1999; Bublies-Godau 1998). Following Rousseau’s idea that nature had equipped women with higher moral competence (Frevert 1995; Rennhak and Richter 2004), female engagement represented this ethical side of voluntary associations. And not to forget: women were at the core of kinship and the creation of marital alliances. The principle of alliance obviously ruled the social life of associations, and marriage bonds were means to gather social capital that could be invested in a wider social net in the public realm. Kinship created an atmosphere of family life within political and social organisations and guaranteed familial communication, trust, and cooperation. There is a strong correlation between the goal of collective activity and the presence of kinship networks. Self-support or insurance associa-

Corporate Birthmarks of Civil Society  •  109

Figure 5.3.  Kinship relations within charity association: Suppenküche Figure 3: Kinship Relations within a Charity Association: Soupkitchen (Suppenanstalt), 1847 1 father – son 5 brothers

consanguinal connubial 2 father-in-law – son-in-law 4 brothers-in-law

3 cousins

6 cousins-in-law 1 uncle – nephew

3 uncle – nephew, 2nd grade

7 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law 1 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law, 2nd grade

1 cousins, 2nd grade

4 co-fathers-in-law

Total: 63 63 male persons Total: persons 46with withrelationships relationships 28 17without without relationships relationships 35

Figure 4: Kinship Relations within the Charity Association Figure 5.4.  Kinship relations within the workers support charity organisation for the Support of Unemployed Workers, 1848 consanguinal connubial 4 father – son

5 father-in-law – son-in-law

5

9

brothers

brothers-in-law 7

6 cousins-in-law

cousins 5

7 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law

uncle – nephew 4 uncle – nephew, 2nd grade

1 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law, 2nd grade 3 co-fathers-in-law

Total: 62 62 persons persons Total: 51with withrelationships relationships 30 11without without relationships relationships 33

110  •  Family and Society in South and Western Europe

tions that tried to balance familial deficiencies or to reduce social risks by financing funerals, saving for disability pension or paying military ransom for recruited sons were founded because the support of a family was lacking or the kinship networks were not strong enough to bear these burdens. According to these circumstances, the known members of these associations were not interconnected by kinship ties. The opposite case is represented by charity and benefit organisations, which were founded and supported by local elites and members of the middle classes. Among the people who installed soup kitchens during the consumption crisis in 1847 or supported unemployed workers’ families in 1848, we find a high ratio of internal kinship connections (see fig. 5.3). These organisations had a clear division of labour. Responsible for fund raising and the financial administration were educated elites or civil servants with administrative expertise, while middle-class members rendered practical services. These philanthropic enterprises gave an opportunity to perform one’s engagement for the common good and to earn public merit; one-third up to half of the members of the charity associations profited from their engagement, being elected as community representatives. On the other hand civil servants of the city’s executive were expected to practice charity. A closer look reveals a clear bi-generational structure within the charity organisations with father–son and uncle– nephew constellations. Each generation of the local elite families had at least one representative who got involved with social welfare. Even state interlocution could not impede kinship networks. In the regional welfare organisation, founded by the Wuerttembergian government and headed by the governor of the district, more than half of the members coming from Esslingen were related. The force of kinship was fundamental for the power of local elites, as our analysis of the Esslingen City Council, City Deputation and other municipal boards showed (Lipp 2005). Though as a particularistic system kinship was considered incompatible with market processes, even market-bound classes like industrial entrepreneurs and merchants used kinship as a medium to formulate and represent their economical interest. When the state of Wuerttemberg implemented a central commercial association as an instrument for economical development, its twelve delegates from Esslingen, all of them industrialists and merchants, exhibited a rather dense kinship network. Seven of them (nearly 57 per cent) were related, as the entrepreneurs in Esslingen tended to inter-marry and thus join their economic capital (Schraut 1989: 282−285). It has often been pointed out that the social group of administrators dominated German associations (Trentmann 2000: 15) – as for Esslingen, this is only partially true because of the special historical situation. Wuerttembergian administrators were at first perceived as occupants

Corporate Birthmarks of Civil Society  •  111

who dismissed the sovereign government of the formerly independent imperial city; and the locals had strong objections to the strict controlling of their decisions and resources. The political reserve receded only slowly with the help of the Casino Society, a predecessor of the later Museum, where the leaders of the formerly free city and the new Wuerttembergian elite held their first tentative meetings. One may say that step-by-step, voluntary associations paved the way to communication and integration and sometimes even led to inter-marriages. A milestone in the course of the encounter between locals and nonlocals was the choral society called Garland of Songs (Liederkranz), founded in 1827 by a democratic Wuerttembergian teacher and longterm editor of the local newspaper. From 1827 until 1850, the society had nearly 450 members, including mobile Wuerttembergian academics, businessmen, artisans and, in the later period, even workers and journeymen. The Garland of Songs illustrates some of the problems evolving around the fact that kinship was a dynamic factor of associational interaction. Singers’ associations usually differentiated between active and passive members. The former practiced regularly, while the latter only attended performances and festivities. There have been many modern misunderstandings of how membership worked in early associations. It would be wrong to imagine membership always to be a long-term commitment. People entered the association as paying members during winter, when they had spare time and the ball season started. During summer people very often sought other sources of pleasure and left the society, thus saving membership fees. The minutes of the Garland of Songs report on huge fluctuation. It was this social ‘elasticity’ that Thomas Nipperdey (1976: 181) regarded as a specific feature of free associations. Sometimes the membership list named over 120 persons, moving in and out, whereas at the same time the musical director noted only some thirty people who actually attended the rehearsals (Lipp 2007). Even sanctions and fines that absent members had to pay could not prevent these movements. To balance missing voices the democratic leader of the Garland of Songs invited travelling journeymen to join the choir in the late 1830s. He thereby practiced what he often had officially proclaimed, i.e. that ‘each song bound a ribbon around all classes’10 and that singing was able to bridge social cleavages. In real life this did not always work out – no movement was split up into so many socially different groups as the singers.11 In Esslingen the acceptance of too many foreigners from lower classes caused a conflict that resulted in the split of the society. In 1840–1841 a great number of members left the Garland of Songs and founded a society of their own which they programmatically named Citizens’ Choral Society (Bürgergesangverein). The renegades allegedly aimed to restrict admission to citizens of Esslingen only.

112  •  Family and Society in South and Western Europe

Figure Kinshiprelations Relations withinthe theGarland GarlandofofSongs Songs (Liederkranz) in Figure 5.5. 5: Kinship within Esslingen,1827-1850

grandfather – grandson

consanguinal connubial

2

19 father – son

12 father-in-law – son-in-law

15 brothers

43 brothers-in-law

13 cousins

41 cousins-in-law

19 uncle – nephew

38 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law

12 uncle – nephew, 2nd grade granduncle – grandnephew

1

11 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law, 2nd grade

2 cousins, 2nd grade 9 co-fathers-in-law

Total:441 441 persons persons Total: 226with withrelationships relationships 136 215without withoutrelationships relationships 305

Figure 6: Kinship Kinship Relations within the Figure 5.6.  relations within the Citizens’ Citizens’ Choral ChoralSociety Societyin Esslingen, 1841-1850 consanguinal connubial 1 father – son 3 father-in-law – son-in-law 23 brothers

33 brothers-in-law

32 cousins

59 cousins-in-law 10 uncle – nephew 16 uncle – nephew, 2nd grade

8 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law 6 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law, 2nd grade

11 cousins, 2nd grade

2 co-fathers-in-law

Total:237 236 persons persons Total: 176with withrelationships relationships 134 60without withoutrelationships relationships 103

Corporate Birthmarks of Civil Society  •  113

A closer inspection of the kinship networks within the two choral societies reveals other dynamics dividing the singers: generational and kinship conflicts. We can observe that the Garland of Songs was a bi- and tri-generational association joined even by grandfathers and grandsons or granduncles and grandnephews. Among the members we also find 19 couples of fathers and sons, 12 fathers- and sons-in-law and a variety of 80 uncle–nephew relations which all suggest multiple intergenerational connections. Kinship was an important element of recruitment; the young followed the elder or joined the association together with them. A large number of brothers, brothers-in-law and cousins produced a family-like milieu (see fig. 5.5). These intergenerational bonds broke in 1841, when younger members moved out and founded a choral society of their own. The father generation was left behind and the newly created association attracted many young people of the same age cohort or generation. The result was a collateral structure within the Citizens’ Choral Society. Dominant kin relations were cousins, brothers and brothers-in-law (see fig. 5.6). The new organisation was a true association of brotherhood, which some years later loosened its social restrictions and admitted even non-local industrial workers. In spite of the narrow-minded localism that induced the break-up, the new singers’ association was politically oriented towards the democratic movement during the revolution of 1848– 1849.12 As Frank Trentmann (2000: 17) remarked: ‘There is no clear-cut divide between modern open democratic associations and a traditional caged corporate society.’ National and democratic ideas were indeed compatible with limited local horizons. Localism based on primordial kin relations stabilised identity in a rapidly changing society. The example of the Citizens’ Choral Society illustrates a common tendency in the 1840s to concentrate on collateral one-generational forms of association and social homogeneity among the membership. The clubs arising during the revolution indicate furthermore that ‘modern’ groups and classes were very often organised collaterally and resembled fraternities rather than multi-generational groups.13 Especially during the revolution the aspect of generation became an elementary question because it meant different styles of political behaviour. At first sight, the impact of kinship seemed to be diminished; we can observe, however, that there were distinct patterns of kinship networks related to political factions, types of political mobilisation and the social origin of the activists. A comparison with a real leftist organisation, the democratic and early socialist Bruderbund, an association of artisans and industrial workers who cherished the idea of Christian fraternity and communalism, shows that this association and subdivision of the Democratic Party gathered a lot of immigrant artisans and workers and therefore showed a far less dense net of kin relations than the choral society for example. Only 11

114  •  Family and Society in South and Western Europe

per cent of the members were connected through familial links. Kinship ties were even rarer within the Workers’ Association, a union-like group built by workers of the industrial plants and day labourers who had recently moved to Esslingen. Among the 39 members only 8 per cent were related. In this case, social homogeneity and common experience replaced traditional forms of bonding. The fact that migrant workers had only few and usually lateral relations with in-laws in town resulted in organisations that were less bound by kinship. Within the history of associations, workers’ unions therefore mark a new social formation. The number, usage, and perception of kinship ties mark an important difference between the institutions of civil society. Kinship was not a necessary but a functional condition which contributed to the inner cohesion of organisations; and common interest might have been felt more strongly when accompanied by a ‘private’ form of obligation which strengthened political convictions. The negative effect of these kinship networks was the corporate constraint they exerted on these associations which were very often run accordant to corporative rules (i.e. descendance in leadership, oligarchic structures etc.). Kinship certainly had an impact on the chance of local acceptance and on the continuity of an association. Kinship networks built not only the fundament of formal associations but were an even stronger force in the formation of short-term political Figure 5.7.  Kinship relations within the social democratic Bruderbund, 1848 Figure 7: Kinship Relations within the Social Democratic Bruderbund, 1848 consanguinal connubial

1 father – son 5 brothers

8 brothers-in-law 1 cousins 2 uncle – nephew

5 cousins-in-law 2 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law

Total: Total:198 198persons persons 2180 with relationships with relationships 77 without relationships 118 without relationships

Corporate Birthmarks of Civil Society • 115

Figure 5.8. Kinship as mobilising factor of the petition movement, comparison of two petitions a) Petition to the National Assembly: Protest against Duties on Wine (Dec.) Total: 504 536persons, persons,32 517 with and without relationships Total: with and 1919 without relationships among the petitioners 6 grandfather - grandson 82 father - son

2 grandfather-in-law – grandson-in-law 103 father-in-law – son-in-law

176 brothers

515 brothers-in-law

433 cousins 19 granduncle - grandnephew

1382 cousins-in-law 74 granduncle-in-law – grandnephew-in-law

186 uncle - nephew

605 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law

283 uncle – nephew, 2nd grade

317 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law, 2nd grade

458 cousins, 2nd grade 115 co-fathers-in-law

b) Petition to the National Assembly: Protest against the Separation of Church and State (Aug.) Total: with and 2121 without relationships among the petitioners Total: 166 232persons, persons,66 211 with and without relationships 2 grandfather - grandson 17 father - son 37 brothers 54 cousins

24 father-in-law – son-in-law 72 brothers-in-law 190 cousins-in-law 4 granduncle-in-law – grandnephew-in-law

30 uncle - nephew 26 uncle – nephew, 2nd grade

77 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law 37 uncle-in-law – nephew-in-law, 2nd grade

59 cousins, 2nd grade 19 co-fathers-in-law

consanguinal connubial

movements. Mobilisation for petitions very often took kinship routes when the lists of signatures were passed on from household to household. In a society which could still rely on face-to-face communication or had short ways for the travelling of news, kinspeople were the first to be informed and risen. But we should be careful not to confuse interest and medium. Kinship certainly was an activator but it was not the political motivation for action. Kinship represented a traditional form of political rallying that was reliable, effective and guaranteed the mobilisation of large numbers of participants on short notice. When in 1848 the Esslingen vintners and other vineyard owners agreed upon an address to the National Assembly in Frankfurt 96 per cent of the petitioners were related to each other. Due to the high degree of endogamy among the landowning vintners their mobilisation usually reproduced condensed kinship networks. This was also the case when the church mobilised against the idea of a neutral laicial state as formulated in one of the first drafts of National Constitution, issued by the National Assembly in 1848. With an internal kinship rate of nearly 91 per cent this petition attracted the conservative landholding and artisanal middle classes. On the other hand, when the few local Catholics addressed to the National Assembly, their kinship net was rather thin because this group had only moved into Esslingen recently and had hardly any relations within the overall prot-

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overall protestant city. The degree of kinship involvement depended on the social group mobilised which again was issue related. Subjects that awoke the interest of the native population activated more kinship networks than topics rooted in special group or economic interests like the citizens who wanted to found an institution for medicinal baths or voted for the building of a certain road. Of the latter petition type only 10 to 20 per cent were connected by kinship ties. In another petition that voted for the acquisition of an expensive baroque palace as town-hall, kinship obviously was a medium of mobilisation. The 357 people who signed this paper represented 1,073 internal kinship relations, 3 per person. Kinship was a mighty rallying political force. To come to a conclusion: There is a ‘culture of relatedness’ (Carstens) underlying the social structure of civil society. At the beginning of the nineteenth century kinship alliances were not a concept of the corporative past but a lively force and important institution in communal politics which developed a dynamic of its own. Especially in the city’s executive, the City Council and the City Deputation, we find long kinship chains stretching over time and − surprisingly enough − produced through elections (Lipp 2006). Voters frequently attributed political competence and representational rights to persons who gained their social capital from both segments, their identification with their individual kin networks and their activity within the institutions of civil society which had played an increasingly important role in the recruitment of local administrative elites since the 1840s. The public sphere and civil society drew (at least partially) emotional qualities like trust and the allocation of power from old sources, i.e. the recognition of kinship. There is a dialectical relation between traditional and modern structures in civil society from which both profited. Kinship was most certainly not a ‘corporate cage’ (Wehler 1987: 176; Trentman 2000) but a solidifying substructure of civil society which stood for continuity as well as for generational change. The idea, cherished by modern social theory and historiography, that in the early nineteenth century the individual was set free from his traditional bindings (Nipperdey 1976: 180) is a concept that in the light of the presence of kinship relations within the institutions of civil society has to be modified. Kinship was a potent operator of social life at that time, and therefore should be integrated into the analysis of civil society.

Notes   1. For Hegel (1986: 328, §175) children in Roman law were kept ‘like slaves’. According to Roman law children stayed under the paternal command till they married and the property of a married woman fell after her death back to her father’s family (1986: 330−338, §§178−180).

Corporate Birthmarks of Civil Society  •  117

  2. Rights of Men (1791–1792) quoted by Keane 1988: 45.   3. This moral quality of civil society is nowadays seen as ‘normative appeal’ of the concept.   4. This separation between home and civil society was not a virtual one but a real spatial distance, because associations and committees dealing with public interest met in municipal buildings, restaurants or rented rooms. See Harrison 2002.   5. When Gabriel Almond and Sydney Verba (1966; 1980) introduced the term civic culture into the discussions of political science it meant analogue to the use of civil society, a normative concept which was used in international survey studies to compare the development of democratic attitudes and participation. In historiography this concept had inspired an approach which concentrated on the performative qualities and symbolic dimensions of politics, enquiring for the cultural foundation of political orientation. See Gendzel 1997; Lipp 1996.   6. The figures refer to kinship relations and not persons. Two fathers-in-law and sons-in-law. relations could represent not four but only three persons if there was one father-in-law with two sons-in-law. To solve this problem we decided to represent relations instead of persons.   7. Following Paragraph 5 of the statutes of the Bürgergesellschaft. Stadtarchiv Esslingen Ordnungspolizei, B1, XI, 1.   8. Esslingen Weekly Announcements no. 22, 3 June 1829 and 23, 6 June 1832; Swabian Chronicle 10 June 1829: 333.   9. Esslingen Weekly Announcements 21, 1 May 1828. 10. Esslinger Schnellpost, 20 May 1848. 11. Esslingen alone experienced up to 1848 the foundation of two separate choral society among the workers of the textile and metal industry. And even the vintners built their own choir. In 1849 they united under the label of a local and regional Sängerbund. See Lipp 2006; Langewiesche 1993. 12. According to the biographical age of the majority of the members of the Garland of Songs, the members tended to a moderate liberalism. This phenomenon of age-related conservatism is described by Best 1985. 13. Three father–son relations within the Bruderbund do not contradict this argument.

References Alexander, Jeffrey. 1988. ‘Introduction. Civil Society I, II, III: Constructing an Empirical Concept form Normative Controversies and Historical Transformations’. Real Civil Societies, ed. Jeffrey Alexander. London: 1−19. Almond, Gabriel A., and Sydney Verba, eds. 1966. The Civic Culture. Princeton. ———. 1980. The Civic Culture Revisited. Boston and Toronto. Best, Heinrich. 1985. ‘Reconstructing Political Biographies of the Past’. Informatique et Prosopographie, ed. Hélène Millet. Paris: 247−260. Bublies-Godau, Birgit. 1998. ‘Geliebte, Gatten und Gefährten. Selbstverständnis und politisches Handeln von Ehepaaren in der deutschen Revolution von 1848–49’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 49: 282–296. Carsten, Janet, ed. 2000. Cultures of Relatedness. Cambridge. Citovics, Tamara. 2002. ‘Bräute der Revolution und ihre Helden’. Schimpfende Weiber und patriotische Jungfrauen, ed. Carola Lipp. 2nd ed. Baden-Baden: 339−352.

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Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall, ed. 2002. Family fortunes: Men and women of the English middle class 1780–1850. London. Eley, Geoff. 1993. ‘Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century’. Cultur/Power/History, ed. Nicholas B. Dirks et al. Prince­ton: 297−335. Fischer, Hans. 1996. Lehrbuch der genealogischen Methode. Berlin. Frevert, Ute. 1988. Bürgerinnen und Bürger. Geschlechterverhältnisse im 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen. ———. 1995. Mann und Weib und Weib und Mann. Munich. Gendzel, Glen. 1997. ‘Political Culture: Genealogy of a Concept’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History XXVIII: 225−250. Grau, Ute, and Barbara Guttmann. 2002. Fahnensticken, patriotisches Einkaufen und der ‚weibliche Terrorismus’. Eggingen. Habermas, Jürgen. 1974. Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. 6th ed. Neuwied and Berlin. Hall, John A. 2000. ‘Reflections on the Making of Civility in Society’. Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History, ed. Frank Trentmann. New York and Oxford: 47−57. Harrison, Carol C. 2002. Kinship Denied: Civil Society and the Myth of the Autonomous Bourgeois. Paper presented at the conference ‘Kinship in the Long Run’. Ascona. Hauch, Gabriella.1998. ‘Frauen-Räume in der Männer-Revolution 1848’. Europa 1848, ed. Dieter Dowe et al. Bonn: 841−900. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1986 [1821]. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt. Johnson, Christopher. 2002. Preliminary remarks’ on Kinship and civil society. Paper presented at the conference ‘Kinship in the Long Run’. Ascona. Keane, John. 1988. ‘Despotism and Democracy: The Origins and Development of the Distinction Between Civil Society and the State 1750–1850’. Civil Society and the State, ed. John Keane. London and New York: 35−71. ———. 1988. Civil Society and the State. New European Perspectives. New York. ———. 1998. Society: Old Images, New Visions. Cambridge. Langewiesche, Dieter. 1993. ‘Die schwäbische Sängerbewegung in der Gesellschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift für Württembergische Landesgeschichte 52: 257−301. Lipp, Carola, and Lothar Krempel. 2001. ‘Petitions and the Social Context of Political Mobilization in the Revolution of 1848/49’. Petitions in Social History: International Review of Social History Supplement 9, ed. Lex Heerma van Voss. Cambridge: 151−170. Lipp, Carola. 1992. ‘Das “Private” im “Öffentlichen”. Geschlechterbeziehung im symbolischen Diskurs der Revolution 1848/49’. Frauengeschichte − Geschlechtergeschichte, ed. Karin Hausen and Heide Wunder. Frankfurt and New York: 99−116. ———. 1996. ‘Politische Kultur oder das Politische und Gesellschaftliche in der Kultur’. Kulturgeschichte heute, ed. Wolfgang Hardtwig and Hans-Ulrich Wehler. Göttingen: 78−111. ———. 1999. ‘1848/49 − Emotionale Erhebung und neue Geschlechterbeziehung?’. In Frauen in der bürgerlichen Revolution 1848/49, ed. Johanna Ludwig et al. Leipzig: 55−67.

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———. 2002. ‘Frauen und Öffentlichkeit’. Schimpfende Weiber und patriotische Jungfrauen, ed. Carola Lipp. 2nd ed. Baden-Baden: 270−307. ———. 2005. ‘Kinship networks, Local Government and Elections in a Town in Southwest Germany 1800−1850’, Journal of Family History 30: 347−365. ———. 2006. ‘Verwandtschaft − ein negiertes Element in der Politischen Kultur des 19. Jahrhunderts’, Historische Zeitschrift no. 2: 31−78. ———. 2007. ‘Eine Mikroanalyse sozialpolitischer Differenzierung und verwandtschaftlicher Substrukturen in württembergischen Gesangvereinen’. Les sociétés de musique en Europe 1700 − 1920, ed. Hans Erich Bödeker et al. Göttingen: 431–454. Moran, Mary Catherine. 2000. ‘“The Commerce of Sexes”: Gender and the Social Sphere in Scottish Enlightenment Accounts of Civil Society’. Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History, ed. Frank Trentmann. New York and Oxford: 61−84. Nipperdey, Thomas. 1976. ‘Verein als soziale Struktur in Deutschland im späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert’. Gesellschaft. Kultur, Theorie, ed. Thomas Nipperdey. Göttingen: 174−205. Paine, Thomas. 1791–1792. Rights of Men. http://www.ushistory.org/Paine/rights/. Paletschek, Sylvia. 1996. ‘Frauen, Nation, Emanzipation’. Frauen und Nation. Stuttgart: 78−88. Parkin, Robert. 1997. Kinship: An Introduction to Basic Concepts. Oxford. Pateman, Carole. 1988. ‘The Fraternal Social Contract’. Civil Society and the State, ed. John Keane. London and New York: 101−128. Rennhak, Katharina, and Virginia Richter, eds. 2004. Revolution und Emanzipation. Cologne. Salazar, Carles. 2004. ‘Primordial Obligations: An Exploration of the Moral Basis of Western Kinship Systems’, Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe 4: 16−23. Schraut, Sylvia. 1989. Sozialer Wandel im Industrialisierungsprozess. Esslingen 1815 − 1870, Esslingen: 282−285. Stone, Linda, 1997. Kinship and Gender. Boulder. Tacke, Charlotte. ‘Feste der Revolution in Deutschland und Italien’. Europa 1848, eds. Dieter Dowe et al. Bonn: 1021−1044. Trentmann, Frank. 2000. ‘Introduction. Paradoxes of Civil Society’. Paradoxes of Civil Society. New Perspectives on Modern German and British History, ed. Trentmann. New York and Oxford: 3−46. Wehler, Hans-Ulrich. 1987. Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Munich.

Chapter 6

STATE, SOCIETY AND FAMILY CHANGE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY SPAIN THE EVOLUTION OF THE ‘STRONG FAMILY MODEL’

Elisa Chuliá

We aim, or we should aim, not at the freedom of the solitary individual but at what can best be called institutional integrity. Individuals should be free, indeed, in all sorts of ways, but we don’t set them free by separating them from their fellows … Men and women are free when they live within autonomous institutions. —Michael Walzer, ‘Liberalism and the Art of Separation’, 1984

Spain, like other West European countries after the Second World War, has witnessed a weakening of the prevailing family model in recent decades.1 Increasing cohabitation, later marriage and a sharp decrease in fertility rates, as well as a growing variety of family types have eroded, although with a certain delay, the primacy of the ‘traditional’ family consisting of two biological parents – breadwinner father and housekeeper mother – with children. Nevertheless, together with other Mediterranean countries, Spain continues to be considered as a paradigm of the so-called ‘strong family model’ which is characterised by the existence of robust kinship ties and significant influence of the family on decisions concerning how individuals organise their lives (Reher 1998). Late emancipation of children from the parental home, the proximity of residence among different generations of the same family and the extensive caring functions families assume with regard to dependent relatives have been interpreted as indicators of the strength of this model in Spain. In this chapter I argue that the Spanish state and societal culture encouraged the strong family model during much of the twentieth century

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in a way that did not respond to the normative standards of a civil society. The type of families they advanced was rigorously hierarchical and male-dominated, at the same time mirroring and reinforcing the gender inequality and authoritarian patterns of behaviour prevalent in society. In spite of this type of illiberal encouragement, from the mid 1950s many Spanish parents who had suffered the misery and shortages of the Civil War (1936–1939) and the post-war period in their childhood and youth adopted family strategies which transformed life within households in a way that was more compatible with the idea of a civil society. Upward social mobility aspirations and the strong desire to improve the life prospects of their offspring led these new families to take advantage of the opportunities provided by a developing economy under a dictatorship increasingly eager to enhance the material well-being of the population. These strategies involved behaviour adjustments in household organisation and relaxation of the control exerted by certain family members over others. Furthermore, they increased contact areas of families with other social and institutional environments also immersed in change (like universities and firms where workers’ and students’ desires to transcend the strict limits on free expression grew progressively in force). As a result of these processes, families contributed – not without intra-family tensions and conflicts – to the expansion of the space and content of conversations between generations and sexes. They thus became sort of experimental microspheres of civil society. The strategies of these post-war families were especially crucial for women because they pushed female education during childhood and youth, thus upgrading women’s value for the labour market and raising the opportunity costs of being exclusively housewives in adulthood. Certainly the advent of democracy after Franco’s death in 1975 brought very important political and institutional improvements in women’s rights and liberties. Additionally, declining religiosity has implied a progressively reduced influence of Catholic beliefs on culture. But the most fundamental factor in improving their structural position and influence in the market, the state and in civil society has been their participation in the private and public economy as qualified producers of goods and services. And ultimately this participation is a result of bold choices made by their families of origin at a time when state policies and cultural traditions firmly anchored in society reinforced female subordination and their relegation to the private sphere.

Families, States and Societies Political theorists have often neglected or even disdained the family. Marxists have perceived it as an institution reinforcing class domination

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while socialists have tended to devalue it with respect to the state, and liberals with respect to the individual. Feminists have repeatedly criticised it as a patriarchal institution which oppresses women. Certainly, conservatives have exalted the family but principally as the quintessence of traditional values such as order, morals and religion. And yet, as communitarians have emphasised, the family is central to the formation of ‘responsible adults and contributing citizens’ and to the ‘health of common life’ (Elshtain et al. 1993). For most people the family is the first instance where the two central concepts of liberal political theory – liberty and justice – are (positively or negatively) experienced and appraised. Furthermore, the family is the institution where individuals adopt and develop the basic skills that enable them to participate in civil society. The abilities to put over their arguments, understand and tolerate other people’s viewpoints and behaviour, set limits on emotions and work together to carry out collective endeavours are learned and practised from childhood in the sphere of families. Survey results consistently confirm that individuals are perfectly aware of the importance the family has in their lives. According to data from the European and World Values Surveys, the family is considered ‘very important’ by an overwhelming majority of societies with very different cultures. Even if cross-national differences are observable, in all surveyed countries the family appears first on the list of important aspects of life (see table 6.1). These results seem the more remarkable against the background shaped by growing concern with the decay of family values and by the evidence of weakening traditional family structures in many industrialised countries during the last third of the twentieth century. An increase in one-person households, the decline in marriage and fertility, the growth of divorce and the rising heterogeneity of family forms have apparently not undermined the value of the family institution. As family historians and anthropologists have broadly shown, families are quite diverse across countries and cultures. But if families are contingent, so also are the grounds on which the family’s high regard rests. Different socio-economic, socio-cultural and socio-political contexts may underlie the latter. In fact, societies and states are crucial domains to look at when trying to explain what type of family prevails in a country and how much the family as a social institution is valued. More specifically, to elucidate the significance people in a country attach to the family one has to look at how society and the state have historically conceptualised, pondered and behaved towards this institution. Societies and states can encourage the family as a social institution through a variety of actions. But this encouragement can be pursued in very different ways. Society promotes the family in fair or egalitarian terms if it does not approve of families favouring some members over others and if it accepts that all of them have the same right to express their preferences and be heard without fear of punishment. On the con-

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Table 6.1. Opinion of different societies on important aspects in life (1999–2001) Percentage of people who say that … is “very important” in their lives

Argentina [2006] Canada [2006] Chile [2006] Finland [2005] France [2006] Germany [2006] Italy [2005] Japan [2005] Mexico [2005] Netherlands [2006] Poland [2005] Russia [2006] Spain [2007] Sweden [2006] South Africa [2007] Turkey [2007] Great Britain [2006] United States [2006]

Family

Friends

Work

Religion

91.4 92.4 90.2 86.7 86.2 81.5 93.2 91.3 94.9 80,0 93.6 89.0 88.9 92.1 95.6 97.7 93.3 94.2

59.4 63.1 23.6 62.2 58.7 52.4 47.0 44.9 36.1 57.6 34.7 37.4 49.3 71.3 33.9 61.8 68.8 59.6

70.4 48.2 47.2 40.1 62.2 49.6 60.9 47.4 84.9 30.9 61.0 48.4 51.9 53.2 77.4 56.0 35.5 32.2

33.1 31.8 62.3 17.6 13.0 11.0 34.0 5.7 58.7 12.0 47.2 13.1 14.8 9.3 69.9 74.6 20.7 47.0

Source: European and World Values Surveys Five-Wave Integrated Data File, 2005–2008.

trary, society encourages the family in unfair or discriminatory terms if it sanctions the use of sex differences to justify privileges or deprivations of some members with respect to others or if it legitimates unscrupulous treatment based on differences in age or either physical or intellectual resources within the families. At the same time the state supports the family in a liberal enlightened way if it creates the conditions under which all family members can enjoy individual rights and freedoms, and develop their abilities. This type of encouragement also requires the state to reject discrimination based on the holding of a certain family position and disallow and punish the mistreatment of some members by others.

Cultural and Institutional Foundations of the Strong Spanish Family In recent times family historians have emphasised the argument of family diversity not only within historical periods but also within groups of close nations and even within nations. Thus the idea of prevailing

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family types in certain eras (for example, industrialisation), regions (for example, Southern Europe) or individual countries raises many objections based on empirical evidence showing the coexistence of different systems of family and household organisation (Kertzer 1991). As regards Spain, David Reher (1997) has extensively substantiated the significant local disparity in family structures and other indicators which condition family organisation (foremost nuptiality and fertility). Arguably this diversity documented for Spain was underpinned by various cultural traditions concerning the role of families in the community, the rights and duties of family members as well as the internal distribution of authority. But beneath this cultural variety, at the turn of the twentieth century there was a common moral ground shaped by Catholicism and embodied in norms of social control and a solid state ideology relating to the status of men and women within the family and in society. Thus, while society put the heavy burden of preserving the family’s honour on women, subjecting them to strict moral rules and endorsing their household confinement, it assigned the custody of female kin to adult males. For its part the state sanctioned women’s legal inferiority. Under the constitutional monarchy restored in 1874, high-class political elites alternated in government and designed the institutional pieces of the so-called ‘liberal state’, one of whose central institutions was the Civil Code passed in 1889. According to this Code married women had to be legally represented by their husbands. Without the permission of the latter, the former could neither appear in court nor engage in trade or sign contracts. Furthermore, fathers always held the parental authority by default and mothers could only obtain this in the absence of their spouses. In article 57 the Code stated that ‘the husband has to protect the wife and the latter to obey the husband’.2 As María del Pilar Muñoz (2001: 42) has written, the 1889 Civil Code embodied ‘the notion of wedlock and the family espoused by the church hierarchy and the bourgeoisie: Catholic morality, supremacy of the private will and strong, traditional family links’. But this piece of legislation also reflected the normative dominance of these gender roles in Spanish society at the time: ‘The ideas of women as different beings, weak and needing protection, which found an excellent source of authority in religion and later on in science was not exclusive to the most conservative politicians or ultramontane Catholics; it was the general sentiment of nineteenth century bourgeois society’ (Muñoz López 2001: 208). The wide overlap between catholic and bourgeois family morals probably explains their social strength and resistance. Thus even if the leftwing governments of the Second Republic (1931–1936) made vigorous efforts to remove the influence of Catholicism on social life through different measures and furthered gender equality (and equality between

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husband and wife in particular),3 the cultural prevalence of the bourgeois family model (and the briefness of the republican regime) limited the effects of these institutional changes on family organisation and morality. This was, however, not the perception of the elites that supported General Franco during the Civil War. Blaming the ‘immorality’ and ‘libertinage’ of the Second Republic, they revoked the republican legislation and pursued the ‘re-Catholisation’ of society. Considered to be the ‘cell of all social life’ and ‘a God’s blessing’, the Franco regime insisted on the need ‘to restore the family’s pure essence and satisfy its needs as a deserving service to the Catholic cause’.4 In sum, the dictatorship idealised the family ‘as the basic fixed unit of society on which all proper social relationships were founded. … As in society at large everyone had their proper place within the family, which functioned to reproduce the nation as a source of morality and a barrier to deviance and illicit passions of all kinds’ (Grugel and Rees 1997: 133–134). Virile, protective and resolute fathers and docile, tidy and self-sacrificing mothers constituted the backbone of the ‘Christian household’. According to Francoist national-catholic discourse, which inspired education and social policies with more or less intensity during the entire dictatorship, girls should be educated in schools ‘for their specific tasks’ and detached from the ‘feminist pedantry of female high school graduates and university students’ (Febo and Juliá 2005: 78). To safeguard this doctrine the regime had in its early hours established the Feminine Division (Sección Femenina), an organisation dependent on the sole political party (the so-called Movimiento), whose main aim was to exert social and political control on women among other means by emphasising their traditional female responsibilities. This organisation administered the Woman’s Social Service (Servicio Social de la Mujer), a program introduced in 1937 which survived until 1978 and consisted of a period of six months during which women took part in courses on household management, cooking, child care, sewing and so forth and did unpaid work in care institutions (for instance nurseries, hospitals and boarding houses). Completing this program was a requisite for single women wishing to obtain certain education certificates, participate in exams for public positions, enter university or work in public or publicly subsidised corporations. The different organisations coordinated by the Feminine Division coexisted with the female organisations of Catholic Action (Acción Católica), under the guidance of the church hierarchy. These organisational efforts were combined with family policies geared to reinforcing the primacy of the male breadwinner model. Family subsidies and wage bonuses for married male employees, with increases on the birth of children, became central in Franco’s social policy; in the late sixties family transfer payments represented between 20 and 26 per cent of social cash benefits (Barrada 1999: 469). Allowances for marriage and

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childbirth as well as widely publicised yearly prizes for large families aimed to encourage nuptiality and maternity (Naldini 2003: 83–91). The professional-corporatist bias of the slowly emerging welfare state buttressed this male dominance within the family. Thus, for example, the nominal holder of the right to health insurance was the worker while the spouse, children and other dependent family members were entitled as ‘beneficiaries’. But while the discourse on family and women cultivated by the political elite noticeably coincided with that of the priests, both being spread in schools, parish churches, regime organisations and a vast array of censored publications, from the late fifties the Francoist rulers began to articulate other legitimising arguments which unintentionally introduced tensions and undermined the perpetuation of this traditional feminine ideal. Although disguised in pompous rhetoric, these arguments could be subsumed under the concepts of ‘modern state’ and ‘consumer society’. Indeed, after overcoming international isolation in the early fifties, the Francoist policymakers designed and implemented measures to reform the administrative structure of the state so as to make it more efficient, professionalised and responsive, and to liberalise the economy so as to improve the supply of goods and the living standards of the population. A modern internationally ‘presentable’ state entailed some progress of the rule-of-law principle and consequently the smoothing of legal discriminations. In this reform context, two legislative changes were introduced to advance the legal position of women, the 1958 amendment of the Civil Code and the 1961 Law of Women’s Political, Professional and Work Rights. The latter recognised women had ‘the same rights as men in the exercise of all types of political, professional and work activities’. Nevertheless, as written in the preamble, it sanctioned limitations on these rights ‘obviously only referring to married woman’ since ‘marriage requires a leadership power which nature, religion and history attribute to the husband’. The preamble then went on to state that ‘it continues to be a programmatic norm of the Spanish state … to liberate married women from the workshop and the factory, but this principle neither vetoes the access of women to the – incidentally increasing – multiplicity of non-manual occupations nor, as far as manual occupations are concerned, can or should be achieved through discriminatory and prohibitive norms’.5 Although the main thrust underlying this liberalisation of single women’s rights may have been to obtain some international recognition from the Western community,6 the text of the law incorporated a somewhat timorous acknowledgment of social change: if in 1940 only 12 per cent of the active population were women, by 1960 this had increased to 20 per cent (Valiente 1997: 83). The evolution from autarky to an opening economy and a rising consumer society since the early sixties implied the expansion of urban

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jobs spurring emigration from rural villages to cities. Between 1962 and 1973, 4 million Spaniards (around 13 per cent of the population) migrated from the countryside to medium-sized and big cities (mainly to Catalonia, Madrid and the Basque country); more than 1.25 million people decided to emigrate abroad (Fusi and Palafox 1997: 355–357). In her anthropological study of an Andalusian town, Jane Collier (1997: 65) writes that in the 1960s ‘emigration changed from a strategy of the poor and downwardly mobile to a strategy of the upwardly mobile’. In fact, rapid economic development through industrialisation, considerable geographical mobility and urbanisation entailed for many people far more than adopting new work and leisure habits, it also implied a remaking of their social world. One important dimension of this remaking affected the relationship between work and social status. In this vein, occupational achievement and access to durable consumer goods (particularly, washing machines, televisions and cars) began to replace land ownership as the most important determinant of a family’s status relative to other families.7 Simultaneously a ‘shift in parents’ perceptions of what their children needed to succeed in adult life’ took place (Collier 1998: 154, 161). Actually, formal education became a crucial condition for children’s occupational advancement and an essential component in parental strategies. Poorly educated young parents decided that school and university would allow their children to live much better than they did. Pinning their hopes on education affected their sons but also, to a great extent, their daughters. In this way, since the early sixties many families refused to exclude little girls from this promising ‘career open to talents’. Through this choice families signalled their growing autonomy from political authority as well as from societal and religious control. It was probably a momentous step in the path towards the emancipation of the family, towards it’s developing into an autonomous institution in the face of the historical eagerness of other powers to control it. This achievement of ‘institutional integrity’ can be interpreted as a liberal conquest in Walzerian terms.8 To improve the social reproduction of their families, young parents not only took decisions that diverged from the mainstream political and social discourse but they also accepted sacrifices in the short term. Thus, while maintaining the labour division between mother and father, adolescent and pre-adult children were increasingly released from many of their household obligations. More concretely, parents no longer expected them to contribute economically to the household (or at least not to the same extent as before). However, this attitude change was not genderneutral: while girls were to a great extent compelled to help mothers in housekeeping, fathers and mothers by and large considered these tasks improper for boys so their sons were usually exempted from doing them.

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In 1970, the Francoist state recognised in the General Education Law that while the partial educational reforms introduced in the last thirty years ‘have allowed the social demand for education to be ever more satisfied and the new requirements of Spanish society to be coped with’, they ‘have generally lagged behind social pressure’. The legislators further asserted that the Law was, ‘like few before it, preceded by the clamorous popular desire to provide our country with a fairer, more effective education system in accordance with the aspirations and dynamic, creative rhythm of present day Spain’.9 In order to achieve this objective, the regime committed itself to providing compulsory general education free of charge for all children from ages 6 to 14. In the absence of sufficient state school places, the state’s commitment to free education involved the subsidising of private schools, thus stimulating the private education market for primary and secondary education to a great extent dominated by the Church. But by this time the Spanish Church was also going through a process of change in response to two factors: on the one hand, the changing position of the universal Catholic Church willing ‘to open its windows to see out and let people see in’ (as Pope John XXIII had declared in 1962, before the Second Vatican Council); on the other hand, the growing exposure of Spanish society to information and experiences often far removed from the homilies, sermons and ceremony of the Church hierarchy. These two factors undermined the unanimity within the Spanish Church which had existed until the mid 1950s and spurred the development of a religious practice and teaching more committed to social problems, closer to the population and increasingly distanced from the authoritarian regime (Pérez-Díaz 1991).

Families as Experimental Microspheres of Civil Society Few historians question that Spanish society progressively experienced significant changes both in its structure and its culture during the second half of Franco’s regime from the late fifties to the dictator’s death in 1975. These changes have often been interpreted as a favourable condition for the transition to democracy. As Víctor Pérez-Díaz (1993) has argued, the political elites in the transition operated within the framework of a society which already deserved to be described as ‘civil’. To be sure, this pre-democratic civil society did not exclude ‘uncivil’ behaviour in some private institutions and probably in most public ones in which arbitrariness and abusive personal relationships persisted. The emerging civil society was built more on socio-cultural practices than on solid, private, social institutions (such as associations with free or voluntary participation). These socio-cultural practices had been tak-

State, Society and Family Change in Twentieth-Century Spain • 129

ing shape slowly and spontaneously from the experiences of conversations between relatives, friends and colleagues in private or semi-private spheres (home, local neighbourhood festivities, canteens and bars, etc.). As a microcosm of social change the family was a suitable scenario to voice dissent, test the limits of tensions and rehearse accommodations between different generations and sexes. Weaker family members (children, wives, younger brothers and sisters) gave in and yielded but also engaged in discussions vis-à-vis their stronger counterparts (parents, husbands, older brothers and sisters). The difficulty or sheer impossibility of applying ‘exit’ options in the form of household emancipation of children or divorce between spouses often left no alternative to ‘voice’ (in Albert Hirschman’s terms). Communication, negotiation and consensus-making devices were crucial to the development of civility in society. The elites that piloted the process of transition to democracy could count on a society for which the confrontation of values and opinions, the coexistence of different political cultures and languages, leisure habits and lifestyles were not unusual. Although the prominent role in the democratic transition has been generally attributed to the national elites and their strategic decisions, the success and exemplarity of this process seem difficult to explain without including society. It was significant elements of society that encouraged the negotiating and consensus-seeking behaviour of the elites, restrained impulses to rekindle old rifts, refrained from demanding policies that divided the citizenship between winners and losers and pushed for inclusive political changes. It has been argued that ‘Spain embraced democracy in the aftermath of Franco’s death with a very impoverished civil society’ (Encarnación 2001: 62). True, civil society development as it is usually understood – i.e. as civic associationism or as participation in intermediary organisations – was then (and is today) scarce. But this does not mean that by the time Franco died (November 1975) and Spain began the transition to democracy people totally lacked the skills and abilities of a civil society. Whereas Omar Encarnación (2001 and 2003) maintains that the social capital emerged during the transitional period from the newly created democratic institutions – more concretely the party system and the organised labour movement – I believe that one important germ of civic sociability spread in many households of young families formed in the last decades of the dictatorship. The smooth social acceptance of the majority of profound legal changes introduced during the first years of democracy suggests indeed that Spanish society in general was culturally prepared for this institutional transformation even though some groups linked with the most traditional branches of the Catholic Church, the military and the Francoist political establishment opposed (at times violently) certain measures.

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Entitlement to equality before the law for all Spaniards established in the 1978 Constitution and the development of the principle of equality between spouses in the 1981 reform of the Civil Code, which also acknowledged the possibility to opt between civil and canonical matrimony, and legalised divorce, were assumed by many families as developments consistent with a tendency towards civility in which they were already immersed.10

Renewed Strong Spanish Families The result of the educational strategies many families espoused from the 1950s has only become fully evident some decades later. The data presented in table 6.2 illustrate the differences in educational levels of Spanish citizens in 2004 depending on the age cohort in which they were born. More than one-third of all Spanish men born between 1926 and 1930 (that is 64- to 68-year-old males in 2004) were illiterate or had not completed primary studies, fewer than 6 per cent had finished secondary education or vocational training while barely 5 per cent had gone to university. The corresponding data for women of the same cohort displayed a worse record: roughly four out of ten had no formal education, fewer than 3 per cent had a secondary education or vocational training certificate while only 2 per cent had tertiary education. In contrast, one-third of 29- to 33-year-old males in 2004 (born between 1971 and 1975) had completed secondary or vocational training and more than one-fifth had a university degree, while only 2 per cent did not have a primary education certificate. But the equivalent female data are more remarkable: just 1 per cent of women between the ages of 29 and 33 in 2004 did not complete primary education. More than onethird of them had concluded secondary education or vocational training while nearly one-fourth had studied at university. These data accurately demonstrate that in the last half of the twentieth century Spanish society made a very significant leap forwards in education. Women started out from lower educational levels than men but have clearly overtaken them: in 2005 the percentage of women between the ages of 30 and 34 years with tertiary education was 8.5 points higher (43 per cent) than that of men of the same age group (34.5 per cent) (Eurostat 2008: 197). This rapid change has led to the coexistence of generations of very different women in present-day Spain. Daughters who have graduated from university often live in the same household or neighbourhood as mothers with a primary education certificate and grandmothers who can barely write. The current lives of these young women have very little to do with the lives of their female predecessors at the same age level. Therefore it has been argued that at this time living

State, Society and Family Change in Twentieth-Century Spain • 131

Table 6.2. Educational levels by age cohorts of Spanish-born residents (2004) Percentage of men being/having completed… Born between…

Illiterate/ uncompleted primary

Primary

Secondary

Vocational training

University

1976–1980 1971–1975 1966–1970 1961–1965 1956–1960 1951–1955 1946–1950 1941–1945 1936–1940 1931–1935 1926–1930

1.1 2 2 2.5 3.7 6.7 9.6 14.7 23.8 31.2 35.2

38.2 42.6 46 50.8 52.7 57.6 61.5 60.2 58.4 54.6 53.6

16.5 11.5 11.6 12.8 16.39 11.6 8.1 6.7 4.5 4 2.8

21.2 21.3 21.7 17.9 11.3 9.1 7.3 6.3 4.8 3.9 3.1

23.1 22.6 18.7 16 16 15.1 13.5 12.2 8.6 6.2 5.3

Percentage of women being/having completed… Born between…

Illiterate/ uncompleted primary

Primary

Secondary

Vocational training

University

1976–1980 1971–1975 1966–1970 1961–1965 1956–1960 1951–1955 1946–1950 1941–1945 1936–1940 1931–1935 1926–1930

1 1.4 1.9 2.9 5.3 8.9 14.4 20.1 32.6 38.1 43.1

26.2 33.3 42.4 47.1 55.3 62.9 65.6 65.8 58.7 55.8 52.2

16.1 12.1 12.4 12.9 12.3 8.7 6.8 4.7 2.9 2.4 1.6

22.1 21.5 19.3 16.8 16.1 7 4.6 2.7 1.6 1.3 1

34.7 31.9 23.8 20.3 16.9 12.6 8.6 6.7 4.3 2.4 2.1

Source: Encuesta de Población Activa (Active Population Survey), third quarter 2004 (Garrido and Chuliá 2005: 46). The data exclude immigrants as well as Spaniards not born in Spain.

Spanish women can be ascribed to ‘two different collective biographies’ with the age cohort born between 1946 and 1950 marking the transition from one to the other (Garrido 1993). The differences between them are specially striking in their labour market behaviour. Although Spain has one of the lowest female employment rates in the European Union, there has been a sharp increase in the last decade. In 1995 fewer than one out of three women age 15 to 64 were employed;

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in 2005, more than one out of two were in employment, a proportion which the economic crisis has not changed (even with soaring unemployment rates over 20 per cent in 2010; see table 6.3). Furthermore, total employment rates conceal significant disparities between age groups. Thus, while in 2009, 40 per cent of women between the ages of 50 and 64 were employed (20 percentage points higher than in 1990), the employment rate of women between 25 and 49 was 65 per cent (more than 25 percentage points higher than in 1990; see table 6.4). This group of women in particular (together with immigrants) has taken advantage of the labour market expansion which began in the mid 1990s. And it has increased not only quantitatively but also qualitatively since between 1994 and 2004 the number of employed women with university education showed a 133 per cent increase (Garrido and Chuliá 2004: 54–55). Obviously these changes in education and labour participation of Spanish women have manifold and far-reaching implications, among them for the formation of new families. After spending time and effort improving their educational qualifications, young women want to make them profitable in a competitive labour market in which contracts for workers who lack experience are often temporary, badly paid and demand usually full-time dedication. Staying in the parental home instead of embarking on the formation of a new family allows them to concentrate on their professional career.

Table 6.3. Female employment rates in different European countries*

Denmark Germany Greece Spain France Ireland Italy Netherlands Austria Portugal Finland Sweden United Kingdom

1995

2005

2009

66.7 55.3 38.1 31.7 52.1 41.6 35.4 53.8 59.0 54.4 59.0 68.8 61.7

71.9 60.6 46.1 512 58.4 58.3 45.3 66.4 62.0 61.7 67.9 70.2 65.8

73.1 66.2 48.9 52.8 60.1 57.4 46.4 71.5 66.4 61.6 67.9 70.2 65.0

*Percentage of women aged 15 to 64 in employment by total female population of the same age group. Source: Eurostat (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/).

State, Society and Family Change in Twentieth-Century Spain • 133

Table 6.4. Female employment rates in Spain by age groups Age

1990

1995

2005

16 to 24 25 to 49 50 to 64 Total

28.7 38.9 20.4 31.8

21.8 42.2 21.1 32.5

35.8 63.6 34.8 51.9

Source: Encuesta de Población Activa, Instituto Nacional de Estadística (www.ine.es).

In 2005 the mean age of emancipation from the parental home for Spanish women age 16 to 34 was 28.2, practically coinciding with the mean age of first marriage (Requena 2006). Longer co-habitation with parents also affects young Spanish men, whose mean age of exit from the parental home is around 30. Nearly 30 per cent of women between the ages of 25 and 39 and more than 40 per cent of men in the same age group lived in 2008 with their parents, well above the European Union average (Eurostat 2010). This is certainly related to the difficulties young Spaniards face in finding a dwelling at an accessible price in a market in which public housing and renting are hardly developed (Jurado 2001: 259–285). Although marriage is no longer associated with women’s job abandonment as in former decades, the incentives to marry (gain in personal autonomy) have decreased while the disincentives (enlarged work load and costs derived from self-sufficient domestic organisation) have increased. Thus, while in the 1960s and 1970s Spanish women married very young, their mean age at first marriage at the beginning of the twenty-first century ranked among the highest in Europe. Similarly, Spanish women have significantly postponed motherhood so that their mean age at childbearing in 2002 was higher than the average age at which women became mothers in most European countries (see table 6.5). This postponement helps to explain the drastic fall in the fertility rate. While Spanish women had one of the highest fertility rates in Europe in the 1960s, by 2000 they were, together with Italian and Greek women, the least fertile (see table 6.6). Perhaps making a virtue of necessity, young people do not seem to be overly concerned about deferring the age of emancipation from the parental home. Around 80 per cent of a representative sample of Spaniards between the ages of 15 and 29 declared in 2007 that their relationship with their fathers was ‘very good’ or ‘quite good’; and 90 per cent answered the same when asked about their relationship with their mothers.11 If this co-residential situation were unsatisfactory either for parents

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Table 6.5. Mean age of women at first marriage and at childbearing in different European countries (2002) Mean age at… First marriage Childbearing Denmark Germany Greece Spain Ireland Italy Netherlands Austria Portugal Finland Sweden United Kingdom

29.60 28.10* 27.30 28.30 — 27.40** 28.20 27.40 25.90 28.50 30.10 27.20**

29.90 29.00 29.40 30.80 30.06 30.30* 30.40 28.60 28.90 29.70 30.10 28.70

*Data for 2001 ** Data for 2000 Data for France not available Source: Eurostat (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/).

or for grown-up children, it would probably ‘spill over’ into more critical attitudes towards the family. Survey data do not back this prospect: even though the percentage of young people who consider the family to be very important in life is somewhat lower, the considerable importance Table 6.6. Total fertility rates in different European countries

Denmark Germany Greece Spain France Ireland Italy Netherlands Austria Portugal Finland Sweden United Kingdom

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2005

2.54 2.37 2.28 2.86 2.73 3.76 2.41 3.12 2.69 3.10 2.72 2.20 2.72

1.95 2.03 2.39 2.90 2.47 3.93 2.42 2.57 2.29 2.83 1.83 1.92 2.43

1.55 1.56 2.21 2.20 1.95 3.25 1.64 1.60 1.62 2.18 1.63 1.68 1.90

1.67 1.45 1.39 1.36 1.78 2.11 1.33 1.63 1.45 1.57 1.78 2.13 1.83

1.77 1.38 1.27 1.27 1.89 1.90 1.26 1.72 1.36 1.55 1.73 1.55 1.64

1.80 1.34 1.28 1.34 1.94 1.88 1.34 1.73 1.41 1.40 1.80 1.77 1.80

Source: Eurostat (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/).

State, Society and Family Change in Twentieth-Century Spain • 135

Spanish people attribute to the family is quite evenly distributed among age groups (see table 6.7). It is true that many indicators commonly associated with the deinstitutionalisation of the family such as births outside marriage and divorce rates are showing increasingly high figures in Spain, even if they are yet significantly lower than in other European countries (see tables 6.8 and 6.9).12 It seems that the development of individual freedoms to cohabitate without being married, to bear children outside wedlock or to divorce have not eroded the confidence in the family and the high regard for this social institution in Spain. One of the leading Spanish family scholars who propound the theory of the ‘new Spanish family’ has written that ‘today’s families maintain traditional values historically linked to this institution: the sense of belonging and the obligation between generations. Extensive research has shown the importance of family relationships and the strength of the institution as the centre of inter-generational solidarity’ (Alberdi 1999: 21). The strong family model has maintained its vigour in the context of significant family change which may be best captured by two concepts: the ‘pluralisation of family types’ (recently including those formed by married homosexuals entitled to adopt children13) and the ‘negotiated family’ in which communication and mutual respect are dominant over coercion and deference (Meil 2006). Both evolutions are consistent with the argument of the family as a chief element of contemporary Spanish civil society, a factor that gains more prominence in the face of a markedly weak social and political associationism.14 Although many scholars have explained family change in Spain mainly as a result of the institutional democratisation after Franco’s regime, the demands of the feminist movement, or a wide-ranging process of individualisation and post-modernisation which has affected the industrialised world, few have focused their attention on families themselves as agents of change. But in fact many of the recent transformations of families and Table 6.7. Importance attributed to the family by age groups Age 18 to 24 25 to 34 35 to 44 45 to 54 55 to 64 65 and more Total

Family is ‘very important’ 76.0 79.1 83.3 84.4 83.8 83.3 81.9

Source: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (www.cis.es), opinion survey 2666 (December 2006).

136 • Family and Society in South and Western Europe

within families, which are often considered to be ‘self-explanatory’ as a result of modernisation and mentality change, can and should be understood as a consequence of the generalised educational strategies adopted by families in recent decades to place children in the best possible position in the social structure. ‘At the same time as families have changed their likely reproduction strategies, they have altered their attitudes, habits and internal relationships modernising their behaviour and ideology. In few years they have displaced century-old prejudices, modes of behaviour sanctioned by religion, and virtues which were part of utterly rancid morals’ (Carabaña 1997: 44–47). Perhaps one of the factors accounting for the high support of the family institution and the healthiness of the strong family model is this recognition of the merit of families.

The Family: Springboard or Millstone for Spanish Women? As described above, Spanish families created a ‘social opportunity structure’ to increase women’s participation in the labour market with the educational strategies they adopted from the 1950s. Thus, it can be argued that the family has represented a springboard for many of today’s professional women. However, an influential strand of sociological and political economy literature stresses exactly the opposite argument: the family represents a burden for Spanish women inasmuch as it either inhibits the expansion of their labour market participation or their willingness to become mothers. This literature perceives the institutional design and Table 6.8. Live births outside marriage (as percentage of all live births)

Denmark Germany Greece Spain France Ireland Italy Netherlands Austria Portugal Finland Sweden United Kingdom

1994

2004

46.85 15.39 2.87 10.76 — 20.82 7.82 14.26 26.81 17.84 31.33 51.60 31.99

45.42 27.94 5.09 26.80 47.39 32.32 14.91 32.49 35.92 29.06 40.78 55.44 42.27

Source: Eurostat (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/).

State, Society and Family Change in Twentieth-Century Spain • 137

Table 6.9. Total divorce rate (mean number of divorces per marriage) per 1,000 persons Denmark Germany Greece Spain Ireland Italy Netherlands Austria Portugal Finland Sweden United Kingdom

1960 1.5 1.0 0.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.5 1.1 0.1 0.8 1.2 0.5

1970 1.9 1.3 0.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.8 1.4 0.1 1.3 1.6 1.1

1980 2.7 1.8 0.7 0.0 — 0.2 1.8 1.8 0.6 2.0 2.4 2.8

1990 2.7 1.9 0.6 0.6 — 0.5 1.9 2.1 0.9 2.6 2.3 2.9

2000 2.7 2.4 1.0 0.9 0.7 0.7 2.2 2.4 1.9 2.7 2.4 2.6

2005 2.8 2.7 1.2 1.1 0.8 0.8 2.0 2.4 2.2 2.6 2.2 2.6

Source: Eurostat (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/). Data for France not available.

functioning of welfare states as a factor that decisively conditions the role and influence of families in society. Since the Spanish welfare state provides scant support for domestic activities usually performed by women, such as caring for children and dependent adults, women are absorbed by these activities and they do not develop their productive potential in the formal labour market or they opt to develop this potential and relinquish establishing a family (Moreno 2007). In fact families represent a crucial component of the Spanish welfare system. Compared with families operating in other welfare systems, Spanish families are conspicuous for their commitments to relatives and kin in need of care or support (Pérez-Díaz, Chuliá and Álvarez-Miranda 1998). Because the Spanish welfare state leans a great deal on families to cover its protection gaps, it has been somewhat contemptuously branded as ‘familialist’ (Esping-Andersen 1999). Like other Southern European ‘familialist welfare states’ the Spanish social protection system stands out for its meagre family benefits and underdeveloped social services. While health care accounted in 2006 for 31 per cent of total social benefits and old age and survivors for 41 per cent, the family/children function absorbed less than 6 per cent of total social benefits. This type of benefits devoted to families represented 1.2 per cent of GDP in 2006, less than those being spent to cover unemployment (2.6) or disability (1.5). In sum, as critics of the familialist model argue, the institutional design of the Spanish and other Southern European welfare states does not help

138 • Family and Society in South and Western Europe

women to reconcile work and family and harms both the economy and the social reproduction while bolstering the continuance of traditional gender roles. The ‘Southern model of welfare’ favours the ‘Southern family model’ (Ferrera 1996; Jurado and Naldini 1996; Guillén 1997). Following this line of reasoning, some scholars demand de-familialisation of welfare systems through the development of public and private social services as an expedient to liberate families, and more specifically women, from domestic work and caring functions. De-familialisation, so the argument goes, would favour earlier emancipation of young people, increase fertility rates, enhance the democratisation of family patterns and boost economies. This argument enjoys wide scholarly support from feminists as well as from advocates of extensive welfare states. It may not be surprising that women who, thanks to their families of origin, have attained educational and occupational goals that situate them probably in the best relative position with respect to men in Spanish history have not taken the lead in demanding de-familialisation. Perhaps the contribution of Spanish families to the development of social capital and civil society has reinforced it institutionally to the extent that recipes that may entail delegating functions usually performed by the family to the state or the market are not supported without reservations, not even by those who supposedly would profit more from such a process. In any case, the evidence of the last decade shows that de-familialisation is not a necessary condition to pull Spanish women to the labour market. Certainly, this increasing female labour market participation involves high individual and social costs since it leads to postponing and reducing childbearing. Usually women are seen as the party which is most harmed in this evolution, although it also affects men. Working wives and particularly working mothers have been pictured as ‘super-women’ with double working days (Moreno 2002). Nonetheless, when observing the patterns of time use of men and women in different European countries, what is striking is not how much time employed Spanish women spend on domestic work (including childcare), but rather the time spent by employed men. Employed Spanish women devote three and half hours daily to domestic work, less than Portuguese, French, Italian, Belgian and Swedish women. A comparison between the time devoted to domestic work by Spanish men and by other European males shows, however, noteworthy differences. Employed Spanish men along with Italians devote the least time to domestic work. The time they devote to domestic activities is more than two hours less than employed Spanish women, despite devoting only a quarter of an hour more to gainful work (see table 6.10). It seems that the individual and social costs of higher female labour participation could be substantially reduced if men accepted a more balanced participation in domestic activities. Increased male par-

State, Society and Family Change in Twentieth-Century Spain • 139

Table 6.10. Time-use structure of employed women and men in different European countries Gainful work/study Women Men Belgium Germany Spain France Italy Portugal Finland United Kingdom Sweden

3:53 3:52 4:57 4:32 4:39 4:46 4:20 4:06 4:05

5:03 5:05 6:11 5:44 6:13 6:10 5:32 5:42 5:17

Domestic work Women Men 3:52 3:11 3:29 3:40 3:51 3:58 3:21 3:28 3:32

3:11 1:52 1:20 1:53 1:10 1:53 1:59 1:54 2:23

Source: Statistics in Focus, Population and Social Conditions 4/2006 (Data taken from national Time Use Surveys conducted between 1998 and 2004).

ticipation in domestic work seems not only an easier strategy to apply than de-familialisation but it is also more coherent with Spanish welfare state traditions and the history and current specificity of civil society.

Conclusion Social and political change in Spain during the last quarter of the twentieth century was impressive by any standards. As Pérez-Díaz, Celia Valiente and I have argued elsewhere, the family has not only been one of the many institutions affected by these far-reaching transformations but also a decisive agent of change. In the context of a developing economy, in the 1950s and 60s, Spanish families built after the hard postwar times decided to improve their opportunities of upward mobility through different strategies, among them the education of their children. These family strategies generated favourable circumstances for increasing knowledge, bringing together conflicting opinions and values and acquiring fundamental communication and negotiation skills for the development of sociability and civilised relationships in a gradually opening society. If, according to Habermas, the private sphere of the bourgeois family in England, France and the United States turned out to be an important source for the formation of the public sphere in the eighteenth century, the private choices and arrangements of many Spanish ordinary families in the second half of the twentieth century prioritising occupa-

140 • Family and Society in South and Western Europe

tion and formal education as a means to ascend to the middle class in a visibly dynamic social structure became relevant for community life and created an important condition of possibility for the emergence of civil society. Perhaps since the publication of Edward Banfield’s The Moral Basis of a Backward Society in the late fifties South European families have in general been deemed as hostile factors to civil society. More recently, familialism has been considered one of the obstacles encumbering women’s integration in the labour market and their full emancipation. As I have tried to show in this chapter, although often overlooked as a promoter of social capital and neglected as a resource able to improve women’s power in the public realm, the type of family which largely develop in Spain during roughly the last twenty years of Francoism contributed to the formation of a social order that facilitated a peaceful and consensual transition to democracy. The advent of democracy brought about very important political and institutional changes affecting the rights and freedoms of individuals not only as citizens but also as family members. But the much-celebrated ‘new Spanish family’ was not only a product of political and institutional change combined with the weakening of religious beliefs, but also of purposive arrangements adopted by numerous families set up in earlier decades. Particularly young and adult women enjoy nowadays an unprecedented social capital whose origins can be traced back to a time when the state and society at large maintained a very unfair view of women. Their parents embarked on a quiet struggle with those societal and state institutions, thus winning greater freedom for them while advancing the institutional autonomy of the family. And many of those parents continue today to provide an invaluable support helping young mothers to care for their children. It may be assumed that recognition of all these efforts underlies the high value the bulk of Spanish society across gender and age groups attaches to the family. Conceivably therefore the discourse of demanding de-familialisation as the panacea to a more women-friendly, gender-fair society has had a rather scarce resonance in public opinion. The persistence of the strong family model in Spain is surely reinforced by many factors, among them the institutional design of the welfare state, but the weight of the social preferences and values should not be underestimated. In sum, even if de-familialisation may have beneficial effects particularly on women’s activity rates and subsequently on economic expansion, it is excessive to perceive it as a universal normative goal. The scope of family commitments in questions relating to the welfare of its members is a contingent issue subject to open debate in each society.

State, Society and Family Change in Twentieth-Century Spain • 141

Notes 1. I am indebted to Víctor Pérez-Díaz who offered me the opportunity to participate in the Conference on Family and Civil Society organised by the European Civil Society Network (Wassenaar, 3–5 March 2005) where I presented a first draft of this essay. The comments and the encouragement I received from the participants at the conference provided an invaluable stimulus to writing the final version. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Spanish governmentgrant SEJ2007-67091. 2. Código Civil published in Gazeta of 25 July 1889 (www.boe.es/g/es/iberlex/). 3. The 1931 Constitution banned legal privileges based on sex and other biological or social conditions, established equal rights for husbands and wives in marriage and endorsed divorce. Furthermore, republican governments supported by left parties in the unicameral parliament legislated on the obligatoriness of civil marriage, recognised women’s right to vote, declared null and void contract clauses forcing women to leave jobs when marrying and suppressed the marital authorisation married women needed to sign work contracts (Valiente 1997: 126–131). 4. As Franco stated in a speech held at the First Congress of the Spanish Family in 1959 (cited in the newspaper ABC, 18 February 1959, 31–32). 5. Law on Women’s Political, Professional and Work Rights of 21 July 1961. 6. As emphasised by Valiente 1997: 92–95; 1998. 7. Between 1960 and 1968 the production of fridges expanded eight times, the production of washing machines four times and that of televisions eleven times. In 1957 less than 24,000 cars were produced and sold in Spain; in 1973 the number exceeded 700,000. The figures that illustrate this ‘consumers’ revolution’ are drawn from Fusi and Palafox (1997: 352–354). 8. See the quotation at the start of this chapter. 9. Law on Education and Financing of Education Reform of 4 August 1970. 10. Unfortunately there were (and are) also families in Spain which have ignored these changes as the dark episodes of family violence (particularly gender violence) demonstrate. Between 1999 and 2006 alone around 500 women were killed by their current or former husbands, partners or boyfriends. 11. Opinion poll 2733 of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, October 2007 (www.cis.es). 12. The 1981 reform of the Civil Code eliminated the differences between children born within or outside marriage in relation to family rights. Divorce has also been possible since 1981 although it used to require a long, tedious procedure including a one-year separation of spouses before they could apply for a divorce. Rodríguez Zapatero’s Socialist government pushed through reform of the divorce law, enacted in 2005, which has made divorce easier. 13. The Law reforming the Civil Code in order to allow homosexual marriage and adoption by homosexual couples was approved in April 2005, under the government of the Socialist Rodríguez Zapatero, against the votes of the main opposition party, the conservative center-right Popular Party. 14. According to a 2004 survey, less than 3 per cent of the population age 18 or more is affiliated to a political party, and less than 7 per cent to a trade union, employer organisation or professional institution. People who define themselves as members of a parish or a religious organisation are below 9 per cent and those

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joining a sport, cultural or leisure group below 15 per cent. Opinion poll 2575 of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, October 2004 (www.cis.es).

References Alberdi, Inés. 1999. La nueva familia española. Madrid. Banfield, Edward. 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. New York. Barrada, Alfonso. 1999. El gasto público de bienestar social en España de 1994 a 1995. Bilbao. Carabaña, Julio. 1997. ‘Educación y estrategias familiares de reproducción’. Estrategias familiares, eds. Luis Joaquín Garrido and Enrique Gil Calvo. Madrid: 37–59. Collier, Jane Fishburne. 1997. From Duty to Desire: Remaking Families in a Spanish Village. Princeton, NJ. Elshtain, Jean Bethke, et al. 1993. A Communitarian Position Paper on the Family, The Communitarian Network. http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/pop_fam.html Encarnación, Omar Guillermo. 2003. The Myth of Civil Society: Social Capital and Democratic Consolidation in Spain and Brazil. New York. ———. 2001. ‘Civil Society and the Consolidation of Democracy in Spain’, Political Science Quarterly 116, 1: 53–79. Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. 1999. Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies. Oxford. Eurostat. 2006. Statistics in Focus: Population and Social Conditions 4/2006. Luxembourg. ———. 2007. European Social Statistics. Social Protection. Expenditure and Receipts. Data 1996–2004. Luxembourg. ———. 2008. The Life of Women and Men in Europe: A Statistical Portrait. Luxembourg. ———. 2010. Newsrelease 149/2010. Luxembourg. Febo, Giuliana Di, and Santos, Juliá. 2005. El franquismo. Barcelona. Ferrera, Maurizio. 1996. ‘The “Southern Model” of Welfare in Social Europe’, Journal of European Social Policy 6: 17–37. Fusi, Juan Pablo, and Jordi Palafox. 1997. España: 1808–1996. El desafío de la modernidad. Madrid. Garrido, Luis. 1993. Las dos biografías de la mujer en España. Madrid. Garrido, Luis, and Elisa Chuliá. 2005. Ocupación, formación y el futuro de la jubilación en España. Madrid. Grugel, Jean, and Tim Rees. 1997. Franco’s Spain. London. Guillén, Ana M. 1997. ‘Regímenes de bienestar y roles familiares: un análisis del caso español’, Papers 53: 45–63. Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA. Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States. Cambridge. Jurado Guerrero, Teresa. 2001. Youth in Transition: Housing, Employment, Social Policies and Families in France and Spain. Aldershot. Jurado Guerrero, Teresa, and Manuela Naldini. 1996. ‘Is the South so Different? Italian and Spanish Families in Comparative Perspective’, South European Society & Politics 1, no 3: 42–66.

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Kertzer, David I. 1991. ‘Household History and Sociological Theory’, Annual Review of Sociology 17: 155–179. Meil Landwerlin, Gerardo. 2006. Padres e hijos en la España actual. Barcelona. Moreno Mínguez, Almudena. 2007. Familia y empleo de la mujer en los regímenes de bienestar del sur de Europa. Incidencia de las políticas familiares y laborales. Madrid. Moreno, Luis. 2002. ‘Bienestar mediterráneo y “supermujeres”’, Revista Española de Sociología, 2: 41–56. Muñoz López, María del Pilar. 2001. Sangre, amor e interés. La familia en la España de la Restauración. Madrid. Naldini, Manuela. 2003. The Family in the Mediterranean Welfare State. London. Pérez-Díaz, Víctor. 1991. The Church and Religion in Contemporary Spain. Working Paper CEACS 1991/19, Instituto Juan March de Estudios e Investigaciones. Madrid. ———. 1993. The Return of Civil Society, Cambridge, MA. Pérez-Díaz, Víctor, Elisa Chuliá and Berta Álvarez-Miranda. 1998. Familia y sistema de bienestar. La experiencia española con el paro, las pensiones, la sanidad y la educación. Madrid. Pérez-Díaz, Víctor, Elisa Chuliá and Celia Valiente. 2000. La familia española en el año 2000. Innovación y respuesta de las familias a sus condiciones económicas, políticas y culturales. Madrid. Reher, David S. 1997. Perspectives on the Family in Spain: Past and Present. Oxford. ———. 1998. ‘Family Ties in Western Europe: Persistent Contrasts’, Population and Development Review 24, 2: 203–234. Requena Díez de Revenga, Miguel. 2006. ‘Familia, convivencia y dependencia entre los jóvenes españoles’, Panorama Social 3: 64–77. Valiente, Celia. 1996. ‘The Rejection of Authoritarian Policy Legacies: Family Policy in Spain (1975–1995), South European Society & Politics 1: 95–114. ———. 1997. Políticas públicas de género en perspectiva comparada: La mujer trabajadora en Italia y España (1900–1996). Madrid. ———. 1998. ‘La liberalización del régimen franquista: la Ley de 22 de julio de 1961 sobre derechos políticos, profesionales y de trabajo de la mujer’, Historia Social 31: 45–65. Walzer, Michael. 1984. ‘Liberalism and the Art of Separation’, Political Theory 12, 3: 315–330.

Chapter 7

THE FOUNDATION OF CIVILISED SOCIETY FAMILY AND SOCIAL POLICY IN BRITAIN AND ITALY BETWEEN 1946 AND 1960

Stefania Bernini

The whole area of family–civil society relations awaits exploration. Very few authors have focused on these relations and those who have done so usually tried to establish what sorts of families, family organisation and culture are best suited for fostering civil society. This chapter seeks to explore the reverse side of this relationship. I ask what part – if any – does civil society and its institutions play in shaping our understanding of the family, its role and social function, and what part does civil society play vis-à-vis the state. The question, from which this chapter moves, may sound obvious. However, while a number of analyses have enquired into the different ways in which the state has tried (and either succeeded or failed) to regulate family life in the twentieth century, the role played by civil society institutions has received scant attention. The role of the state vis-à-vis the family in welfare societies has been considered from a variety of perspectives, some sympathetic to the support provided by the state to family life, others critical of a presumed erosion of the prerogatives of the family in contemporary western societies.1 While the first saw state and family as allied in the construction of a welfare society, the latter identified in the family the first victim of an unhealthy expansion of state powers and responsibilities. While the first saw social services as a necessary support, the latter saw them as a threat both to individual responsibility and to the cohesion of family life. In Jacques Donzelot’s famous turn of phrase, services presented as a

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friendly help, pursued in actual fact ‘the policing of the family’, and by so doing reduced individual liberty and freedom within society (1997). The concentration on the dyad family-state in the twentieth century can be partly explained with the growing presence of the state in family life at least since the interwar years. If the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes of the 1920s and 1930s had shown the extent to which the family could be central to politics aimed at establishing a tight control over society, the political relevance of the family did not disappear with the return to democracy. The rise of the post-war welfare state epitomized the effort to govern (although not to rule) citizens’ lives in a democratic way. In their different forms, welfare politics aimed to establish a new relationship between the state and its citizens through a far-reaching rethinking of their respective entitlements and duties. The redefinition of family’s attributions represented an integral part of this process. All this confirms the relevance of the relationship between family and state in post-war Europe. Yet, the concentration on the couple family- state as a crucial dimension of modern societies, has often neglected to explore some crucial aspects of the relationship that exists between the two. In particular, it has failed to ask what kind of understandings of family life guided social policy and where did such understandings originate. Moreover, the treatment of the state as a mighty and homogeneous institution has often underplayed the influence exercised by the multifarious actors responsible for the implementation of state’s guidelines and legislations. The inclusion of civil society in the analysis brings to light some crucial features of the relationship that takes place between family and state institutions in the second half of the twentieth century. This chapter argues that civil society institutions played a crucial role in creating specific definitions of family life and in informing the way in which state policies towards the family were implemented. Examining how civil society and the state interacted in relation to the family sheds light both on the different types of knowledge according to which the family was understood and regulated and on the nature of civil society as such. Italy and Britain provide useful case studies for the investigation of which models of family life were considered most likely to support both individual welfare and a flourishing (civil) society. They also reveal the actors that were most influential in defining the categories according to which family life was understood and regulated in the aftermath of the Second World War. The different political processes taking place in Italy and Britain in the aftermath of the war are relevant to this analysis, starting with their different approaches to welfare reforms. In the case of the British welfare state the idea that the new welfare society required a specific model of

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conjugal and parental relationships emerged from the onset. The ideal characters of marriage and the family were laid out by William Beveridge in his 1942 Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services, widely considered as the blueprint of the reforms pursued by the post-war Labour government. Such a discussion was much less explicit in Italy, where the introduction of welfare reforms was piecemeal and lacked a clear agenda. Here too, however, an understanding emerged of the centrality of the family to the wider social and economic transformations that invested the country throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In their different approaches to welfare and the family, post-war Britain and Italy provide ample examples of politics, which, while condemning the manipulation of family life and the attack on the private pursued by authoritarian regimes, fostered nonetheless a specific norm of family life through legislative intervention and social policy.

Family and Civil Society Before moving to the comparison of Britain and Italy, a few words must be said concerning the use of the terms family and civil society within this article. Both constitute complex and contested terms, which combine descriptive and normative connotations. The overlapping of ‘normative and descriptive, analytical layers of meaning’ has been widely acknowledged in relation to civil society (see Kocka 2004: 74). Families and households, however, have been often treated merely as descriptive terms, particularly in studies dedicated to their contribution to the growth of a civil society. Such use of the concept of the family is problematic. The overlapping of notions such as household, kinship, marriage, parenthood and so on makes ‘the family’ an ambiguous concept, even at a descriptive level. Even greater ambiguities emerge when we consider the normative dimension of the concept. Dominant definitions of what constitutes a family are the result of changing cultural contexts and shifting power relations; however, the tensions and the resistances that inform the creation and transformation of such dominant understandings are easily lost in commonplace references to ‘the family’. To recover the normative content of family as a concept is essential when discussing the relationship between the family and civil society. In other words, if civil society can be thought of as ‘an unfulfilled project’, we can ask − and in my opinion must ask − to what extent ‘the family’ ideally supportive of its development has also represented an ideal, rather than a historical reality. In discussing how civil society has contributed to shape dominant ideas of family life (and the extent to which such ideas constituted the basis for social intervention) it is important to treat family not as a descriptive term, but as a set of (normative) expectations

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upheld in the regulation of sexuality and reproduction as well as in social, labour and economic policies. As for civil society, I look at it first of all as an arena of economic, professional and intellectual activity and as the terrain of action of voluntary work, both religious and secular. Following Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato’s definition – and Habermas’ original distinction – civil society is taken to represent a ‘sphere other than and even distinct from the state’ (Cohen and Arato 1992: 74; Habermas: 1989). This definition, however, applies somewhat uncomfortably to the welfare state and its realm of activities (Baker 1998: 84). When looking at the welfare state we observe a continuous interactions taking place between state agencies and independent civic bodies and organisations. In what follows, taking a somewhat empirical approach to the notion of civil society, I do not try to draw a clear line between the state and civil society, but rather accept the fuzziness of such distinction as a crucial area of exploration. At the core of my analysis are the debates and strategies of intervention formulated among professionals, politicians and individual citizens, whose main commonality was the commitment to the betterment of society through the improvement (as they saw it) of family life. They expressed, from this point of view, a civic commitment, which they articulated in their respective areas of work. In their commitment they followed agendas and values formed in different social, cultural and political contexts. The structural differences that characterised Italy and Britain influenced both the content of the debates examined here and the extent to which ideas developed among professionals, volunteers and academics became part of policymaking processes in the two countries.

Italy and Britain as Comparative Cases The idea that the family had played an important role in forging Italy’s and Britain’s differing patterns of political and civic development was first explored to some length by scholars working on democracy and civic culture, starting from the late 1950s. Civic culture studies identified the family either as a crucial support or hindrance to the development of a democratic political culture. In Lucian Pye and Sidney Verba’s Political Culture and Political Development, published in 1965, Britain and Italy figured as two alternative cases of successful (Britain) and incomplete (Italy) political modernisation. In his contribution to the volume, Richard Rose described the British family as an institution that, by helping to forge ‘strong face to face ties’ in the context of a stable, industrial society, had exercised a ‘stabilizing political influence’ in modern Britain (1965: 106).2 The British family had sup-

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ported the development of a democratic, stable and cohesive society, the ultimate outcome of which was represented by the post-war welfare state. According to Rose, the belief ‘in mutual aid’ that supported welfare values originated in the family and was transmitted through the political education that took place within the household. The British family was strong enough to promote social cohesiveness, but not so strong as to prevent individual participation in society. In the same volume, the American political scientist Joseph La Palombara depicted in sharply contrasting terms the role played by the family in Italy (1965: 318–319). In his contribution, La Palombara followed an argument he had developed fully in a book published in 1964 and dedicated to the Interest Groups in Italian Politics. Here, La Palombara had argued that in large parts of Italy, ‘the family, the kinship group, the neighborhood, and the village’ represented ‘the most important claims to the loyalty and allegiance of the individual’. The influence of Edward Banfield’s study The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, published in 1958, was very clearly present in La Palombara’s argument and in his conclusion that the narrowness of Italians’ spheres of loyalty and investment prevented the development of spontaneous forms of political organisation. La Palombara (1964: 64−65) argued that such attitude was crucial in making the whole of the country vulnerable to widespread corruption and prone to authoritarian temptations. According to La Palombara (1964: 66), the acceptance of patriarchal norms within the Italian family hampered the development of democratic attitudes and transformed the family into an instrument of political fragmentation. Growing up in homes where they were hardly ever allowed to participate in decisions concerning themselves, Italian children tended to express their complaints ‘in the form of emotional protest’ or ‘violent behaviour’, rarely experiencing any ‘training in the kind of pragmatic give and take that a democratic polity require[d]’. In other words, the political socialisation they received was not to ‘a sense of effectual involvement’ in democratic politics, but on the contrary, to an idea of power exercised ‘physically and readily in order to exact obedience’ (La Palombara 1965: 318−319). The rather fundamentalist argument presented in Pye and Verba’s volume is echoed in a more cautious form by Jürgen Kocka’s reference to differing European relationships between the family and civil society. Western and Central European families and kinships, according to Kocka, ‘supplied important conditions for the rise of civil society’, by providing ‘family bonds’ that ‘did not absorb the loyalty and involvement of their members to a degree that was so absolute and without gaps as to leave no room for civic engagement’ (Kocka 2004: 74–75). He suggested that comparisons of Western and Central Europe with Southeastern and

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Southern Europe would show that ‘not every kind of family and kinship was equally suited for civil society’ (ibid.). The civic culture studies placed great emphasis on cultural and anthropological factors in explaining the differences that characterised the relationship between families and individuals (and therefore the overall role played by the family) in Italy and Britain. Yet, I would like to suggest that fairly similar expectations existed in the two countries in relation to what type of family life best supported the satisfactory development of society as a whole. What differed was rather the nature of a number of political, institutional and social factors, including the role played by the main Churches, the type of social policy adopted, and the position occupied by the medical and social professions. These factors, rather than anthropological characters (or a distinctive ethos) shaped the interactions taking place between individuals, family, civil society institutions and the state.

The Debate over the Family Although political historians have given little attention to the family as an issue of ideological confrontation, debates held within political parties constitute a good starting point for the examination of the conceptualisation of the family in contemporary societies. As party literature shows, the family played a prominent role in political propaganda, used often as a means of signalling parties’ cultural references and value systems. For the purpose of this chapter I limit my analysis to the four main mass parties operating within Britain and Italy after the war, namely the Conservative and the Labour party in Britain and the Christian Democratic and the Communist parties in Italy. This has not the aim of proposing easy comparisons, but rather to examine the messages sent by the parties with the largest social penetration. It is worth noticing that despite having been often considered a typical feature of moderate parties’ ideological baggage, discussions about the family and its social role figured prominently across the political spectrum. Both on the left and on the right, notions of family life where closely intertwined with views of society and its transformation, and the question of how to regulate family life went hand in hand with the broader question of how to govern social change. For those parties who found themselves in power for sustained periods of time, the possibility was open to translate ideas formulated within the civic sphere of political confrontation into actual guidelines for state intervention. In several respects, however, the family proved to be a particularly difficult terrain to govern.

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From a conservative perspective, the main function of the family was to protect society from the overpowering presence of the state, fostering individual responsibility and contributing to the preservation of the social order. In Britain, the conservative Quentin Hogg defined the family as the ‘foundation of the whole fabric of civilized society’, the first and most important of the groups of common interest that constituted it (1947: 97). Within the family, men and women learnt their duties, practiced social interaction and experienced forms of self-expression. As a natural unit, the family was ‘prior to the state’ and had ‘rights which [did] not derive’ from its fiat. Through the family, individuals found protection from the intrusion of the state, as well as support and affection. Moreover, the experience of the family transmitted the sense of tradition upon which society was based. Being part of a family helped to appreciate social order and generated a will to preserve the present, by instilling a fear of sudden changes and their unpredictable results. More than any other institution, the family protected individual freedom and with it liberty within society. In order to do so, the family had to remain ‘an independent centre of power enjoying its own franchises and prerogatives and occupying its true position as the foundation of civilized society’ (Hogg 1947: 64; see also Gilmour 1978: 149). Conservative analysis linked the interpretation of the family as a space of individual freedom to the endorsement of Christian teaching, ‘the attachment to the moral free agency of the individual’ and an organic vision of society, as a body made up of the spontaneous communities to which individuals naturally belonged (Goldman 1961: 5–15; White 1950: 3–8). In order to thrive families needed not extensive social services – that substituted their responsibilities and were likely to take away their prerogatives – but rather the possibility to enjoy the greatest material autonomy. This would have allowed them to fulfil their duties and responsibilities in an independent and satisfactory manner. From a conservative perspective, the best way to achieve such an outcome was promoting families’ access to a fair share of private property. In Britain, the idea that private property and the family represented the principal means of defending individual rights and a free society informed Sir Anthony Eden’s political formula of a ‘property-owning democracy’. The formula tried to attach a positive message to the politically dangerous effort to curb the growth of welfare spending, which the Conservative Party pursued throughout their years in government. The message sent was that although some level of social intervention could help family life, a clear distinction should separate the spheres of competence of the family from that of the state. Especially in the new welfare society, it was important to emphasise that too extensive a social policy could be detrimental to the welfare of families and individuals alike. This was not just because only self-reliant

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families could forge independent individuals. An even more sinister risk lurked behind the excessive expansion of the welfare state: the transformation of an apparently friendly social intervention into an instrument of control in the hands of a despotic and all-powerful state. In the words of Bernard Braine, ‘Today it is an official coming in to search your larder; tomorrow it may well be an official coming in to inspect your books and private papers’ (quoted in Francis 1996: 62). In Italy, the Christian Democratic Party (DC) shared with the Conservatives a view of the family as an institution of natural law whose prerogatives preceded those of the state and whose origins coincided with the development of human life itself. Where the two parties differed markedly was in the explicit reference made by the DC to the teachings of the Catholic Church as the basis for its political action. A discussion held in 1963, in the occasion of a conference organised by the Women’s Movement of the Italian Christian Democratic Party on ‘The family and the transformation of Italian society’, is indicative of the view of the family held within the party. A crucial point to emerge from the debate concerned the need to fight the ‘increasingly popular’ idea that social transformations should alter the way in which the nature of the family was understood. Such an idea had to be refused because it meant to subscribe to an interpretation of the human conscience as the product of social and economic conditions that was incompatible with Christian values. On the contrary, Christians should deal with the family on the basis of ‘objective values’, starting from the firm acknowledgement of the immutability of its origins and ends. Procreation represented the primary purpose of family life and dictated the correct approach to family relations, both at an individual and political level. At an individual level, it imposed absolute dedication to one’s family, including the willingness to sacrifice individual interests or desires, especially in the case of women. At a political level, it inspired the promotion of policies aimed to sustain the cohesion of the family and the indissolubility of the institutions upon which it was based. Any consideration of divorce, for instance, had to be rejected because it lowered the status of marriage, opened the door to birth control and reduced parents’ sense of responsibility towards their children (Falcucci 1963: 9−11). The family was at the core of Catholics’ attempt to defend a conception of society according to which moral values did not adapt to changing socio-economic circumstances, but should represent instead the immutable guidelines for the changes taking place within society. The affirmation of such principles was the paramount responsibility of policymaking. Preventing the transformation of the legal treatment of the family became a prominent part of the DC’s social policy agenda in the twenty years that followed the end of the war. The protection of the prerogatives

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of the family included the upholding of an asymmetric view of family relationships, where domestic duties fell overwhelmingly upon women while most of the power rested with men. Within the Catholic message as well as within the DC’s political action, men were treated as the main representatives of the family in the public sphere, while women were conceptualised as exclusively responsible for the daily working of the family. The asymmetry of the catholic family was necessary to the preservation of its unity. As we will see, however, this view of family relations was hardly limited to Catholic thinking. The fact that the protection of the family was upheld by the DC as one of the party’s defining elements forced the Italian Communist Party (PCI) to engage with a theme that had hardly figured in its political thinking before 1945. The way in which the PCI dealt with the family had the double aim of reassuring Catholic sensitivities while promoting an idea of family relations (moderately) different from that advocated by their opponents. In the aftermath of the war, communist leaders lamented the disruption of the family caused by fascism and the war and advocated its recovery as the first step towards the renewal of national life.3 At the same time, they criticised the inequalities and oppression that characterised family life, or, in Palmiro Togliatti’s words, the ‘feudal character’ that the Italian family sometimes still held.4 The legal equality of the spouses was championed by the PCI as an aspect of its commitment to women’s emancipation and as part of a general view of marriage as the product of specific social and economic relations. Only structural economic transformations would change the nature of marriage and the position of women within it. Only by ceasing to be seen as an economic expedient would marriage become a means of satisfying natural, moral and social needs. For women in particular, only the end of their economic dependence could transform marriage into a freely embraced life choice (Dossetti, Iotti and Ruini 1986: 51). On the whole, however, the position upheld by the PCI remained ambiguous, particularly in relation to women. The PCI advocated women’s legal equality; however, both strategic considerations and the party’s own political culture discouraged it from formulating a comprehensive critique of traditional family roles. The fear of being accused of acting against the family deterred the PCI from supporting controversial causes, such as the introduction of divorce. Moreover, the party did its best to stress that even those women who chose political militancy were not expected to abandon their traditional duties; rather, they should contribute to the renewal of society by seeking collective ways to solve ‘the difficulties they experienced in their daily lives’, starting from their experience within the home.5 As well as helping to reassure Italian Catholics, the involvement of the PCI with the family suited the moral code endorsed by the party after the war. A stable family life helped to promote the sense of responsibility,

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morality and endeavour that the party required of its members and provided a supportive environment for militants’ political activities. Communist ideals could inspire life within the home as well as outside it, first of all by establishing strong ties of solidarity to which men and women were asked to sacrifice individual desires when detrimental to the welfare and happiness of the family as a whole. It is not surprising that ‘the individual’ should be considered with suspicion in both communist and Catholic discourses. From a Catholic position, the family’s needs and prerogatives overcame individual aspirations (especially in the case of women) because the family itself was seen as the ultimate sphere of individual realisation. From a communist perspective, individual aspirations should be sacrificed in the name of a higher morality represented not by religious principles but by the commitment to a collective political cause. To this the family itself was expected to give its contribution (although a passive one), first of all by allowing male militants to spend their free time not with their families but working for the cause. Looking back at the experience of the Resistance, the Communist leader Gian Carlo Pajetta explained in unambiguous terms the idea that political engagement should always have priority over personal life: ‘I often wondered then, whether there were cases when the “private” should be given priority over the “public”. And I have wondered about it later in life. The answer has always been the same: never’ (quoted in Pavone 1991: 526). Unlike the Italian Communist Party, the post-war British Labour Party had the unprecedented opportunity to promote its own view of family life and social relations through social policy reforms. The ‘male breadwinner model’ theorised by William Beveridge and adopted as the basis of the post-war British welfare state affirmed a strong notion of marriage as ‘equal partnership’, in which men and women performed unequal but complementary functions (Parliamentary Papers 1942−1943, VI: 53). There was here a strong notion of domestic relations, based on women’s economic dependency, which reflected the central place occupied by the family in Labour (and in working class) political culture. To many post-war observers, the family and the neighbourhood appeared as the most resilient core of those ‘working class attitudes’ increasingly threatened by the individualistic values of modernity. The reference to a ‘sense of the personal, the concrete, the local’, to use Richard Hoggart’s expression, represented a recurrent theme in Labour post-war imagery of social relations (1960: 20). If a reflection on civil society as such was lacking in the British Labour Party, as Paul Ginsborg has pointed out, working class communities were nonetheless theorised as places of civic and political engagement, characterised by strong local solidarities in constant interaction with the wider political sphere. The traditional working class family was attributed a major role in promoting social cohesion

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and community identity. Leading Labour sociologists and social policy experts such as Peter Townsend, Michael Young and Peter Willmott concentrated on the social role performed by what they identified as the ‘extended family’ typical of the working class and on the consequences of its transformation. What they called ‘extended family’, however, requires some clarification. By the end of the Second World War, a process of nuclearisation of the family had largely been accomplished in the industrial cities of Britain and, from a demographic point of view, the British working family could hardly be described as ‘extended’. What observers such as Young, Willmott and Townsend lamented was not a demographic transformation, but rather the progressive disappearance of a type of society in which proximity (rather that co-residence) and social ties as well as kinship provided a cohesive environment able to offer the type of help and support that they considered a typical feature of family life. Townsend described the irreplaceable function of what he called ‘the main texture of working class society’ in providing individual and collective welfare (particularly in relation to the case of the elderly) and Michael Young and Peter Willmott studied the effects of re-housing policies on long-established communities (Townsend 1959: 112). In their descriptions, the family did not constitute a secluded entity, concentrated in the defence of its own interests and in competition with the outside world, but an institution in constant interaction with the surrounding community. Blood ties, geographical proximity and participation in the same kind of social life created resilient networks of solidarity and transmitted a sense of ‘identification with a particular neighbourhood or street, a sense of shared perspectives, and reciprocal dependency’ (Bourke 1994: 137). Not everything was ‘virtuous’ in neighbourhood transactions. Local solidarities, for instance, could be detrimental to the impersonal fairness of bureaucratic procedures, dictating that residents’ interests should have precedence over those of ‘any outsider’ in the management of housing estates (Young and Willmott 1957: 25). However, little blame was attached to such mechanisms by observers such as Young and Willmott, who saw them as proper in a social system that guaranteed benefits bound to be lost when more formal transactions prevailed. This idealised picture of working class community life (a ‘retrospective construction’, according to Joanna Bourke) ignored the potential for individual oppression that might develop from such closed communities. It was an optimistic and partial image, mirrored by a representation of the family as a place of unfaltering solidarities and cohesion (Bourke 1994: 142−155, 169). For Peter Townsend, ‘to be a member of, and reproduce a family’ was ‘the chief means of fulfilment in life’; true happiness resided not in ‘falling in love but in marrying, in having children and in maintaining one’s love for one’s parents’ (1959: 120). Marriage, procreation and intergen-

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erational solidarity represented the fundamental features of family life. The notion of conflict (or the idea that different members of the family might have contrasting aspirations) remained on the whole outside this representation. Here too the asymmetry of family relations represented a condition for the contribution of the family to the harmonious working of society.

The Challenges to the Family In contrast to these idealised representations stood social transformations that seemed to many to threaten both families and their ability to care for their most vulnerable members. Medical experts proved particularly influential in establishing sets of discourses concerned with the present state of the family and the likely implications of social transformations upon it. Three main themes emerged from the socio-medical debates taking place both in Italy and Britain after the war. The first was the supposed ‘involution’ of morality and sexual customs caused by the war, especially among young women, and the widespread perception that such changes could not be reversed after the end of the conflict. The second was the idea that women’s role within the home was diminishing and maternal skills declining and that both these factors were causing a widespread ‘moral decline’, transmitted across generations. Finally, great concern was attached to the belief that households were becoming not only smaller, but also increasingly isolated, with the consequence of producing accelerated processes of atomisation and individualisation at social level. Such themes represented not only issues for theoretical discussion, but also fields of social policy intervention; professional expertise and voluntary efforts proved essential both in defining the problem and in setting up agendas of intervention. Interpretations and strategies, however, varied according to cultural and social conditions specific to the two countries.

Maternity, Marriage, Psychologists and the Law The increase in births outside marriage during the war was identified both in Italy and in Britain as the most obvious and worrying sign of the disruption brought to family values by the war. Even more alarming was the impression that the return to peace had not been able to reverse this tendency. Worried descriptions of an irrevocable moral downturn flourished in both countries throughout the 1950s. At the same time, as the general upheaval caused by the war receded in time, explanations for the perseverance of the phenomenon started to be located elsewhere.

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The family came now increasingly under scrutiny not only as the victim of the disruption caused by the war, but as the likely subject responsible for the transmission of weak moral values and as the source of the psychological and emotional troubles (especially among young women), of which maternity outside marriage seemed to be the main manifestation. Both in Britain and in Italy, few issues raised as many questions concerning the definition of the family and its social role as did maternity outside marriage. This was indirectly confirmed by the reluctance with which both British and Italian policymakers looked at policies aimed to eliminate legal inequalities in the treatment of legitimate and illegitimate children. Legislative interventions in this area were used to affirm the norm of the family based upon marriage, a norm reinforced by the unequal status of children born outside marriage. In Britain, the new welfare state showed little interest for the status and conditions of so-called ‘illegitimate children’. Until the Affiliation Act of 1952, the weekly maintenance paid by natural fathers in those (relatively few) cases in which a court order had been sought and obtained by the mother, remained lower than the maintenance payments due for children following a divorce.6 By bringing allowances to the same level, the 1952 Act established an important principle. Its tangible consequences, however, were curbed by the limited extent to which affiliation orders continued to be granted: only 4,160 affiliation orders were awarded in 1959, out of 38,161 births registered as illegitimate (Fink 2000: 183). Moreover, there were instances in which the new welfare state penalised rather than protect maternity out of wedlock. Under the Poor Law Act (1930) the husband had been responsible for ‘any child born to his wife prior to their marriage’. Under the National Assistance Act introduced in 1948, however, a husband’s responsibility became limited to his wife and his own children (Fink 2000: 185). On the whole, the legislative framework created after the war treated women as the sole bearers of responsibility towards children born outside marriage and used discrimination against illegitimate children as a means of reaffirming the unique position of marriage within society. In Italy, the different status of legitimate and illegitimate children, as inscribed in the post-war republican constitution, was explicitly presented as a means of defending the legal status of marriage as the only legitimate foundation of family life. It was a norm that influenced heavily successive reforms and that contributed to create a framework where individual rights were shaped according to gender and the family. Until the reform of the Family Code in 1975, men retained the right to acknowledge a ‘natural’ child independently of the will of the mother, while married women were neither allowed to acknowledge a child born outside their marriage, nor to reveal the name of the natural father, paternity rights remaining with the husband unless he renounced them. In

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Chiara Saraceno’s words, ‘the acknowledgement of the offspring was a right negotiated among men’, without any power being left to the mother (Saraceno 1998: 41, my translation).7 As we will see, important differences characterised the relationship that took place between civil society’s institutions and state agencies visà-vis the family in Italy and Britain. There was, however, a fundamental similarity in the way in which moral, legal and medical discourses upheld a narrow definition of what constituted the family, attributing to either psychological or moral pathologies any deviation from the heterosexualmarriage norm. The major justification provided for the upholding of restrictive legislation in relation to illegitimacy was that unmarried mothers and their children could not be considered families in the full sense of the word and that maternity out of wedlock constituted a condition harmful to individuals and society alike. Such a notion remained dominant throughout the 1950s and 1960s despite the growing evidence – derived from medical and sociological observations – that unmarried mothers and their children were far from constituting a homogeneous group and were not necessarily deprived of material and emotional networks of support. In 1954, an enquiry conducted in Newcastle by the public health expert James Spence contradicted ‘the common view that unmarried mothers live alone in a single room or flat, or that they are friendless in this situation’. James Spence, professor of Child Health in Durham and a leading personality in the field of public health, found that most illegitimate children were part of a family circle, ‘either through the parents, more often through the mother, or through the adopted parents’ (Spence et al. 1954: 144). Nonetheless, Spence concluded that ‘illegitimate infants’ ran ‘a far greater risk’ than legitimate ones ‘of living in a home where the maternal capacity, the family stability, and the physical environment and housing conditions’ were unsatisfactory (ibid.: 145). Even in the best of scenarios, such as when parents lived together, the mother remarried, moved with her family of origin, or simply became self-sufficient, illegitimacy was considered an abnormal situation likely to cause emotional, moral and physical hazard. The depiction of illegitimacy as a state of inevitable vulnerability for the child was partly the consequence of the widespread assumption that an unmarried mother brought with her personal characteristics, either from a moral, social or psychological point of view, which were detrimental to the welfare of her child. A popular line of argument put forward in the post-war period focused on the idea that the mothers of illegitimate children carried with them a defect of personality whose cause was often to be found in the family of origin, notably in her relationship with her own mother. The argument had proved particularly influential in the US. In a widely quoted book published in 1954, Leon-

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tine Young suggested that many unmarried mothers had indeed desired their pregnancy and that this was the sign of a psychological imbalance that rendered them unlikely to develop a satisfactory relationship with their child. Young argued that the adoption of illegitimate children was the most effective way to create functioning families and well-adjusted individuals (Young 1954). The support given in the US to the adoption of illegitimate children by married couples immediately after their birth represented the outcome of the meeting of medical and psychological theories with long-established definitions of family life, which by definition excluded the unmarried mother and her child. The support for the removal of illegitimate children from their mothers was less pronounced in Britain than in the US, and the guidelines on adoption produced by the British government throughout the 1950s and 1960s recognised the right of unmarried mothers to keep their child. In Britain as well, however, the fostering and adoption of illegitimate children started to be seen with growing sympathy from the late 1950s, largely as a result of arguments stressing the necessity to give priority to the interests of the child over the desires of the mother. In the absence of a national mandatory policy, however, actual decisions were left to the responsibility of the numerous voluntary organisations operating in the field of childcare and adoption. Definitions of what constituted the interest of the child varied between different organisations, and the outcome of individual cases depended largely on the interpretations of individual adoption officers. It is significant that the number of illegitimate children adopted grew in Britain from 10,000 in the mid 1950s to c. 19,000 in 1968. In Italy, widespread moral condemnation was attached to ‘unmarried maternity’ throughout the post-war period. The limited extent of social intervention in this area, however, meant that the issue of how to deal with ‘illegitimate children’ remained largely a private matter.

Professionals, Experts and the Place of Civic Society The idea that maternity outside marriage necessarily constituted a riskfactor carried with it other implications besides the question of how to deal with illegitimate children. In particular, it legitimised the involvement of welfare agencies in the life of the unmarried mother, and contributed to transform the profile of social workers, now increasingly expected to be able to understand and deal with the psychodynamics at work within the family. In Britain, from the 1950s onwards, the growing attention given to the psychological training of social workers constituted a significant element of the transition from a ‘moral’ model of intervention, characteristic of nineteenth-century charitable organisations, to a

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medical-scientific approach. This transformation, already started during the interwar years, intensified under the auspices of the welfare state. No comparable shift took place in Italy in this period. Here, the limited role played by the state did not promote a flourishing of professional expertise, leaving to voluntary organisations linked to the Catholic Church, and often directly run by religious orders, the main responsibility for social intervention. Although the Catholic Church itself increasingly promoted training in social work, particularly from the mid 1960s, the approach followed throughout the 1950s and early 1960s continued to follow a model of charitable action in which reliance on individual willingness and moral considerations had priority over the development of formalised strategies of intervention. This suggests an important difference in the type of civil society institutions at work in Britain and in Italy and in the relationship that existed between civil society and state. In Britain, professionalised experts were increasingly influential in establishing guidelines and praxes adopted by state services and voluntary organisations alike; in Italy, the main influence on family matters continued to be exercised by the Catholic Church. While in Italy the state proved all too willing to delegate to the Catholic Church the responsibility over difficult social questions, different authorities competed in Britain over social intervention. The Anglican Church had been aware of the transformations underway since the mid 1940s; in fact, several observers had complained that the emergence of the welfare state threatened to obscure the role of voluntary organisations in the provision of social care and to obliterate the central part they had played in establishing the very principles that had inspired the creation of the new public services. 8 Even in Britain, the interaction between the activity of the professionalised experts and the ‘unregulated’ world of charitable intervention remained intense throughout the 1950s. In areas where statutory powers appeared more difficult to apply, welfare services looked for inspiration to the least institutionalised of voluntary organisations, usually religiously inspired and based primarily on individual commitment. Unlike in Italy, however, the state assumed in Britain, at least formally, a strong role of guidance and control, even in those areas of intervention in which the work and guidance of non-state organisations was explicitly sought.

Poor Motherhood and the Transmission of Unsuitable Behaviour through Generations The concern attached to maternity out of wedlock highlights an interesting and indeed only apparent paradox in the role attributed to women in the running of a home. The condemnation of single mothers suggested

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that women were wholly unfit to run a household by themselves; at the same time, women bore the main responsibility for the success or failure of family life. A widespread consensus existed that while a good mother ‘could make up for a reckless and drunken husband’, not even the most decent father could repair the damages brought to family life by an incapable mother. This popular assumption found scientific corroboration in epidemiological studies of the time, such as those conducted by the already mentioned James Spence in Newcastle. Spence identified in the capacity of the mother the dominant factor in the correlation between environment and children’s health. In Spence’s own words, if the mother ‘failed her children suffered. If she coped with life skilfully and pluckily, she was a safeguard for their health’ (Spence et al. 1954: 121). Similarly in Italy, well-known paediatricians saw in the supposedly declining sense of maternity of Italian women a major explanatory factor for the permanence of high levels of infant morbidity and mortality in the country. The president of the Società Italiana di Pediatria, Rocco Jemma, argued in 1947 that the first aim of any public social policy towards children should be that of ‘re-establishing a cult of maternity among women and of bringing mothers back to the meticulous observance of their duties’ (1947: 10). The issue of maternity highlighted the gendered nature of the expectations placed upon men and women, within the family and in relation to their participation to civil society. In many post-war debates women’s participation in the labour market was treated as a factor inevitably detrimental to a satisfactory domestic life. Women’s absence from home was widely regarded as harmful to the development of children and therefore as a hindrance to the creation of emotionally and psychologically stable adults. Since paid work remained the main means of acquiring citizenship rights, especially in post-war welfare societies, women’s achievement of the basic entitlements of citizenship seemed to be fatally antagonistic to their upholding of domestic responsibilities. The question was extensively discussed in Britain, where women’s employment was significantly higher than in Italy. In 1954, the Women’s National Advisory Committee of the Conservative party (WNAC) affirmed that now that women had ‘won most of their civil liberties’, it was necessary to ‘re-emphasize their natural responsibilities as parents and home makers’ in order to contrast the danger ‘that women’s influence in the home’ could be forgotten’.9 Even more pessimistic conclusions were reached by the WNAC five years later, when a working party established to enquire into the issue of ‘Parental Responsibility and Juvenile Delinquency’ indicated children of working mothers among those most at risk of developing a delinquent behaviour. Those children who on return from school faced ‘an empty house, sometimes even a locked door’ were more likely ‘to get into mischief’ than those who found ‘mother

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at home and ready with tea – un unconscious symbol of security in the child mind’.10 Similar alarm was expressed by Italian commentators, many of whom saw changes in women’s aspirations as a threat to their maternal devotion and to the stability of the whole social order. These concerns emerged clearly from the articles published in this period on Maternità e Infanzia, the journal of the Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia (ONMI), to which contributed some of Italy’s best-known experts in child health. The ONMI had been established by the fascist regime in 1925 and continued to operate, largely unreformed, after the war; throughout the 1950s and 1960s it represented the only organisation with a specific responsibility for the provision of welfare services addressed to mothers and children in need. Representative of the view expressed by many contributors to the journal was an article by Maria Vittoria Pugliaro, who in 1959 wrote of her puzzlement in the face of women who no longer ‘recalled the image of the mother’, but rather that of ‘a changing creature, in search of definition’. Contemporary women, it seemed to Pugliaro, wished to express themselves exclusively according to their individual interests. Feminist thought had produced a new kind of woman, ‘independent and responsible for her own destiny’. It was a ‘revolution of the feminine personality’ that Pugliaro saw as ‘just and rightful, and yet dangerous’ (1959: 15). Pugliaro expressed a sense of bewilderment in front of a transformation in attitudes whose justice was difficult to deny but which appeared nonetheless destined to bring unwelcome social turmoil. Perhaps surprisingly, a similar uneasiness was expressed in Britain by a leading personality on the left of the Labour Party such as Richard Crossman. In a book originally written in 1937 and re-published unchanged in 1963, Crossman pondered about the likely consequences of women putting their profession before their home, in the same way as men did. Notably, Crossman wondered whether the home could still be considered as ‘the best place for the upbringing of children’, if women too started to regard it ‘as the place of relaxation’ from their daily work. A ‘tragic dilemma’, Crossman wrote, stood before humankind: ‘If we value the institution of the family and doubt our powers to change the deep seated instincts of sexual life, then woman must renounce the status of man and retain the marriage partnership as the chief function of her life’ (1937: 196−197, 199−200). Crossman’s dilemma represented more than just a theoretical issue. The male breadwinner model of welfare theorised in the Beveridge Report and promoted by the social security system created in Britain after the war affirmed in unambiguous terms the idea that a well-functioning society required families based on different and complementary gender roles. An unequal participation of women in the labour market and in civil society seemed to represent the inevitable corollary of this model.

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The Nuclearisation of the Family and the Atomisation of Society Decline in family size followed a different pattern in Italy and in Britain. In Italy, where birth rates declined steadily throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the reduction in family size coincided with a fast process of urbanisation and a diminution in the number of extended families. The new households created by those men and women who moved to the industrial cities of the north made a sharp contrast with the multigenerational households characteristic of at least part of the Italian countryside, particularly the sharecropping areas of the centre and northeast. It was a transformation that many social observers saw as inevitably leading to the crumbling of those traditional values and solidarities associated to the patriarchal household. Once again, such a preoccupation cut across traditional ideological divisions. In 1963, Achille Ardigò, a well-known sociologist active in the progressive/left wing area of the Catholic movement, considered critically the impact of capitalism on the traditional structures of Italian society, starting from the family. The transformation of the country into a mass society, wrote Ardigò, had separated the ‘natural life of the family’ from ‘the artificial life of industrial and urban society’. While the scale of industrial organisations grew (together with the cities in which they were located), families became smaller and smaller, and the informal relationships upon which they were based seemed to be swallowed by the formal exchanges that took place within bureaucratic organisations. The logic of capitalist enterprise seemed to Ardigò to have grown increasingly aggressive, impacting harshly on the families of the industrial working class. Deprived of their ‘convivial and communal life’, working class families were subjected to the growing influence of the mass media, whose values (such as ‘economic success’ and ‘the beauty of the woman-lover’) they were often unable to resist (1963: 39–42, 47, 50). In post-war Britain, both industrialisation and the nuclearisation of the family hardly represented new phenomena. Here too, however, anxieties were raised, particularly by the increasing isolation of the nuclear family, and its expected social consequences. These anxieties, it is important to note, were not expressed in terms of the separation of families from ‘civil society’ or from an extended network of associations, but rather in terms of the disappearance of informal family and neighbourhood links. A typical concern was that articulated by Anthony Crosland in relation to the loss of support and mutual aid at particular times of need. The decline in the proportion of families who lived in the proximity of their relatives weakened traditional networks of support and multiplied the demands posed upon the state and the newly created social services. It was at times such as illness, childbirth and above all old age that the absence of an

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extended kinship network left a gaping hole that no amount of welfare intervention could be expected to fill (Crosland 1956: 148–53). Peter Townsend proposed a similar reading of contemporary social changes in his seminal work on the networks of support available to old people (1957). Townsend lamented the reduction of support caused by the transformation of the structure of the family and agreed with Crosland on the impossibility of replacing the richness of informal family ties with formal welfare services. To be lost was not only material help, but also a network of solidarity able to provide practical support as well as friendship, sense of identity and purpose in life.

Conclusion Despite the existence of significant ideological differences, a coherent definition of what type of family was best suited to promote welfare at an individual and social level emerges from the different discourses examined here. This was first of all a family based on marriage and characterised by a clear distinction of roles between men and women. Two main characteristics defined the ideal relationships taking place within the home: the predominant responsibility of the mother and the presence of the father/husband acting as the breadwinner. In the absence of one of these conditions the family became a locus of unstable and potentially dangerous relationships. Unmarried motherhood was dangerous above all because it questioned the very bases of what was defined and conceptualised as the norm of family life. A widespread agreement existed also on the ideal of the family as part of an extended network of support in which kinship ties played a leading role. The preoccupation for the disappearance of traditional communities figured prominently in the debates taking place both in Italy and in Britain. In Italy, the modesty of welfare policies left families to cope largely alone with demographic transformations resulting in shrinking networks of support. In Britain, a far greater effort was made to create alternative forms of individual support, provided by the state at local level. Here too, however, it remained an unquestioned assumption that no level of social policy could or should replace entirely the support provided by and within the family. In both countries, civil society institutions, including political parties, voluntary organisations and leading professionals and intellectuals were crucial in establishing the categories according to which the family was defined and treated. The different influence exercised by these actors in Italy and Britain was largely the result of the diverging paths followed by the two countries in a number of areas relevant to the family and to its relationship

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with civil society institutions. While the immediate post-war years were characterised in Britain by the creation of one of the ‘classic’ forms of welfare state, Italy followed a slower and more uncertain path in the development of social policy. While the British welfare state upheld a strong notion of social and family relations, already contained in the blueprint for reform represented by the Beveridge Report, the development of Italian social policy was the result of a piecemeal process, which seemed to lack a coherent view of what kind of family (and society) it wished to foster. Despite the rhetorical endorsement of family values by the Christian Democratic Party, and the frequent reassertion of the central role of the family by the church, no distinctive pro-family policies were adopted or pursued by Italian post-war governments. Rather, families were relied upon as the main providers of individual support and care in the absence of significant state interventions (Saraceno 1998: 8–9). While the British welfare state multiplied the opportunities for the involvement of state agencies and welfare professionals, the modesty of Italian social policy left a largely unchallenged role to the Catholic Church, providing it with ample possibilities to promote its own vision of the relation that should exist between families, society, the state and the church itself. As Pius XII affirmed on a number of occasions throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, it was only through the church that family and state could fulfil their respective roles: the family as first source of Christian education and the state as the guarantor of the law (Bernini 2007: 54). Differences in social policy intervention influenced the way in which the family was regulated in the two countries, mostly as a result of the different roles played by professional, political and religious authorities. This had a direct influence also on the development of forms of therapeutic intervention in family life. In Britain the involvement of social workers, doctors, and psychologists in family life multiplied in the post-war period. This was accompanied by a flourishing of interpretations concerning family dynamics and behaviour and by growing investigations in how to deal with family troubles. In Italy, the absence of public engagement on a similar scale limited the possibility of active experimentation with and intervention in family life. Debates between and among social and medical practitioners were also relegated to a more theoretical sphere. It was not only the role of the state to differ in the two countries. The type of civil society’s institutions that concerned themselves with the family diverged too. In Italy the Catholic Church pervaded civil society and permeated civic commitment vis-à-vis the family. Its commitment to the construction of a catholic society and the influence that it was able to exercise as the main provider of support for families and individuals alike reduced the possibility for Italian civil society to develop into a plural space. Alternative actors from civil society, as well as the state, remained in the shadow of the church on matters related to the family, giving up

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any ambition to become engines of transformation in the realm of social policy. In Britain, on the other hand, civil society institutions and the state appeared more in balance and more plural, despite the growing powers acquired by the latter. The pursuing of a welfare society gave to the British state responsibilities and powers on social matters that had no parallel in Italy. To this end, the state was able to use knowledge and ideas formulated outside the state itself, in a plurality of institutions, such as universities, Royal Societies and even the Anglican Church. The different attitudes showed by the Anglican and Catholic church in the post-war years represent a crucial element of distinction between Britain and Italy. In Italy, social and cultural transformations were met with the church’s staunch defence of its own social (and political) project; consequently, the Catholic hierarchy engaged in an open battle to defend the Catholic prerogatives of the Italian society, using its social and political influence to this end. In Britain, the Anglican Church seemed to accept that an irreversible transformation of values and social costumes was taking place. Its response was not to fight such transformation, but rather to try to carve a new role for itself in an increasingly plural society, first of all by developing a ‘sociological’ attention to social change. The regulation of family and sexuality constituted a crucial area of intervention for the churches in both countries. In Britain, the Anglican Church increasingly presented itself as having a specific but not unique competence on matters of morality and family life. In this process, it adopted methods of intervention similar to those of secular organisations and tried to foster co-operation with the agencies of the state. In Italy, the Catholic Church strove to resist transformations in the spheres of sexuality, marriage and family life, rejecting the idea that socio-economic changes could legitimise changes in values. Throughout the 1950s the Italian Catholic Church remained deeply suspicious of a pluralistic civil society and pursued a model of social presence aimed to establish a tight control over the public sphere. Such different strategies were not only the result of different political and social conditions. They also suggested different ideas of the nature and role of civil society.

Notes 1. Two examples of opposite interpretations of the role of the British welfare state in relation to the family are Richard Titmuss’s essay ‘The Position of Women’ (1958), in which he focused specifically on the role the state could play in support of the needs of families and women in contemporary society, and Ferdinand Mount’s The Subversive Family. An alternative history of love and marriage (1982: 173), in which the family was described as being besieged by ‘those who claim to come with the best intentions but come armed, all the same, with statutory

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2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8.

9. 10.

powers and administrative instruments’ (173). A more complex and diversified critique of the welfare state as a reproducer of traditional roles within the family was articulated by feminist scholars, starting with Elizabeth Wilson’s Women and the Welfare State (1977). Elsewhere, in his Studies of British Politics, Rose explained: ‘Beginning in early childhood, a young Englishman learns through formal and informal instruction the basic outlook of his society. This process of socialisation helps to differentiate the individual Englishman from a German, Russian or American. … The family constituted the main agency through which such a culture was passed through the generations’ (1966: 1). Palmiro Togliatti, ‘Per la Difesa della Famiglia Italiana’, L’Alba, 18 March 1944, in Togliatti 1979: 534−537. Palmiro Togliatti, speech at the Conference of Communist Women, Rome, 2−4 June 1945, in Togliatti 1984: 154. In the occasion of a party’s central committee held in February 1947, Togliatti explained that the principle of the indissolubility of marriage could be accepted, at least until the state was able to guarantee the economic self-sufficiency of those women for whom marriage constituted ‘not a state but a profession’, APC, Comitati Centrali, 27−28 February 1947. On the use of family in the PCI’s appeal to women see Gozzini and Martinelli 1998: 297−300. The latter were regulated by the 1949 Married Women (Maintenance) Act and by the 1951 Guardianship and Maintenance of Children Act. Apart from maintenance payments, the status, custody and maintenance of natural children continued to be regulated by the 1872 Bastardy Laws Amendment Act. For a wider analysis of the genesis of post-war family legislation in Italy, see Saraceno 1990: 431−432. A particularly sensitive field proved to be the care of parentless children, a traditional area of intervention for the Anglican Church, whose management was put under scrutiny at the aftermath of the Second World War. For a wider analysis, see Bernini 2007: 60−61, 84−86. Conservative Party Archive (CPA), CCO 4/409, ‘The task that lies ahead’, notes of a discussion held on 2 September 1954. CPA, CCO 4/8/379, National Union of Conservative and Unionist Organisation, 1959.

References Ardigò, Achille. 1963. ‘Le trasformazioni nella società Italiana: riflessi nella vita della famiglia’. La famiglia e le trasformazioni della società italiana. Movimento Femminile della DC. Rome, 10–11 February: 39−42. Baker, Gideon. 1998. ‘Civil Society and Democracy: The gap Between Theory and Possibility’, Politics 18, 2: 81−87. Banfield, Edward C. 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Glencoe. Barker, Rodney. 1997 [1978]. Political Ideas in Modern Britain. London. Bernini, Stefania. 2007. Family Life and Individual Welfare in Post-war Europe: Britain and Italy Compared. London. Bourke, Joanna. 1994. Working-Class Cultures in Britain 1890–1960: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity. London.

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Cohen, Jean A., and Andrew Arato. 1992. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA. Crosland, Anthony. 1956. The Future of Socialism. London. Crossman, Richard. 1937. Plato To-Day. London. Donzelot, Jacques. 1997 [1977]. The Policing of Families. Baltimore. Dossetti, Giuseppe, Leonilde Iotti and Meuccio Ruini. 1986. Interventi alla Costituente. Bologna. Falcucci, Franca. 1963. ‘La famiglia, società naturale fondata sul matrimonio’. La Famiglia e le trasformazioni della società italiana. Movimento Femminile della DC. Rome, 10–11 February: 9−11. Fink, Janet. 2000. ‘Natural Mothers, Putative Fathers, and Innocent Children: the definition and regulation of parental relationships outside marriage, in England, 1945 – 1959’, Journal of Family History 25, 2: 178−195. Francis, Martin. 1996. ‘“Set the People Free?” Conservatives and the State, 1920– 1960’. The Conservative and British Society, 1880–1990, ed. Francis Martin and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska. Cardiff. Gilmour, Ian. 1978 [1977]. Inside Right: A Study of Conservatism. London. Goldman, Peter. 1961 [1956]. Some Principles of Conservatism. London. Gozzini, Giovanni, and Renzo Martinelli. 1998. Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano. VII. Dall’attentato a Togliatti all’VIII Congresso. Torino. Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Private Sphere. Cambridge, MA. Hogg, Quentin. 1947. The Case for Conservatism. Harmondsworth. Hoggart, Richard. 1960 [1957]. The Uses of Literacy. Harmondsworth. Jemma, Rocco. 1947. ‘Morbilità nell’infanzia nel dopoguerra’, Maternità e Infanzia XIX, 1 (September−October): 10−11. Kocka, Jürgen. 2004. ‘Civil Society from a historical perspective’, European Review 12, 1: 65–79. La Palombara, Joseph. 1964. Interest Groups in Italian Politics. Princeton, NJ. ———. 1965. ‘Italy: Fragmentation, Isolation, Alienation’. Political Culture and Political Development, ed. Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba. Princeton, NJ: 282−329. Minella, Angiola, Nadia Spano and Ferdinando Terranova. 1980. Cari bambini vi aspettiamo con gioia. Milano. Mount, Ferdinand. 1982. The Subversive Family: An Alternative History of Love and Marriage. London. Parliamentary Papers. 1942−1943. Report by Sir William Beveridge on Social Insurance and Allied Services, Cmd.6404, VI. Pavone, Claudio. 1991. Una guerra civile. Saggio storico sulla moralità della Resistenza. Torino. Pugliaro, Maria Vittoria 1959. ‘Essere Madre’, Maternita’ e Infanzia XXIII, 1−3 (January–March): 15–16. Rose, Richard. 1965. ‘England: a Traditionally Modern Political Culture’. Political Culture and Political Development, eds. Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba. Princeton, NJ: 83−129. ———. 1966. Studies in British Politics. London. Saraceno, Chiara. 1990. ‘Women, Family and the Law, 1750−1942’, Journal of Family History XV, 4: 427−442. ———. 1998. Mutamenti della famiglia e politiche sociali in Italia. Bologna. Spence, James, et al. 1954. A Thousand Families in Newcastle upon Tyne: An Approach to the Study of Health and Illness in Children. London.

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Titmuss, Richard. 1958. ‘The Position of Women’. Essays on the Welfare State, ed. Titmuss. London. Togliatti, Palmiro. 1979. Opere, vol. IV/2. Rome. ———. 1984. Opere, vol. V. Rome. Townsend, Peter. 1957. The Family Life of Old People. London. ———. 1959. ‘A Society for People’. Conviction, ed. Norman Ian Mackenzie. London. White, Richard J. 1950. The Conservative Tradition, London. Wilson, Elizabeth. 1977. Women and the Welfare State. London. Young, Leontine. 19554. Out of Wedlock. New York. Young, Michel,. 1957. Family and Kinship in East London. London.

Chapter 8

CHILDREN AND CIVIL SOCIETY

John Keane

Can children become full members of a civil society? Do they have the capacity to enjoy its rights of association and property, legal protection and citizens’ powers to vote for representatives of their choice, in free and fair elections? In countries otherwise as different as France, the United States and Japan, most people think not, for reasons that are woven firmly into the fabric of contemporary common sense definitions of civil society and childhood. Citizens are said to belong to a civil society and political community of common laws, and to share its entitlements and duties equally with other grown-ups. When Aristotle famously defined a citizen as any adult who can ‘hold office’, he invoked a powerful thought that still lives on: to be a citizen is to be the opposite of a powerless subject. To enjoy the status of a citizen is to engage freely and equally with others who are mature enough to act politically by exercising the power to define how to live together peacefully, to decide who should get what when and how. Seen in this way, citizenship is not just about fair and open legal decisions or democratic government or living as equals with other adult members of civil society. According to some old and venerable traditions of political thinking, citizenship is their condition of possibility. Children – according to the same common-sense definition – are minors. Their ontogenesis is incomplete and so by definition they cannot be citizens who are full members of civil society. To speak of citizens is minimally to speak of beings equipped with the capacity to choose self-reflexively when navigating their daily courses of action through the institutions of civil society and government. Children do not choose to be born and at the beginning of their lives, by definition, they have no say in who is to

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parent them and which institutions, beginning with their household and its psychodynamics, are to guard over and mark their lives indelibly, forever. Consistent with this ascribed powerlessness, there is also the brute fact – it is said – that children are nowhere acknowledged as entitled to govern their own lives until well into their teenage years. Hence the conclusion: children are children and only time and proper upbringing can bring them into the adult world of civil society and citizenship. Viewed in this way, common sense thinking about children may be persuasive, but it nevertheless begs important descriptive and normative questions about their status and power within a civil society. Are children fated to be the temporary possession of adult-dominated institutions and policies? Since children are by definition beings that have not yet passed through the gates of adulthood, surely their childhood, and thus their unequal relationship with adults must be recognised and protected within any civil society? Or might it be that this unequal relationship between child subjects and adult citizens is unnecessary? Might young people deserve to be considered as worthy of greater equality of treatment, perhaps even as the formal equals of grown-ups, so that their dignity is protected? Could it be that actually existing civil societies are confronted with a new challenge: how to create spaces for children considered as citizens? Among the interesting things about the subject of childhood is that such questions have arisen only in contexts that have been touched by modern hands. Put simply, contingent categories like childhood and children belong to the universe of thinking and acting structured by institutional complexes that we have come to call civil society, representative government and democracy. Once upon a time, the idea of childhood as a special and alterable phase of life simply didn’t exist. Every culture of course had its views about living beings in their early years of life. The temptation was always strong to think of them as natural creatures – as naturally innocent, or as naturally depraved, or as naturally expendable, as for instance was the custom in classical Greece, where sickly youth were commonly left in the countryside to die of exposure, or their healthy counterparts were sold into slavery, especially if a family needed money. This belief in the absolute primacy of nature had the effect of suppressing awareness of either the continuities or discontinuities in the transition between infancy and adulthood. In medieval Europe, for example, around the age of 5–7, the young were commonly deemed no longer in need of constant attention from their mothers and were jettisoned into the workaday world of adults. Young people were viewed simply as miniature adults – a picture reinforced by the male-centred ‘ages of man’ imagery inherited from classical antiquity, and by beliefs in the four humours, and by the parallels that were often drawn between the stages of life and the behaviour of the seven planets.

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All this changed with the re-invention and geographic spread of the language and institutions of civil society and representative government. The sixteenth century was a particularly decisive watershed in this respect. The causal links between the fate of young people and the push for constitutional government underpinned by vibrant civil societies oiled by commerce and exchange and Christian norms of conjugal duty were certainly complicated, but the clear consequence was that modern civil societies became associated with the nurturing of a new category of beings called ‘children’. This ‘discovery’ of childhood (the contention of the classic study by Philippe Ariès, L’Enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien régime [1960], translated into English as Centuries of Childhood [1962]) was in fact no ‘discovery’ of a pre-existing social terrain. The simile is wrong: childhood was rather an invention of certain social groups – middle-class moralists, lawyers, priests, men of property and philanthropists – who felt the ground of certainty shaking under their feet, who sensed that the abandonment of old patterns of authority and the push for self-government required the definition and special treatment of young people, to shape their earliest emotional experiences so that they could be prepared for the shock of adult citizenship.

The Great Quarantine The task of pinning down the history of childhood and children is not easy, initially because there is an obvious problem of sources. In their diaries, letters and autobiographies, members of the literate and educated elites and upwardly mobile social groups have left behind traces of their thoughts and feelings about children; by contrast, the ways in which the vast majority of people regarded their children – peasants and rural and urban labourers for instance – have passed into oblivion. The surviving evidence suggests, however, that bourgeois Protestant circles clustered around figures like Luther and the English Puritans were among the first to express sustained interest in the young and their proper place in an emergent civil society (Sommerville 1992). The contributions of these rising lower middle-class believers to the invention of childhood sometime during the sixteenth century was initially justified using many different and conflicting labels – Christian duty, civility, civilisation, civil society, the commonwealth, the order of liberty, the republic, education – but the quarantining effects linked to these epithets were pronounced, and historically speaking without precedent. Young people were made to pay a high price. Defined by groups within civil society, children were positioned outside and underneath civil society. The resulting dualism of children and civil society placed children of all classes in the position of being powerless objects of attention by civil society actors and institu-

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tions. Reminded constantly of mental and bodily and height differences by adults who called them ‘kids’ – the same slang word first used in the seventeenth century to describe young goats, an animal thought to be naturally stupid and renowned for its insatiable appetite – children were subjected for the first time to highly invasive forms of arbitrary power. Fine talk of civility and civilisation aside, children in fact resembled slaves fit for incarceration within the walls of families, or foundling homes. William Blackstone’s lectures on the common law, given at Oxford in 1758, spoke revealingly of the family as ‘the empire of the father’. He reported that women were ‘entitled to no power, but only reverence and respect’; and that the absolute legal power of fathers over their (male) children ended only when they reached the age of 21, at which point the young male adult entered ‘the empire of reason’. Until that moment arrived, Blackstone added, ‘the empire of the father continues even after his death; for he may by his ill appoint a guardian to his children’. ‘He may also delegate part of his parental authority, during his life, to the tutor or schoolmaster of his child; who is then in loco parentis, and has such a portion of the power of the parent committed to his charge, viz. that of restraint and correction’ (1793: 451–453). Under the impact of such thinking, the historical change in the lives of young people was dramatic. Children were no longer principally seen as incorrigible slaves of their wicked nature, brutish and devilish creatures tainted by the sin that began at the time of creation, and that was subsequently passed down from generation to generation (a view that lingered well into this period, and that was often associated with the theology of St Augustine). Young people were also no longer principally regarded as miniature adults whose simplicity, sweetness and drollery provided relaxation and (sexual) amusement for adults in their vicinity (a view represented in some seventeenth-century paintings that featured children dressed in their own distinctive clothes, with their own distinctive mannerisms). Young people instead became objects of adult definition, adult psychological interest and adult moral solicitude. They were viewed as creatures that stood halfway between animals and adults – creatures that were capable of correction and instruction, and thus in need of confinement in families through special practices that gave them the special treatment sufficient to enable them to pass from the half-animal world of minors to the world of adults, replicating in a few short years the stages of civilisation that human beings themselves had taken several millennia to achieve.1 The exceptions, such as ill-bred peasant scoundrels, the urban beggar children wearing ragged trousers, the pickpockets and scoundrels with snotty noses who somehow managed to slip through the nets of paternal supervision were living proof of this new preoccupation with children. So too was the fascination with the figure of the puer senex, the rare male child prodigy who behaved from the beginning like an old man.

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Such freaks defined the rules of an age in which the young were deemed non-adults. Thomas Williams Malkin was a much–talked about example: born in 1795, he started his career at the age of 3, proved himself to be an expert linguist at 4, an outstanding philosopher at 5, and then began reading the fathers of the Church at 6, only to die of old age and excess at 7 (Malkin 1806). So the invention of children and childhood went hand in hand with new strategies of control that on the surface of things had little to do with the norms and institutions of civil society or citizenship or representative democracy, as they would later be understood. If anything, certainly when measured in power terms, the new strategies of control were their antithesis, as evidenced by the rapid spread throughout eighteenth-century Europe of homes of correction for abandoned children. London’s Foundling Hospital, established by Royal Charter in 1739, is today still often considered a shining example of a golden age of philanthropy, but for the children who found themselves confined within its solid brick walls life rather resembled a military camp. On entering the Hospital, children had their hair cut in the same style; they were issued with a standard uniform and given the same meagre diet, repeated weekly. Hunger and bullying and violent punishment were endemic; hard work and God-fearing obedience to adult superiors was expected; and the young inmates quickly discovered that every aspect of their existence was geared to their future role of dutiful and productive servants, artisans and soldiers. Children considered ‘legitimate’ found that life within their own families bore a striking resemblance to that of ‘bastard’ foundlings. Respectable children were regarded as fresh clay in the hands of adult potters and dressed accordingly in civilising metaphors that suggested the primacy of nurture over nature. The Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) spoke of the possibility of overcoming the ‘monstrous bestiality’ of the human condition by cultivating the ‘quality of rawness and freshness’ of children’s minds. The famous English philosopher John Locke noted that he regarded the child for whose father he had written the 1693 treatise Some Thoughts Concerning Education ‘only as white Paper, or Wax, to be moulded and fashioned as one pleases’ (1889: 187, § 217). Standing behind these metaphors of bestiality, rawness and pliability were eager thoughts of power over the future: the presumption that the hands that rocked cradles would one day rule the world. Locke was quite clear about this. ‘Of all the Men we meet with,’ he wrote, ‘Nine Parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their Education’ (1889: 1, § 1). The popular methods backing this presumption varied through time and space, but they consistently supposed not only a deep consciousness of childhood – a strong will to brand young people with the name of

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‘child’ – but also a deep desire to isolate children in order better to bend them to the will of their adult rulers. Printed advice came thick and fast. ‘Sleep neither too little nor too much. Begin each day by blessing it in God’s name and saying the Lord’s Prayer. Thank God for keeping you through the night and ask his help for the new day. Greet your parents. Comb your hair and wash your face and hands’, advised an early sixteenth century German manual on discipline (two centuries later, Byron was among those still complaining that children disliked washing and hence always smelled of bread and butter, or worse). Encouraging children to internalise social norms and to cultivate their sense of individual conscience were given top priority among the Dutch Protestants of the seventeenth century. From a republican perspective, Rousseau’s Émile, ou de l’education (1762) developed similar thoughts. Though indebted to the quarantining imperative and its universe of presumptions, his manual of advice gave a radical twist to images of children. It was a forerunner of the view that childhood was a realm of purity and dynamic innocence subsequently lost to adults. Émile begins with the famous line: ‘Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things, everything degenerates in the hands of man.’ Then followed the advice: ‘Respect childhood, leave nature to act for a long time before you get involved with acting in its place.’ The advice supposed that children were (potentially) creatures blessed with a depth of moral wisdom about the world that adults find hard to comprehend. From there it was just a short step towards the conclusion that children should be given more space outside civil society in which to develop their capacities, for instance through play with objects made available to them by adults. In the closing decades of the eighteenth century, the first hints of the child as player of games and consumer of commodities appeared. Parents were encouraged to tap into the emerging toy industry to occupy their children’s attention by supplying them with marbles, dolls, tops, board games, jigsaw puzzles and model soldiers; by the middle of the nineteenth century, manufacturing centres such as the Black Country in England and Nuremberg in Germany turned out huge quantities of cheap metal and wooden toys that even working-class households could afford to buy. But during the age of the great quarantine, childhood was not all play. Hegel’s image of the family, which belongs to the very end of this period, pictured the domestic as the ‘first ethical root of the state’, as a sphere of sensuous reciprocity, of harmony nourished by unadulterated love. The image was greatly idealised, as revealed by the systematic spread of rougher methods of crushing the wills and training up children to the standards of adulthood, backed by threats of force. The age of quarantined children was marked by great violence against them – in the name of their civilisation. The lingering belief in the innate deprav-

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ity of children encouraged parents and guardians to pick up the rod so as not to spoil the child. Raw leather could be made to stretch; soft wax would take any impression; as the twig was bent, so would the tree be inclined, ran the common sayings of the new ‘poisonous pedagogy’ (Miller 1983: 3–91). There were children hanged for committing minor offences, such as rebelling against their parents. Whipping, beating, scolding and generally abusing children, so as to fling them into a state of fear, was widespread, through all social ranks. Not even toddlers were spared: the future seventeenth-century king Louis XIII was reportedly whipped by his nurse from the age of 2 (a fitting tribute to an age that believed in the aphorism, ‘Woe to the kingdom whose king is a child’); and Susanna Wesley, the mother of Methodism and herself the twenty-fifth of twentyfive children, noted that from the age of 1, at the latest, her own children were taught to fear the rod and to cry softly.

The Age of Welfare Regulation There is no space here to detail the complex variety of challenges to the enslavement of children – for that is what it was – but striking is the fact that well into the nineteenth century the majority of children living in the Atlantic region managed in various ways to escape the worst effects of the quarantine process. There was tremendous resistance, most of it unorganised and ‘private’, to the efforts of the middle-class friends of civil society to define young people as children, then to forcibly isolate and civilise them. Material necessity, fear of starvation and infant mortality, and the simple imperative of survival, gripped the offspring of the peasantry and craftspeople and urban workers and vagrants. Young people were thus expected to grow up fast, to earn or thieve a crust by working for money or kind, as well as to help their elders with tasks around the farm, or the workbench, or the home, if indeed there was a home. Among the civilisers of the emergent civil societies of the Atlantic region, the ruffians and vagabonds who absconded were regarded as less than children, as in need of new forms of government and philanthropic regulation that more effectively ‘policed’ children, using more benevolent methods. ‘Every person that frequents the out-streets of this city’, declared a group of New York city reformers in 1824, ‘must be forcibly struck with the ragged and uncleanly appearance, the vile language, and the idle and miserable habits of great numbers of children, most of whom are of an age suitable for schools, or for some useful employment.’ The reformers added: ‘The parents of these children, are, in all probability, too poor, or too degenerate, to provide them with clothing fit for them to be seen in at school; and to know not where to place them in order that they may find employment, or be better cared for’ (Documents Relative

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to the House of Refuge 1832: 13). By the middle of the nineteenth century, this new way of thinking flourished. The upshot was that legislators, Christian philanthropists, newspapermen, writers and public moralists imagined a better future for children. They questioned the use of violence and quarantine as means of reproducing childhood – and rejected the principle of dealing with recalcitrant children by humiliating them, sometimes by taking their lives. We know from the reception afforded Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist (1838) that literature played a vital role in persuading publics of the urgent need to view children and childhood differently. Among the most powerful appeals to stop the wanton cruelty against children was the fictionalised autobiography by Jules Vallès, L’Enfant (1879). An open attack on the double standards of bourgeois culture, a plea for greater civility directed at young and old alike, the novel was dedicated to ‘all those who were bored stiff at school or reduced to tears at home, who in childhood were bullied by their teachers or thrashed by their parents’. It featured a young boy, Jacques Vingtras, who suffered persistent scapegoating and violent abuse at the hands of a schoolteacher father and peasant mother who seemed mainly interested in climbing social ladders. The boy’s mother is especially pleased to find divine authority for her sadistic impulses in the biblical injunction that sparing the rod spoils the child. So at home she gets on with the daily act of worship, all the while subjecting her young son to ingenious humiliations. He appears to internalise his mother’s zeal, and indeed he seems most at home and free of emotional suffering when he is receiving his regular sacrament of beatings and humiliations. He seems to enjoy being forced to eat onions that make him vomit. He apparently likes being battered black and blue. He obeys orders to wear trousers that are so rough and ill fitting that they draw blood. He willingly swallows his mother’s regular doses of penny-pinching public humiliation and his father’s attempts to have him incarcerated. So brutalised is the boy that he seems to pity those among his mates who are the victims of non-violent parental affection. He even feels unwell when his mother refrains from chastising him. ‘I’d give a great deal to get a clout – it makes my mother happy, it cheers her up; it’s like the flip of a wagtail or the dive of a duck.’ Or so things seem. Much of the action in L’Enfant is hideously farcical, so charged with emotional coldness and cruelty that the reader is encouraged to identify with the angry introspection of a misunderstood child, who eventually learns in subtle ways to escape his prison of punishment and to stand up to his parents, even to love them in time. Despite everything, the morally and physically abused child is in fact a model for others, an example of how to endure injustice, and how to use early moral intuitions to overcome it in the name of dignity and simple decency – against its self-appointed adult guardians. The young child’s conclusion even had political implica-

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tions: ‘I’ll defend the Rights of Children in the same way others defend the Rights of Man’ (Vallès 2005: 327). Language like that sent reformers scurrying in all directions, to find new ways of rescuing children from violence, material deprivation and ill breeding – and from their unduly short childhoods. The horrible condition of the lower-class young was no longer seen simply as a fact of life; and young people in general were now considered capable of escaping their immaturity. For that to happen, they needed to be trained into obedient maturity, to see that one day they would become adults, and that until that day arrived, like young animals not yet ready to cope in the wide world, they had to be trained up into literacy, and socially useful practices. ‘The feebleness of infancy demands a continual protection’, noted Jeremy Bentham, who was among the first to express the new wisdom in the language of child welfare. ‘Everything must be done for an imperfect being, which as yet does nothing for itself. The complete development of its physical powers takes many years; that of its intellectual faculties is still slower.’ He added: ‘At a certain age, it has already strength and passions, without experience enough to regulate them. Too sensitive to present impulses, too negligent of the future, such a being must be kept under an authority more immediate than that of the laws’ (1840: I/248). The process of producing happier, literate, socially useful children through families, hospitals and foundling homes was presumed to take time. The period of childhood was consequently extended, and the new pedagogies and laws and government policies combined to usher in a second phase of childhood: an age of welfare regulation that demonstrated not only that there was no such fixed condition called childhood, but also that childhood could be a prelude to membership of a civil society and full citizenship exercised within a political community. The old spatial metaphors that had defined childhood as subservience were shattered. New spatial metaphors appeared. Children were still reckoned to live outside of civil society, beyond its margins; but from hereon they were supposed no longer to stand beneath its structures, as in the age of the great quarantine. Children were regarded instead as positioned alongside and just outside its boundaries – as proto-adults who were capable of entering into its dynamics, as labourers, servants, owners of property, civil administrators and military and naval men, and as citizens. How did the change come about? The age of welfare regulation was inaugurated and subsequently driven by many forces, including the advent of public inoculation against smallpox and other fatal diseases; public outcries against cruel employers and the trans-Atlantic opposition to slavery; new claims about the benefits of public education, including teaching children to read and write; and the dramatic reduction of fertility rates, of the kind that first happened in the United States and

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France. The shrinking numbers of young people in these countries was triggered by a change of expectations unleashed by their revolutions against absolutism. Dreams of material improvement, equality and liberty spread rapidly through the Atlantic region. It soon became something of a laboratory where young people were rescued from violence, over-working and ill breeding by philanthropic and state intervention in households, especially the homes of the poor scum that comprised the majority of the population. Among the vital champions of such intervention were children’s home-improvement societies, of the kind that flourished in nineteenth-century America. Rooted in civil society and fostered originally by the Protestant churches, middle-class bodies like the New York Children’s Aid Society (founded in 1853 by Charles Loring) and the Boston Children’s Aid Society (founded in 1860) specialised in the placement of poor, neglected and orphaned children in farms and small towns – and did much to popularise new methods of care for children that were said to be firmly in their best interests, not merely the interests of adults. The resultant of these various trends had vast social effects. Young people were gradually removed from the official labour market, subcategorised, compulsorily educated, required by law and social pressure to spend a growing proportion of their lives in the publicly regulated institutions of childhood, alongside civil society. Many striking paradoxes marked the era of welfare regulation. In an age when children were still poor people’s riches, children, in the name of civil society, were forcibly removed from its labour markets. Formally excluded from involvement in the market structures of civil society, children were increasingly housed in its schools. Regarded as beings that were not yet capable of responsibly shifting for themselves, children who violated social standards, for example by committing a crime, suddenly found themselves treated – and punished – as if they were adults. Public muddle about the status and powers of children was commonplace during this period. It was certainly stained by the juices of paternalism: while there was much talk of ‘care’ and ‘improvement’ in connection with civil society, representative government and democracy, children were regarded as objects of welfare administration, as the aim and effect of top-down policies designed to minimise violence and humiliation, to prepare them for their discharge into adult life. A case in point, at the end of the nineteenth century, was the rise of the ‘child savers’ in the United States – reform-minded intellectuals, professionals and organisations who were rhetorically committed to ‘protecting’ children from themselves, and from the ‘delinquency’ that was said to be produced by the physical and moral dangers of an increasingly industrialised and urban society (Platt 1969). Especially in the field of government, the building of pioneering systems of welfare protection was often slow, in no small measure because

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they triggered bitter conflict and resistance. In Britain, for example, the 1802 Health and Morals of Apprentices Act limited the hours worked by children in textile mills to twelve per day; and the 1833 Factory Act prohibited the employment of children under the age of 9. But it was not until the passing of the 1880 Education Act that schooling became compulsory for children between ages 5 and 10 – and not until 1900 that the school-leaving age was raised to 14 years, so effectively removing younger people from the vagaries of lab our markets. The American case equally highlights the drawn-out difficulties that frustrated welfare reformers. In 1916, a Democratic Congress passed the first child labour law (known as the Keating-Owen Child Labour Act) in the country’s history by substantial majorities. Its proponents considered the legislative victory a triumph, and with good reason. Signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, it condemned the perceived evils of child labour by prohibiting the sale in interstate commerce of goods manufactured by children. But two years later, in a cliffhanging judgment, the Supreme Court held the law to be unconstitutional. Within eight months of that judgment, a newly elected, Republican-dominated Congress passed another child labour law, again by a sizeable margin. The Supreme Court dug in its heels, and three years later it rejected the law as unconstitutional by a margin of 8–1. Congress took its revenge; it ensured that judicial obstruction was to produce a much bigger, unintended effect. In 1924, Congress introduced a constitutional amendment. It passed through the House and Senate by big margins. The issue of protecting children against exploitative employers then spread to the state legislatures. By 1938, twenty-eight states with a clear majority of the country’s population had passed the amendment. In that same year, Congress agreed to the Fair Labour Standards Act, which contained provisions outlawing child labour. By 1942 – half a lifetime after the pioneering legislation – the cause in favour of children was finally upheld by the Supreme Court (Dahl 1965: 106–107). Efforts to abolish child labour formed part of a much bigger shift, a great historical transformation of the definition and treatment of children. Government and philanthropic intervention into the world of childhood had not merely the effect of lengthening the time young people spent as minors; it triggered a paradigm change in how they were regarded by others. Mental and physical violence directed at young people was increasingly viewed as illegitimate. Child poverty was seen to be unnecessary. All children were said to be capable of literacy and in need of a certain level of material and spiritual wellbeing; as fragile beings, they were thought to be deserving of adult feelings of compassion and mercy. The history of legislation covering compulsory schooling exemplifies the mood change. Consider again the case of Britain, where governments became involved for the first time with the schooling of children, in 1833, with an education grant of £20,000. The first Education Act (which

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conceived education as neither compulsory nor free) did not reach the Statute Books until 1870; only in 1876, with Sandon’s Education Act, did government stand behind efforts to encourage as many children as possible to attend schools, and to make their parents responsible for ensuring that they received basic instruction. In 1891, the Fee Grant Act finally made elementary education free of charge – at which point, government effectively acknowledged that all adult members of the society had a responsibility for the youngest generation, who were from here on presumed to be capable of leaving the world of childhood to become adult citizens capable of satisfying their duties, but also blessed with entitlements, including the rights to live and work and organise within a civil society protected by the casting of votes in elections.

The Coming Enfranchisement The most recent phase of childhood – let us call it the age of the child citizen – is one in which the principle that children are capable of living within civil societies, and that they are honorary citizens, serves as both a rallying point for many organisations, networks and groups, and as the focus of conduct and policymaking in the fields of government, law and civil society. Although the emancipation of children as full citizens is bitterly contested – there is plenty of resistance from government administrators, paediatricians, social workers, nurses, daycare centre employees, school teachers and child therapists – there are also many indications that the release of children from bondage, into civil society and its political and legal entitlements, is now under way. The old dogmas of quarantine and welfare regulation are crumbling; it is as if civil societies and governments have decided that they cannot live with the incivility that they formerly inflicted on children. The consequence is not only that the dualism between children and civil society becomes blurred in many people’s minds; the power-ridden division between child and adult becomes questionable, and is publicly questioned, with politically unsettling effects.2 Although unstable, self-contradictory and by no means fully consolidated, the age of the child citizen, roughly speaking, had its beginnings in the years immediately following the end of World War Two. It is true that the changes affecting the definition and treatment of children since that time have older roots. Not to be underestimated are the long-term boomerang effects, the unintended consequences, of the two earlier phases of childhood. The quarantine of children, for instance, presupposed that there was no such thing as the innocence of childhood. Much later, it also stimulated awareness that the cruel treatment of children was incompatible with the values and rules of a civil society. The age of welfare regulation, with its talk of ‘care’ and ‘the best interest of the child’,

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similarly produced allergic reactions to the condescension of children. Both epochs subsequently prompted distinctions to be drawn between biological ‘time’ and ‘social’ time, so that, for example, the biological immaturity of children is today routinely distinguished from the many different ways in which that immaturity can be symbolically understood, and made publicly meaningful and institutionally effective. If the age of the child citizen is the unintended consequence of two earlier historical epochs, then it also has more immediate roots in the efforts of civil society campaigners, professional experts, governments and businesses to do something about the powerlessness of minors induced by the earlier history of childhood. Thanks to their efforts, which are not always altruistic, the conditions in which children live their lives are coming to be seen as contingent, as therefore capable of improvement. The subjection of children comes to seem strange. The task of vindicating their rights to live well finds its way onto political agendas. Once presumed to be the section of society best suited to the rod, creatures that were little and prone to misbehaviour, children nowadays find themselves at the centre of policy disputes and political fights. Some of them also find a voice of their own; through youth parliaments, children’s forums and other bodies, they are heard and come to expect to be listened to by others. The contemporary politicisation of childhood is driven by a wide variety of forces. Summarised in the briefest way, the most important trends include: The twentieth-century assault on the patriarchal family. The contemporary retreat of the patriarchal family, especially in the Atlantic region, is not the result of what some structural-functional sociologists blandly call modernisation. Two global wars, the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, the political victories of the suffragettes, the construction of welfare states, new labour market obligations and opportunities for women and, most recently, neo-feminist movements have had the combined effect of weakening patriarchy on a scale never before witnessed in such a short time (Therborn 2004). In the Atlantic region, the changes have been a mixed blessing for children. The early death of infants has radically declined in tandem with a comparative decline of the numbers of children. That has meant better conditions of life for many children, including their cherishing as children (the matter-of-factness with which earlier generations handled high infant mortality rates is almost unimaginable to most people today). But for some children, life has come to be plagued by such factors as fatherly neglect, pauperisation and (increasingly reported) domestic violence. The continuing wide gap between women’s legal equality with men and the fact that on average in OECD countries women enjoy not much more than half (55–60 per cent) the wealth and income of men is not to the general advantage of children. The point is

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that while the breakdown and decline of patriarchal families has not led automatically to the improvement of the lives of children, their actual living conditions are nevertheless changing fast. The development of government and civil society schemes in support of the principle that children, considered as young citizens, have the right to certain universal entitlements. Free dental and health care and schooling schemes have become commonplace, but there are signs on the political horizon of more radical schemes, such as plans for the provision of basic income to children as citizens. The former US Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, championed federal government proposals for opening an investment saving account in the name of every child at her or his birth, to place a specified sum of several thousand dollars into the account at every birthday until the age of 18, with the accumulated funds then allowed to grow at a compounded rate until the individual reaches retirement age. The proposal has had some effect. Legislation to establish more modest Kids Accounts – in a society in which up to 20 per cent of households have no bank account – has reached Congress; at state level, experiments are under way to create children’s accounts through Cradle to College Commissions, supported by banks, colleges, businesses and foundations; and the SEED Initiative, sponsored by the Ford Foundation and other civil society bodies, is so far the most intensive effort to invest in children of different ages and family incomes by providing an initial deposit matched by family contributions, over a four-year period. In Britain there is a more ambitious scheme already in operation: the Child Trust Fund, under whose rules each child born on or after September 2002 receives a voucher of at least £250, rising to £500 for poorer families, then an additional payment of the same order when they reach age 7, the amount paid into a special cash or stock-market based account, which cannot be touched by the young person until she or he reaches 18. Changes in the field of civil and family law. These changes are dramatically transforming the jurisprudential status of children. There is growing agreement that law must make the child’s needs paramount; that there is an unquestioned right of (foster or step-) parents to raise their children as they see fit, free of government intrusion; but that in cases of neglect, maltreatment and abandonment, or in circumstances where adults themselves are unable to reach agreement and are forced to resort to legal processes, the role of the courts is to take the side of the child, in support of their needs, in order that they can become a person living in dignity, and capable of becoming an adequate parent for children of the future.3 Consider just three statutes in Britain during the past several decades: (1) the 1984 Appeal Court ruling in favour of Gillick, a ruling that established the principle that in the absence of an express statutory rule, all parental authority ‘yields to the child’s right to make his [sic] own

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decisions when he reaches a sufficient understanding and intelligence to be capable of making up his own mind on the matter requiring decision’; (2) the 1991 Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act, which established that young people have full (or ‘active’) legal capacity at 16 years, and that although the courts can set aside certain transactions as ‘prejudicial’ (like buying a computer or a bike), a child age 12 or over can make a will, be entitled to consent or not to an adoption order; the same Act also declared that a child of any age has ‘passive capacity’, for example, the right to own heritable and moveable property; and the Act had the effect of replacing the term minor with ‘age 16’ in certain statutes; (3) the 1995 Children (Scotland) Act which established that any child under 16 years, if s/he has sufficient understanding of the nature and consequences of the proceedings, now has legal capacity to instruct a solicitor in connection with any civil matter. The rapid growth of power-scrutinising organisations and networks dedicated to the improvement of young people’s lives. Many monitory bodies concerned with children are rooted in civil society, within state borders. Well-known examples include Action on Rights for Children, ChilOut (Children Out of Detention) and the Child Welfare League of Canada. Some child-monitoring initiatives operate across borders, often inspired by the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, whose clauses specify the entitlements of all young people under 18 years of age, or at least until the age of majority, if that comes earlier. Examples of crossborder social initiatives include Plan International; End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking; and the Campaign for Universal Birth Registration, which takes its cue from Article 7 of the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child, in support of the entitlement of each and every child to enjoy a legal identity (each year an estimated 48 million children are born without such an identity). What is striking about most or all of these power-monitoring initiatives is their rejection of the political language associated with the age of welfare regulation. Instead of condescending descriptions of children as frail and vulnerable creatures in need of protection and compassion, they speak firmly of the rights of children to enjoy their rights. Acts of preying upon children – including paedophilia – are deemed unjustified abuse. Histories of childhood. Guided by the work of Philippe Ariès and others, scholars from several disciplines have tried to show, for the first time and often with surprising effect, the varying spatial and temporal ways in which people and institutions have defined childhood, and how children themselves experience childhood as a particular phase of their lives. Such research has stimulated awareness that our childhood is not simply a bundle of formative experiences that we forget or remember; it forces recognition that the way we think about childhood itself has a history. The new histories have definite relativising effects on the un-

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derstanding of children – effects that have been compounded by the growing public impact of various species of psychoanalysis and child therapy. In spite of many in-house disagreements, the science and art of child development has emphasised that the experiences of adulthood are permanently linked to the formative episodes of childhood. Freud’s famous observation that a child suckling at his or her mother’s breast is the prototype of every relation of love serves as a clue to the bigger point – one that becomes obvious to those who think about it – that childhood and adulthood operate within the same spectrum; that at any moment an individual’s life is propelled into the future by the repetition of past (sexual and emotional) experiences that are more or less recognised, evaded or unwittingly consummated. Seen in this way, it is a brute fact that all adults were once children, but how exactly childhood works within adults, and what significance it has for them, is a ‘contingent fact’, a matter for adults themselves to recognise and to act upon. Put differently: children are equipped with the strong wish to grow up, to become like adults, but adults are forever (like) children. ‘A life’, Adam Phillips (2002: 150) explains, is ‘an idiosyncratic repertoire of repetitions.’ Children’s literature. In the burgeoning literature by or about children, young people are now considered, like adults, as readers with tastes and powers to set trends (Lesnik-Oberstein 1996). The age of the child citizen witnesses the advent of a huge global children’s book industry; well-publicised listed ratings of children’s books, featuring many different sub-genres; and the popularity of Roald Dahl, Jacqueline Wilson (the most borrowed author in Britain’s libraries) and other authors who write explicitly in defence of the democratic principle that children are at least the equals of adults. There are as well huge-selling works that are now widely considered ‘children’s classics’, like Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking series, Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince, E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, as well as blockbuster works, like 13-year-old Anne Frank’s diaries, which contain the following kinds of entries: Monday 28th September 1942 … I think it’s odd that grown-ups quarrel so easily and so often and about such petty matters. Up till now I always thought bickering was just something children did and that they outgrew it. Of course, there’s sometimes a reason to have a ‘real’ quarrel, but the verbal exchanges that take place here are just plain bickering. I should be used to the fact that these squabbles are daily occurrences, but I’m not and never will be as long as I’m the subject of nearly every discussion. (They refer to these as ‘discussions’ instead of ‘quarrels’, but Germans don’t know the difference!) They criticize everything, and I mean everything, about me: my behaviour, my personality, my manners; every inch of me, from head to toe and back again, is the subject of gossip and debate. Harsh words and shouts are constantly being flung at my head, though I’m absolutely not used to it. According to the powers that be, I’m supposed to grin and bear it. But I can’t! I have no intention of taking their

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insults lying down. I’ll show them that Anne Frank wasn’t born yesterday. They’ll sit up and take notice and keep their big mouths shut when I make them see that they ought to attend to their own manners instead of mine. How dare they behave like that! It’s simply barbaric. (2002: 43–44)

The self-creation of youth subculture. Beginning during the 1950s, for the first time ever, there appeared new lifestyles for young people that quickly came to be called ‘youth culture’. Defined by distinctive symbolic styles and tangible choices in matters such as clothing, slang, politics and music genres, the youth-based subculture offered participants membership and identities outside of those ascribed by family, work, school and other civil society institutions. The long-term effects of youth subculture remain controversial. Some observers interpret it as a ritualised resistance from below to dominant (bourgeois) culture; others claim that the subculture has made young people, whose hormones change earlier and faster than ever before, more worldly wise; still others insist that youth subculture has become so dominant that the worship of adolescence ensures many people now retain immature attitudes well into adulthood (Hall and Jefferson 1993; Mintz 2004; Danesi 2003). Less controversial is the way youth subculture, in defiance of the old adage that old heads cannot be put on young shoulders, has powerfully interpellated children to think of themselves as members of a younger generation. Consider just one example from the early youth generation: ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’, a famous song written and performed in the early 1970s by Lou Reed, a louche, musically talented New Yorker with a drug habit, good connections and a large chip on his shoulder. Those who heard it performed live usually agreed that it was among the most sublime contributions to music of that generation. Quite at odds both with Reed’s cultivated talent for making himself permanently misunderstood through dark and brooding performances, its simple lyrics summarised one (imaginary) view of the history of the outbreak of youth culture: Jenny said, when she was just five years old / You know there’s nothin’ happening at all / You know my parents will be the death of us all / Two TV sets, two Cadillac cars … ain’t help me nothin’ at all. … One fine morning, she heard on a New York station / She couldn’t believe what she heard at all. … Despite all the amputation / You could dance to a rock ‘n’ roll station / It was all right.

The rise of the child consumer, and a politics of children’s consumption. Business corporations, especially in the field of communication media, show unprecedented interest in youthful outlets for their products. While the figure of the child as a participant in the world of commodities made its first appearance towards the end of the quarantine phase of childhood, and while children as buyers and consumers of toys, books,

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clothing and other commodities expanded considerably during the welfare phase of childhood, it was usually the spectre of childhood pauperisation that gripped the imaginations of contemporaries. During the age of the child citizen, by contrast, children have become the target of concerted advertising and marketing strategies that have proved to be as controversial as they have been profitable to manufacturers and retailers. On an unprecedented scale, children have been drawn fully into markets, where they are targeted by businesses keen to exploit whatever buying power they or their parents or guardians have. The whole process is however not quite the one-way street that some observers have supposed it to be. Those who worry that children will drown in an endless flood of choosing, buying and expending commodities have a point. But for all the claims that children are the victims of organised efforts to manufacture a future generation of dead-head consumers who will serve as the obedient slaves of a totalitarian consumer society of ‘comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom’ (Herbert Marcuse), the terrain of children’s consumption is now heavily contested. Many efforts to de-commodify young people’s lives have begun: Jamie Oliver’s media-led assault on the British school lunch culture of turkey twizzlers, including his Democracy Cookbook (2006) initiative ‘for youth workers to help them engage young people in politics, show them what it means, how it works, and demonstrate the difference they can make with their vote’; campaigns against the use of Scooby-Doo, Bob the Builder, Shrek and other film and cartoon and celebrity characters to sell food stuffed with salt, fat and sugar to minors whose obesity rates are rising; and the enforcement of legal limits on advertising targeted at children. The unsustainability of present and predicted future patterns of high-intensity consumption is also prompting campaigns to highlight to children their long-term responsibilities as earthly bio-citizens. Initiatives to reduce the voting age for young people. The early history of representative democracy was marked by the presumption that young people were entitled to become citizens with full voting rights only when they reached the age of 21; voting and office holding was sometimes confined to elected representatives who were even older (a practice that remains in countries such as Italy, where in Senate elections voters must be at least age 25). Many adults today think such rules are set at about the right level. They are against reform, and say so openly. Their language bears striking parallels, in the history of representative democracy, to the rhetoric used by those who opposed the emancipation of slaves, or who resisted granting the vote to male workers, or women, or colonial subjects. Conservatives say that ‘kids’ lack ‘maturity’; their ability to think logically through an argument, to understand cause and effect, and to take responsibility for their own actions, is sub-standard, or so it is said. The claim is of course circular and true by definition: kids are naturally

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kids; maturity is thought to have no history, so that youth and politics will never mix. So it follows that teenagers, in their imprudence, will misuse the vote. At 16 (say opponents) teenagers are negative and rebellious; they are more keen on making a statement than acting responsibly. Like hysterical suffragettes bent on dragging passions into politics, or ill-mannered nineteenth-century workers, young people are a danger unto themselves. The champions of voting reform contradict this way of thinking, with some success. The era of the child citizen unleashes pressures for reducing the voting age below 18. The earliest successful moves to set the voting age at 16 began during the 1990s, at the municipal and state levels in Germany. In 2007, Austria became the first of the world’s leading democracies to adopt a voting age of 16 for all purposes. Elsewhere, civil society campaigns pursue the same goal. Examples include groups like Article 12 in Scotland; Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions and Rock the Vote in the United States; and Germany’s K.R.Ä.T.Z.Ä. (www.kraetzae.de), a youth support network that stands for the abolition of all age limits for voting.

The Child Citizen? The changes unleashed by these and other forces are arguably of major significance in the history of civil societies and modern representative democracy. The overall transition that is now under way in many richer countries is one that leads from a condition of childhood in which children were neither in nor of civil society, and were accordingly treated as mere subjects of adult’s power, towards a world in which children are gradually coming to be seen as full members of civil society, and as citizens who are the equals of adults. Something like a de-colonisation of children and childhood is going on. No longer are young people regarded, for instance, as little animals in need of a good thrashing, or as delicate creatures that should be seen but not heard. Overweening adult presumptions are breaking down. In various fields of law and government and civil society, children are coming to be seen as thoughtful and sentient beings, as citizens who are entitled as of right to lives unblemished by fear and violence, happy and fulfilling lives unscarred by enforced labour, or the pressures of market consumption, or the prejudiced bossing of those who have already reached the age of so-called majority. The old presumption that the physical immaturity of children consigns them of necessity to generalised immaturity is crumbling. Just as the physical ‘disabilities’ of groups once referred to in derogatory ways as ‘the crippled’ and ‘the old’ are now seen as needing compensation, so that ‘the disabled’ and ‘the elderly’ can live their lives in dignity, in the sunshine of respect from others, so the biological facts of physical immaturity of children are

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seen increasingly to be detachable from questions about how, in social and political ways, this so-called immaturity is to be compensated in ways that are meaningful and satisfying to children themselves. Reminders are served that immaturity means something positive: far from connoting inertness or mere lack or the inability to shift for oneself in the world, it signifies the positive power of children to act meaningfully and in dignity – to live, play, work, shed tears, love and ponder things in peace and quiet, just as grown-ups do. Enfranchisement by stealth: that is one way of describing the longterm trajectory that makes children living in various parts of the globe the beneficiaries of policies and support that win them greater dignity and respect and freedom. Symptomatic of the long-term enfranchisement is the way that the period of so-called minority is subjected to increasingly anomalous patterns of definition, duty and entitlement. In today’s Britain, for instance, young people can vote at 18; but at 16, they can pilot a glider, sleep together, marry (without parental consent in Scotland) and have children. In Scotland, 16 year olds can bring an action for aliment – or even when they are under 16, so long as they display the capacity to instruct a solicitor. All 16 year olds can be independently domiciled and give their consent to surgical, medical and dental treatment; they can be company directors, or be tried by jury in Crown Court and locked up, or change their name by deed poll, or leave school. Under the 1991 Child Support Act, whose central legal concept is the ‘qualifying child’, a person ceases to be a child at 16. Young men (women have to wait another year) can even join the armed forces. Anomalous definitions of childhood are symptomatic of the democratisation of childhood. We have entered times in which its fields come to be ploughed by deep political controversies; on a scale never before seen, the experience of childhood comes widely to be seen as contingent. That results in a widening repertoire of images and interpretations of childhood; monistic presumptions about children’s necessary servitude, or their bestiality, or their utility as young beasts of burden, or as angels, give way to a kaleidoscope of views about childhood and children. It might even be said that childhood is so pluralised that childhood is no more. The spaces opened up for different definitions of the experience of minority even enable some children, for the first time, to win political and legal protection for their claims, and even to find a public voice, for instance through school councils, youth parliaments and children’s forums. There are admittedly mountains of prejudices and double-standards that still burden and spoil children’s lives, but symptomatic of the trend towards their inclusion as citizens in civil society is the accelerating breakdown of philosophical confidence in the old practices of treating children as feral or fragile creatures. Suppositions that the fundamental

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power division between adult and child is rooted in factual differences are admittedly still alive today. They underpin recent proposals (in Germany and Italy and elsewhere) for extending a second vote to parents, who are understood as ‘interested guardians’ of the interests of their children. Starker versions of such thinking have old roots. The nineteenthcentury English journalist James Fitzjames Stephen gave voice to the supposed differences when discussing the legal status of being a child. Although admitting that ‘minority and majority are questions of degree, and the line that separates them is arbitrary’, he blasted as meta-barbaric those who dared to raise questions about children’s legal status. ‘If children were regarded by law as the equals of adults, the result would be something infinitely worse than barbarism. It would involve a degree of cruelty to the young which can hardly be realized even in imagination. The proceeding, in short, would be so utterly monstrous and irrational that I suppose it never entered into the head of the wildest zealot for equality to propose it’ (1967: 142, 193). The old confidence exuded by Fitzjames Stephen and others of this period has been withering for some time. It shows every sign of withering away completely. In the age of the child citizen, there is growing awareness of the need for distinctions and discriminations that are much more subtle than thresholds – the 21st or 18th or 16th birthday – that seem utterly arbitrary, and misleadingly so, if only because they suppose that mature, sane, responsible adults appear magically, at an instant, like butterflies from the cocoon of childhood. The opening sequences in the passage from birth to adulthood to old age (with which childhood shares more than a few passing resemblances) to death are not like that. Just like adults of any age, children enjoy well-developed capacities to feel and abhor pain. It is not true that the young feel no pain, or less pain, or that there is something like a rule that stipulates that the younger a child the less pain s/he ‘naturally’ feels, or remembers. Hence the campaigns, waged by groups such as War Child and Amnesty International, to highlight the hellish suffering experienced by child soldiers, whose numbers have reportedly swelled to more than 300,000 worldwide. While children are certainly not adults in miniature, there are other deep continuities between the worlds of minority and majority. Those who have and/or know children also know that whatever their degree of self-centeredness, their actions are always tempered by some measure of selfless concern for others, as well as a strongly imagined sense of selfrespect. These are of course qualities shared with adults, some of whom in moments of honesty will admit that their own sense of self-respect is not only bound up with the concern for others, but that contact with children often has the effect of reminding adults that they can unlearn qualities that are sometimes better developed in children. ‘Few grown-up persons’, remarked John Dewey (1925: 51–52), ‘retain all of the flexible

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and sensitive ability of children to vibrate sympathetically with the attitudes and doings of those about them. Inattention to physical things (going with incapacity to control them) is accompanied by a corresponding intensification of interest and attention as to the doings of people.’ Dewey’s point prompts the vexed question of whether or not children know how to live – as citizens – in the big, wide world. It is often said, and common sense seems to dictate, that they know little or nothing, that lacking conceptions of how they should live, parents, guardians, teachers and other adults have no alternative but to teach the young by imposing their own standards upon minors. ‘The child literally does not know how to live, and must be taught to do so’, wrote John Plamenatz five decades ago. He drew from this the conclusion that since it has neither knowledge nor experience of the world, the child is incapable of making choices worthy of the name, and must therefore be the object of alien rule. ‘If it is not taught in one way, it will be taught in another; it feels the need to be influenced, to be guided, to be put on its feet morally and spiritually. … We impose our standards on our children, not because our standards are better than theirs, but because they have none of their own’ (1960: 23–24) From the point of view of the child citizen, there are several troubles with this view. Ignorance is not a monopoly of childhood; nor is inexperience or uncertainty about how to live in the world. The acknowledgement by adults that people do not know enough to navigate their way through the world – that they are humble creatures in need of humility and help from others – is in any case a fundamental democratic virtue (Keane 2009). Moreover, the view that children are ignorant of the world, and are therefore incapable of dwelling responsibly on the (distant) consequences of their own actions, is again not a defect of minors; the history of adult struggles for and against self-government is splattered with ignorant fools and headstrong knaves. Finally, the view that children are ignorant and irresponsible, and that it is therefore ‘in their own best interests’ to be subjected to external controls, begs large questions about not only who defines their ‘interests’, but also which forms of control are most appropriate and legitimate – exactly the same questions that have proven to be the stuff of every known attempt to build civil society and democratic procedures and institutions. Rash ignorance and efforts to minimise its harmful effects are not specialties of the young. Governmental intervention into the affairs of adults for the stated purpose of minimising or preventing misguided acts that have harmful effects – think of John Stuart Mill’s reasoned call for the regulation of soldiers who drink alcohol on the job, or of someone unwittingly about to swallow cyanide – are of course a feature of all known forms of government. What is distinctive and special about democracy, beginning with its assembly-based forms in the classical period, is that they may be seen as practical experiments in

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exactly the same art of naming and regulating their citizens’ precipitant behaviour, but doing so by means that are subject to processes of public accountability and the public giving of consent.

And the Future? What are the probable long-term effects of the quiet revolution in favour of children’s rights as citizens? How will it all end? It is far too early to guess, let alone to tell. All that can be said safely is that for two centuries, European theories of civil society have largely had deaf ears and closed eyes for children, instead priding themselves on thinking of civil society as an adults’ affair, as a sphere of life higher in status than that of the family. Think of Hegel’s treatment of domestic life in Philosophie des Rechts: the family is parochial, body-bound, oiled by sentiments of closeness, the proximity of adults concerned with the animal-like concerns of lust and procreation, the nurturing of uncivilised children, who are ‘outside’ of civil society and state or, more accurately, duty bound to behave as objects of transcendence, as preludes to the higher worlds of civil society and the state. It is time to abandon this kind of thinking, which in practical terms has been rendered obsolete and (from a strategic and normative perspective) is now better described as an uncivilised remnant of the early nineteenth century. It was the eighteenth-century wit Nicolas de Chamfort who remarked that the best index of the degree of civility of any society is the way it treats women. That aphorism remains true, but it needs to be supplemented with another: the quality of life within any actually civil society is best measured by the way it treats its young people, who are after all one key to the doors of the future of all government and society. It follows from this maxim that there is today an urgent need to do something about the lingering condescension and disempowerment of children – beginning with such elementary reforms as the campaign for universal registration; the strengthening of the Gillick criteria in courts of law; the prohibition of child trafficking and solitary confinement and forcible strip searching of young offenders; and the reduction of the age at which young people can vote for representatives. The current jump in the levels of child poverty – documented by a recent world report on children’s living conditions in rich countries (United Nations Children’s Fund 2007) – must be reversed; that this can be achieved is suggested by the striking fact that given levels of child wellbeing are policy-susceptible, and that there is no obvious relationship between child poverty and GDP per capita. The cluttering of children’s lives with unnecessarily different and confusing thresholds of adulthood should be seen as a public problem; for the sake of their sense of self and dignity, and their learned ability

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to juggle and make sense of different situations, their domestic and wider societal lives should be better synchronised, not broken into fragments. All forms of cruelty and violence against children should be outlawed. So too should the outright victimisation of children by contingent and removable prejudices, many of them masquerading as generosity and benevolence. Energies must be invested in the creation of new mechanisms for enabling children publicly to represent their own interests. But the basic requirement for any or all this to happen is a switch of perception, a change of heart and mind, a willingness to see things differently: commencing with the recognition (as Tocqueville said of slavery in nineteenth-century America) that democracies that try to harbour the ships of servitude and injustice will find their shores battered by the gales of contempt for their hypocrisy. That rule certainly applies to children, who are no longer to be regarded simply as the citizens of the future. A new truth is out: children are now the measure of how all other citizens should be treated.

Notes 1. See the illuminating observations of Norbert Elias (1978) on children and civility, especially 53−54, 73−74, 140−141, 168−177, 188−189, 203. 2. Some accounts of this trend include O’Neill 2004, especially 101−109; Chen 2003: 189−202; and Bronfenbrenner and Neville 1994. 3. Among the classic and most highly influential defence of these principles is Goldstein, Freud and Solnit 1973.

References Bentham, Jeremy. 1840. Theory of Legislation. Vol. 1. Boston. Blackstone, Sir William. 1793. ‘Of Parent and Child’. Commentaries on the Laws of England in Four Books, 12th ed. London: book 1, chapter 16, 451–453. Bronfenbrenner, Urie, and Peter R. Neville. 1994. ‘America’s Children and Families: An International Perspective’. Putting Families First: America’s Family Support Movement and the Challenge of Change, ed. Sharon L. Kagan and Bernice Weissbourd. San Francisco: 3–27 Chen, Xiaobei. 2003. ‘The Birth of the Child Citizen’. Reinventing Canada: Politics of the 21st Century, ed. Janine Brodie and Linda Trimble. Toronto: 189–202. Dahl, Robert. 1965. A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago and London. Danesi, Marcel. 2003. Forever Young: The ‘Teen-Aging’ of Modern Culture. Toronto. Dewey, John. 1925. Democracy and Education. New York. Documents Relative to the House of Refuge. Instituted by the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents in the City of New York, in 1824. 1832. New York. Elias, Norbert. 1978. The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners. New York.

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Fitzjames Stephen, James. 1967. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Cambridge and New York. Frank, Anne. 2002. The Diary of a Young Girl. London and New York. Goldstein, Joseph, Anna Freud and Albert J. Solnit. 1973. Beyond the Best Interests of the Child. New York and London. Hall, Stuart, and Tony Jefferson. 1993. Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain. London. Heath Malkin, Benjamin. 1806. A Father’s Memoirs of his Child. London. Keane, John. 2009. The Life and Death of Democracy. London, New York and Madrid. Lesnik-Oberstein, Karin. 1996. ‘Defining Children’s Literature and Childhood’. International Companion Encyclopaedia of Children’s Literature, ed. Peter Hunt. London: 17−31. Locke, John. 1889 [1693]. Some Thoughts Concerning Education. 2nd ed. Cambride: University Press. Online at: http://archive.org/details/somethoughtsconc00lock uoft (30.03.2012) Miller, Alice. 1983. For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence. New York and London. Mintz, Steven. 2004. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA. O’Neill, John. 2004. Civic Capitalism: The State of Childhood. Toronto. Phillips, Adam. 2002. Equals. New York: 150. Plamenatz, John. 1960. On Alien Rule and Self-Government. London. Platt, Anthony M. 1969. The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency. Chicago and London. Sommerville, John C. 1992. The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England. Athens, GA. The United Nations Children’s Fund. 2007. Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries. Florence. Therborn, Göran. 2004. Between Sex and Power: Family in the World 1900−2000. London. Vallès, Jules. 2005. The Child. London 2005.

PART IV

State and Changing Families in Eastern Europe and the Middle East

Chapter 9

THE FAILURES OF MODERNITY FAMILY, CIVIL SOCIETY AND STATE IN THE PASSAGE FROM OTTOMAN EMPIRE TO TURKISH REPUBLIC

Ays*e Saraçgil

This chapter deals with the failures of the Ottoman and Turkish modernising elites of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to put the three elements family, civil society and state in a virtuous relationship which could have permitted the growth of a public sphere, free institutions and democracy. I believe that this is not just a political question in the narrow sense. It is also one heavily dependent on cultural dimensions and on relations in the private sphere. In this respect, the historian’s sensibility must be directed towards a series of complicated interactions: between Ottoman imperial structures and institutions on the one hand, and the way individuals, families and communities are conceived by the Muslim religion on the other. These elements combined to produce a specific narrative of male power and dominion, both in the private and the public spheres, which had an extraordinary force of resistance and continuity during the process of modernisation. The capacity of adaptation of this traditional narrative of male power constituted the major cultural limit of the Ottoman and the Turkish elites but it also allowed them to realise radical social, cultural and institutional changes without modifying the core structure of power relations. In these structural conditions a stable, pluralist and democratic public sphere had great difficulties in establishing itself. In reality there are moments when one has the impression of history being about to take a different turn, and of real change taking place: during the 1860s and the 1870s in the big urban centres, particularly in

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Istanbul, there is an important cultural and associational ferment which involves the young Muslim population as well as the youth of other, minoritarian, religious communities of the Empire. Their activity is to a great extent concentrated on a discussion of the emancipatory instances of modernisation. An even more dynamic moment of cultural-political activism, this time with a major emphasis on nationalist revendications, takes place in the first decades of the twentieth century. These movements, though different between them, nonetheless express a series of reformist desires; many of their demands for major liberties, political participation and cultural change are not that far distant from those debated in European bourgeois circles in the eighteenth century, famously analysed by Jürgen Habermas (1989). However, in the case of the Ottoman Empire these same battles never quite expand beyond the boundaries of a narrow elite. The top echelons of Ottoman society were divided along religious lines: the bureaucratic and military corps were Muslim, while the merchant class came mostly from non-Muslim communities (Göçek 1996: 81–83). When the concept of Ottoman citizenship came to the fore in the late nineteenth century, Muslim privilege was protected with the result that the merchant class never gained sufficient representation within the modern state. There were also profound difficulties in integrating into the new state the mass of illiterate peasants who were too heterogeneous from an ethnic and religious point of view, too numerous and dispersed. The weakness of the reformist movements did not just derive from their limited social base and ongoing religious exclusions. A fundamental conflict existed between two differing visions of reform. The first was inspired by French models of the centralised state as an all-powerful and corporate body which had the privilege of lawmaking, duly adapted to Ottoman and post-Ottoman conditions. The second derived its force from the relatively new theology of Islamist modernism. It sustained the ideal unity of a supra-national umma and demanded a necessary return to the purity of Islam’s origins and strict adherence to the Shari’a, which was to be the moral and juridical backbone for all the state’s actions (Abu-Manneh 2001; Mardin 1962: 402). These two tendencies came to characterise the cultural and political debate of the Ottoman Muslim elite, leaving aside all the other communities of the Empire. In this paralysing and excluding context the military were to predominate. We can discern the same pattern in almost all the key moments of change – in 1876–1877, when the Sultan Abdulhamid II suspended the recently proclaimed Constitution; in 1913, when the principal political organisation of the Young Turks gained absolute power by means of a coup d’état against the newly established Liberal Union government; lastly in 1925 when Atatürk abruptly banned the only organised opposition, the Progressive Republican Party. Although historical conditions are

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different in each case, we can find the same sequence of reaction: a violent military response leading to the closing up of all possibilities for the opposition to make itself present, and a rapid suppression of democratic and pluralist possibilities. These patterns are to have a very long trajectory in the history of modern Turkey.

Internal and External Spaces in the Ottoman Empire Before allowing this story to unfold, I have to analyse briefly and schematically the traditional power structures and institutions of Ottoman society, and their configuration in the family. It is as well to begin with religion. Islam does not conceive of the possibility of an anonymous public space with its own rules. The believers constitute the umma, the community of faithful, which performs the fundamental function of rendering testimony to God, ensuring the fidelity of individuals and educating them in Allah’s wishes. Therefore in the life of the believers there is no clear distinction between the private and the public, as both have to obey the same rules dictated by God, once and for all. Each able Muslim has the duty of judging the conformity of his or her acts with the revealed Laws, if need be with the aid of the ulema (the knowledgeable). Belonging to the umma protects from error. Normative models of behaviour, prescribed by gender, religion and social standing of each person and supervised by the elders, are the guarantee of community cohesion. These rigidities are mirrored in the traditional organisation of Ottoman society. This was a corporate society with very strong social control exercised at the levels of family, neighbourhood and work, both in the cities and the countryside. What the dominant power structures, both political and religious, feared most was a mixing-up of the different categories, the development of a promiscuity between them. Ottoman power was obsessed with the need to keep separate different categories of population and to maintain clear barriers between them, while guaranteeing certain freedoms and autonomies to each group. In a system that was both patriarchal and patrimonial, the Sultan was alone entitled to permit the passage from one social order or group to another. A possible exception was the time-honoured practice to take Christian boys very early from their families, convert and train them up either in the Janissary barracks or the Topkapı Palace, ready for high positions in the Sultan’s household. In Ottoman society, therefore, an individual’s space was strictly limited and everyone perforce had a group identity. The primary grouping, of course, was the family. Its structure and functions were naturally different in different historical periods, in different social classes and in differ-

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ent regions, and it is arduous indeed to talk about ‘the’ Ottoman family. But in this brief space, which obliges me to select and simplify, I shall concentrate upon the families of the governing elite and educated classes in the central regions of the Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. Ethnic traditions, imperial power and Islamic rules together create a family which has a monolithic and patriarchal structure. Male dominion within the family is automatic, but is dependent for its successful exercise upon the collaboration of women. Inside the family there are two power dichotomies at work: male-female and younger-elder (Pierce 1993). While the younger generation of both sexes is controlled by the elder, the hierarchy internal to the family is a dual one: on the one hand the most powerful figure in the household is the eldest male who is at the apex of the male hierarchy. But he promotes a parallel structure in the female hierarchy with the eldest woman – either the mother or the first wife of the patriarch – exercising noteworthy authority over all family members and the overall shape of domestic life (Kandiyoti 1991). In the domestic space patriarchal power is exercised and reproduction guaranteed. There is a clear-cut division of roles; the male head of household guarantees the purity of the domestic space, its economic viability and its external representation. His female counterpart, the mother figure, is responsible for the correct transmission of the patriarch’s rules and for the organisation of sexuality and reproduction practices of the younger generation. The powerless situation of young couples divides the relationship between the sexes into different periods of the life cycle: sexuality and reproduction as the main concern of the younger generation, family strategies and companionship for the older one. For females this domestic organisation led them to be powerless as wives and powerful as mothers (Saraçgil, 2009). The Ottoman version of the relationship between private (internal) and public (external), based on the concept of ritual purity and of its control, was reflected clearly in the organisation of the household and the construction of its physical spaces (Necipog¨lu 1991). The relatively powerless members of the family – women and children – lived their lives in the harem, the untouchable and inviolable part of the house, whose purity was controlled and guaranteed by men and elders. The presence without good reason – work or worship – in external space, potentially polluting, was to be kept as brief as possible even for males. The daily activities of adult males were situated on the borderline between external and internal spaces. They mainly lived in the part of the house called selamlık, which was situated in proximity to the outside world, enabling the head of the family in particular to receive his friends and visitors and to conduct his affairs without violating the exclusivity of the harem (Saraçgil 2011). In these family constructions male control was exercised

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above all over women’s bodies and sexuality. Women were considered incapable by nature of preserving the purity of their own bodies and potentially dangerous for the ordering of the umma (the community of believers) because of their capacity to undermine the self-control of men. Women’s sexuality was strongly associated with fitna, a word which alludes to chaos, disorder, even civil war. This constitutes one of the ancestral fears of the Muslim community (Mernissi 1975: 18–20), deriving from the Muslim conception of sexuality not as a sin, but as positive energy, a vital necessity and a gift of God, but one which had to be channelled into the social regulation of women’s bodies (Bouhdiba 1985: 7–10). Men’s sexuality and bodies were, by contrast, allowed a great deal of freedom, in keeping with patriarchal practice in that long geographical belt of ‘classic patriarchy’ which both Deniz Kandiyoti (1991) and Göran Therborn (2004: 113) have traced as extending eastwards from Anatolia to as far as the Chinese Pacific coast. Within the Muslim version of this patriarchy, polygamy is accepted in the Koran and praised for its advantages in guaranteeing reproduction and avoiding prostitution. Each man can have up to four wives if he considers himself able to treat them all equally, while he is permitted to possess as many concubines1 as he can afford. Alain Duben and Cem Behar (1991), in their valuable study of Istanbul households at the end of the nineteenth century give an accurate picture of the declining and limited nature of polygamy, to be found only in about two per cent of the households, although the statistics do not take into account concubines. On the other hand, Halide Edib (Adıvar), one of the most famous female novelists of the young Turkish Republic, and who was to be gratified with the rank of sergeant for her services in Mustafa Kemal’s press office during the war of independence, has left us a graphic description of the poisonous effects of legal polygamy upon her own family of origin in the 1890s: The nature and consequences of the suffering of a wife, who in the same house shares a husband lawfully with a second and equal partner, differs in both kind and degree from that of a woman who shares him with a temporary mistress. In the former case, it must be also borne in mind, the suffering extends to two very often considerable groups of people – children, servants and relations – two whole groups whose interests are from the very nature of the case more or less antagonistic and who are living in a destructive atmosphere of mutual distrust and a struggle for supremacy. On my own childhood, polygamy and its results produced a very ugly and distressing impression. The constant tension in our home made every simple family ceremony seem like a physical pain, and the consciousness of it hardly ever left me. The rooms of the wives were opposite each other and my father visited them by turns. (Adıvar 1926: 144–145)

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Two last considerations with regard to Ottoman families need to be underlined, both highly relevant to the argument of this essay. The first has to do with family structures and marriage patterns. The family is certainly a powerful unit within the central, Turkish parts of the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century, but by and large, both in city and countryside, it is a nuclear structure, not an extended one (Quataert 1994: 785). Furthermore, and this is crucial, its marriage patterns, unlike its Arab and Kurdish cousins, were exogamic not endogamic (Vergin 1985). In the Arab world, the traditions of the endogamous community family, characterised by frequent marriage between first cousins, the cohabitation of married sons with their parents and equal inheritance between brothers, have had a fundamental influence on social formation. No family could be stronger, but at the same time more ‘closed’ than one in which the marriage partners of the next generation are chosen from within its midst (Todd 1985: 144–145). Turkish family traditions, on the other hand, were saved from this tendency to produce over-strong families, with all that they entail in limiting the historical possibilities of civil society. Secondly, within the central parts of the Ottoman Empire the power of the Sultan was so great and continuous, even in its decline, that families had limited possibilities of becoming over-powerful agents within society and the state (Gerber 1994: 149). From the beginning of the seventeenth century the elite families, both in the bureaucratic/military and religious sectors of power did begin to operate successful, albeit conflictual strategies to obtain guarantees of autonomy from the Sultan which enabled them to transmit status and resources to successive generations (Salzmann 2004). But only in 1839 did the Tanzimat edict recognise this possibility. At the same time we must recognise the growth of a patronage system (intisab) in the last centuries of Ottoman rule. The relations of intisab were one of the strategies adopted by the elite families to guarantee their positions and transmit them to the future generations, and they were of various nature: built upon blood, upon matrimony, sexual relations, common ethnic or geographic origins, services to the Imperial household, etc. (Fleischer 1986: 20). But all this could not undermine the great tradition of state authority which extended to every part of the Ottoman Empire in a pluri-secular fashion. Kinship ties within the state apparatuses remained less extensive and numerous than in other Muslim states, as is testified by the rare presence in Ottoman history of families which enjoy important political positions for more than two or three generations. These, then, were the major elements of the inheritance which first Ottoman and then Turkish reformers had to confront. They cannot all be judged in a negative fashion. Alongside a tyrannical though decaying central state authority, there existed families which were certainly

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patriarchal and cohesive but were not endogamic and did not spread their tentacles into every part of the social and political system. State and family, in other words, were not caught in a vicious circle in which the first was inextricably dependent upon the second. But the third of our elements, civil society, had great difficulty in finding any relevance in a corporate society in which external space, with the important/sole exception of religious (mosques and brotherhoods) was regarded as so obviously inferior to its internal counterpart.

The Young Ottomans In 1839 the Grand Vizier Mustafa Res*id Pas*a read out aloud the historic edict in which the Ottoman Sultan declared to the European powers that the entire population of the Empire, excepting women and slaves, but without regard to ethnic and religious distinction, were to be considered Ottoman citizens and equal in the face of the Law. With this solemn declaration came the beginning of the construction of a modern state, and the official beginning of the reform movement (Tanzimat). The change occurred for many reasons. The Ottomans had been forced into recognising the growing military and economic superiority of the West and to see that the new, centralised states in Western Europe, based on the rule of law, were political instruments offering many advantages: more effective government, and the right political terrain for military, economic and scientific advances. The model was also seen as a possible antidote for the centrifugal tendencies of the Empire, marked by the growing autonomy of regional notables who had once served as tax collectors and administrators of state lands (Quataert 1994). In addition, the non-Muslim communities of the Empire were emerging as a rapidly growing commercial force. The protection of their rights was of vital importance for the European States, who on this point exercised constant pressure on the Ottoman authorities (Lewis 1968). In the decades after 1839 the Empire would take steps to change its institutional organisation, the bases of its legitimacy, and its attitudes towards individuals as well as social and religious groups (Berkes 1964; Ortaylı 1983). However, the reform movement was deeply characterised by its contradictions. Reform was undertaken with conservation in mind, for an absolute priority was to be accorded to the guaranteeing of the core values of the Empire. In a sense the Ottomans were trying to introduce new methods to guarantee old practices, by getting closer to European models of modernity without letting themselves become culturally contaminated. In spite of affirming the juridical equity of all Ottoman citizens, the promoters of the reforms were determined to preserve political

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supremacy for Muslims only. Rarely had Islam been so explicitly used as a defining factor in imperial power as in these ‘modernising’ decades (Berkes 1964). Around 1865 there came into being a secret union, modelled on the Italian carbonari but above all inspired by Islamic modernism. It would come to be known in history as the movement of the Young Ottomans (Lewis 1968: 152). This was the first gathering of Muslim citizens with a clear political character in the whole history of the Empire. The Young Ottomans took the first steps towards transforming the reform movement known as Tanzimat, which had began from within the Ancien Régime state, into a mobilisation from outside of it and, to a certain extent, against it. They were from the educated middle classes, often students of the military and civil service academies, or else journalists and writers. More than previous generations, they were sensitive to the European cultural sphere and aware of the potentialities of public space created by associationism, the diffusion of newspapers and the autonomous actions of individuals. The Young Ottomans wanted to create a public opinion to welcome the reforms but were also aware of the potential dangers of cultural contamination. Theirs was, in form and content, a very different discourse from that of the traditional religious-oriented community. In political terms, they wanted to transform the Sultanate into a constitutional monarchy, based on the Islamic model of mes*veret, consensus (Mardin 1962; Berkes 1964). Their most visible activities, therefore, were those of cultural transmission: through publishing and translating they tried to introduce new literary genres and themes from European literature. As journalists, pamphleteers, novelists, playwrights and poets they used their skills to introduce a new culture, more representative of their own generational needs. Among the educated elites new concepts, such as romantic love, liberty and patriotism, became central elements of a fervent debate.2 Members of non-Muslim minorities often played a leading role in these activities (Strauss 1995). The first Ottoman novel, Akabi’s Story (1851), treating the impossible love story of two Armenian youth, one Catholic and the other Gregorian, was written in Turkish Ottoman with Armenian characters by Hovsep Vartanian (1813–1879), an Ottoman Armenian statesman, author and journalist (Tietze 1991). The Ottoman theatre was almost completely created, performed and managed by Armenians and Jews. Given its pluralism, cultural sensibilities and youthful constitutionalist struggles, this period of Ottoman History, albeit with many contradictions, can be considered as a real moment of civic wealth, ‘a civil society before democracy’ (Bermeo and Nord 2000). As their name suggests, much of the reforming passion of the Young Ottomans concerned generational struggle and the questioning of the asphyxiating control of the patriarchal system both within and outside

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of the family (Kandiyoti 1998). In this potentially revolutionary conflict sons contested fathers, but there were clear limits to their revolt. Devoted Muslims as they were, they never wanted to proceed to the point of ‘killing the father’: the father’s – or the Sultan’s – authority was necessary as it represented the absolute text, i.e. Muslim and imperial identity (Parla 1990: 89–93). What they did want, though, was to be able to choose their life paths for themselves. In 1872 Namık Kemal wrote in his famous article Aile (The Family): ‘Until when will fathers go on, wanting their sons to be exactly how they were? For how long will they consider it a mortal humiliation if, for example, the son of an imam (mosque preacher) chooses to become a doctor? How can we go on thinking that we are giving a good education to our sons if we refuse in the mean time to recognise their rights and inclinations?’ (1872: 2). The new generations no longer wanted to wait endlessly for their own empowerment, but rather to make the beginning of their adult life (the moment of getting married and having children) coincide with access to power and decision-making. If we return for a moment to the dichotomies traditionally expressing power in the Ottoman Empire, we see that these ‘new men’ were above all sensitive to the dichotomy between older and younger generations. They wanted to be freer in their movements, they wanted to be able to participate in political decisions, they wanted to be able to live lives full of love and passion. Therefore, without being contrary to the conception of power as control, without having developed any substantially new conception of interpersonal and gender relationships, without having worked conceptually on the traditional distinction between internal and external spaces and the European idea of public space, they nonetheless began to promote the most important and potentially revolutionary cultural debate in Ottoman history. What did they have to say about the family? In this critical area the Young Ottomans were much more circumspect than they were with regard to their own individual ambitions. It is symptomatic of the blocking power of the Muslim heritage and the weakness of the Ottoman reforming spirit vis-à-vis the family that the Mecelle-i Ahkam-ı Adliyye, the new Ottoman Civil Code, consisting of 16 volumes and 1,851 articles, completed between 1869 and 1876, had no part dedicated to family law (Duben and Behar 1991). The modernisers, in other words, wanted to bring about a ‘selective’ transformation – i.e. keeping the basic power relations of the internal space immune to change while promoting rapid transformation in the external sphere, not only in literature but in science, technology and politics as well. Within the family they wanted to replace the authorities of their fathers with their own, but leave the structure of patriarchy intact. And they wanted to enlist the aid of mothers who were the silent and powerless representatives of patriarchy’s absolute narrative in this opera-

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tion. In this sense, the first novels of Ottoman Muslim literature written at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth are extremely revealing . In most of them the father figure is absent (Parla 1990), while the figure of the mother tries in vain to protect her son from the risks and contaminations of the external world. The Young Ottomans were not altogether oblivious to the need to introduce reforms within the family. They wanted to put an end to arranged marriages (once again individual choice is to the forefront), they aspired to replace asymmetrical relations with wives and concubines by relationships that were emotionally and intellectually more rewarding, more profoundly based upon Romantic love. But the bottom line was always their own patriarchal authority within traditional structures, both sexual and spatial. Polygamy was to be maintained. Slavery was abhorred but in some way justified in the Turkish setting by its ‘familial’ quality. If we return to Namık Kemal and his famous article on the family of 1872, we see that the thrust to change is relatively limited. He stressed that the moral superiority of the Muslim world with respect to the West lay in the strength of family ties and the validity of the basic family model. He admitted, though, that the traditional family, based on the forcible submission of the younger generations, both men and women, was antiquated and damaging. But in order to bring back harmony, it was simply necessary to adjust existing structures. Likening society as a whole to a large house, in which every family occupied a room, he noted that a house full of rooms in disorder could not possibly enjoy harmonious development. Fathers should become more like teachers and mentors, but always the basic gender structure went unquestioned, as did the ultimate recourse to violence. As Namık Kemal (1872: 3) wrote: ‘Paradise finds itself at the feet of mothers, but under the authoritative protection of the father’s sword.’ However, it was not so easy to reform in one area and to keep another immune from its effects. The Young Ottomans wanted their women to be better educated and to be more rewarding partners, and at the same time to be better prepared by modern science for their responsibilities as mothers, capable of rearing healthy children for the fatherland. But the modernisation process in the gender and reproduction sphere could not easily be circumscribed. Better education for women of the urban elites implied that they began to learn European languages, to read European novels, to long for Romantic love, and to form for themselves ideas and dreams of liberty. Nor was this just a phenomenon of dreaming and imagining, with Europe as a distant and exotic model. On an everyday basis, European objects increasingly entered the spacious wooden mansions of the Istanbul elite: dinner tables, armchairs, mirrors, pianos became part of their material culture. The women began also to go out more frequently – in

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their carriages or simply covered with a veil and an umbrella. Some of them even used the new public transport facilities which had special sections reserved for women. All these actions and innovations constituted a dangerous blurring of the barriers not only between male and female but also between internal and external spaces. Indeed, this was one of the main points made by conservatives who identified the modernisation process not only as a threat to traditional Ottoman masculinity, but as the most direct way to lose a centuries-old collective identity. In the last decades of the nineteenth century the traditional distance between sexes within the families began to diminish: modernised families gathered around the same dinner table and sat in the same living room while young women played the pianoforte. Children began to be considered the main focus of family life and their socialisation the main objective of parents. Families’ traditional use of economic resources for their children’s weddings instead of schooling, as in Europe, became the object of harsh criticism. In these same years external space itself was changing quite rapidly, above all in the Ottoman capital. The representative symbols of power were far less the mosques and much more the courts and barracks built to last, new commercial buildings, embassies, theatres, schools, hospitals, hotels, railway stations. A new social stratification based on wealth, power and modernity began to show itself in the urban fabric, as the new elites began to move out of the traditional neighbourhoods into the new apartment blocks built in the European part of the city and along the Bosporus itself. Cafés, restaurants and shops opened in these quarters (Eldem, Goffman and Masters 1999: 202–206). Coffee houses, which in the early seventeenth century had been fiercely contested by the Ottoman religious and military authorities for their transgressive potential, now were making their return from Europe to define the terms of a new sociability; fashionable, open to everybody, anonymous. Turkish middle-class, urban society was thus in ferment. However, in 1877, there took place the first of a long series of drastic political checks which showed the political limits of the Young Ottoman movement and the more general limits of a nascent Turkish civil society. In fulfilment of promises made before his accession, Abdulhamid II issued the empire’s first constitution on 23 December 1876, a document largely inspired by the liberal-minded Midhat Pas*a, his prime minister of the time, and by a council summoned by him with Namık Kemal as one of its members. It provided for an elected bicameral parliament and for the customary civil liberties, including equality before the law for all the empire’s diverse nationalities. But as soon as Abdulhamid established his control over the government, he forcibly dissolved the Assembly, using the Russian war

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and the empire’s internal difficulties as pretext. In February 1877 Midhat Pas*a was first dismissed, arrested and exiled, then amnestied and made the governor of Syria, and finally condemned to life imprisonment on trumped-up murder charges. Strangled on the orders of the Sultan, he died on 8 May 1883 in the dungeons of Al-Taif, in Saudi Arabia. Arbitrary power prevailed again in political practice. The press was severely curbed, pan-Islamism was embraced as imperial politics, and for the next thirty years Sultan Abdulhamid II ruled over a police state. Many of the Young Ottomans fled abroad, others made their peace with the regime. The modernisation process continued, but its possible political outlets and further civic development had been decisively blocked. A great period of pluralism and experimentation had been curtailed. Pessimism now predominated about the possibilities of rescuing the dying Empire.

Young Turks and Kemalists: Continuity and Change On 11 July 1908 Halide Edib, then only a young writer of just 25, was sipping coffee in an Istanbul hotel with two old friends. Suddenly the news arrived that Sultan Abdulhamid II had decided, after more than thirty years, to restore the constitution of 1876. Over the next few days Istanbul was in ferment, as old and young, poor and rich, Muslim and non-Muslim intermingled in a spontaneous movement of rejoicing. The testimony of all the European newspapers of those days bear out the account that Halide Edib has left us in her memoirs of that spontaneous urban convulsion: The papers might have been printed on gold leaf, so high were the prices paid for them. People were embracing each other in the streets in mad rejoicing. Hussein Jahid [a famous journalist] smilingly added, ‘I had to wash my face well in the evening, for hundreds who did not know me from Adam, hundreds whom I have never seen, kissed me as I walked down the road of the Sublime Porte; the ugly sides of revolution, vengeance and murder, will not stain ours’. The next day I went down to see Istamboul. The scene on the bridge caught me at once. There was a sea of men and women all cockaded in red and white, flowing like a vast human tide from one side to the other. The tradition of centuries seemed to have lost its effect. There was no such thing as sex or personal feeling. Men and women in a common wave of enthusiasm moved on, radiating something extraordinary, laughing, weeping in such intense emotion. (Adıvar 1926: 256–258)

How had such an extraordinary event, so dense in its significance for the history of Turkish civil society, come to take place? The answer must be sought in the complicated history of secret societies and conspiracies that had grown up in the shadow of the Sultan’s police regime. If the

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so-called liberal Young Ottomans in exile, divided into conflictual groupings, were rapidly fading in significance, in the last years of nineteenth century there emerged a new organisation, Union and Progress. It connected the Paris group led by Ahmed Rıza, an admirer of August Comte, with the secret organisations of students in Istanbul, and above all that of the young army officers in Salonika, founded in 1906. Thus there came into being a unified and well-organised political movement with the solid support of a significant section of the military. ‘Union and Progress’ professed a pluralist and Ottomanist program, and Ahmed Rıza declared that it would honour ‘the rights of all the various nationalities in the empire’ (Göçek 1996: 79). But the predominant influence of the young military officials based in Salonika and serving in the Third Army would soon imprint upon the organisation an intense Turkish nationalism. These Young Turks, who numbered in their ranks the most important men of the last decades of the Empire, Enver, Ismail Hakkı and Mustafa Kemal, were ready to shift their loyalty from the personalised authority of the Sultan to a ‘Turkified’ central state and nation. In 1908 the Third Army Corps and other units threatened to march on Istanbul if the Sultan did not restore the Constitution of 1876. This was the physical force background to the sudden opening up of the Ottoman system. From then on, even though the Ottoman dynasty was not deposed, the young Turks of Union and Progress substantially ruled in its name from 1908 until 1918. In its first years the ‘revolution of the Young Turks’ kept its basic promises of liberties: in Istanbul, Salonika, Izmir and other major centres of the core regions of the Empire, there reigned a completely new atmosphere, with newspapers and magazines flourishing in all languages and cultural and political associations growing rapidly in numbers. Even Muslim women began to appear on the political scene, writing in the newspapers on feminist issues, giving lectures and conferences, founding associations to facilitate women’s access to work. Parliamentary opposition, civil liberties and a free press survived (and in some areas even prospered) for a few years. But these ferments were destined to a short life. The fierce nationalism that inspired the Young Turks was not primarily concerned with the development of a plural and broadly democratic civil society and state, but rather with a policy of modernisation and ‘Turkification’ from above. As the century moved into its second decade, so it became ever clearer that the imminent battles to be fought in the decaying Empire were not to be in the civil sphere, but between different and ferocious nationalisms, as well as against the voracious appetites of the Great Powers. Italian aggression in Libya (1912) and the first and second Balkan wars (1912–1913) all bore testimony to these tendencies. In January 1913, Union and Progress staged a coup, crushed all opposition and created a de-facto one-party state (Zürcher 1994: 134).

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Within it, politics were strongly personalised. Enver Pas*a, the minister of war, emerged to prominence during the defence of Libya and above all in the Balkan wars. In 1914 when the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on Germany’s side, it was apparently Enver Pas*a alone, still the minister of war, who decided, without even a vote in the Cabinet. Union and Progress’s government between 1913 and 1918 was characterised by its fierce and defensive Turkish nationalism, by its faith in military solutions as a reply to perceived encirclement, and by authoritarian state centralism as the agent of modernisation. Indeed from as early as 1911 the existing web of social, cultural and political organisations was mainly characterised by its nationalistic content (Poulton 1997: 80). As for the Young Turks’ attitude to society as well as to the family, it is as well to begin with Ziya Gökalp, the theorist of Turkish nationalism and one of the most innovative intellectuals of the Muslim world of his time. Inspired by Durkheimian sociology, Gökalp underlined the necessity for consensus to be based upon the social solidarity deriving from an organicist society (Parla 1985: 59–62) He concentrated upon the role of three social groupings in particular: political associations, the professions, and families. For his model of Turkish family morality, Gökalp, although considering the advent of Islam to be positive, turned backwards to the legends of Central Asia and to a largely mythical account of the Turks before their conversion to Islam. In a highly innovative way, he derived from that past the original model of a Turkish nuclear family, monogamic and democratic, in which women were accorded equal status to that of men (Toprak 1991: 444). According to Gökalp, segregation, the veil and polygamy (the ancient Turks did not recognise legal polygamy but only the possibility for men to win concubines as part of war booty) were all attributable to later Iranian and/or Byzantine influence. He called for a return to the ‘feminism’ of ancient Turkish society, which would give women dignity both in the family and the nation. The nationalist platform of the Young Turks insisted that their political revolution should be accompanied by a social one (içtimai inkilab), able to generate a new life (Yeni hayat), and inspired by corporatist thought and Ottoman guild traditions (Toprak 1980). In this context, both motherhood and fatherhood were reinterpreted within a Turkified model of the European family. In it the Young Ottoman’s dream of the conjugal family, emancipated from the control of the elders was meant finally to become reality. The Nation-to-be asked families to make as rational use as possible of their human resources, and called upon men to distance themselves from the model of the old Ottoman patriarchs – authoritarian and incapable of showing affection. They were to become instead careful spouses and loving fathers, even if their prime duty would take them away from home to wage war (Kandiyoti 1998).

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Union and Progress’s government was to bring about one of the most radical legal measures regarding the private sphere of Muslim life. In 1917 it introduced a new interaction between the state and the family by passing the Law of the Family (Hukuk-u Aile Kararnamesi), which completed the Mecelle (Duben and Behar 1991: 213). The revolutionary importance of this was that by doing so the Young Turks were contesting, for the first time in a Muslim state, the previously unquestioned supremacy of Islamic Law, dating back to the eighth century, with regard to private and above all family life (Aluffi Beck-Peccoz 1990: 14–16). They did so because of their conviction that the state had the fundamental role to play in the shaping the evolution of family life – developing its conjugal form, abolishing the power of the elders and thus creating the ‘milli aile’ (National family). The new law obliged the couples to register their marriage with civil authorities, and before the ceremony to render public their biographical details. In order to limit forced and arranged marriages, the age of first marriage was raised to 18 for men and 17 for women. The new law also made it possible for either party to ask for a divorce, and motivations were not limited to those recognised as legitimate by Islam. As for polygamy, one of the fundamental instruments of Muslim patriarchy, the new law allowed a wife to insert in the marriage contract a clause forbidding her husband to take further wives, but no effective sanctions were provided in the case that he chose to ignore the clause (Duben and Behar 1991). Under the political and military leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey emerged from the First World War and from the ensuing war of national independence (1919–1923) as the first Muslim country to construct itself as a sovereign nation state. The founding act of the new Republic was to negate all historical continuity with the Ottoman Empire. Simultaneously, it distanced itself from the public, political and juridical dictates of Islam (Poulton 1997: 87), which, as we have seen at the beginning of this article, had previously taken prime responsibility for the moral and legal ordering of the networks connecting individuals, families and communities. The new Kemalist regime distinguished itself for its radicalism, its totalising character and its ideological content. Prime among its objectives was the creation of a new society – westernised, modern and secular. The homogeneity of the new nation and a strong sense of belonging were to be affirmed by constant mobilisation and political campaigns which aspired to the status of a ‘cultural revolution’. Kemalism was to replace the public functions of religion (Armstrong 1937: 245). During the 1920s and the 1930s the regime proceeded to eliminate by decree an entire Arabic and Islamic legacy – the previous alphabet, calendar and traditional clothing – all with the dramatic intention of proclaiming the secular Republic.

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One of the most radical reforms was the promulgation in 1926 of the new Civil Code, based closely upon its Swiss equivalent. The new Code abolished the normative function of Islamic Law in social life and constrained religion within the bounds of the private sphere and of the individual conscience of believers. The introduction of the Swiss Code prefigured a radically new relationship between the state and citizens, far more direct and interventionist. This was true for both sexes. Women for the first time acquired juridical and social status – they gained the right to further education, access to the professions and, in advance of their counterparts in many European countries, the right to vote and to be elected (1934), albeit in carefully controlled elections. As far as family life was concerned, the new Civil Code, by subtracting families from religious jurisdiction, provided the corner stones for their eventual transformation in terms of structure, formation and functioning. In terms of that parallel development of families and family law which Mary Ann Glendon (1977) has analysed so well, it was the law in the Turkish case which in Kemalist practice had run far ahead of actual family practice. The approval of the Civil Code, strongly supported by Mustafa Kemal, did not take place without a considerable struggle. Against him there took shape a solid political and cultural coalition which tried to ensure a modified and more rigid version of the Family Law of 1917, anchored to Islamic jurisdiction. The Kemalists, by approving the Swiss Civil Code chose instead to impose their idea of the Turkish national variant of the European family. It was to be nuclear in structure, to show a new respect towards its central woman figure and to recognise her relative autonomy. Thanks to the legal ban on polygamy and concubinage, the new families rejected the traditional means of psychological and sexual violence exercised by men within their midst. On the other hand, the position of family leadership and breadwinner continued to be ascribed to fathers and only in the absence of the father could a mother be head-of-family. Ottoman patriarchy had been superseded but in the new Turkish Republic social relations both inside and outside the family still operated within highly paternalist and authoritarian frameworks, and male hierarchies in society went almost untouched, in keeping with the military origins of the Republic itself. All civic rights and emancipatory measures introduced for women by Kemalism negated the very existence of a gender conflict. Thanks to this fundamental paternalism strong continuities in male power are identifiable across the decades that I have analysed. The power of what I have called ‘male chameleons’ remained uncontested (Saraçgil 2001). Arbitrary male power connected the various reform movements, from the Young Ottomans to the Young Turks and the Kemalists. Kemalism placed in strict relation to each other the family, the state and national society. Using a well-known organicist metaphor, the new

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Civil Code underlined the fact that the family was the first cell of the state (Gökalp 1980: 120–124). For Atatürk the family was the founding nucleus of society, ‘the essence of civilization, the source of all progress and strength’ (Melzig 1942: 85). The notion of home as habitat gained in importance, as part of the (public) project of the stabilisation of family lives. An article in the popular monthly Modern Türkiye Mecmuası stated in 1938: ‘The Turkish nation having decided to settle on these territories in perpetuity now builds its own homes in stone and cement. … In our country the idea of home, bearing this meaning, emerges only now in the Republican period’ (Bozdog¨an 2001: 195). The nation had to be born by reformulating the relationship between internal and external spaces, attributing to the state the duty of vigilance over both. Kemalism put at the very heart of its political and cultural project the question of the creation of ‘new’ men and women, and new ways of forging alliances between maternity and paternity. In the national family, composed by father, mother and children, the woman, as wife, was the principal figure responsible for domestic life, while as mother she was the depository of the moral and intellectual destiny of the nation itself. Mustafa Kemal declared: ‘If our women want to become the mothers of this nation which has decided to be strong, they have to make themselves much more enlightened, much better prepared and better educated than men’ (Unan 1959: 151–152). Briefly, the state and its ideology were coming to play the role which had traditionally belonged to religion. The formation of a family was still considered a necessity, but a national necessity. The good ‘childrencitizens’, brought up by capable mothers, were to demonstrate their profound feelings of gratitude and sense of duty towards the state (Yücel 1956: 137). A textbook for primary schools in 1937 stated: ‘The family is like a little government in which the father is the prime minister, the mother is a minister and the children are the people. If in the familygovernment the father and the mother work in harmony and the children are obedient, all will work well’ (I Æçsel and I Æçsel: 1937: 8). Although the Republic gave women equal rights with men in many spheres and emancipated the married couple from the control of the elders, the home was defined as a male metaphor. It was a paternal space, not maternal, and within its context sexual identities were constructed in observance of the traditional division of roles. The nationalist Republic, constituted by its ‘new’ families, its ‘new’ men and women, reformulated the codes of class and of power in Turkish society. Kemalism recognised in the modernised elites of the major urban centres the only section of society entitled to govern and to represent the nation. The majority of the population, impoverished and illiterate peasants dispersed in the immense spaces of Anatolia, were still firmly anchored to religion. There traditional ideas of masculinity

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and of femininity reigned supreme, as did the dictates of the Muslim community of believers. Families continued to be organised without much regard to the new republican dictates, on the bases of traditional norms which often included polygamy and religious marriages without civic registration. The control exercised by the elder generation on the younger and of male on female continued unchallenged. Anatolia was the significant ‘other’ which still had to be civilised. The task that lay ahead was well-summarised by Nusret Kemal, in one of the first editorials of Ülkü (founded in 1933), the review published by the Halk evleri (The People’s houses), the cultural organisation of the People’s Republican Party: ‘We have between 14 and 17 million “citizens” of whom over 90 percent are alien to civilization. Scattered over a territory stretching over almost 800,000 square kilometres, are some 40,000 villages. The devoted citizens prepared to bring some sort of enlightenment to them do not number more than 40,000’ (1933).

Conclusion The strong state and military traditions which were the essence of Kemalism, as well as the small nationalist elite which strongly identified with its charismatic leader, were able to make a national revolution of iconoclastic quality. The Kemalist Republic was a spectacularly determined regime, striving to substitute the public function of religion with nationalist ideology, and to modify radically, at least in the urban areas, the social and cultural structures previously governed by Islam, including the family. But it also failed in the last analysis to place family, civil society and state in a virtuous relationship which could have permitted the growth of a flourishing public sphere, free institutions and democracy. In spite of many democratic and pluralistic instances contained in the Constitution of 1924 which called for the creation of a representative system of government and provided the possibility for society to express differing political views and preferences, the country’s political system actually worked in precisely the opposite manner. And that brings me to the last of our moments, the infamous year of 1925 in which history ‘fails to turn’ and when Atatürk abruptly banned the only organised opposition, the Progressive Republican Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası). There are various reasons for this failure. One lies within the ideology of Kemalism itself, constructed in the image of a single, brilliant and ruthless general, over-anxious to modernise from above and with little time for parliamentary procedures or a free press. Another was the Kurdish revolt of 1925, which was to signal the end of all opposing organisations, media and the freedom of expression, within

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and without the parliament. The special courts established at this time played a general role in the suppression of opposition of any kind. From 1925 onwards, excluding only the brief experience of a ‘friendly opposition party’ founded in 1930 upon the request of the government but soon banned after having achieved significant success in municipal elections (Yetkin 1982), the one-party system remained throughout the Second World War, ending only at the end of 1945 (Emrence 2000). The Progressive Party’s leading members, including Halide Edib and her husband, were exiled. Between 1926 and 1939 Halide Edib lived in Europe and the United States, teaching courses on the intellectual history of the Near East and on contemporary Turkish literature. In 1935 Mahatma Gandhi invited her to India, where she taught in New Delhi. The couple returned to their home country only in 1939 after the death of Atatürk. A final and fundamental reason for the inversion of 1925 and the consequent absence of a developing civil society lies with the social structure of Turkey itself. The Anatolian peasantry was for many years practically unreachable with respect to the modernising discourse that emanated from first Istanbul and then Ankara. They lacked the strength and cohesion to defy the regime, but their fidelity to Islam and their passive opposition were a great weight around the ankles of the new Republic. As Mustafa Kemal himself explained in 1931, since the voters still did not have sufficient political, social and cultural knowledge to enable them to make an informed decision, the president of Turkish Republic, as well as of the only political party, namely himself, was the only person qualified to decide who was to be a candidate and who was to be elected to parliament. The comparison, rarely made, with the Soviet Union is very striking. It is only after many decades that there began that mass emigration from Anatolia to the great cities which marks a new chapter in Turkish history, where civil society in the modern sense truly begins to flourish, but in the context of a still strong military and secular tradition, and of a dynamic revival of Islam. The uncertainties of the future do depend to a great extent upon the partial failures of the past.

Notes 1. Although in the second half of the nineteenth century there were many attempts by the Ottoman governments to ban it, a slave market flourished in Istanbul, as shown in testimonies by Charles White (1845: vol. III, 7). See also Toledano 1982. 2. When Namık Kemal presented in 1873 in the theatre which was then under the direction of these young intellectuals, his patriotic drama entitled Vatan Yahut Silistre (Fatherland or Silistre), an enormous mass of spectators followed him

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home, applauding and shouting ‘Long live Vatan [fatherland], long live liberty’ (Adıvar 1926: 250). For a discussion on the place of this drama in the changing conceptions of masculinity, see Saraçgil 2001.

References Abu-Manneh, Butrus. 2001. Studies on Islam and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century (1826–1876). Istanbul. Adıvar, Halide Edib. 1926. Memoirs of Halide Edib. London. Aluffi Beck-Peccoz, Roberta. 1990. La modernizzazione del diritto di famiglia nei paesi arabi. Milano. Armstrong, Harold Courteney. 1937. Grey Wolf: Mustafa Kemal. An Intimate Study of a Dictator. London. Berkes, Niyazi. 1964. The Development of Secularism in Turkey. Montreal. Bermeo, Nancy Gina, and Philip Nord, eds. 2000. Civil Society Before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century Europe. Lanham, MD. Bouhdiba, Abdelwahab. 1985. Sexuality in Islam. London. Bozdog¨an, Sibel. 2001. Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic. Seattle and London. Duben, Alain, and Cem Behar. 1991. Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family and Fertility, 1880–1940. Cambridge. Eldem, Ethem, Daniel Goffman and Bruce Masters. 1999. The Ottoman City Between East and West. Aleppo, Izmir and Istanbul. Cambridge. Emrence, Cem. 2000. ‘CHP’nin Baskı ve Propaganda Yöntemleri’, Tarih ve Toplum XXXIV: 4751. Fleischer, Cornell H. 1986. Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Âli (1541–1600). Princeton, NJ. Gerber, Haim. 1994. State, Society and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective. Albany, NY. Glendon, Mary Ann. 1977. State, Law and Family: Family Law in Transition in the United States and Western Europe. Amsterdam and New York. Göçek, Fatma Müge. 1996. Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire – Ottoman: Westernization and Social Change. New York. Gökalp, Ziya. 1980 [1923]. ‘Türk Ailesi’. Makaleler IX, ed. S*. Beysanog¨lu. Istanbul: 120–124. Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA. I Æçsel, Perin, and Nazim I Æçsel. 1937. Aile bilgisi ve Ev idaresi üzerine pratik dersler. Istanbul. Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1988. ‘Bargaining with Patriarchy’, Gender and Society 2, 23: 274–290. ———. 1991. ‘Islam and Patriarchy: A Comparative Perspective’. Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, ed. Nikki Keddie and Beth Baron. New Haven, CT, and London: 23–42. ———. 1998. ‘Some Awkward Questions on Women and Modernity in Turkey’. Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lila Abu-Lughod. Princeton, NJ: 270–287. Lewis, Bernard. 1968. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. London and New York.

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Mardin, S* erif. 1962. The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought. Princeton, NJ. Melzig, Herbert. 1942. Atatürk’ün bas*lıca nutukları (1920–1938). I Æstanbul. Mernissi, Fatima. 1975. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society. London. Namık, Kemal. 1872. ‘Aile’, I bÆ ret 56. Republished in the new Turkish alphabet in 1992. Sosyo-kültürel deg¨is*me sürecinde Türk ailesi, ed. T. C. Bas*bakanlık Kurumu. Ankara: vol. 3, 1017–1019. Necipog¨lu, Gülru. 1991. Architecture, Ceremonial and Power: The Topkapı Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Cambridge, MA, and London. Nusret, Kemal. 1933. ‘Halkçılık’, Ülkü I, 3: 185–190. Ortaylı, Ilber. 1983. I Æmparatorlug¨un en uzun yüzyılı. Istanbul. Parla, Jale. 1990. Babalar ve Og¨ullar. Tanzimat romanının epistemolojik temelleri. Istanbul. Parla, Taha. 1985. The Social and Political Thought of Ziya Gökalp 1876–1924. Leiden. Pierce, Leslie P. 1993. The Imperial Harem. Oxford. Poulton, Hugh. 1997. Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent: Turkish Nationalism and the Turkish Republic. London. Quataert, Donald. 1994. ‘The Age of Reforms’. An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, vol. 2: 1600–1914, ed. Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert. Cambridge. Salzmann, Ariel, 2004. Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State. Leiden. Saraçgil, Ays*e. 2001. Il Maschio Camaleonte. Strutture patriarcali nell’Impero ottomano e nella Repubblica turca. Milano (Turkish ed. 2005. Bukalemun Erkek, Osmanlı Imparatorlug¨ Æ unda ve Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Ataerkil Yapılar ve Modern Edebiyat. I Æstanbul). ———. 2009. “Cumhuriyet’in Ana-Babaları. Ebeveynlik ve Milli Toplumun I Æns*ası”, Kritik, 4: 183–221. ———. 2011. ‘Concetti e pratiche di socialità nell’Impero ottomano in età moderna’. Bizzocchi Roberto (ed.), Storia dell’Europa e del Mediterraneo. II. Dal Medioevo all’Età della Globalizzazione. vol. XI: Culture, religioni, saperi. Roma: 613–652. Strauss, Johann. 1995. ‘The Millets and the Ottoman Language: The Contribution of Ottoman Greeks to Ottoman Letters (19th–20th Centuries)’, Die Welt des Islams 35, 2: 189–249. Therborn, Göran. 2004. Between Sex and Power: Family in the World, 1900–2000. London and New York. Tietze, Andreas. 1991. Transcription and Annotated Translation of Akabi’s Story, by Vartan Pasha, 1851. Istanbul. Todd, Emmanuel. 1985. The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structures and Social Systems. Oxford. Toledano, Ehud R. 1982. The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression: 1840–1890. Princeton, NJ. Toprak, Zafer. 1980. ‘Türkiye’de korporatizmin dog¨us*u’, Toplum ve Bilim 12, 8: 41–49. ———. 1991. The Family, Feminism and the State during the Young Turk Period 1908–1918. In Premiere rencontre internationale sur l’empire ottoman et la turquie moderne, ed. Ethem Eldem. Istanbul and Paris: 441–452. Unan Nimet. 1959. Atatürk’ün söylev ve demeçler. Ankara.

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Vergin, Nur. 1985. ‘Social Change and the Family in Turkey’, Current Anthropology XXVI, 5: 571–575. White, Charles. 1845. Three Years in Constantinople, or Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1844, 3 vols. London. Yetkin, Çetin. 1982. Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası Olayı. I Æstanbul. Yücel, Hasan Ali. 1956. I Æyi vatandas*, iyi insan. Ankara. Zürcher, Erich J. 1994. Turkey: A Modern History. London.

Chapter 10

ISRAEL AND PALESTINE THROUGH FAMILY, CIVIL SOCIETY AND STATE AN OVERVIEW

Marcella Simoni

The relationship between family, civil society and state in Palestine/Israel can be viewed as a mirror of the process of economic, social and political transformation experienced by the country and its inhabitants during the twentieth century; it can also be seen as a key to read the complex series of events which led to the foundation of the State of Israel and to the Palestinian Nakba (the catastrophe). The chain of causes resulting in such an outcome in 1948 cannot be attributed only to the predominance of civil society and/or of the family within the two competing Zionist and Arab-Palestinian nationalist movements; other factors played into the success of the first and into the defeat of the other: among them, questions of land, immigration, economy, culture, the framework of the ‘dual colonialism’ (Shamir 2000), orientalist attitudes and approaches, etc. However, the role played by family and civil society as two forms of social and political organisation in that national competition should not be underestimated. Even more so, as in a long-term perspective, the tension between family, civil society and state remained present within each group, although in different ways. The Zionist movement started off at the beginning of the twentieth century by de-emphasising the centrality of the family within the new society it wanted to build in Palestine and by stressing the importance of horizontal linkages of participation in its rural communes as well as in an urban context. The family had indeed represented one of the strongest elements of resistance to assimilation of Judaism in Europe at a time

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when other cultural, religious and political ties were threatened (Arendt 1951). At the end of the nineteenth century, especially in Western Europe, Emancipation led to the gradual (and apparently permanent) integration of Jews into their national contexts, opening up career opportunities and, in general, favouring a process of upwards social mobility; at the same time, Emancipation also opened up multiple possibilities and ways to be Jews. In this new context, the family lost some of the functions it had performed before Emancipation: it no longer represented the main reference point for individuals and for the community in religious terms, but it remained central as an institution sheltering Jewish identity and culture. In Eastern Europe too, the family had played a crucial function in sheltering Jewish identity and tradition, altogether allowing for collective survival in a society where Judaism had often been threatened by physical persecution and where, in the nineteenth century, socialist, communist and Bundist ideals also began to spread. At this time, the family started to appear to Zionist pioneers as an institution too closed and rigid; as one of the centres of Jewish life and of its continuity in the shtetl, the Eastern European Jewish family appeared to new generations – some of whom would choose immigration to Palestine – as one of the factors responsible for a life ‘without pleasure and satisfaction, without splendour, without light, a life that tastes like lukewarm soup, without salt or spice (as in the words of Shalom Jacob Abramovitz (1836–1917) writing under the pen name of Mendele Mocher Sforim (Mendele the book seller), quoted in Elon: 49). Also for these reasons, collectivism was to replace the family in the new Zionist society. When the final product of that collective effort – the foundation of the state – was finally achieved forty years later, the family made a return on the Israeli social and political agenda. Even by only looking at the Jewish/Zionist population, the country’s social composition had changed dramatically after 1948. Jews from Arab countries – 600,000 immigrants between 1948 and 1956 – did not move to Palestine on an individual basis; it was rather the family that moved together; certainly Shoah survivors who opted for Palestine/Israel after the Second World War had no intention of demeaning the family; if any, they were migrating to rebuild one. Confronted with immigration waves which were very different from those of the pre-statehood period, with the perspective of a semi-permanent state of war and, most of all, with a demographic race to run, the newly established state replaced the family at centre-stage, transforming it into one of the sites where loyalty to its own system of values could be best displayed and implemented. The tension between family, civil society and state for the Palestinian population group followed a different route, but these three entities played a central role both before 1948 and after. The family represented the ultimate stronghold of resistance against the progressively more

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widespread Zionist presence in the country’s life before 1948. As we shall see below, the various attempts towards civil society formation that developed at that time among the middle and upper classes remained subordinate to the influence of the extended family in the personal as well as in the public spheres. In exile, it was again the family that functioned as a ‘shock absorber’, sheltering the memory of the Paradise Lost, whether in (often) neighbouring countries or elsewhere in the Palestinian Diaspora, and/or in the refugee camps of the Gaza Strip and of the West Bank. After 1967, here emerged an organised civil society that, in the absence of a state, undertook some of its functions – among them, the provision of services, social and welfare work and education. This essay is divided into two parts: the first focuses on the period of the British Mandate, the last moment that Palestine was united and one, the formative period of Jewish and Palestinian nationalism and therefore the time which saw the separation of the two societies. The second part considers more briefly the post-1948 years. In different ways, each of these two phases of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict shows how the connections, but also the imbalances, between family, civil society and state were crucial to the historical trajectory of both groups in conflict, to the political results they achieved and to their nationalist agenda.

The British Mandate (1922–1948): Family and Civil Society (and State) The British Mandate can be considered as an institutional framework within which the Arab Palestinian leadership and the Zionist movement negotiated the pace of their national realisation. While individual personalities and political leaders in both groups certainly played a relevant role in defending and fostering their respective national cause, the Arab Palestinian extended families and the Zionist civil society can also be seen as agents – and at the same time the objects – of such a negotiation. This radical diversity of agency immediately gives us an insight into how far the chain of connection between family, civil society and the state was diverse in the two cases, and how much the links in this chain were weighted differently. From a British perspective, the thirty years of the Mandate represented an attempt to modernise the country, in the judiciary and in administration, in its educational structure, in the system of land registration, in its health facilities and so on. This attempt was generally supported by Zionist groups operating through a network of associations which can be seen as a civil society, and resisted by Palestinian notables’ families. For the Zionist movement, the century had begun with the immigration of increasingly large groups of individual Jews (mainly) from Eastern

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Europe and had progressed with their gradual organisation into structured networks offering social and service provision both in rural and in urban Palestine. For the Arab Palestinian population, the beginning of the twentieth century had brought an administrative reorganisation that had favoured the control of urban extended families on the rural provinces and on their inhabitants, among other things (Abu-Manneh 1999: 41–51). The period of the British Mandate (1922–1948) strengthened these initial trends, favouring the networking of the Zionist organisations and associations on the one hand, and increasing the importance of Palestinian extended families both in society and in nationalist politics on the other, for example with the appointment of Amin Al Husseini as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem as early as 1921. As the confrontation between the two groups turned into a progressively more violent and nationalistic conflict with the riots of 1929 – and later with the Great Arab Revolt (1936–1939) – these tensions found a development also in the changing roles attributed by each group to family, civil society and state. Let me give just one example. The Arab notables’ families decided to boycott the hearings of the Peel Commission, which came to Palestine to report on the causes of the 1936 uprising and to give recommendations; by contrast, the same Commission would present the administrative, social and service network of the Zionist movement as a ‘state within a state’.1 The long path that led to such an acknowledgement in 1937 had begun in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Zionism Between Family, Civil Society and State Both in rural and in urban Palestine, the Zionist movement structured its pattern of settlement, economic development and social organisation on the idea of a cohesive national community. In both settings communal (national) values and communitarian life led to a demoting of the family’s role as an element of social and/or economic organisation. In rural Palestine the Zionist movement had brought to life a form of collective settlement which, somewhat too enthusiastically, Martin Buber still considered in 1949 to be the ‘only utopian experiment that did not fail’, the kibbutz (Buber 1949; 1983: 25–35). From here came the model – and at the same time the political myth – of a more radical, socialist and collective life where the family had been limited as an institution. Instead of being the heaviest link in the chain of sociality, as it had been in the Diaspora, it was ideally to become the lightest. The vast body of literature on the history and on the internal organisation of the kibbutzim has discussed the means and ways adopted by the various collectives – especially during their early time – to reduce the functions of the traditional family, from the abolishment of marriage to

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the collective education of the children, from the common dining hall to the introduction of a third person (ha-shlishi) who would share the couple’s lodging (Spiro 1956a; Spiro 1956b; Talmon, 1972; Simoni 1993– 1994). In this respect, early Zionism placed itself in the wake of that European utopia that had seen the family as an institution to be limited in order to achieve a reform of the character of the individual in a collective way.2 The memoirs of the Jews who immigrated to Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century until the mid 1920s speak in fact not only of the hardships of work in the rural communes and of settlement in the Galilee and/or in the Emek Valley (Koestler 1969; Segre 1987). They also present the ambivalence of many ‘pioneers’, as they were called, and of many women in particular, asked to sacrifice individual needs in the name of a collective utopia, in what has been described as ‘a period of cruelty towards the individual’ (Zhidovsky 1947: 556–557). In the communes of Hedera, Sejera, Ayelet Ha-Shahar, Romni, Kfar Uria, Degania, Bittania and Um Juni, all established between 1905 and 1920, collectivism represented a framework of mutual help for settlement and colonisation; it constituted a value in itself, the first step for a process of individual and collective regeneration which stood as a prerequisite for the foundation of a national unity. In the words of Yitzhak Tabenkin, one of the main representatives of one of the kibbutz movements: The kvutza [pl. kvutzot; collective settlement; early phase of development of the kibbutz] does not recognise the family from two perspectives, social and economic, as the family is the mother of individualism. … We can certainly state that in this collective lifestyle there will be no need whatsoever of the family. Its biological function can be undertaken also without the family existing as an institution (Goldberg 1949: 29). They decided to get married, but will do so without the cloth. … Is it possible that this wedding will not be recognised and that the children born will not be legal? Is there someone who is born illegally?3

Some of these communes dissolved rapidly, as in the cases of the Romni group, of Ayelet ha-Shahar and/or of the more peculiar Bittania; others, like Degania for example, turned within a few years in kibbutzim, i.e. in socialist and collectivist settlements that were more stable and organised than the kvutzot from a political point of view and in their social organisation. Shortly after the establishment of the kibbutzim, the pioneers had to confront two crucial questions: in the first place, how to deal with couples, and therefore with the formation of personal ties that were potentially disrupting of the collective’s unity; secondly, what to do with the children born inside the collectives, and therefore how to transmit to the following generation the founding values of their own utopia. In the words of an elderly woman of a kibbutz interviewed years later by Bruno

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Bettelheim for his famous The Children of the Dream: ‘Let’s face it, the kibbutz wasn’t built for children, but to make us free’ (1969: 356). The solution for transmitting dreams through the generations was temporarily found in a system of collective education whose main longterm weakness was the separation of children from parents (De Benedetti 2001); in this respect, the kibbutz represented a radical choice which not all Jewish immigrants were ready or willing to share. There existed other possibilities for placing oneself within the Zionist and national framework and at the same time for maintaining the family as an institution. One of these could be the moshav, a cooperative settlement where the unity of the family was maintained (Dayan 1985).4 Another was life in those cities of Palestine that had a Jewish presence, Haifa and Jerusalem, or a Jewish majority, like Tel Aviv (Londres 1930). These represented the stage where a networked civil society composed of numerous associations and organisations of varying size and scope was growing and consolidating in the same period. In the urban context, Zionist associationism developed in a series of ‘tight’ and ‘loose’ networks (Piselli 1995) that were able, between the mid 1920s and the late 1930s, to coordinate and manage the whole structure of Jewish welfare (Simoni 2010a). Some of these networks developed their activities on a national scale – like the Hadassah Medical Organization, the Workers’ Sick Fund (Kupat Cholim), the Association of Jewish Women (Histarut Nashim ’Ivriot) or, for another example, the General Trade Union, the Histadrut.5 Others operated locally, for example the ‘Committee for the help to the Insane’, various Jewish charitable societies,6 the ‘Jubilee Fund for Children’, ‘The Tel Aviv Boys Home’ (Simoni 2010b: 121).7 In either case, both these national and local networks ultimately came under the control and supervision of the educational, welfare and health committees of the National Council (Va’ad Leumi), the body in charge of coordinating the whole structure from above. In this respect, urban Jewish Palestine did not only constitute the place where social, educational and medical structures were being built; it really represented a space where a homogeneous national community founded on the sharing of common values – health, strength, community, Jewish regeneration and work – took shape. Here too the public dimension dominated over the private sphere, though without the radical demoting of the family so prominent in the organisation of the kibbutzim. Couples and families had naturally formed in this period; however, they were considered an integral part of the society built on that system of values which emphasised the collective, the community and the horizontal links on which it was founded. Although apparently far away one from the other, from a Zionist perspective rural and urban Palestine were complementary and closely connected; both were laying the foundations of that ideal new society

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that Zionism wanted to build in Palestine. The former emphasised collectivism above everything else, the collectivism of the ‘pioneers who lived … in Galilee, Sharon and the Valleys … strong, serious, self-contained people … capable of loneliness and introspection, of living outdoors, sleeping in tents, hard labour’ (Oz 2003: 5). One step down the ladder of prestige stood ‘the affiliated community’ – as again exemplified in the words of Amos Oz ‘reading the socialist newspaper Davar in their singlets on summer verandas, members of the Histadrut, the Haganah and the Health Fund … contributors to the voluntary Community Chest solidarity fund … devotees of self-restraint, a solid way of life’ (2003: 12). The combination of these two dimensions transformed the ‘State on its way’ (medinah ba-derech) of the 1930s into the state ‘up and running precisely on schedule’ (Vital 2000: 32) of 1948. This process of state building – which had ultimately brought a complete transformation of the country’s economy, society and politics – had altogether left out the Palestinian population and leadership. This civil society – founded on cultural and ethnical homogeneous values, which was normative and often even coercing towards the thencalled Oriental Jews – was nationalistic and exclusionary (Simoni 2010b: 53–70); its main features tend to place it outside contemporary definitions of civil society, which present it as an ever-changing bundle of open and inclusive networks; rather, the Zionist civil society of the 1930s may be seen as following the model of Ernest Gellner (1995), a modular construction, founded on internal cultural and social compatibility, intrinsically nationalist because of the exchangeability and substitutability of its members, connecting only within a culturally acknowledged framework, while disconnecting outside it (Simoni 2010a). Against the ideological foundations underlying this process of transformation and against the practical means used to realise it, the Palestinian group resisted by strengthening the institution at the core of its social and political structure, the extended family.

The Palestinian Population Between Family and Civil Society During the thirty years of the British Mandate, the Palestinian extended family (the clan, the hamula) represented one of the institutions that tried to withstand the administrative, economic and social changes introduced into the country by the British policy of modernisation and by the political and national agenda of the Zionist movement. In this respect, and in the framework of the nationalist struggle taking place in Palestine, some of its traditionally founding traits – patrilineal descent, non-consensual endogamous marriage (often between cousins), women’s subordination and, at times, child marriage and polygamy – contributed

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to shelter the group’s internal solidarity and to strengthen its national identity, in different ways according to social and economic status and regional provenance (Barakat 1985; Firestone 1990: 101; Tucker 1993; Doumani 1995). This system remained throughout this period central among the Palestinian elites, in the middle classes and among peasants – becoming an important tool of national mobilisation. Unlike the Zionist case, where horizontal networks operated for the advancement of the national cause, on the Palestinian front nation building developed along vertical and hierarchical lines that depended upon family and clan loyalties and, often, upon clientelism. In the words of Khalil Sakakini, Greek Orthodox, Jerusalemite, and the educator of generations of Palestinians: Every Muslim family in Jerusalem has a tradition distilled into its blood, handed down from father to son. The family’s influence comes before any other interest. If you assign someone to vote for a representative in a house of delegates, or a city council, or a board of education, or a national association, he will vote for the elder of his family, whether or not that person is fit for the job. Ask him who the most loyal patriot is, the one with the most superior qualities, with the broadest knowledge or with the best opinions and he will cite his father, or brother or cousin.8

In this context, political action was generally dependent upon family loyalties and hierarchies, especially those of the notables’. As we shall see in more detail below, it was also in response to such a monopoly of political action from above that – from the mid 1920s – a number of local committees and associations developed in the main cities of Palestine. Here, they tried to organise local politics from below, and at the same time address the national question. As it is well known, five national parties came into existence between 1932 and 1936;9 with the exception of the Istiqlal, each of them was connected to one of the major notables’ families, which were in turn split in two family camps: that dominated by the Husseinis and the one led by the Nashashibis. The Palestinian leadership used the family instrumentally, utilising for nationalistic purposes a number of structures that had traditionally served as means to strengthen the extended family and its pervasiveness in society. While for example both child marriage and the waqf 10 were on the decline in this period in the Middle East, they gained importance and increased in numbers in Palestine during the British Mandate, a phenomenon that can easily be connected to the strengthening of traditional customs and institutions in situation of perceived or real collective/national danger.11 Child marriage was in fact reported to be declining (in particular) among the middle and upper classes from Turkey to India, but its percentages had risen in Palestine during this period (Simoni 2010b: 71–94). The waqf had become an instrument both of nationalistic politics and of competition between families as early as

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1923, when the management of this institution was assigned to the ‘Central Committee of the Waqf ’, one of the organs of the Supreme Muslim Council, founded in 1922, the highest Palestinian body of (limited) selfgovernment and the real political chessboard on which families played out their strategies of the time. The founders of the ten richest awqaf set up at this time belonged not by chance to four of the most important families of Jerusalem: the Husseini, the Alami, the Dejani and the Khalidi. From these and other main families the British Administration – further enhancing the ambiguity of their modernising project – used to pick the officers for its administrative ranks for example;12 from the notables’ families also came some of the students for the exchange schemes with the Universities of London, Oxford and Cambridge which the British administration sponsored (Simoni 2006: 40–3). From inside the extended family also came some potentially interesting, but ultimately limited attempts towards civil society formation. Such efforts appear even more notable in gender terms, as they originated from a group of middle- and upper-class women who, during the 1920s, established welfare associations, committees and organisations (Fleischmann 2003). These operated mainly on the local level, as in the case of the ‘Beit Safafa Benevolent Society’, constituted to ‘to help the poor of the villages’13, of the ‘Women’s Auxiliary for Child Welfare and Motherhood’ from Nablus, of the ‘Society for the Enhancement of Women’ from Ramallah14 or of the more ambitious Jerusalem-based ‘American Colony Association’, whose aim was the construction of a school for girls, kindergartens and clinics.15 While some of these examples could fall more in the field of family philanthropy than in that of civil society formation, the foundation in October 1929 of the Arab Women’s Congress (AWC) in Jerusalem – under the leadership of Sejez Nazzar and Matiel Mogannam (Wilke 1994) – strengthened on the Palestinian front the connection between national struggle, attempts towards civil society formation, and the permanence of the family’s influence. These women aimed at inspiring men in their national struggle, emerging from the private into the public sphere, ‘against the traditions of the old’ (Mogannam 1937: 83). However, their being part of the AWC or of other associations was filtered through family identification: women were in fact politically active in civil society as sisters, wives, mothers and daughters. This aspect of Palestinian civil society became increasingly apparent immediately after the 1936–1939 riots, when delegations of women began to appeal to the British authorities to free their menfolk, arrested or condemned for their part in the 1936–1939 riots, or at least for the reductions of the sentences they had been condemned to serve.16 As for the AWC, in the long run this institution too reproduced some of the fractures and factionalism which dominated the Palestinian (male) leadership. Whalida al Khalidi, the president of the AWC, was the wife of Hussein Fahri al Khalidi, elected mayor of Jerusalem in 1934; five of the

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women sitting in the AWC Executive Committee were married to men in leading positions in the ‘Arab Higher Committee’, established in 1936 (Fleischmann 2000: 20). In this period, these two forms of resistance – family politics from above and civil society associationism from below – did not find a shared ground where their common opposition to Zionism and to its transformation of the country’s politics, society and economics could be turned into practical and political measures of collective national mobilisation. Instead, extended family and civil society intertwined through the pervasive influence that the first was able to exercise on the other. Ultimately, such influence undermined the possibility that organised horizontal networks would be formed independently from the vertical dynamics of the family, hindering the realisation of practical instruments to resist the Zionist advance. Not by chance, after 1939, with the defeat of the Palestinian leadership following the end of the Great Arab Revolt, also Palestinian associationism diminished. Moreover, while the politics of the notables’ families did connect urban and rural Palestine, albeit in an often clientelistic relationship, those of civil society – generally urban and middle-class based – were both in geographical and class terms more limited. When the paths of family and civil society crossed, it was always at the expense of the latter and to the endorsement of the former. These (and other) attempts towards civil society formation on the Palestinian front indicate that the family did not remain static and immutable throughout this period; on the contrary, also through the family Palestinians tried to react to the changes introduced in the country at various levels, especially in the way that national aspirations were expressed in that political context. In the framework of the comprehensive transformation which invested Palestine in this period, the extended family functioned therefore not only as a ‘shock absorber’ but also as a shelter for the preservation of individual and collective identity. But the pre-eminence of over-powerful family clans, often in conflict one with one another, and always subordinating civil society initiatives to family loyalties and hierarchies, was a very heavy ball and chain attached to the Palestinian nation’s foot. The events that led to the foundation of the State of Israel and to the Nakba cannot only be explained by such differences in social organisation and their influence on the country’s national politics, but they certainly played a relevant and little-commented-upon role in determining which of the two groups would have a better chance of sustaining mass mobilisation and eventually war. The presence of an organised civil society on the Zionist front certainly proved a more practical and successful tool for the mobilisation of its members on the basis of a series of shared and common national values. The internal divisions of the Palestinian leadership – which was mainly composed of middle and upper classes, among the

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first to leave the country after the UN Resolution n. 181 (29 November 1947) – not only filtered down to the lower classes; the factionalism and familism that had characterised their approach to the national competition of the 1920s and 1930s hindered the possibility of a coordinated civil or military effort, leading to complete desegregation. As historian Salim Tamari wrote on the dramatic results of 1948: ‘The vertical segmentation of Palestinian society, on which its political fabric prevailing in the 1930s and 1940s was built, was shattered from without’ (2009: 10–11).

After 1948. Family and State The relationship between family, civil society and state had mirrored the changing balance of power between the Zionist movement, the Palestinian group and the British authorities during the Mandate. After 1948 too, the role of these three agents of social and political transformation reflected some of the enormous changes that affected the country and the two contending parties. Following an initial phase of civil war, the ‘war for Palestine’ (Rogan and Shlaim 2001) turned into an international conflict with the foundation of the State of Israel and with the Arab armies’ invasion in its immediate aftermath; it led to the flight/expulsion of about 650,000–700,000 Palestinians and it transformed those 140,000–160,000 who remained within the borders of the newly established state into Israeli citizens (living under military administration until 1966).17 The events of 1948 also represent the starting point of a longterm process that led to the disappearance of an entire culture and to the uprooting of historical patterns of social and political organisation as well as of modes of rural and urban settlement, which came to be substituted by new ones. Most of all, there was now a state for Jews and its absence for the Palestinians, the potential end of the Diaspora for the former and its beginning for the latter. This new situation changed the role that family, civil society and state played within each group. In Israel, with David Ben Gurion’s mamlachtyiut (statalism), the family was gradually turned into one of the factors supporting the new Israeli civil religion, which revolved around the state and its symbols, together with other national institutions like education and the army (Liebman and Don-Yehiya 1983). As in the case of other ancient or modern Diasporas, for Palestinians the family became one of the main vehicles for sheltering national identity and for enhancing chances of material survival, whether in refugee camps or elsewhere.18 Family networks, clan loyalties and common provenance from the same areas and/or villages of former Palestine naturally became pivotal for the formation and consolidation of solidarity ties. At this initial stage and throughout the 1950s for both groups civil society altogether faded from

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the picture, as there was little room for its functions of social and political mediation and mobilisation where the state was too strong, as in Israel, or where the state did not exist, as in the Palestinian case. It would take another major geo-political transformation – the Six Day War – to bring civil society back into the picture as a major political force both in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt).

The Return of the Family on the Israeli Agenda The return of the primacy of the family in Israeli society and politics after 1948 can in part be seen as a national project constructed from above (Simoni 2010c). Under the leadership of MAPAI, the historical Israeli Labour Party, the family as an institution was reintroduced from an ideological point of view, a factor which – for Israel as well as for other cases – reveals the often conservative approach of traditional Labour to family policies (Aronoff 1993; Sternhell 1998). However, such centrality can also be considered as a response to a series of structural factors: first of all, a major conditioning role was played by the already mentioned immigration of 600,000 Arab Jews (Shenhav 2006) in the decade following the foundation of the state. This large group was historically far closer to the dynamics of the extended family than to the radical collectivist experimentation of the kibbutzim; its Zionist ideal was generally based on religious considerations rather than on any socialist utopia.19 Secondly, the return of the family on the national agenda was helped by the growing fear that this flow of immigration would not be sufficient to ensure a long-term Jewish majority in Israel. Arab fertility rates were notably higher than Jewish ones, especially looking at those families of Western origin where the percentage of children per household was then calculated between 1.5 and 1.7 (Talmon Garber 1954), a factor connecting the question of Jewish demography to the imperative of national defence. In the words of David Ben Gurion (1971: 839): ‘Any Jewish woman who, as far as depends on her, does not bring into the world at least four healthy children is shirking her duty to the nation, like a soldier who evades military service’. In feeding this connection – and the nationalist rhetoric of a country in a state of semi-permanent military mobilisation – Ben Gurion and the political leadership were helped by at least two groups: in the first place by demographers, sociologists and statisticians (Peri 1996) and, secondly, by the religious establishment, especially after the foundation of the ‘National Religious Party’ (1956) and its participation in almost every government coalition until 1992. The intertwining of these three factors – the migration of Jews from Arab countries, the demographical threat and the progressively more

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marked influence of religion in Israel – are part of a larger picture that speaks of the difficult relationship between Ashkenazi and Arab Jews as it developed through the unfolding of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In this context, family and state became close allies, with religion contributing to anchor the former to needs of the latter. Family law gradually found a convergence with religious norms, a factor that led to the judicial transformation of the standing of this institution and to its full acknowledgement as a key institution in society (Shifman 1984; 1989). The main rites of passage of family and social life – birth, circumcision, bar mitzvah, military service, marriage and death – came to coincide, although in different ways, with both the religious and the civic national calendar (Safir 1991). In the same period the kibbutzim entered into a slow but terminal decline in terms of being seen as an alternative institution that had once offered a different set of relationships and balances between family, civil society and the state. The family and the state became after the 1950s complementary, a transformation that can also be seen through the demographic policies of the various governments, beginning from the fertility prizes of the 1960s up to the ‘Large Family Bill’, discussed in the Knesset in the summer of 2000 (Portugese 1998). The long-term effects of this overall transformation also had an impact on maternity, which became an instrument of transmission of traditional and/or religious values, as well as a vehicle for asserting civic and national values (Yanay and Rapoport 1997). In this respect, the Israeli mother came to embody two characters at once: she was responsible, as always, for transmitting the values and traditions of Judaism across generations, both inside the family and outside of it; and she became the mother of the nation, in a re-elaboration in national terms of the previous Diasporic character of the Jewish mother (Berkovitch 1997; Stoler-Liss 2003). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Israel considers itself – and is generally considered – a familistic society (Doron and Kremer 1991). The family has become a reference point for the individual; marriage is valued as an important personal and social step; fertility (2.9 newborn per woman) rates are generally higher than in other Western countries while the percentages of divorce and the number of children born out of wedlock remain lower (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics 2000: 5). During the twentieth century the family in Israel has therefore completed a precise path, from the margins to the centre of society.

From Family to Family: The Palestinian Diaspora For Palestinian refugees after 1948 the family as an institution – and often that which had physically remained of large extended families in reality – became the guarding agent of the past, sheltering individual and

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collective history and memory, the anchor to a ‘golden’ past whose symbol became not by chance the keys of the homes left in Palestine, which were jealously preserved and often exhibited (Masri 2001). Scattered in various other national contexts, Palestinians in exile clung to the family as the privileged site where the specificity of their history and national identity could be nurtured and transmitted through the generations. As exemplified by the words of Fawaz Turki, well-known Palestinian author and journalist: ‘In his home a Palestinian child, whether born in Beirut, Amman or Damascus, would be instructed to identify himself as a Palestinian child, from Haifa or Lydda, or any other town that had been his parents’ birthplace’ (1974: 39). In this respect, the fateful events of 1948 certainly represented a moment of rupture for Palestinians in terms of displacement and dislocation; and this applies both to those who migrated voluntarily or forcibly, and to those remained within the borders of the newly established state of Israel, about 150,000 persons living under military administration until 1966, who tried to restructure individual and community life in a new national context. Between the 1950s and 1960s this group – and in particular the younger generation – plunged into an identity crisis that started from within families (unemployment of the breadwinner, sense of humiliation of children for the loss of authority of the father20) and continued into schools and in society. In this period, this very same crisis pushed at least 2,000 young Palestinians with Israeli citizenship to attempt an escape from Israel towards Jordan or Egypt (i.e. Gaza), endangering themselves and their families, as their escapes usually ended up either in prison, or with their being shot.21 Family and kin not only remained central among Palestinian Israelis; they were as important among the majority of Palestinians who found themselves outside Palestine/Israel after 1948; they became a trait of continuity imbued with a new meaning in unstable and threatening circumstances.22 Sketching a complete portrait of the Palestinian family in Diaspora after 1948 seems improbable in the conclusive paragraphs of this essay, mainly for reasons of space. Within this long-term general continuity, different cases can be presented according to the families’ social status, for example – whether they came from the peasant world or from the urban middle classes. The latter often escaped along routes that followed the regional economic networks of the larger extended families. Most peasant extended families split, as documented also in the dramatic testimony filmed in Tur’an by Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi in Route 181.23 Finally, the contingent diversity of the places of arrival, whether the urban context or the refugee camps, contributed to determine which role families would play after the Nakba in economy and in society. Other factors that should be considered in analysing the transformation

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of Palestinian families are the role played by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA, 1949), as well as that of other national and socialising agents: education received in Jordanian schools for example or study and work opportunities in the Gulf (Maffi 2005; Salam 1994; Lesch 1991). The words of Ibrahim Abu Lughod (dean of Bir Zeit University, 1991–2001) about the methodological difficulties of tracing the history of Palestinian education for a population scattered over more than twenty countries, can maybe be applied also to the study of the family structure and of its transformation as well (Abu Lughod 1973). In this sense, an analysis of the Palestinian family after 1948 which does not consider this multi-dimensional geographical, economic and political perspective can only reproduce once more a general picture lacking completeness and perpetuating the idea of the immutability of the Palestinian family. However, in most cases, and despite the different socialisation which Palestinians underwent in various national contexts, on the family was placed one of the heaviest burdens for sheltering national identity. Individual and collective memory was passed on through the generations through the family; the trauma of dislocation and dispossession found in the family a vehicle for trans-generational transmission; patriarchy was further strengthened by the national imperative and it was supported from within families by accepted practices of gender segregation and oppression, beginning with the return of child marriage in the 1950s (Rubenberg 2001). If the state of Israel had subjected the family to its national agenda, it had done so as part of the battle against Palestinians, for whom the family had remained one of the most powerful instruments of individual, collective and national survival and reproduction. The centrality of the family in Palestinian life did not exclude the highly important emergence of an embryonic civil society in the mid 1960s, in a co-existence between the two which made them interdependent. A stronger and organised Palestinian civil society gradually came into existence in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip after the Six Day War, including also associations of and for women. I will just mention a few main ones here: in 1965 Zlikha Shihab, a Palestinian woman activist considered a pioneer of battles for women’s rights, established in Jerusalem the ‘General Union of Palestinian Women’ (GUPW) (Fleischmann 1999: 151); in the town of Al-Bireh, Samiha Kalil, another activist who then had a relevant political career also in the Palestinian Authority, established an association called In’ash al-usra (The rehabilitation of the family), a charitable organisation of middle-class women. By focusing on the professional education of other women through sewing, cooking and embroidery courses, this association became the largest charitable organisation of the Occupied Territories after 1967. In a number of

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ways In’ash al-usra paved the way for the better-known committees of women established in the 1970s: the Women’s Work Committee (1978), the later Union of the Committees of the Working Women of Palestine (1981), the Union of the Palestinian Women’s Committees (1981) and the Women’s Committee for Social Work (1982). As the work of Joost Hiltermann demonstrated, these represented important sectors of Palestinian civil society in the 1980s and during the First Intifada (1991).24 For another example, it was from the families of some refugee camps that came the establishment of social networks of solidarity and mutual support under occupation (Rosenfeld 2004: 2938). A civil society had been born, but its democratic flowering was still hindered by the strength of family traditions and hierarchies.

Conclusion While coming from very different starting points, both the Zionist (and later Israeli) and the Palestinian approaches eventually converged on the centrality of the family in their respective and opposed national quests. After about one hundred years of conflict, the relationships between family, civil society and state, though different in the Palestinian and Israeli cases, seem to be weighted heavily – some would say too heavily – towards the primacy of the family. After 1948 the family has become in Israel one of the factors supporting the state, in its military, demographic, social and symbolic needs. In the case of Palestine, the family has often represented the first and ultimate safety net for a population of refugees in 1948 and for those living under military occupation since 1967. The family is therefore deeply inscribed in the dynamics of conflict for both populations. However, it is certainly worth noting in closure that its predominance began to be challenged from the 1970s in both settings by the growth and expansion of civil society initiatives. Civil society too remains in fact central to dynamics of the conflict, both in its relation with families and in that with institutional authorities. While its growth and diversification can be considered part and parcel of the wider ‘associationism revolution’ of the 1980s (Anheier and Salamon 1997) it is already after the Six Day War that, on both fronts, it began to offer a possibility – and no more than that – of the overbearing primacy of families being muted and even transformed by the extension of civil society initiatives. Such growth may also have some bearing on the continuing protracted and tragic conflict which has been affecting – although in different ways – Israelis and Palestinians, and which neither institutional authority seems to be able to solve without a substantial contribution from below.

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Notes 1. Cmd. 5479, Report of the Palestine Royal Commission, Presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies in Parliament by Command of His Majesty, London, HMSO, 1937, pp. 113-25, 136-40. 2. Like in the phalansteries of Fourier for example, in the anarchic communes of Kropotkin (circulating in Palestine in a Hebrew translation of 1923) in the new Bolshevik family described by Alexandra Kollontai in 1920, or, for a much later example, in the communes of 1968. See Colombo and Quarta 1991. 3. Kibbutz Ha-Meuchad Movement Archives, Ramat Efal, Israel, Series Tabenkin, (henceforth TAYT (TAB), b. 9, f. 3, 15 August 1966, The Question of Education, Course n. 5. The ‘cloth’ of the quote is a reference to the traditional bridal canopy of Jewish weddings. 4. See also TAYT (TAB), b. 11, f. 1, 19 December 1966, The Question of Education and TAYT (TAB) b. 9, f. 3. 5. The example of the Histadrut as a horizontal network can be problematic (see Sternhell 1998). 6. Israel State Archives, Jerusalem (Henceforth ISA), Series Mandate (henceforth M) 1577 54/30, 1934. 7. ISA M 274 T/256/35, 1935. 8. K. Sakakini, Khada Ana, ya Dunya (Such I am, O World), quoted in Segev 2000: 103. 9. The Istiqlal (1932), the ‘National Defence Party’ (Raghib al Nashashibi, 1934), The ‘Palestine Arab Party’ (Amin al Husseini, 1935), the ‘Reform Party’ (Hussein al Khalidi, 1935), the ‘National Bloc’ (Abd-al Latif Salah, 1935). 10. The waqf (pl. awqaf ) is a pious endowment according to the Islamic Law. It represents an Islamic institution which came to fulfil major vital political, social and economic functions in the new administrative and institutional framework of the Mandate. 11. The period 1967-90 in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) has also witnessed an increase in both child marriage and in the establishment of awqaf. On child marriage today see Rubenberg 2001; for the increase in awqaf in Jerusalem after 1967, see Reiter 1996, and Dumper 1997. 12. The National Archives , London, (Henceforth TNA), Series Colonial Office (Henceforth CO) 733/240/2, 1 January 1933. Correspondance between Sir Arthur Wauchope, High Commissioner for Palestine 1931–1937, and Philip Cunliffe-Lister, then Secretary of State for the Colonies. 13. ISA, M 842, 1042. 14. ISA, M 838, 458. 15. ISA, M 838, 529. 16. ISA, M 365/POL/1/46 e M 349 OP/395/46. 17. For a discussion on the number of Palestinian refugees, see Morris 2004. For the number of the Palestinians who remained see Rouhama 1997: 502. 18. For the role of kin relations in the Palestinian Diaspora in Kuwait, see Ghabra 1988. For the relationship between family and nation-states in Diaspora situations see Cohen 1996. 19. With the possible exception of Iraqi Jews, whose relationship with Zionism and communism is analyzed in Meir-Glitzenstein 2004. See also Samir 2002. 20. For a film representing this last point see M. Khleifi, Wedding in Galilee, 1987.

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21. A. A Zu’bi, ‘Discontent of Arab youth’, New Outlook vol. 1, no. 6, January 1958, 12–17; Z. Schiff, ‘Arab youths flee from Israel’, New Outlook vol. 4, no. 5, March– April 1961, 61–62; A.B.A, ‘The death of five Arab boys’, New Outlook vol. 4, no. 8, November 1961, 25–26 and 36. 22. For a historiographical review of various approaches to the centrality of kin and family in the Palestinian case, see Johnson (2006). 23. E. Sivan, M. Khleifi, Route 181, Part III, North, Memento! Sourat Films, Sindibad with the participation of the Centre National de la Cinématographie, 2004. 24. International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Collection Palestinian Labour and Women’s Movement, f. 84, Federation of Palestinian Women’s Action Committees, The Development of the Palestinian Women Movement in the Territories Occupied in 1967 after twenty years of Israeli occupation. Translation from Arabic by Chiara Cassinari.

References Abu Lughod, Ibrahim. 1973. ‘Educating a Community in Exile’, Journal of Palestine Studies 2, 3: 94–111. Abu-Manneh, Butrus. 1999. ‘The Rise of the Sanjak of Jerusalem in the Late Nineteenth Century’. The Israel/Palestine Question, ed. Ilan Pappé. London and New York: 41–51. Anheier, Helmut K., and Lester M. Salamon. 1997. ‘The Civil Society Sector’, Society 34, 2: 605. Arendt, Hannah. 1951. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York. Aronoff, Myron J. 1993. Power and Ritual in the Israeli Labour Party: A Study in Political Anthropology. Armoni, NY. Barakat, Halim. 1985. ‘The Arab Family and the Challenge of Social Transformation’. Women and the Family in the Middle East: New Voices of Change, ed. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. Austin, TX: 27–48. Ben Gurion, David. 1971. Israel: A Personal History. New York. Berkovitch, Nitza. 1997. ‘Motherhood as a national mission: the construction of womanhood in the legal discourse in Israel’, Women’s Studies International Forum 20, 5/6: 605–619. Bettelheim, Bruno. 1969. The Children of the Dream. London. Buber, Martin. 1949. Paths in Utopia. New York. ———. 1983. ‘An Experiment that did not Fail’. The Sociology of the Kibbutz, Studies of Israeli Society, vol. II, ed. Ernest Krausz. New Brunswick and London: 25–35. Cohen, Robin. 1996. ‘Diaspora and Nation-State: From Victims to Challengers’, International Affairs 72, 3: 507–520. Colombo, Arrigo, and Cosimo Quarta, eds. 1991. Il destino della famiglia nell’Utopia. Bari. Dayan, Yael. 1985. My Father, His Daughter. New York. De Benedetti, Corrado Israel. 2001. I sogni non passano in eredità. Cinquant’anni di vita in kibbutz. Firenze. Doron, Abraham, and Ralph M. Kremer. 1991. The Welfare State in Israel. Boulder, CO, San Francisco, CA, and Oxford. Doumani, Beshara. 1995. Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus 1700–1900. Berkeley, CA. Dumper, Michael. 1997. The Politics of Jerusalem since 1967. New York.

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Elon, Amos. 1986. The Israelis: Founders and Sons. New York. Firestone, Ya’akov. 1990. ‘The Land-Equalizing Musha’ Village: A Reassessment’. Ottoman Palestine, 1800–1914: Studies in Economic and Social History, ed. Gad Gilbar. Leiden: 91–126. Fleischmann, Ellen L. 1999. ‘Selective Memory, Gender and Nationalism: Palestinian Women Leaders of the Mandate Period’, History Workshop Journal 47: 141–148. Fleischmann, Ellen L. 2000. ‘The Emergence of the Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1929–1939’, Journal of Palestine Studies 29, 3: 16–32. ———. 2003. The Nation and Its ‘New’ Women: The Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1920–1948. Berkeley, CA. Gellner, Ernest. 1995. ‘The Importance of Being Modular’. Civil Society. Theory, History, Comparison, ed. John A. Hall. Cambridge: 32–55. Ghabra, Shafeeq.1988. ‘Palestinians in Kuwait: The Family and the Politics of Survival’, Journal of Palestine Studies 17, 2: 62–83. Gidron, Benjamin, et al. 2003. ‘Through a New Lens: The Third Sector and Israeli Society’, Israel Studies 8, 1: 20–60. Goldberg, Yet, ed. 1949. Pyrqe kvutza (The Chapters of the kvutza, Hebrew). Tel Aviv. Hiltermann, Joost R. 1991. Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories. Princeton, NJ. Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. 2000. Prime Minister’s Office. Women and Men in Israel. Jerusalem. Johnson, Penny. 2006. ‘Living Together in a Nation in Fragments’. Living Palestine, Family Survival, Resistance a Mobility under Occupation, ed. Lisa Taraki. Syracuse, NY, and New York: 51102. Khleifi, Michel. 1987. Wedding in Galilee. Marisa Films, LPA, ZDF, in association with CNC. Koestler, Arthur. 1969. Arrow in the Blue: The First Volume of an Autobiography. New York. Lesch, Ann M. 1991. ‘Palestinians in Kuwait’, Journal of Palestine Studies 20, 4: 42–54. Liebman, Charles S., and Eliezer Don-Yehiya. 1983. Civil Religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in the Jewish State. Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles and London. Londres, Albert. 1930. Le Juif Errant est arrivé. Paris. Maffi, Irène. 2005. ‘La fabrication des frontières nationales dans les manuels scolaires jordaniens’, a contrario 3, 2: 26–44. Masri, Mai. 2001. Frontiers of Dreams and Fears. Independent Television Service, Palestine. USA. Meir-Glitzenstein, Esther. 2004. Zionism in an Arab Country: Jews in Iraq in the 1940s. London and New York. Mogannam, Matiel. 1937. The Arab Woman and the Palestine Problem. London. Morris, Benny. 2004. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge. Oz, Amos. 2003. A Tale of Love and Darkness. London. Peri, Yoram. 1996. ‘The Radical Social Scientists and Israeli Militarism’, Israel Studies 1, 2: 230–266. Piselli Fortunata, ed. 1995. Reti: L’analisi di network nelle scienze sociali. Roma. Portugese, Jaqueline. 1998. Fertility Policy in Israel: The Politics of Religion, Gender and Nation. Westport, CT, and London. Reiter, Yitzhak. 1996. Islamic Endowments in Jerusalem under British Mandate. London.

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Rogan, Eugene L., and Avi Shlaim, eds. 2001. The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. New York. Rosenfeld, Maja. 2004. Confronting the Occupation: Work, Education and Political Activism of Palestinian Families in a Refugee Camp. Stanford, CA. Rouhama, Nadim N. 1997. Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict. New Haven, CT, and London. Rubenberg, Cheryl A. 2001. Palestinian Women: Patriarchy and Resistance in the West Bank. Boulder, CO. Safir, Marilyn P. 1991. ‘Religion, Tradition and Public Policy Give Family First Priority’. Calling the Equality Bluff: Women in Israel, ed. Marilyn P. Safir and Amir Rosenmann. New York, Oxford, Bejing, and Frankfurt. Salam, Nawaf A. 1994. ‘Between Repatriation and Resettlement: Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon’, Journal of Palestine Studies 24, 1: 18–27. Samir. 2002. Forget Baghdad: Jews and Arabs – The Iraqi Connection, Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion. Zurich. http://www.forgetbaghdad.com/pdfs/e/ presskit_forget_baghdad_e.pdf Segev, Tom. 2000. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. New York. Segre, Dan Vittorio. 1987. Memoirs of a Fortunate Jew: An Italian Story. Bethesda, MD. Shamir, Ronen. 2000. The Colonies of Law: Colonialism, Zionism, and Law in Early Mandate Palestine. Cambridge. Shenhav, Yehouda. 2006. The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity. Stanford. Shifman, Pinhas. 1984–1989. Dine ha-mishpahah be-Yi´sra’el [Family Law in Israel]. Ha-Fakultah le-mishpatim, ha-Universitah ha-`Ivrit bi-Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim. Simoni, Marcella. 1993–1994. Ideali comunitari e il superamento della famiglia ebraica. Dallo Shtetl al Kibbutz (1900–1956). Unpublished Tesi di Laurea. Università di Firenze. ———. 2006. ‘Sanità e competizione nazionale: la Palestina durante il Mandato Britannico (1922–1948)’, Medicina e Storia 6, 12: 27–50. ———. 2010a. A Healthy Nation. Zionist Health Policies in British Palestine (1930– 1939). Venezia. ———. 2010b. At the Margins of Conflict. Social Perspectives on Arabs and Jews in British Palestine (1922–1948). Venezia. ———. 2010c. ‘Famiglie in Israele. Gli anni Cinquanta’. Famiglie nel Novecento. Conflitti, culture e relazioni, ed. Enrica Asquer, et al. Roma. Sivan, Eyal, and Michel Khleifi. 2006. Route 181. Memento! Sourat Films, with the participation of CNC. Spiro, Melford E. 1956a. Venture in Utopia. Cambridge, MA. ———. 1956b. ‘Is the Family Universal?’, American Anthropologist 58, 5: 839–846. Sternhell, Zeev. 1998. The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State. Princeton, NJ. Stoler-Liss, Sachlav. 2003 ‘“Mothers Birth the Nation”: The Social Construction of Zionist Motherhood in Wartime Israeli Parents’ Manuals’, Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women and Gender Issues 6: 104–18. Talmon Garber, Yonina. 1954. ‘The Family in Israel’, Marriage and Family Living 16, 4: 343–349. ———. 1972. Family and Community in the Kibbutz. Cambridge, MA.

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Tamari, Salim, 2009. Mountain Against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture. Berkekely, CA, Los Angeles and London. Tucker, Judith E. 1993. ‘The Arab family in History: “Otherness” and the Study of the Family’. Arab Women, Old Boundaries, New Frontiers, ed. Judith E. Tucker. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: 195–207. Turki, Fawaz. 1974. The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile. New York. Vital, David. 2000. ‘From “State within a State” to State’. Israel: the First Hundred Years, Volume I:. Israel’s Transition from Community to State, ed. Efraim Karsh. London and Portland, OR: 32–42. Wilke, Allison. 1994. Shoulder to Shoulder: Women and Palestinian Nationalism 1929–39. MPhil thesis, St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. Yanay, Niza, and Tamara Rapoport. 1997. ‘Ritual Impurity and Religious Discourse on Women and Nationality’, Women’s Studies International Forum 20, 5/6: 651–663. Zhidovsky, Aliza. 1947–5548. ‘Hevle klita (The pain of absorption)’. Ha-alyia ha-shnia (The Second Alyia), ed. Brakha Habas. Tel Aviv.

Chapter 11

GENDERED BOUNDARIES BETWEEN THE STATE, FAMILY AND CIVIL SOCIETY THE CASE OF POLAND AFTER 1989

Elzæbieta Korolczuk

What comes to your mind, when you come across the word ‘Poland’? Strange country somewhere between Russia and Germany, not truly a ‘European’ one, but gradually becoming a part of Europe? The Pope maybe, and strong Catholic traditions, sad-faced Madonnas and crosses at the sides of badly maintained roads? Or the Solidarity movement, one of the most spectacular examples of civil society that emerged under communist rule? Solidarity became a symbol of the forces that successfully initiated political and social transformation in the region. Many hoped that it would set an example of how civil society should function in Poland and other post-communist countries. Unfortunately, those hopes have never been fulfilled. Entering formal politics turned out to be the beginning of the end – the grassroots social movement transformed into a party proved to be both incompetent and ineffective. Disillusionment has been strengthened by the continuous conflicts between the founding fathers (and mothers): several of his previous colleagues have made numerous allegations against Lech Wałeç sa, accusing him of working as an agent for the communist regime. As a matter of fact, Solidarity has never been a fully democratic social movement. In her enlightening book on women in Solidarity, Shana Penn demonstrates that from a gendered perspective, it was neither egalitarian nor truly open to ideas of emancipation, especially women’s emancipation (Penn 2005; see also Kondratowicz 2001). Despite the fact that

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many women were active in Solidarity, some in leading positions, after 1989 their struggle was easily forgotten. The celebration of the twentyfifth anniversary of Solidarity in 2005 showed that women’s struggle is neither remembered nor honoured. The list of people constituting the honorary committee is quite telling. It includes the best-known leaders of the movement such as Lech Wałeçsa and Bogdan Borusewicz, the famous Polish film director Andrzej Wajda and two archbishops – thirteen men and not a single woman.1 The presence of the Polish Catholic Church officials here is not a coincidence, though. The Internet site of Solidarity welcomes us with the quotation from the late Pope John Paul II. At the twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations, the main focus was the memorial open-air mass said by the archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, life-long papal collaborator and allegedly one of his closest friends. Clearly, to understand the Polish context one needs to remember that the church has been one of the major forces influencing social and political life in Poland for over a century now. In the wake of transformation, gender issues and women’s rights in particular opened up as an important space of political struggle. And the church became very active in this field. As Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk argue: ‘By exercising political pressure, the Church has tried to transform gender-related legal regulations and to shape public discussion about women’s status in society, their rights and duties as citizens, their biological responsibility to reproduce the nation’ (2000: 151−152). Indeed, the Church has been very successful. This chapter analyses the development of civil society networks in Poland since the collapse of socialism. It scrutinises the interplay between the concepts of family and the state policies in order to demonstrate how discourses on gender are mediated by the Church and its alliance with the state. Focusing on women’s participation in public life and women’s rights leads not only to better understanding of gender regime in Poland, but to a deeper analysis of the relations between the state, civil society and family within a specific cultural context.

‘Politics of Reproduction’: The Conceptualisation of Family in Poland Let us first situate the relations between the state, family and civil society in Poland within a broader context. Although the family is often relegated to the realm of the private, it is also an institution, whose very existence and wellbeing is heavily influenced by the state’s actions. Policies affecting the family, generated at the state level, depend largely on the way family is conceptualised. Reproductive policies are particularly worth scrutinising because ‘the discursive and practical effects of de-

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bates about reproduction provide one of the keys to understanding how politics is being reshaped in East Central Europe’ and they contribute ‘to the creation of new kinds of political actors and subjectivities’ (Gal and Kligman 2000: 15–16). This perspective raises questions about the division between the public and private in Poland. Liberal theory usually defines the public sphere as a space accessible to all members of society, but at the same time controlled by the state, whereas one’s private sphere is accessible to few only and free from state intervention. Thus, the role of the state is first and foremost to protect the rights of an individual, just as Locke and Hume argued (Okin 1998: 130–137; see also Kymlicka 2002: 386–398; Pateman 1998; Elshtain 1982). In such a vision the separation between the public and the private seems to be clear and unquestioned. However, as Susan Okin (1998) points out, there are major ambiguities inscribed in most discussions when this problem is considered. The first regards the use of the terms public and private. These terms are used to refer to the distinction between the state and the members of society, as well as to the distinction between non-domestic and domestic sphere. In fact, ‘the crucial difference between the two is that the intermediate socioeconomic realm (what Hegel called civil society) is in the first dichotomy included in the category of private, but is in the second dichotomy public’ (Okin 1998: 117). Analogous to Okin, Will Kymlicka stresses the fact that the distinction between the public and the private is not comparable to the non-domestic and domestic. The latter offers autonomy, independence and intimacy to men only, not women (1998: 386–391). Taking into account such a division, the restrictions of state power within family refer to some of its members only, which seems to contradict the basis of liberal theory, though not liberal practice. The second and related ambiguity mentioned by Okin arises from patriarchal practices. The family has historically been identified with an adult male member of the household, and other members of family, namely women and children, as deprived of their individual rights (see Pateman 1998). From this perspective, the force of the well-known feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’ becomes apparent. As Okin explains, this slogan emphasised that, ‘what happens in personal life, particularly in relations between the sexes, is not immune from the dynamic of power, which has typically been seen as a distinguishing feature of the political’ (1998: 124). In the Polish cultural and historical context, the separation between the public and the private seems even more unclear. Due to the specific historical conditions such as the Partitions in the nineteenth century, the First and Second World Wars and the transition from state socialism to post socialism, for almost two hundred years family in Poland not only served ‘private’ purposes, but also had certain political and public func-

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tions.2 As Elzæbieta Matynia points out, ‘The boundaries [between public and private] had already become blurred in the nineteenth century. Education, religion, art, and self-help organisations – all activities that in the normal society constitute the public sphere, but which in Poland were illegal throughout the nineteenth century and both World Wars – had already moved into the private sphere long before communism was installed there’ (2003). It is significant that most of the types of activities Matynia lists were actually performed by women, whose work was conceptualised in terms of patriotic duty, not individual fulfilment. As Nanette Funk points out in Poland ‘the issue is not that the family was labelled private and non-political, because it was not, but that some activities in the family – for example, abortion and teaching national values – were said to be public, while others – for example, abuse and violence – were not’ (2004). Moreover, according to Funk, individualism in Poland never had the ideological role it had in US or some western European countries. In most of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century the common good was supposed to have a priority over the rights of an individual, and the duties and obligations one has towards the community could overrule an ideal of personal freedom (2004). The historical role of family to preserve Poland after the Partitions and during the wars and uprisings made it ‘an object of worship’, a collective good not to be harmed and in which individuals, especially women, have no individual rights or interests (Nowakowska 2000: 142). For women to act in their own interests or independently was considered not only selfish but betrayal of the nation (Titkow 1999). As I shall argue, within such a framework, there is very little room left for the development of civil society networks, nor for the improvement of efficient mechanisms supporting such process. The instability of the private-public distinction has continued after 1989 and the effects were disadvantageous, particularly for women. Women were overlooked when new structures of the state were formed, and the policies introduced by new democratic governments were clearly against women’s best interests.3 In Poland, as in other countries in the region, abortion was among the first issues raised and ‘the politicians, publishers, and media consumers who constituted the first democratic parliaments and public spheres of 1989 have consistently turn their attention to reproductive issues’ (Gal and Kligman 2000b: 15). According to Anna Titkow women’s efforts ‘contributed substantially to delay the passage of antiabortion legislation from the first attempt in 1990’ (Titkow 1994). Despite their efforts, in 1993 the so-called ‘antiabortion law’ was finally introduced. In theory, it was intended to only place limits on abortion, but in practice the law severely restricted the right and access to abortion (Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning 2005).

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Significantly, when parliament passed the anti-abortion legislation, it ignored the voices of various groups and formal organisations that organised mass protests against its implementation. Thousands of women and men took to the streets in what was sometimes described as the largest demonstrations since the fall of the regime and over a million of people signed a petition demanding a national referendum to be held (Nowakowska 2000; Graff 2007). Soon enough, it turned out that ‘common people’s’ influence on the sphere of formal politics was as insignificant in democracy as it had been during the communist era. In the debates that have been held on this subject during the 1990s and continue until now, the conflict around abortion has centred on issues of the public and private realms, and individuals − specifically women’s − rights within them. Specifically, the debate asks whether letting women decide to perform an abortion or not is in contradiction with the interests of Polish family and nation, and if women who have abortions ‘betray’ Poland, since they do not want to reproduce it. Thus, women’s bodies are treated as ‘a national boundary’ (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1994; Yuval-Davis 1997; see also Szczuka 2004; Graff 2008a; 2008b) and women are subjected to the supervision of the state as family members, namely, actual and potential mothers. It is important to scrutinise the justification for restricting women’s reproductive choices. Point Five of the Ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal,4 dated 28 May 1997, concerning the Family Planning, Protection of Human Fetus and Conditions Permitting Pregnancy Termination Act says that: ‘One must agree … that in consenting to become pregnant, a woman gives her consent to a certain limitation of her own freedom, in order to perform duties – that have remained unchanged for centuries – resulting from pregnancy, birth and upbringing of a child. … The developing life … can limit the mother in her possibilities to take advantage of the rights and freedoms that she is entitled to’ (The Ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal 1997). In other words, woman’s rights are suspended during pregnancy or rather they are transferred to the fetus that represents family from now on. As Janine P. Holc rightly observes, ‘The court’s discourse constructed not only a presumption of fetal personhood but a space in which the fetus becomes a subject of the state – here, the subject of state authority and social welfare goals’ (2004: 755). The Ruling puts the woman and her fetus in a conflicting relationship, rather than united (which they are, biologically). That the patriarchal family became the axis of state policies resulted partly from the harsh reality of the socialist regime, when the private sphere and family were the locus of resistance (Gal and Kligman 2000; see also Titkow 1999). It also helped to establish an alliance with the Catholic Church, ensuring the ongoing support of this institution. A telling example of how the state representatives act at the church’s bidding

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is seen in the controversy over the statement of Magdalena S:roda in 2004, when she was Polish government’s representative for gender equality (the Plenipotentiary for the Equal Status of Women and Men). During a conference on ‘honorary killings’ held under the UN auspices in Stockholm, referring to reports regarding violence against women in Poland, S:roda said that ‘Catholicism does not directly support or oppose violence against women. But, there are indirect links through culture, which are strongly rooted in religion’ (Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Washington, DC 2005). This seemingly innocent statement enraged most Polish politicians, who immediately demanded her dismissal. The Law and Justice (PiS) representative Ludwik Dorn stated that ‘A person who represents the government, but professes views that are absolutely untrue, unwise and extremely offensive to religious people cannot hold a high public office in the government’ (Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Washington, DC 2005). Significantly, Professor S:roda was referring to the difficult situation of battered women, often wives and mothers, and her critics were talking about family as a unit, as an entity that should not be interfered with by any outside forces. They did not acknowledge that existence within the family circle may not be profitable to all its members, at all times. Her statement moved the issue from the private sphere, to which some of the interactions between family members in Poland belong (such as domestic violence), to the realms of the public. Unfortunately, since the family is treated as a national good and the basis for survival of the nation, the rights of an individual, namely a woman, can be easily sacrificed when the preservation of family is at stake, at least in the eyes of the Catholic Church officials and the Polish politicians with whom they are aligned. S:roda’s account, supposedly ‘offensive to the Roman Catholic Church’ and ‘an attack on the integrity of Polish families’, disqualified her for a high office in the state administration, according to most state officials, not only those from the right-wing parties. The demand of dismissal was supported by most deputies, including those representing Civic Platform (PO), which presents itself as the liberal party.5 Additionally, Marek Belka, then the prime minister, publicly criticised S:roda’s statement and attempted to punish the Plenipotentiary for it, despite the fact that he represented the leftist party Alliance of Democratic Left (SLD). Theoretically, he could demonstrate a certain immunity to the pressure of the Catholic Church and far-right politicians,6 but the church has been too powerful to risk such a confrontation. At this point, the issue of development of civil society comes into view again. One of the important points of the electoral program of the Alliance of Democratic Left before the elections in 2001 was a promise to run a national referendum on the issue of abortion. But soon after the elections, the promise was easily broken when it turned out that the gov-

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ernment needed the Catholic Church’s ongoing support in the process of Poland’s accession to the European Union (Graff 2007). Again, women’s reproductive rights were easily sacrificed in order to meet the present political goals. Ironically enough, this time the goal was to join Europe: the cradle of liberal democracy where active citizens are enabled to secure their interests, also through participation in civil society networks.

Civil Society Versus the State As demonstrated above and will be discussed further, virtually every Polish government since 1989 preferred to invest in a patriarchal model of family instead of strengthening voluntary forms of organising and extra-familial involvement of citizens despite the political orientation of the ruling party. One may argue that it was one of the reasons why the potential of massive activism and enthusiasm brought about by Solidarity has been wasted, as demonstrated in the outcomes of many research projects on the state of civil society and civic attitudes in Poland. Below, I focus on the data indicating the level of development of civil society in Poland, and come back to the links between civil society, family and gendered politics later. Usually, supporting non-governmental organisations and voluntary work on behalf of some community or more generally outlined ‘good cause’ are mentioned as important, if not fundamental elements of civil society (see Salamon 1999; Salamon et al. 2003). The existence of ‘the “healthy” networks of associationism’ (Ginsborg 2005: 7) focused mostly on philanthropy and volunteering is a sure sign that civil society exists in a given country or region. When applying such an approach to the analysis of the Polish context, it is difficult to be optimistic. A series of opinion polls carried out between 1998 and 2006 by the Public Opinion Research Centre (CBOS 2006) – one of the largest and most renowned public opinion research institutes in Poland – indicated that the percentage of Poles involved in any kind of social activities at all remained rather low during the last few years. Despite the fact that most of the respondents tend to agree that nowadays one should be more sensitive to the needs of others, the vast majority of them did not work for any civic organisation or association (ibid.). The Civil Society Index Report 2007 (based on the data collected by Klon-Jawor Association) also demonstrates that the sphere of civil society is shrinking rather than expanding in Poland. The percentage of people undertaking voluntary work has dropped: in 2007 only 13 per cent of adult Poles engaged in some kind of voluntary work (as shown in the diagram below).7

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Figure 11.1. Percentage of adult Poles undertaking voluntary work between 2001 and 2007

What’s more, comparing to the year 2005, the number of members of non-governmental and non-partisan organisations and associations has also dropped by more than one-fourth (from 20 to 14 per cent). The data indicate that the legal environment for civic activities is favourable and improving, but the main problem remains ‘the low engagement of citizens in public affairs, such as involvement in non-partisan political actions and membership of organizations’ (Gumkowska et al. 2006: 9). When it comes to the involvement in non-partisan political activities, Poland is on the very last position in comparison with other EU countries (according to the European Social Survey).8 This trend is hardly surprising considering that Poles lack trust in fellow citizens – only 23 per cent of respondents claim that one can trust the majority of people in Poland (Gumkowska and Mozga-Górecka 2008). The tendency to withdraw into the private sphere appears particularly alarming in the case of young people. Comparative international research projects carried out in 1999 and 2000 by the International Educational Association (IEA) indicate that the Polish generation of 14 year olds does have knowledge about democratic mechanisms, but with regard to civic attitudes in everyday life, they are far behind their peers from most democratic countries. They do not take part in local, charity or ecology organisations; they are not involved in particular activities; and they do not declare the wish to participate in elections (see Torney-Purta 2001).

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The parliamentary elections in 2005 were considered a litmus test of attitudes towards democracy within the Polish population in general – the turnout was a low 41 per cent and the percentage of young people taking part in it was alarmingly low (CBOS 2005). The development of civil society networks is not necessarily correlated with participation in elections.9 But in the case of Poland the lack of interest in taking an active part in elections suggests a more general attitude towards democracy, as it was soon revealed. One can hardly identify with the idea of being an active citizen, when the very notion of Poland as a civic project is neither entrenched in popular consciousness nor propagated by the actors on the political scene. In 2006 then Poland’s Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyn;ski expressed a view that the concept of citizenship is alien to the Polish political and cultural tradition: ‘It is harmful to use in public life political-ideological concepts which are completely devoid of meaning, have no tradition behind them, such as for instance “citizenship”’ (Paradowska quoted in Graff 2008b: 18). In her enlightening article, Agnieszka Graff demonstrates how the nationalistic discourse has expanded under Kaczyn;ski’s rule, marginalising ‘the future-oriented liberal discourse which dominates in the European Union – a way of thinking about collective identity that pays little heed to blood ties, and defines nation as a civic project, sometimes referred to as Staatsnation’ (2008b: 17). The short but turbulent time when Law and Justice (PiS) was in power10 (between 2005 and 2007) strengthened major disillusionment with party politics and exposed the fragility of democratic system in Poland. It also undermined the very foundation of civil society’s structures. The new rightist government cut financial and legal support for many non-governmental organisations, especially those promoting gender equality, defending minority groups’ rights and/or propagating ‘alternative’ lifestyles, e.g. focusing on ecology, world peace or alter globalism. Maintaining and supporting civil society networks was an even less desirable goal of the state than before. Popularising ‘patriotic values’ and defending ‘healthy Polish family’ against the evils of cosmopolitanism and individualism became the ultimate objectives of Polish government. Those goals were to be met through education, media and overemphasis on celebrations of national holidays. Also, the immediate effects of EU accession, once conceptualised as an intrinsically positive process, stabilising democratic political culture in Poland, were far from what was expected. The power of EU bodies to support civil society initiatives in Poland turned out to be limited, and the funds distributed via state bureaucracies were largely unavailable to the organisations and centres endorsing views not in line with the ideals of ‘patriotism’ and ‘normality’ as understood by the ruling parties. One of the most striking examples of withdrawing state’s support for activities

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initiated by the EU was the case of the manual ‘Compass’ prepared by the Council of Europe. It was about to be distributed in Polish schools as a part of human rights education program, and it was supported by NGOs dealing with such issues. But Roman Giertych, the president of the League of Polish Families (LPR) and by then a minister of national education, decided to ban ‘Compass’ from schools on the grounds that it allegedly ‘promotes’ homosexuality. The head of the National In-Service Teacher Training Centre, the institution responsible for translating and publishing the manual, was dismissed from his office, despite numerous letters of protest and appeals in media, all pointing out to the fact that he was a highly qualified professional and the book was prepared by the Council of Europe and as such should not be banned in Poland (Gmaj 2007: 9). The book has never been introduced into the Polish educational system and instead of teaching young people tolerance and empathy, in October 2006 the Ministry of National Education introduced a program named ‘Zero tolerance’ supposedly aimed at dealing with violence in schools. Under the program, ‘troikas’ representing the police, a public prosecutor and a school inspector were sent to schools to help deal with problems such as drinking, drug abuse, aggression and violence. In practice, one of the first assignments they undertook was preparing the lists of under-age pregnant pupils. The program itself and the activities of ‘troikas’ (bearing clear resemblance to ‘troikas’ of the communist era) were heavily criticised by the media, parents and educators, but Minister Giertych did not pay attention to public disapproval; he was busy planning the creation of ‘separate schools for violent pupils to be run on military lines’ (Easton 2006). Fortunately enough, he was dismissed from his office before he was able to turn such ideas into reality, although we may expect that the damages to the educational system in Poland will outlast his political career. Importantly, the efforts to weaken the sphere of civic activity and involvement were met with a strong social opposition. Grassroots initiatives flourished, especially on the Internet, with many of the activists being young people who decided that it was time to take responsibility for the preservation of civil society. A very telling and important example of civic mobilisation emerged in the weeks before the early elections in the fall of 2007. The campaign ‘Change the country – vote!’ initiated by a number of NGOs cooperating under the name ‘the Coalition of the 21 of October’ not only attracted wide media attention but also won significant support of the younger generation.11 Among the activities undertaken were outdoor campaigns, TV spots, articles in different journals and specially designed Internet sites, as well as civic trainings and distribution of manuals ‘How to vote’. This outburst of activism, well organised and generously sponsored, mostly by media and private

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enterprises, resulted in significantly higher participation in elections. In fact, the turnout in the elections was the highest since 1989: 54 per cent compared to 41 per cent in 2005 and 46 per cent in 2001. The change in attitudes was especially noticeable in the case of young voters: 46 per cent of people between 20 and 25 voted compared to one-third in 2005. Also, in the age group of 26–30 year olds turnout was a high 51 per cent, comparing to 31 per cent in 2005. The success of the campaign demonstrates that the apathy of the majority of Polish society and low engagement in civic activities is caused not by some kind of virus of postsocialist mentality. It is rather the lack of structural and financial support for civil society’s structures as well as naïve expectations that joining the EU would immediately alter the context that makes citizens withdraw from the public sphere.

The State, Family and Civil Society: A Third Way? A second example of civic mobilisation, although not as successful as the campaign ‘Change the country – vote!’, regards the movement fighting for the reestablishment of the Alimony Fund (Fundusz Alimentacyjny) in Poland (AF movement).12 This example reveals how citizens may attempt to use and abuse the dominant discourses and redefine relations between the family and the state. It also serves as another example of how the state may stimulate the emergence of civil society indirectly and unintentionally through actions and decisions, in this case directed towards family. As I shall argue, the outcomes of governmental policies may be quite unexpected and positive, although the ultimate success requires more than just a lot of enthusiasm, large numbers of participants involved and wide media coverage. The protectors of national values who came into power in 2005 turned out to be obsessively focused on the family, supposedly endangered by the enthusiasts of Europeanisation, feminists and other groups disseminating liberal ideologies. Graff observes that the discourse in question has been deeply invested in the ideal version of femininity – be it Poland as mother, the figure of Polish Mother or Virgin Mary as the Queen of Poland and protectress – while at the same time easily sacrificing the rights of Polish women in the name of the integrity of the nation (Graff 2008b; see also Janion 2004 and 2006). The elevation of the position of a Woman concurs with the disempowerment of women’s ability to make claims within the public sphere, the mythology ‘resulting from a highly specific interlacing of history, religious structures, myth, metaphor and metonymy, interlaced and represented in local language and visual imagery’ (Robinson 2003: 125). Powerful cultural imagery of femininity based on motherhood determines the political and social reality of women’s

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lives while limiting their access to the public sphere. On the other hand, in can be used as a vital source of female empowerment as the story of women’s mobilization for the reestablishment of the Alimony Fund (AF movement) suggests (Molyneux 1985; Werbner 1999).13 As Paul Ginsborg puts it, referring to the text by Jürgen Kocka, ‘It is certainly true that families can have public or semi-public faces. … They acquire such an aspect in what may be described as a two-way process: that of certain members of family entering civil society, or else elements of civil society “entering” the family’ (Ginsborg 2005: 4). I would like to propose a third type of interaction between family and civil society: individuals can become active members of civil society as members of a family, when their ‘private’ identities become ‘public’ and serve as the basis for collective action. This is the case of movement fighting for the restitution of the Alimony Fund. Not surprisingly, these were women who entered the public sphere as family members, namely mothers. Originally, the Alimony Fund was established in 1974 in order to financially support single parents (almost exclusively women) when the other parent did not pay alimony as sentenced by the court. This fund was not a form of social allowance. Rather it was based on the idea that the state, through its institutions, could induce debtors to pay in a much more effective way than the citizens themselves, as it is the case with court orders in general. It worked rather well in the 1970s and 1980s when the divorce rate was relatively low, the unemployment virtually non-existent and state control very efficient. As the report prepared by feminist organisation Centre for Women’s Rights in Cracow (Krakowskie Centrum Praw Kobiet)14 demonstrates, the fund’s effectiveness plummeted in the 1990s: in 2003 the debtors paid only 11 per cent of the total charges (the Report ‘Alimentare znaczy jes;c;’ 2005: 12). According to the Labour Market and Social Security Report for 2003, published by the Ministry of Economy, Labour & Social Policy of Poland, between 1996 and 2003 the number of individuals collecting benefits from the Alimony Found rose by close to 200,000 persons (in 2003 535,500 persons were entitled to it). The report states that ‘the increase is due to the growing number of court orders determining alimony entitlement and very low effectiveness of their enforcement. This causes frequent requests to the Alimony Found for the provision of alimony benefit’ and costs a lot (The Labour Market Report 2003: 44). The leftist government decided to eradicate it and finally, the Alimony Found ceased to exist, leaving over 500,000 individuals, mostly single mothers and their children, with no financial support (the Report ‘Alimentare znaczy jes;c;’ 2005: 13). Ironically enough, the liquidation of this institution was part of austerity measures taken by the Polish government to meet EU requirements and took place on 1 May 2004, when Poland finally became a part of European Union (Desperak 2008, Hryciuk 2006; Hryciuk and Korolczuk 2007).

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Women who felt that their rights had been violated decided to take over the initiative. Already in 2004, a nationwide grassroots women’s network emerged, with headquarters in several smaller towns in Poland. They prepared a citizens’ law proposal to reestablish the Alimony Found. With the help of various women’s and feminist organisations, they managed to gather close to 300,000 signatures in support. The draft was presented to the lower Chamber of Polish Parliament (Sejm) on 21 September 2004 and it was sent to the commissions for further legislative work. The AF movement can serve as an example of a ‘motherist movement’ discussed by Pnina Werbner in her informative article on political motherhood. Werbner argues that often ‘women’s active citizenship starts from pre-established cultural domains of female power and rightful ownership or responsibility. These culturally defined domains, or the attack on them, create the conditions of possibility for women’s civic activism, which, in the face of male resistance, comes progressively to challenge authoritarian structures of power, usually controlled by men’ (1999: 221). Obviously, this is the case of AF movement, which originated from individual women protesting against the eradication of the Alimony Fund, and eventually expanded into local groups that cooperated on a national level. They have had their own Internet site, fostering communication with other women in the same situation but also with a wider audience and media.15 They managed to organise nationwide protests and rallies, and also gained wide media coverage. Their representative Renata Iwaniec was invited to deliver a speech at the lower Chamber of Polish Parliament in the beginning of 2006. According to some, it was the most significant grassroots social movement since the time of Solidarity (Ostałowska 2007).16 Unfortunately, as it was in the case of Solidarity, entering formal politics turned out to be the beginning of the end, albeit for slightly different reasons. Representatives of rightist parties such as Law and Justice (PiS) and Self-Defence (Samoobrona) offered support. They encouraged some of the leaders to join and run in the parliamentary elections in 2005, with promises to make sure that the regulations of the citizen’s project would be implemented as quickly as possible. Clearly, the leaders of the movement hoped that such cooperation would enable them to reach their goals, in light of the fact that grassroots activism did not. In an interview given in 2005, one of the leaders, Renata Iwaniec, said: ‘We wanted to be independent [at the beginning]. We strongly believed in the power of civil protest, in the principles of civil society. Now, we decided to look for the allies in the political parties, especially those on the right side of the political scene. We will support the party that agrees to take up our project. Now we know that we need a political support, that civil initiatives mean nothing!’ (quoted in Hryciuk 2005).

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Cooptation of the AF movement during the elections in 2005 helped the parties position themselves as sensitive to the needs of ‘ordinary people’. As for the women, it turned out to be a nail in the movement’s coffin because the promises made before elections were easily forgotten. Most members withdrew feeling disempowered, and the leaders decided to blame the feminists, rather than the politicians’ cynicism or their own naiveté (Ostałowska 2007). The law reinstalling the Alimony Fund was passed on the very last day before the parliament was dissolved and Law and Justice rule ended (in fall 2007). Thus, we may conclude that the movement’s victory is only partial and a bitter one. Concerning the relations between the family, state and civil society though, the story of the single mothers’ fight might be enlightening. As this example demonstrates, despite different types of familial configurations existing in Polish society, it is often taken for granted that a nuclear, heterosexual family is the family in question. Such an assumption, rooted in popular consciousness, is reflected in public discourses and social policies promoted and reinforced by the Polish state. The government that claimed that the family should be supported due to its significant role in the reproduction of Polish nation obviously did not consider single mothers and their children to be families worthy of support. The state’s refusal to help these families forced their members to become active on the public forum. The example of AF movement demonstrates that also in the postcommunist context women can challenge patriarchal state, not necessarily by stressing their individuality or their right to be recognised as equal despite their ‘private’ roles. It is also possible to do so, by underlining their identity as mothers and citizens at the same time (Werbner 1999). Arguably, Polish women challenged the state’s welfare policy, thus rejecting male dominance on the public arena, as well as undermined gender order within private sphere by assuming the traditional male role of representing family to the ‘outside’ world. Nevertheless, the question of the effectiveness of such an approach is open. As it was the case with massive support for the referendum on abortion in the 1990s, the fight for reestablishment of the Alimony Fund demonstrates that unless there are institutional mechanisms ensuring that the claims and interests of groups being discriminated against be recognised on the parliamentary level, the efforts of civil society networks may be futile. Government’s indifference towards citizens law proposal also suggests that women entering the public as family members may be easily trapped in the ready-made identity of self-sacrificing mothers, who act on behalf of their children, without having a clear political agenda on their own (Molyneux 1985). As a result, they are denied access to actual power and crucial decisions. Thus, it could be argued that the ultimate success of such a strategy is the very emergence of mothers as new actors

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on the public scene, as well as challenging the notion of separate gendered spheres (public versus private) and identities, rather than stimulating the development of civil society in the long term.17

Conclusion The examples discussed above suggest that civil society networks may emerge in democratic countries, even if they are not encouraged by state policies. Members of society can at times challenge the limits of gendered citizenship and make use of their ‘private’ identities in order to gain certain political goals. But the example of AF movement is also a cautionary tale because it reveals the limitations of such strategies. The imbalance of power between the state apparatus and civil society activists is enormous, and without stabile and substantial resources and built-in mechanisms of support, the struggles of the latter often turn out to be fruitless or not fully successful. More significantly, an overview of the relations between the state, family and civil society in Poland provokes more general questions about the meaning of ‘transition’ and a possible end of it. Before 1989 many expected that once the communist regime was dismantled, the road to liberal democracy would be wide open for both men and women. ‘As many critics have remarked, “transition” … assumes evolutionary progress from one well-known “stage” of history to another’ (Gal and Kligman 2000b: 10). Now it does not seem so simple, anymore. As Susan Gal and Gail Kligman argue, the very idea of ‘transition’ from real socialism to liberal democracy assumes that all aspects of the society change in the same time and in the same direction, while in reality it is very rarely so (2000b). From today’s perspective, the discontinuity and the lack of contemporaneity of changes are very clear but we still do not know what their ultimate outcome might be. As I have demonstrated, in the case of Poland the very roots of the newly established democratic order are sexist and patriarchal, and the sphere of formal politics is informed by the idea of a country as a nation rather than as a democratic society. The nation in turn is often imagined as a patriarchal family where ‘real’ women and men occupy their ‘natural’ places: women within the private sphere, bearing and rearing children, and men in the public sphere, protecting womenandchildren and making all vital political decisions (Enloe 1991; see also Werbner 1999; Graff 2008b). Clearly, the concept of the state does not evoke such emotional response and does not have such symbolic power as the nation imagined as Mother Poland, holding her children in a firm grasp, protecting them from any outside threats. As a result, instead of a classic triangle of the state, the market and civil society, Poles in general and Polish women in

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particular are trapped between the nation, the market and the church. Thus, I agree with Agnieszka Graff, who argues that, ‘the shift from the post-communist to the post-colonial’ in future research on the Polish context as ‘a pessimistic but perhaps necessary corrective’ (2008b). To conclude, for scholars wishing to analyse intersections of the state, family and civil society, one of the biggest challenges might be the conceptualisation of family, including its diverse forms and the variety of activities that are connected with it, while remaining attentive to the gendered identities of its members. The second important issue is recognising the differences between particular political and cultural contexts when it comes to family, its role and its meaning in the past as well as in the present. Therefore, it is necessary to recognise and develop a nonWestern-centric point of view. Let us hope that, as the Civil Society Network Project description states, the ‘results from studies of this kind will contribute to the clarification and solution of practical problems which we face in Europe now and in the near future’.

Notes 1. Detailed information on the celebrations of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Solidarity, including pictures, can be found on the official Solidarity internet site http://www.solidarnosc.org.pl/25/ (in Polish only). 2. For more detailed information on family and women’s position in Poland and other post-communist countries see for example: Funk and Mueller 1993; Gal and Kligman 2000a; Regulska 1995 and 2001; Titkow 1994b; Titkow 1999; Titkow and Duch 2004. 3. Discussion on economic aspects of the situation of women in Poland after 1989 is beyond the scope of this article but there is a body of literature on the disadvantages female members of society faced during the last two decades. See Doman;ski and Titkow 1995; Fuszara 2002; Budrowska et al. 2004. 4. The full text of The Ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal can be fund on the Internet site of Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning, http://www .federa.org.pl/english/constrib.htm 5. The Civic Platform finally won the elections in Poland in 2007. 6. Marek Belka attempted to limit the executive power of the Plenipotentiary, but withdrew when Magdalena Sroda threatened to resign. Finally, the issue was ‘solved’ in 2005, when the Office of the Plenipotentiary for the Equal Status of Women and Men was liquidated by the new rightist government (Tarasiewicz 2005). 7. Source: The Civil Society Index Report 2007, http://klon.org.pl/ and http:// www.civicpedia.ngo.pl/ 8. Cited in Gumkowska and Mozga-Górecka 2007. For more information see the European Social Survey at http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/ 9. Often, the civic participation and mobilisation is a response to the lack of possibility to take part in democratic elections as it was the case of Poland before 1989.

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10. The Law and Justice formed a coalition with other far-right parties such as the League of Polish Families (LPR) and Self-Defence (Samoobrona). 11. Detailed information on the campaign and its outcomes are available at http:// www.maszglos.pl/kampania_zmien_kraj,_idz_na_wybory.php 12. In writing the part on the AF movement I am deeply indebted to Renata Ewa Hryciuk, a Polish anthropologist, my friend and collaborator, who first began to analyse the movement and with whom I have discussed this phenomenon on various occasions. 13. I discussed the idealised images of a woman present in Polish visual cultures and contemporary young artists’ strategies to challenge them in the presentation ‘The Church, the State and What’s Left In-Between: Strategies and Positions Towards Femininity in Contemporary Polish Feminist Arts’, delivered at the 6th European Gender Research Conference ‘Gender and Citizenship in a Multicultural Context’ at the University of Łódz; on August 2006. 14. The full text of the Report is available, in Polish only, at the website of the Responsible Parent’s Association (Stowarzyszenia Na Rzecz Praw Odpowiedzialnych Rodzicow), http://samodzielne-matki.free.ngo.pl/ 15. Here and elsewhere in discussions of activities undertaken by the women fighting for reestablishment of the Alimony Fund, I rely on information available at Responsible Parent’s Association’s website, http://samodzielne-matki.free.ngo .pl/fundusz-alimentacyjny.html, and personal communication with members of various feminist organisations who supported the single mothers. 16. According to the census in 2002 there were over 1,798,000 single mothers in Poland and single-parent headed families constituted over 17 per cent of all Polish families. Data available at http://bi.gazeta.pl/im/2/4042/m4042512.jpg 17. The AF movement is just one of several examples of Polish women taking to the streets during the last decade. In 2006 nurses demanded their salaries be raised, but government representatives refused to discuss their claims. As a result the women started a nationwide protest and began to occupy the prime minister’s office. Thousands of nurses with tents and sleeping bags established a camp called ‘White Town’ in a park near the government’s premises. They managed to stay there for about two months and various organisations, trade unions and private persons helped them by bringing food and other necessities. Finally, government representatives started negotiations but the results were not satisfactory for the nurses. They continue to organise protests and strikes in hospitals around the country.

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———. 2006. Mothering for Hard Times? Single Mothers for the Alimony Fund Movement ‘Alimenciary’ and the Politics of Backlash in Poland. Unpublished manuscript. Hryciuk, Renata Ewa, and Elzbieta Korolczuk. 2007. Is Poland a Woman? Cultural Imagery and Social Reality. Presentation delivered at ICCEES European Congress ‘Transcending Europe’s Borders: The EU and Its Neighbors’. Berlin. Janion, Maria. 2004. ‘Pozæegnanie z Polskaç. Jeszcze Polska nie umarła’, Krytyka Polityczna 6: 141–151. ———. 2006. Niesamowita Słowian;szczyzna. Fantazmaty Literatury. Kraków. Kondratowicz, Ewa. 2001. Szminka na sztandarze – kobiety ‘Solidarnonci’ 1980–1989. Rozmowy (Lipstic on a banner – ‘Solidarity’ women 1980–1989: Conversations). Warsaw. Kymlicka, Will. 2002. Contemporary Political Philosophy. 2nd ed. Oxford. Labour Market and Social Security Report for 2003, www.mgip.gov.pl/NR/rdonlyres/ 2E7C0082-A574-47F8-82CF-6BF2B5A4CCCD/0/reportlabour2003.pdf Landes, Joan B. ed. 1998. Feminism, the Public, and the Private. Oxford and New York. Marody, Mira, and Anna Giza-Poleszczuk. 2000. ‘Changing Images of Identity in Poland: From Self-Sacrificing to Self-Investing Woman?’ Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics and Everyday Life after Socialism, ed. Susan Gal and Gail Kligman. Princeton, NJ: 151–175. Matynia, Elzbieta. 2003. ‘Provincializing Global Feminism: The Polish Case’, Social Research 70, 2: 499–530. Molyneux, Maxine. 1985. ‘Mobilization without Emancipation? Women’s Interests, the State, and Revolution in Nicaragua’, Feminist Studies 11, 2: 227–254. Nowakowska, Urszula. ed. 2000. Polish Women in the 90s: The Report by the Women’s Rights Center. Warsaw. Available at http://free.ngo.pl Okin, Susan. 1998. ‘Gender, the Public and the Private’. Feminism and Politics, ed. A. Philips. Oxford and New York: 116–141. Ostałowska, Lidia. 2007. ‘Opuszczone przez meçzæów i polityków’, Gazeta Wyborcza 2007.04.10, avaliable at http://www.gazetawyborcza.pl/1,79769,4049106.html Penn, Shana. 2005. Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland. Ann Arbor, MI. Philips, Anne. 1998. Feminism and Politics. Oxford and New York. Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning. 2005. Contemporary Women’s Hell: Polish Women’s Stories. Warsaw. Regulska, Joanna. 2001. ‘Transition to Local Democracy’. Women on the Polish Labour Market, ed. M. Ingham, H. Ingham and Hendrik Doman;ski. Warsaw. ———.1995. ‘Udział Kobiet w ZÆyciu Politycznym i Społecznym’ (The status and position of women in public and political life), Bulletin no: 5. Council of Europe / Warsaw University, Warsaw. The Civil Society Index Report 2007. Prepared by the Klon/Jawor Association as part of the CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation program, available at http://klon.org.pl/ and http://www.civicpedia.ngo.pl/ The Public Opinion Research Centre (CBOS). 2006. Report from research ‘Stan społeczen;stwa obywatelskiego w latach 1998–2000’ (The civil society between 1998–2006), http://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2006/K_019_06.PDF ———. 2005. Report from research Ocena funkcjonowania demokracji w Polsce (Evaluations of the functioning of democracy in Poland), http://www.cbos .pl/SPISKOM.POL/2005/K_186_05.PDF

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Alimentare znaczy jes;c; (Alimentare means to eat). 2005. Report by Krakowskie Centrum Praw Kobiet (Center for Women’s Rights in Cracow), http:// samodzielne-matki.free.ngo.pl/ The Ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal. 1997. http://www.federa.org.pl/english/ constrib.htm Salamon, Lester M. 1999. America’s Nonprofit Sector. 2nd ed. New York. Salamon, Lester M., Wojciech S. Sokolowski and Regina List. 2003. Global Civil Society: An Overview. Baltimore, MD. Szczuka, Kazimiera. 2004. Milczenie owieczek. Rzecz o aborcji (The Silence of the Lambs: On Abortion). Warsaw. Tarasiewicz, Małgorzata. 2005, The Protest to the Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, issued by The Network of East-West Women Polska, http://www .neww.org.pl/en.php/supernews/protest/1.html Titkow, Anna. 1994. ‘Status evolution of Polish women: the paradox and chances’. The Transformation of Europe. Social Conditions and Consequences, ed. Alestalo M., Allardt E., Rychard A. and Wesołowski W. Warsaw. ———. 1999. ‘Poland, New Gender Contract in Formation’, Polish Sociological Review 3, 127: 377–395. Titkow, Anna, and Henry P. David. 1994. ‘Abortion and Women’s Rights in Poland’, Studies in Family Planning 25, 4: 239–242. Titkow, Anna, and Danuta Duch. 2004. ‘The Polish Family: Always an Institution’. Families in Eastern Europe, ed. M. Probila and E. Jaj. Amsterdam, London, and Tokyo. Torney-Purta, Judith, et al. 2001. Citizenship and Education in Twenty-Eight Countries: Civic Knowledge and Engagement at Age Fourteen. Amsterdam, available at http://www2.hu-berlin.de/empir_bf/iea_e1.html Werbner, Pnina. 1999. ‘Political Motherhood and the Feminisation of Citizenship: Women’s Activism and the Transformation of Public Sphere’. Women, Citizenship and Difference, ed. Nira Yuval-Davis and Pnina Werbner. London and New York: 221–245. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997. Gender and Nation. London.

Chapter 12

FAMILY STRUCTURES AND CIVIL SOCIETY PERSPECTIVES IN PRESENT-DAY SERBIA

Dragica Vujadinovic;

In order to present the Serbian situation with regard to family life and (its mutual relation with) civil society development, it is necessary to bear in mind the historical conditions in the former Yugoslavia before the 1990s, as well as in contemporary Serbia during the last decade of twentieth century. Here the process of decomposition of Serbian society and its impact on changing family structures and the thwarting of any development of civil society are particularly relevant. It is equally necessary to outline the positive anti-patriarchal trends in Serbian (ex-Yugoslav) family life, gender relations and civil society development that had been emerging steadily from the 1960s onwards (though in a more or less suppressed form) and have become again somewhat strengthened after the democratic institutional reforms in 2000. The theoretical and methodological background to this chapter is the dialectic between patriarchy and anti-patriarchy in contemporary world, as applied to the former Yugoslavia and to present-day Serbia. In addition, an underlying assumption of the chapter is the idea that democratic family structure, gender equality and civil society development are essentially connected to one another.

Family Structures and Gender Relations in Contemporary Serbia Family structures and gender relations in Serbia today have been negatively influenced by the social and political devastation which had hap-

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pened during the authoritarian Miloševic; regime. It means that some emancipatory results which had been already achieved during the existing socialist Yugoslavia (Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, or SFRY) have now become suppressed and even eliminated. The elements of gender emancipation in the former Yugoslavia after the Second World War were related to the women’s massive entrance into spheres of education and labour, the phenomenon which had also been common for all real-socialist countries of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.1 In contrast however to the real-socialist countries under the Soviet umbrella, and according to the fact that the Yugoslav (so-called self-managing) real-socialist regime had been more open and ‘soft’, and insofar much more influenced by Western capitalism, these developments were combined in Yugoslavia between the 1960s and the 1980s, with impacts of the Western welfare state in the areas of social policy, education, labour, cultural patterns, system of values, as well as with impacts of consciousness raising through feminist movements and women’s studies. These emancipatory elements in public life were accompanied by sticking to the patriarchal, however attenuated, model of family relations in the private sphere (Papic;; 1989; Vujadinovic;; 1995). Persistence of patriarchy in a private and family life had inherently contributed to reproducing the authoritarian (though softened) nature of the real-socialist regime. The growing political crisis from the late 1980s until the early 2000s had been followed in virtually all former Yugoslav republics by a rising trend of populism based more and more on ethnicity, religiosity and ethno-nationalist ideology instead of on the previous dominant communist ideology. Democratic institutions and multi-party systems were implemented in 1990 in the federal units of the former Yugoslavia. However, political elite successfully blocked attempts to introduce democracy at the level of the Federation. The first multi-party elections in each of the federal units ended with victories for nationalist-separatist parties, which marked the beginning of a violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia. In Serbia, the essentially unchanged communist elite continued to rule even after the first multi-party elections; the pseudo-democratic order was significantly coloured by elements of plebiscitary support for charismatic leadership and personalised state authority, ethno-nationalism and militarist polity. Serbia carried the negative political inheritance of the Miloševic;; regime, which was extremely expansionist (the idea of a ‘Greater Serbia’) and most responsible for the wars which broke out in the Balkan region. The Serbian state under Miloševic; regime was punished by international economic sanctions and isolation soon after the 1990s, and later on also by the NATO bombing campaign, what necessarily led to a rising economic crisis, drastic impoverishment of the people, criminalisation of the state and society and, consequently, to the

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destruction of society (‘sociocide’; Lazic; 1994), of the economy, and the then present system of social welfare (Vujadinovic; et al. 2005a; 2005b). All this reflected on gender relations and family structures. The persistently strong patriarchal matrix was reinforced by the massive loss of jobs by women and their return to unpaid housework, by the reappearance of extended families and by the reaffirmation of traditional gender roles following economic collapse (re-patriarchalisation) and outburst of ethno-nationalist populism and religious fundamentalism (re-traditionalisation and clericalisation) (Bolc=ic; 2002; Milic; 2004; Mihajlovic; 2006; Vujadinovic; 2009). These negative trends continued even after the democratic change of regime in 2000. However, the democratic transformation of political, legal and economic systems has also been strengthening the positive, emancipatory trends in family life, gender relations and civil society development (Blagojevic; 2006). The most prominent Serbian sociologists had conducted three huge empirical surveys in a continuum – the first from 1991 to 1995, the second from 1996 to 2000 and the third from 2000 to 2004, with representative samples and a common methodology. The aim was to introspect and analyse turbulent social and political processes in Serbia and their impacts on everyday life. The results of these empirical surveys,2 conducted in the approximately fifteen-year period of sociocide and of delayed/controversial transition, have offered relevant information about family and gender issues; they have continuously confirmed the negative trends of re-traditionalisation, re-patriarchalisation and clericalisation in everyday and family life and gender relations, though some dimensions of private and public life where gender equality progressed were also detected. According to these surveys, in existing conditions of structural disturbance of social services and state institutions, as well as in a situation of an enormous impoverishment of a huge majority of the population, the family took over many disordered economic, social and cultural functions. In the overall social decomposition, the family – while being the basis of any sociability – was the last instance of defence, security and stability (Milic; 2002). Thanks to its character of being a biosocial total phenomenon, with consistent functions and established inner relations, the family managed to secure itself, to survive and operate even in abnormal situations when other social groups and organisations failed to support its existence and functions. Fostering the links on a kinshipbased networking of families, re-establishing extended families has attained a great importance for survival and for taking the place of social services and other disordered and weakened institutions. In a situation of extraordinary impoverishment, mass unemployment, insecurity and loss of manifold social networks, individuals have come to see family

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as their irreplaceable, sole and chief support. The escape to privacy was linked with strategies of survival and avoiding the stressful public sphere. All the above contributed to keeping families and marriages during the whole process of sociocide more intact than would have been expected in normal conditions of a modern life. Consequently, the divorce rate, which had been rising since the 1970s and through the 1980s, began diminishing with the outbreak of the crises; the price of preserving the (extended) family and marriage in turbulent times and contaminated social and ethical circumstances has been very high, in the sense of losing the emancipatory potential of qualitative changes and improvements in gender relations (Milic; 2004). Family and kinship networks took over various social functions that had previously been institutionalised. Mere survival was followed by processes of re-privatisation (the return of various social functions into the family) and re-traditionalisation (the traditional extended family was revived thanks to the impacts of pauperisation – a lack of housing, a lack of money for renting flats and living on one’s own, a lack of money for everyday life, etc.). The process of re-patriarchalisation also occurred through strengthening the ‘other side of the coin’ of the traditional female role – the female as prostitute – in the form of a massive rise in sex trafficking3 and new forms of violence and sexual abuse. The militarisation at the public level and the rise of aggression at the private level – accompanied by a ‘self-sacrificing micro-matriarchy’ – represented the decomposition of the emancipatory anti-patriarchal elements in family and public life and the strengthening of both the old and new patriarchy at the macro as well as the micro level (Blagojevic; 2002: 255). According to the aforementioned surveys, family changes have been regressive in structural and normative terms. A drastic increase in the number of extended families took place, now making up one-third of all households. Survival strategies have led towards the revival of family-kinship networks and their positing as the framework of individual existence, which hindered the promotion of individual needs, desires and identities. There has also been a drastic fall in the share of nuclear families with one or two children – from 65 per cent in 1971, to just 31.7 per cent of all households today. Additionally, elderly households have become more numerous (more than 50 per cent of them consist of retired people and 72 per cent of them are over the age of 60). Couples without children make up almost 25 per cent of households (again a rise), and most of them consist of retired people. One-parent families make up less than 10 per cent, and consist of a combination of a child/widowed parent or a child/divorced mother (Milic; 2004). The nuclear family (comprising 3.5 members on the average) was in the 1970s and the 1980s the motor of changes towards modern values and ways of life; it used to be the most vital family form from the

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perspective of modern codes of fertility, childbearing, upbringing and socialisation. Instead of further modernising processes and changes of the nuclear family in the direction of deepening partnership relations and opting for alternative family and household forms that seem to offer more gender equality, a retrograde and paradoxical trend in the case of the nuclear family happened: towards, on one hand, smaller units of older people without reproductive capacity and, on the other, antimodern extended families. In accordance with the strong presence of the patriarchal matrix, marriage is highly valued and most people wish to become married. Alternative forms of partnership are rare, and serve rather as a preparatory phase for marriage (Tomanovic; 2002; Milic; 2002). Somewhat divergent trends have been found in the most urban regions of Belgrade, indicating a decline in the universality of marriage, as well as an increase in extramarital childbearing, especially during the last decade of the twentieth century. There are also some changes in marital modes, in the sense of the increasingly frequent choice of alternative models of consensual unions, like the ‘living apart together’ (LAT) model, cohabitation and extramarital family model. However, these changes do not reflect the meaning of partnership as a relationship based on love, equal rights and mutual respect, but are more conceived as a short-lasting life goal, as a preparatory stage leading to marriage, which could easily become influenced by the ideology of patriarchy. Still, there was an evident change in attitudes towards consensual unions, indicating that a departure from the traditional value system has taken place (though a certain value confusion was also present), and has had impacts on the behaviour of individuals and the quality of relations within couples and among social groups (Milic; 2004; see also Bobic; 2003: 214). Another important transformation of marriage is linked with the evident postponement of marriage and childbearing (the aging of nuptiality and fertility), and there is also a significant increase in the percentage of the single people (Bobic; 2004: 375).4 The drop in fertility has occurred simultaneously with a fall of divorce rates. The former trend has been documented by long-term indicators; the latter5 was more related to a prolonged crisis and with a gradual improvement in the socio-economic situation after 2000, it started to change (Bolc=ic; and Milic; 2002; Milic; 2004). The trend of postponing the moment of marriage has occurred not only due to existential problems, but also due to women’s prolonged education and new cultural patterns. The educational situation of women has been improving. One-third of women have finished high school (approximately 5 per cent with a university degree). The rise in number of highly educated women after the Second World War was extremely rapid (from 1962 to 1991, more than 40 per cent of highly professionalised specialisation – in the fields of

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medicine, law, etc. – belonged to women, and in 1992 more than a half of specialisations were by women; in same period, 30 per cent of MA and 20 per cent of PhD degrees belonged to women, and in 1992 women received 40 per cent of all MA diplomas, and 34 per cent of PhD diplomas (see Statistical Yearbook: 1993).6 Indicators concerning women’s active participation in work outside the home are controversial: around 40 per cent of women were active in the labour market in 1991, but over half of the female population consisted of economically dependent housewives. However, there had been a trend of diminishing economic dependence of women up to the 1990s, and a strong trend of their massive return into the household from then onwards (especially of older, less-educated women). An opposite trend has also been noted, that has a significant emancipatory potential, of a comparatively high rate of women entering the free-market economy (especially when younger and well-educated women are concerned). Namely, with the growth of private entrepreneurship since the late 1990s, women have emerged as proprietors of more than 30 per cent of newly established private firms (often as co-owners with husbands and family members). Highly educated women consider their career very important and experience a conflict between their career and maternity; most women give priority to the latter (Blagojevic; 2002: 205). Parenthood is extremely important and families in Serbia have been declaratively child-centered. Most of the childcare falls on the shoulders of mothers, but the share is fairer when playing with kids and out-ofschool activities are concerned. Women generally accept the model of self-sacrifice, which essentially means unequal spending of their basic human resources: energy, time, health and creativity (Blagojevic; 2002: 181−204). Parenthood thus turns out to be the most important source of satisfaction for women; it gives meaning to life and meaning to self-sacrifice. Self-sacrificing, paradoxically, becomes the condition for the individualisation of women, for their escape from both the anonymity and chaos of the public sphere. ‘Self-sacrificing micro matriarchy implies not only that families are “mother-centred” but also that there is a structure of authority that is hidden (not to threaten or offend the patriarchy) but active, that women achieve a great amount of private power, especially over their offspring, that there is a large amount of dependence on women, that there is an inclination towards matrilineal kinship, and that women actually achieve their domination through self-sacrifice’ (Blagojevic; 2002: 255−257). All in all, the transformation of parenthood in Serbia has not been directed towards de-traditionalisation and individualisation; yet, among well-educated parents and gender-sensitive women and couples an awareness of the importance of a child’s autonomous personality ex-

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ists, and parenthood does lead towards de-traditionalisation (Tomanovic; 2004: 347−348). The child’s position in the Serbian family has been measured in the studies cited above via the categories of children’s rights as stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The personal rights of children to the freedom of thought, individuality and privacy are constrained by the dominance of the traditional patriarchal collectivist culture which still largely looks upon the child as a silent family member without individuality of its own and thereby also without the right to privacy (Tomanovic; 2002). To sum up the results of three aforementioned empirical surveys: most gender equality has been achieved in education and high professionalism, but generally the process of emancipation has been stopped and the re-traditionalisation and renewed marginalisation of women have been progressing. Protracted crises, war, sanctions and pauperisation have made conditions considerably more difficult for education, employment, financial independence, getting married and divorced, for decisions on childbearing and upbringing. Chances for democratic changes in family structures have been significantly curtailed. The first feminist empirical study, which was focused directly on comparing male and female social positions and quality of life, was conducted under the title: The Gender Barometer in Serbia 2006: Social Position of Men and Women (Blagojevic; 2006). According to the author, the focal points of the research were the social position and life quality of women and men in Serbia, which was put in a broader context of analysing the transformation of gender regime in Serbia, the country considered as a society in transition and also a semi-periphery of Europe. The sample was representative for Serbia (Vojvodina and Central Serbia) and consisted of 1,500 examinees, ages 20 to 50, which is a period of active life and employment.7 The results of this more specified empirical survey and feminist analysis have been, however, similar to the ones brought by the three aforementioned more-general sociological surveys. They indicate the kept-on dominance of the patriarchal gender regime, but also certain emancipatory trends and appearances in gender roles and relationships. However, this empirical survey offers more direct and clear indicators about the inter-relation of family structures, gender relations and civil society development. The core findings about a dominant gender regime in the Serbian society are characterised by the following: Examined in regard to households, there are relatively small distinctions in the integral economic position of men and women, because they are dominantly interlocked with belonging to a family, which ‘offsets’ gender disparities. The biggest economic disparities arise in cases when there is an absence of the specific ‘family mediation’: single mothers,

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unemployed young women, elderly women living in single households, women who are taking care of the sick and reliant family members and women who are not married, etc. High acceptance of women’s employment has been ‘the standard’, which is the consequence of high economic activity of women during the period of communism, and after communism, but also the necessity of the family’s survival, having in mind that one income is not sufficient in most cases. However, this does not constitute high acceptance of a successful career for women. Women’s income is most often perceived as the ‘additional’ one (Blagojevic; 2006: 5–6). Examined from the individual point of view, economic disparities between men and women are great in comparison to employment/unemployment and ownership. There are sharp differences in favour of men concerning their position in the labour market, private property, registered private firms and family inheritance: 50 per cent of men and 14 per cent of women from the sample own a car, 18 per cent of men and 5 per cent of women own real estate, 27 per cent of men and 8 per cent of women own a house and 22 per cent of men and 10 per cent of women own a flat. Gender disparities on a level of everyday life are very visible in the domain of reproductive labour (unpaid house labour, care and nurturing). Women, regardless of whether or not they are employed or of the level of their education still perform the majority of the household work. This is not only because of ‘traditionalism’, but also because of the eroded and undeveloped system of institutional support to the family. Strong authority of women within the family (‘self-sacrificing micromatriarchy’) has been based on the high investment of women’s resources into the family, as well as the high dependency of the other family members on these resources; there are high expectations of both women and men that the woman needs to be the ‘cornerstone’ of the family, and also high expectations of both men and women that a woman should ‘sacrifice herself for the sake of the children’ and be ‘a good housewife’.8 The high inclination of the general population towards the family and towards the children has been on agenda; however, this inclination does not necessarily include the high quality of family relations and family life as a whole. The patriarchal matrix is shown in attitudes about the share of responsibility in the private sphere, in partnership relations and parenthood. Both men and women think that men have ‘more important’ jobs than women do; that men contribute more than women do to solving housing problems, securing the family budget, exerting authority over children or making important decisions. However, a profound change in the pattern of sharing responsibility is also visible, as there is a rather high percentage of responses among men and women stating that they decide ‘together’ about crucial things such as large investments.

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Concerning violence in family life, both men and women in the sample say (both 40 per cent) that there had been no violence in their parents’ families. When asked about their own family, 85 per cent of men and 78.8 per cent of women say there is less violence than there used to be in their families of orientation. The high inclination of the general population towards the children does not necessarily include a high quality of parent–children relationships. According to this survey, physical punishment of children is still existent in Serbia: only 45.8 per cent of women and 47.5 percent of men in the sample say that they have never beaten their children. This data clearly shows a patriarchal matrix in treating kids as subordinate, where providing love and patience goes together with expecting obedience, while the failure to obey must be punished. These indicators are negative from the perspective of democratisation of the structure of the family and anti-authoritarian model of childrearing, as well as from the point of view of civil society development. High inclination especially among men has existed towards the maintenance of social networks, close relationships and exchange with the relatively wide (although lessening in times of transition) scope of relatives, neighbours and friends in order to reduce the negative effects of the surrounding. According to this survey, social networks of men have become wider over the past five years (between 2000 and 2005), while the opposite has happened with the social networks of women (although women in the sample are proportionally younger). This speaks greatly about women’s lack of free time, energy and capacity for public activities and social networking. Indicators of social networking and political activity show rather low capacities for participatory democracy, especially among women; these are quite unfavourable signs for the development of civil society. There is also a higher inclination towards social and political activism among the men in the sample, and higher inclination towards selfisolation in a private sphere among women. Men are much more active than women in public life, especially when activities in political parties and the local community are considered. However, where younger women in the sample are concerned, there is a very evident decline in reproductive work; there is the revision of priorities – especially in the younger educated female population – with career and economic autonomy becoming per se more important (and even more important than family and children) along with political activism and participation in civic activism. An intensive change in gender relations in the younger generations has been at stake. The emphasis is put on the need to create a balance between family and professional life, and there is even an increase in men being more involved in the private sphere and the household (as a response

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to the ‘crisis of masculinity’), as well as an increase in women being more involved in the public sphere and political life. Among young men and women especially, a high inclination of men and especially women has been expressed towards education and professional development. Due to the sample in this empirical survey, the massive unemployment of the young, particularly women, together with all the indices related to labour and private property, sum up to a quite unfavourable picture of gender equality and the available possibility of building anti-patriarchal family structures. However, emancipatory trends have been visible especially among the young, employed and well-educated representatives of both genders, and especially among the female population. To sum up, this empirical survey convincingly demonstrates the general dominance of the patriarchal matrix in private and public life, but it also points to certain moves towards more gender equality in private and public life, and towards more active participation of women in political life and civil society activism.

Civil Society and the Feminist Movement in Contemporary Serbia Between the 1960s and the 1990s, the former Yugoslavia was relatively open towards the West and experienced rather strong modernising processes in its economy, culture, family and education. Such modernisation processes and influences resulted in the emergence of some initial elements of civil society (a suppressed civil society, so to speak), particularly in Slovenia (the most advanced republic), and partially in Croatia and Serbia as well (see Pavlovic; 1995). The discourse and practice of this (suppressed) civil society spread over the country, beyond and despite republic borders as a tool for fighting the authoritarian communist (Titoist and post-Titoist) regime. However, at the time of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, a differentiation, realignment and contextual redefinition of the language of civil society and its protagonists began, either towards independentist and ethno-nationalist movements, or towards anti-war and other civic movements and NGOs (Vujadinovic; 2005b; Jakšic; 2005; Pavlovic; 2005). In Serbia, civil society – counterbalanced and endangered by ethnonationalist populism – took longer to acquire more massive proportions. After a decade of constant struggle, however, it turned into a decisive force of social pressure on the Miloševic; regime (and the divided opposition) – especially after the student and civic protests in 1996–1997. Little by little, it became capable of contributing significantly to the final downfall of the regime in December 2000, combining democratic methods (elections) with non-violent, civic activities (Pavlovic; 2004a; 2004b; 2005).

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Feminist groups and NGOs used to be among the most developed and active social movements in the former Yugoslavia. They preserved their mutual connections even after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, in spite of the wars and the bloody disintegration of the country as a whole, and they acted together against the wars and the ethno-nationalist policies in the region (see Women in Black 2006a; 2006b).9 Feminist initiatives and NGOs in Serbia have been strongly and massively present since the 1970s (Papic; 1989; Spasic; 2003).10 They have been working not only on awakening female consciousness, but also on promoting anti-war and human rights culture. Today, they work in the area of women’s human rights, women’s political participation, the issue of family violence and child abuse, and they initiate multiple public campaigns for uncovering and publicly denouncing violence, for preventing it and also solving the problem through joint efforts of the police, social services, and legal and state representatives. Some feminist organisations are focused on gender-sensitive education and research. The strongly internationally networked organisation Women in Black has been active in Serbia and the region since the beginning of the wars in the 1990s against war, ethno-nationalism, militarism and in favour of realising transitional justice (see Women in Black 2007a; 2006b). Feminist organisations, especially Women in Black, often act in cooperation with the most influential mixed-gender NGOs in an attempt to fight against public neglect of war crimes (such as Srebrenica), against Nazi and fascist extreme right activities. For example, the so-called G8 is a group of eight NGOs – the Belgrade Circle, Center for Cultural Decontamination, Civic Initiative, Humanitarian Law Center, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (YUCOM) and Women in Black – that formed a coalition in 2005. It mostly has focused on the responsibility of the Serbian regime for war and war crimes,11 as well as on transitional justice, the rule of law and democracy. However, NGOs with anti-emancipatory ideas on gender issues are also springing up in Serbia. The falling fertility rate, among the lowest in Europe, provides a strong stimulus to extreme-right NGOs and clerical campaigns against women’s reproductive rights and generally against gender equality and democratisation of family structures (see Women in Black 2006a). For example, the NGO Survival – Struggling against ‘White Plague’ blames women for killing unborn babies. A curiosity is that this NGO is led by a retired Law School professor of Family Law, who is also a poet. In the period of the Yugoslav ‘real-socialist’ regime, he was an academic well known for his promoting modern family law and insisting on social policy measures in favour of protecting women. Today, he misuses ‘poetry’ and composes for his NGO slogans like the following:

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Why you, dear Mother, Killed so many glorious great Men; Instead of them, from your Lap A dried Branch has sprung. (www.opstanak.org.yu)

These retrograde processes have been supported by the Serbian Orthodox Church (Srpska pravoslavna crkva, or the SPC). A drastic rise in religiosity12 (replacing communist ideology) from the 1990s has been followed by an increasingly conspicuous presence of religious rituals in private and public life. Religious instruction was introduced in primary schools in 2002. The SPC has been obtaining ever more influence in state policies, education, cultural patterns and social life. The SPC has been using this great impact for affirming traditional gender roles and family structures; promoting collectivist, ethno-nationalist, militarist values and anti-modern ways of life; recommending educational models based on religion and uncritical obedience; opposing emancipatory tendencies in human rights protection – including the legal regulation of the right to abortion, provisions against sexual and family violence and against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. However, there has also been ever-stronger opposition to these extreme-rightist attacks on gender equality and the democratisation of family life. Feminist movements and women in general react strongly when their already achieved rights to birth control and abortion are endangered.13 Women in Black initiated a public campaign against the clericalisation of the Serbian state and society, and the so-called Coalition for a Secular State was established in 2006 as a form of cooperation between feminist and mixed-gender associations. This Coalition published a booklet with quotations from written or oral public announcements of the highest representatives of the SPC. Here are some quotations of Patriarch Pavle14 and other high-level Church officials: ‘The covering of the female head has been a symbol of women’s obedience towards their husband and the Church; that is a sign of the men’s power over women’; ‘By commanding a woman to be obedient and compromising towards her husband – in spite of all his bad features − Christianity tends to bring peace into marital relations and re-establish marital happiness’; ‘Great poets among women can be counted only on one hand’; ‘The Church considers any sexual relation outside of marriage as debauchery’; ‘Feminists opt for killing unborn kids. Fortunately, they are not in any way connected to the essence of the Serbian people’; ‘Atheism bears the guilt for wars, impoverishment and moral collapse’; ‘Many mothers who did not want to have more than one child, today pull out their hair and cry desperately over their sons lost in these conflicts of war; they often damn God and people for that, but forget to blame themselves for not bearing more kids

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in order to have kept some alive for consolation’ (Coalition for Secular State 2007). Feminist groups, feminist intellectuals and civil society activists initiate different public campaigns and initiatives for promoting gender equality in public discourse, in school textbooks,15 the media,16 political parties,17 state policies, political documents and in the legal system. Concerning state policies and legal and political documents, some advances have been made between 2000 and 2007 in an attempt to cope with the EU legal and institutional standards. Here is the overview (Blagojevic; 2007) of most relevant state provisions for gender equality: In 2001, a new Labour Law was adopted regulating, in an improved manner, equal pay for equal work, protection of personal integrity and childcare leave (introduced as complementary to maternity leave); it also included articles against discrimination and sexual harassment; in 2002 the Vojvodina Provincial Secretariat for Labour, Employment and Gender Equality was established as the first institutional gender equality mechanism in Serbia; Act on the Provincial Ombudsperson (one of the five deputy-ombudspersons is the deputy for gender equality) was passed by the Vojvodina Provincial Parliament; in 2003, the Criminal Code was amended to sanction domestic violence, as well as the failure to pay alimony to single mothers; marital rape became a crime in the new Code as well; it was also amended to include sexual harassment and trafficking in human beings as new criminal acts. In October 2003, the Serbian Government adopted the Poverty Reduction Strategy, which was also sensitive to gender aspects of poverty, and an inter-ministerial body, the Council for Gender Equality, was established; in 2004, the Parliamentary Committee for Gender Equality was finally constituted in the Serbian Parliament. In 2005, the Council for Gender Equality was constituted under the new government, and created a National Action Plan for Improving the Position of Women and Promoting Gender Equality. The final draft for the Gender Equality Act had waited since 2007 to be sent by the Government to Parliament, and was finally adopted in December 2009. The Law on the Prohibition of Discrimination entered into force in March 2009. We can add to this overview the legal changes in the Family Law, announced in 2005, which introduced civic law protection from violence in the family; this change has been complementary with changes in the new Criminal Code, which introduced the crime called ‘violence in the family’ (Draškic; 2007: 61). When speaking about female and feminist activism in Serbia, it is important to keep in mind that women have been leading and taking an active part in the most prominent NGOs which fight against ethnonationalism and for the protection of human rights, the affirmation of democratic reforms and for democratic political culture. Women have

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led some of the most influential NGOs, such as the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, the Centre for Cultural Decontamination, the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (YUCOM Serbia), and the Humanitarian Law Fund. These women have demonstrated genuine courage in their struggle for human rights and the rule of law, and especially for transitional justice. They and their NGOs are often personally attacked by the extreme right. Well-known women from some of these organisations are denounced by extreme-rightist political parties and their sympathisers as ‘being witches’ because of their being on the frontline of speaking publicly about war crimes and war criminals, signs of fascism or human rights violations. This fact indicates a high level of women’s political participation in the field of civil society, and also delineates favourable prospects for promoting gender sensitivity inside civil society.

Conclusion: Family Structures and Civil Society Perspectives in Serbia after 2000 Serbia has been an example of how regressive tendencies of re-patriarchialisation, re-traditionalisation and clericalisation can slow down the processes of emancipation in family and gender relations, and in the development of civil society as well. These negative trends have been working systematically against the development of autonomous personality in family life, against forming democratic family and non-authoritarian gender and family relations. However, emancipatory potentials – though suppressed – have still been present. The self-awareness which women had gained between the 1960s and the 1990s – thanks to mass education, mass entrance into the labour market and their rather well-developed social security based on advanced social legislation (even more protective of women and children than in Western welfare states) – should not be treated as something completely lost during the long period of social and value devastation. Women have still been proportionally equally present in higher education and in highly important professions in such fields as medical care, engineering, university and the judiciary. Women were likewise proportionally equally active during civic and student protests in the 1990s, and assumed a prominent role in overturning Miloševic;’s authoritarian regime in 2000 (Lazic; 1999). Women have been equally visible or even over-represented in the NGO sector, and power relations have become far more balanced in the field of civil society than in political, economic and other public domains. Gender inequality has been less prevalent in civic movements and NGOs than in other institutions and organisations of public life.18

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Civil society actors, feminist groups and individual feminist intellectuals have been making great efforts and producing considerable impact on changing the patriarchal matrix in public discourse, in media, political life, state policies and legal regulation. They undoubtedly have contributed to the gradual spreading of anti-patriarchal values and practice in public and private life. In addition, the official state policy has been aiming towards EU integration (although with certain ambivalence), and has, insofar, contributed to articulating public discourse and official documents in a gender-sensitive way. Of course, all steps in favour of gender equality after the democratic change in 2000 – which have been proposed by the governments and also initiated and intensified by the civil society sector – have had a positive impact on family relations. If the democratic political reforms and economic improvement will continue in the forthcoming period and if the process of EU accession will be accomplished in the near future, the emancipatory potential in family structures and the development of civil society, as well as their mutual relation, will gain a crucial stimulus and begin to prosper.

Notes 1. ‘Actually existing socialism’, ‘developed socialism’, ‘state socialism’ or ‘real socialism’ (the last formulation emerged as the favoured one), implied that the economic, political and social make-up of the Soviet bloc societies was in fact a distinct mode of production. Its defining features were the primacy of politics over economics and the intertwining of the two, the absence of a multi-party system, of the rule of law and civil society, as well as an absence of a free-market economy. State ownership of productive means in fact led to a property vacuum. Absent ownership rights fostered corruption, eroded motivation, distorted managerial priorities and diverted state energies into control rather than planning and directive functions. The primacy of the nomenklatura system undermined professional and expertise criteria of performance, dissipated the mechanisms of accountability and vested power in the hands of groups who ruled this monocentric society and whose aim was the maximisation of power over a non-controllable economy. Party, state bureaucracy, security apparatus and military formed a power élite, presiding over a bureaucratically centralised, segmented society. Extensive economic growth exhausted the natural and human resources of countries tied into patterns of dependence devoid of an economic logic but rooted within the over-riding needs of the military-industrial complex. Economic interests, rather than being based upon economic rationality, were distorted by the state-controlled re-distributional mechanism. Finely graded occupational and hierarchical privilege incorporated most of the population into an artificial set of dependencies (Marshall 1998). 2. The Institute for Social Research of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade (ISI FF) conducted three successive surveys – from 1991 to 1995, 1996 to 2000 and 2001 to 2004. The idea was to scan transition capacities and tendencies, including trends in changing family structures and gender relations. These studies have been collected in: Bolc=ic; 2002 [1995]; Bolc=ic; and Milic; 2002; Milic; 2004.

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3. Serbia, because of its better economic situation at the beginning of 1990s, was for some time one of the main destination countries for sex trafficking within Eastern Europe. However, later on Serbia became mainly a transit country, both to neighbouring territories where the raging war brought a large military presence, and to Western Europe. A dramatic decrease in the standard of living from the 1990s and during the next fifteen or twenty years, accompanied by the impacts of wars in the Western Balkans region, criminalisation of the state and society, rise of corruption and grey economy, institutional disorganisation and underdeveloped rule of law and an increase in uncertainty, overall fluidity, instability and war victimisation have led to the rise in sex trafficking over the last decades. In addition, the international isolation during the regime of former president Miloševic; meant the severing of ties with Interpol, other international organisations and other countries’ police forces, and this also contributed to human trafficking. And finally, the post-war militarisation and the large presence of international organisations further contributed to the growth of sex trafficking in the Balkans. In a contemporary period, Serbia has been a transit country for victims trafficked from Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia and destined for Italy and other countries in Western Europe. However, internal slow economic recovery and incomplete democratic transformation of Serbia have led also to the increase of internal sex trafficking of Serbian women and girls during the last few years (Nikolic;Ristanovic; 2002). 4. People who have never been married. 5. The long period of keeping family relations ‘in peace’ and ‘in one piece’– just for the sake of mere survival (i.e. by suppressing inner conflicts, mostly achieved by female subordination and women’s double burden) – has been coming, after the democratic changes in 2000, to a close. Anđelka Milic; writes: ‘This is a new moment in family transformation, giving rise to hopes that modernizing trends have not been completely annihilated in the destructive processes of the past decade.’ (Milic; 2004: 315). 6. However, there is still a high rate of illiteracy: almost one of every ten women is illiterate, and one in five is poorly educated; more than half of illiterate women are over age 65 (Statistical Yearbook 1993). 7. The aim of this survey, conducted by the feminist NGO sector, was to serve as the empirical basis for articulating gender politics within the framework of democratic reforms and key policy strategies and documents of the Serbian state, concerned with overcoming poverty and gender inequality in Serbia (National Action Plan 2007–2010; see Statistical Yearbook 1993). 8. Readiness to sacrifice for their children is very prominent in both men and women: 73 per cent and 80 per cent of the sample, respectively (see Blagojevic; 2006). 9. Between 1975 and 1979 the first public discussions and lectures on gender topics started in Belgrade; the first international feminist conference in the communist world was held in Belgrade in 1978; several gatherings of Yugoslav feminists happened in Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade during the 1980s; in 1990, SOS lines for women and children victims of violence were launched; in 1992, different women’s organisations took part in anti-war activism, building solidarity networks and bridges with women in other Yugoslav republics and the war zones; in 1993, with the war in Bosnia raging, the SOS line began working with women victims of rape in war; in 1994, the ZaMir (ForPeace) e-mail network was established in Zagreb, serving as the only means of communication among peace activists and organisations during wartime in the former Yugoslavia (see Blagojevic; 2007).

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10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

The International Network of Women in Black has also been very active as well as the Women’s Peace Network (Coalition between Kosova Women’s Network and Women in Black Network-Serbia). In July 2006, Women’s Regional Lobby for Peace, Security, and Justice in Southeastern Europe was formed. It was comprised of women activists from civil society and democratic parties from the Balkan region (Albania, BiH, Montenegro, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia). See Women in Black 2007a. In 1979–1980, the first feminist research group in Belgrade, Women and Society, was founded; in 1990, the Belgrade Women’s Lobby was established; in 1990, a short-lived Women’s Party appeared; in 1991, the founding assembly of a shadow Women’s Parliament was organised; in 1992, the NGO Women and Society launched its Centre for Women Studies; in 1993, Women’s Studies were officially introduced into the academic curriculum; in 1994, the feminist publishing house ‘94’ was established, publishing several feminist journals: The Feminist Notebook, Women’s Studies, and ProFemina; in the same year, the Incest Trauma Centre and Women’s Network were founded; in 1996, the first shelter for women refugees was opened; in 1997, new centres for women’s studies in Novi Sad and Niš were opened; in 1999, The Voice of Difference – a group for the promotion of women’s political rights – was founded (see Blagojevic; 2007). During the last few years, many new SOS hotlines, shelters and safe houses have been opened. Largescale media campaigns against family violence and sexual abuse have been supported and initiated by already existing feminist groups, NGOs and networks. The Declaration on Srebrenica parliamentary proposition from June 2005 was the most noteworthy initiative of G8. However, the NGO draft Declaration to that effect, tabled on their behalf by two MPs in 2005, was never put on the Parliament’s agenda. The Serbian parliament has narrowly passed the Declaration condemning the killing of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica only after five years. With 127 votes to 21 (out of the total of 250) the Parliament of the Republic of Serbia adopted on 31 March 2010 the Declaration on the Condemnation of the Crime in Srebrenica. In the 1991 national census, there were just 8.5 per cent ‘convinced believers’, while according to the 2002 national census 99 per cent of the Serbian population said they were religious (see National Census in 1991 and 2002, Statistical Office of Serbia; see also Markovic; 2005). In 1995, a draft law severely restricting women’s right to abortion was on the legislative agenda. Feminist groups organised public signings of a petition against the adoption of this law, and it was signed by tens of thousands of women in Belgrade and other cities. The petition succeeded and the draft was withdrawn. Patriarch Pavle was born on 11 September 1914 (as Gojko Stojc=evic;) in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, Austria-Hungary. He died on 15 November 2009. He was the spiritual leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church. His full title was His Holiness the Archbishop of Pec;, Metropolitan of Belgrade and Karlovci, Serbian Patriarch Pavle. Feminist academics, historians and linguists have done critical research of the textbooks for primary and high schools; see, for example, Stojanovic; 2006. For example, a few years ago the daily Blic started a public campaign for choosing the 100 most prestigious women, as well as for electing a ‘Women’s Government in Shadow’ from the list. This Government has been operating through voicing, in Blic, opinions of the female ‘ministers in shadow’ about relevant political and economic topics.

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17. All political parties have been considering 30 per cent quotas for female political representation; however, after the January 2007 parliamentary elections, only 20.4 per cent of women were elected to Parliament, and only one party (the G17 Plus) had over 30 per cent of women MPs. There were four women ministers in that Serbian government (out of twenty-three). After the early parliamentary elections, held in May 2008, 21.6 per cent of women were elected to Parliament, and there are five women ministers (out of twenty-two, plus four deputy ministers) in the new Serbian government. 18. There is an evidence of a lack of gender sensitivity and democratic political culture even among female activists in democratic political parties: the NGO Women in Black recently conducted a study titled: ‘Women, Security, Reproductive Rights and Transitional Justice’. The aim was to examine statements and value orientations of politically active women (democratic female political elite) concerning their acquaintance with Security Council Resolution 1325 and the issue of female security, as well as about reproductive rights and transitional justice. The survey discovered poor knowledge among these politically active and above-average educated women relating to questions of transitional justice and Resolution 1325 (70 per cent have not even heard of it). The survey also showed an especially low level of democratic political culture among women active in democratic parties (an uncritical acceptance of their parties’ official statements, a strong suspicion of the NGO sector, negative sentiments towards Women in Black and their feminist and anti-militarist views); and also, their low interest in the questions of female human rights, and extremely poor awareness of the sense and importance of transitional justice (Women in Black 2007b: 69–92).

References Blagojevic;, Marina. 1997. Parenthood and Fertility: Serbia in the ‘90s. Belgrade. ———. 2002. ‘Everyday Life from Women’s Perspective: Self-sacrifice and Escape to Privacy’. Social Changes and Everyday Life: Serbia in the Early ‘90s, ed. Silvano Bolc=ic;. Belgrade: 181–209 (English summary: 255–257). ———. 2006. Gender Barometer in Serbia 2006: Social Position of Men and Women. Association of Women Initiative, AWIN. Belgrade. www.awin.org.rs ———. 2007. Regional Cooperation in the Field of Gender Equality. Altera – Research Centre on Gender and Ethnicity. Bobic;, Mirjana. 2003. Marriage or/and Partnership: Demographic and Sociological Study. Belgrade. ———. 2004. ‘Transformation of Marriage: Strategies of Conservation and Delay of Changes’. Social Transformation and Strategies of Social Groups: Everyday Life of Serbia at the Beginning of the Third Millennium, ed. Anđelka Milic;. Belgrade: 375−444. Bolc=ic;, Silvano. 2002. Social Changes and Everyday Life: Serbia in the early ‘90s. 2nd ed. Belgrade. Bolc=ic;, Silvano, and Milic;, Anđelka, ed. 2002. Serbia at the End of Millennium: Destruction of Society, Social Changes and Everyday Life. Belgrade. Coalition for Secular State, ed. 2007. What Each Male and Female Citizen should know about Serbian Orthodox Church. Draškic;, Marija. 2007. Family Law and Rights of Children. Belgrade.

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Jakšic;, Božidar. 2005. ‘Nationalism/Populism versus Civic Option: Serbia’. Between Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Vol. II, Civil Society and Political Culture, ed. Dragica Vujadinovic; et al. Belgrade: 181–200. Lazic;, Mladen, ed. 1994. Destruction of Society. Belgrade. ———, ed. 1999. Protests in Belgrade. Budapest. Markovic;, Slobodan. Serbian Orthodox Church and the State: Clericalization and Cesaropapism. www.nspm.org.yu/Debate/2005_CP_slmarkovic_klerika.htm Marshall, Gordon. 1998. A Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford. Mihajlovic;, Srec;ko, ed. 2006. Five Years of Transition in Serbia. Belgrade. Milic;, Anđelka. 2002. ‘Winners and Losers in the Process of Transformation from the Family Everyday Angle (1991–2001)’. Serbia at the End of Millennium: Destruction of Society, Social Changes and Everyday Life, ed. Silvano Bolc=ic; and Anđelka Milic;. Belgrade: 251−281. ———. 2004. ‘Transformation of the Family and Households: Stagnation and Survival Strategies’. Social Transformation and Strategies of Social Groups: Everyday Life of Serbia at the Beginning of the Third Millennium, ed. Anđelka Milic;. Belgrade: 315−347. ———, ed. 2004. Social Transformation and Strategies of Social Groups: Everyday Life of Serbia at the Beginning of the Third Millennium. Belgrade. National Action Plan for Improving the Position of Women and Promoting Gender Equality 2007–2010. http://www.awin.org.zu/NAP/pdf/nap_final_translation.pdf Nikolic;-Ristanovic;, Vesna 2002. ‘Sex Trafficking: The Impact of War, Militarism and Globalization in Eastern Europe’, Globalizacija.com: Journal for Political Theory and Research of Globalisation, Development and Gender Issues. http://www .globalizacija.com/doc_en/e0058sim.htm Papic;, Žarana. 1989. Sociology and Feminism. Belgrade. Pavlovic;, Vukašin, ed. 1995. Suppressed Civil Society. Belgrade. ———. 2004a. Social Movements and Social Change. Belgrade. ———. 2004b. Civil Society and Democracy. Belgrade. ———. 2005. ‘Civil Society and Politics in Serbia’. Between Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Vol. II, Civil Society and Political Culture, ed. Dragica Vujadinovic; et al. Belgrade: 289–328. Spasic;, Ivana. 2003. ‘Social Movements’. Critical Conceptualization of Civil Society, ed. Ðorđe Vukadinovic; and Predrag Krstic;. Belgrade. Stojanovic;, Dubravka. 2007. ‘The Construction of the Past: The Case of History Textbooks’. Women in Black, ed. Women for Peace. Belgrade: 324–329. Tomanovic; Mihajlovic;, Smiljka. 2002. ‘Everyday Life of Children in a Society in Transition’. Social Changes and Everyday Life: Serbia in the early ‘90s, ed. Silvano Bolc=ic;. Belgrade: 211–227 (English summary: 259–260). ———. 2004. ‘Parenthood in Transformation: Capitals, Problems, Strategies’. Social Transformation and Strategies of Social Groups: Everyday Life of Serbia at the Beginning of the Third Millennium, ed. Anđelka Milic;. Belgrade: 349–375. Vujadinovic;, Dragica. 1995. ‘Everyday Life and Civil Society’. Suppressed Civil Society, ed. Vukašin Pavlovic;. Belgrade: 303–328. ———. 2005a. ‘Between Authoritarianism and Democracy’. Between Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Vol. I, Institutional Framework, ed. Dragica Vujadinovic; et al. Belgrade: 13–21. ———. 2005b. ‘The Concept of Civil Society in the Contemporary Context’. Between Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Vol. II, Civil Society and Political Culture, ed. Dragica Vujadinovic; et al. Belgrade: 15–42.

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———. 2009. ‘What is the Rational National and State Interest of Contemporary Serbia?’. Between Authoritarianism and Democracy, Vol. III, Serbia at the Political Crossroads, eds. Dragica Vujadinovic; and Vladimir Goati. Belgrade: 9–30. Vujadinovic;, Dragica, et al., eds. 2003. Between Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Vol. I, Institutional Framework. Belgrade. ———. 2003. Between Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Vol. II, Civil Society and Political Culture. Belgrade. Vujadinovic;, Dragica and Goati Vladimir, eds. 2009. Between Authoritarianism and Democracy, Vol. III, Serbia at the Political Crossroads. Belgrade. Women in Black, ed. 2006a. Threatening Signs of Fundamentalism: Feminist Responses. Belgrade. ———, ed. 2006b. Women for Peace. Belgrade. ———, ed. 2007a. Always Disobedient. Belgrade. ———, ed. 2007b. ‘From Traditional to Feminist Concept of Security’. Resolution 1325. Belgrade.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Stefania Bernini is a lecturer at the School of History and Philosophy of the University of New South Wales in Sidney, Australia. She has a BA (Hons) from University of Florence and a PhD from University of London. Her research specialisations are twentieth-century European history, gender history, family history and the history of childhood. Selected Publications include: ‘Family Politics: Political Rhetoric and Family Life in the Italian Second Republic’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 13, 2 (2008); Family Life and Individual Welfare in Post-war Europe (2008); ‘Przemiany Rodziny i Ich Implikacje dla Polityki Rodzinnej w Polsce i we Wloszech. Perspektywa Historyczna i Sociologiczna’ (Changes in Family Life and their Implications for Family Policy in Poland and Italy), in Historical and Sociological Perspectives, co-edited with Ewa Les (2009); ‘Family Politics, the Catholic Church and the Transformation of Family in the Second Republic’, in Italy Today: The Sick Man of Europe, eds. A. Mammone and G. A. Veltri (2010). Elisa Chuliá is an assistant professor of political science at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) in Madrid. She obtained her degree in communications at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (FRG) in 1989 and took her doctorate at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (Instituto Juan March) and the Complutense University Madrid in 1997. She is the author of several publications on welfare state reform, European pension policies and Spanish families. Paul Ginsborg has been a professor of contemporary European history at the Faculty of Letters, University of Florence, since 1992. Previously, he was a reader in European politics at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Churchill College. His main research interests are the history of Italy and the history and politics of European families. Selected publications include: A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 (1990); Italy and its Discontents 1981–2001 (2001); Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony (London and New York 2004);

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The Politics of Everyday Life: Making Choices, Changing Lives (2005); Democracy: Crisis and Renewal (2008); ‘Only Connect: Family, Gender and Civil Society in Twentieth Century Europe and North America’, in Civil Society, Public Space, and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, eds. Karen Hagemann, Sonya Michel and Gunilla Budde (2008), 223−249. Karen Hagemann is James G. Kenan Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the history of Germany and Europe from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century, women’s and gender history and military history. Selected publications include: Frauenalltag und Männerpolitik. Alltagsleben und gesellschaftliches Handeln von Arbeiterfrauen in der Weimarer Republik (1990); ‘Mannlicher Muth und Teutsche Ehre’: Nation, Militär und Geschlecht zur Zeit der Antinapoleonischen Kriege Preußens (2002); co-edited with Ida Blom and Catherine Hall, Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century (2000); co-edited with Stefan Dudink and John Tosh, Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (2004); co-edited with Jean H. Quataert, Gendering Modern German History: Rewriting Historiography (2007); co-edited with Stefan Dudink and Anna Clark, Representing Masculinity: Male Citizenship in Modern Western Culture (2007/2012); co-edited with Sonya Michel and Gunilla Budde, Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspective (2008/2011); co-edited with Gisela Mettele und Jane Rendall, Gender, War, and Politics: Transatlantic Perspectives, 1775–1830 (2010); and co-edited with Konrad H. Jarausch and Cristina Allemann-Ghionda, Children, Families, and States: Time Policies of Childcare, Preschool, and Primary Education in Europe (2011). John Keane is a professor of politics at the University of Sydney and at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB). He recently founded the Sydney Democracy Initiative (SDI). His publications include: The Media and Democracy (1991); Democracy and Civil Society (1988; 1998); Tom Paine: A Political Life (1995); Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions (1998); Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts (1999); Global Civil Society? (2003), Violence and Democracy (2004); The Life and Death of Democracy (2009); and, with Wolfgang Merkel et al., The Future of Representative Democracy (2011). Elzæbieta Korolczuk received her PhD in sociology from the Graduate School for Social Research, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences in 2009. Since then she is a post-doctoral fellow at Södertörns högskola, Sweden. Currently she works on the projects: National mobilization strategies and transnational networks: Social movements

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in East and West and ‘We are no second-rate quality citizens’. Negotiating biological citizenship in social mobilizations around infertility issues and access to in vitro in Poland founded by The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies. She is also involved in the project founded by Swedish Research Council Institutional constraints and creative solutions: Civil society in Poland in comparative perspective. Her main fields of interests are: social movements, civil society and gender studies. She has published several articles on social activism, social movements, motherhood, and mother-daughter relations. She has also co-edited the book Farewell to the Polish Mother? Discourses, practices and representations of motherhood in contemporary Poland (2012). Carola Lipp is professor of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the University of Goettingen, since 1989. She has a MA and Ph D. in Empirical Cultural Studies from the University of Tuebingen. Her main research interests focus on political culture, petition and protest movements in the 19th century, studies in demography, kinship and social networks. Her work centers furthermore on regional and community studies and aspects of gender, class and everyday life (Alltagsgeschichte. Lexikon der Geisteswissenschaften, eds Helmut Reinalter and Peter J. Brenner (2011), 871–877; Das Private im Öffentlichen. Geschlechterbeziehung im symbolischen Diskurs der Revolution 1848/49. Empirische Kulturwissenschaft, eds. Reinhard Johler and Bernhard Tschofen (2008), 321–336); Substructures of Local Power. German City Elites and Kinship in the Nineteenth Century. Control of the City. Local Elites and the Dynamics of Urban Politics eds. Stefan Couperus et al, (2007), 15–27; Kinshipnetworks, Local Government and Elections in a Town in Southwest Germany 1800–1850. Journal of Family History, Vol. 30, (2005), 347–365). She is author of several publications on the subject of the revolution in 1848/49 (Lipp, Carola/Krempel, Lothar: Petitions and the Social Context of Political Mobilization in the Revolution of 1848/49. A Microhistorical Actor Centered Network Analysis. Petitions in Social history. Sonderheft der Zeitschrift International Review of Social History Supplement No. 9, (2001), 151–170. Last publications include methodological reflections: Perspektiven der Historischen Forschung und kulturhistorische Hermeneutik. Europäisch Ethnologisches Forschen. Neue Methoden und Konzepte. eds. Sabine Hess et al., (2012), 201–242. Currently her work includes network approaches to credit cultures: Aspekte der mikrohistorischen und kulturanthropologischen Kredit-forschung. Zur sozialen Praxis des Kredits, ed. Jürgen Schlumbohm (20097), 15–36. Sonya Michel is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC and a professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park. She focuses on the history

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and contemporary analysis of social policy in the United States and in comparative and transnational perspective, with an emphasis on racial and gender equity. Her current research is examining the role of migrant workers in providing care work throughout the developed world. The author of Children’s Interests / Mothers’ Rights: The Shaping of America’s Child Care Policy (1999), she was a founding co-editor of the journal Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, and has co-edited several volumes, including Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (2008); Child Care at the Crossroads: Gender and Welfare State Restructuring (2002); Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (1993); and Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (1987). Jürgen Nautz is an assistant professor of economic history at the Department of Economics at the University of Vienna and senior lecturer for business administration and related topics at the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences; until 2009 he was a speaker (with Emil Brix) of the interdisciplinary working group ‘Civil Society in Austria’ of the Austrian Research Association (ÖFG); now he is a member of the ÖFG interdisciplinary working group ‘Religion – Violence – Politics’, of the research platform ‘Migration of the University of Vienna, the study group ‘Contemporary Hessian History’, the team of authors ‘History of the City of Kassel’ and he initiated the research network ‘Contemporary Protestant History in Austria’. Besides these scientific activities he is a board member of the NGO ‘World of NGOs’ and active in ‘ArabianEuropean Dialog’, originally initiated by the Evangelical Church in Germany and the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services in Egypt. Selected publications include: Conflict Potentials in Monetary Unions, co-edited with Lars Jonung (2007); ‘Bimetallism’ and ‘Industrial Revolution in Germany’, in Encyclopaedia of the Age of the Industrial Revolution, 1700–1920, ed. Christine Rider (2007); Zwischen Markt und Staat. Geschichte und Perspektiven der Ordnungspolitik in der Zweiten Republik, co-autor with Christian Dirninger, Engelbert and Theresia Theurl (2007); Frauenhandel. Diskurse und Praktiken, co-edited with Birgit Sauer (2008); State and Civil Society, co-edited with Emil Brix, Rita Trattnigg and Werner Wutscher (2008); ‘Ethnic Conflicts and Monetary Integration in Austria-Hungary’, in Building Civil Society and Democracy in ‘New’ Europe, Sven Eliaeson (Hg.) (2008); Zwischen Fürsorge und Seelsorge. Christliche Kirchen in den europäischen Zivilgesellschaften seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, co-edited with Arnd Bauerkämper (2009). Ton Nijhuis is the scientific director of the Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam and a professor in German Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Amsterdam (UvA)

284 • Notes on Contributors

and a member of the Science Board of the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) in Vienna. Before that he was a visiting fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in Wassenaar, at the IWM, and a member of the Research Board of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP). In 2009 he received the Alexander von Humboldt Forschungspreis. Selected publications include: ‘So nah – so fern: Das Verhältnis von Staat und Zivilgesellschaft in den Niederlanden im Vergleich zu Deutschland’, in Europäische Zivilgesellschaft in Ost und West. Begriff, Geschichte, Chancen, eds. Manfred Hildermeier, Jürgen Kocka and Christoph Conrad (2000), 219–244; ‘Neoliberalismus und das Verhältnis zwischen Staat und Bürgergesellschaft in den Niederlanden’, in Globalisierung und Neorealismus im Spiegelbild der Zukunft der Bürgergesellschaften Europas, ed. H. Badura (2007), 127–137; ‘America and the Search for a European Political Identity’, in Reviewing Europe. Missed opportunities and possible potential, ed. T. Blom (2007), 81–107; ‘Comparing Political Cultures in Germany and the Netherlands’, in United in Diversity; European Integration and Political Cultures?, ed. E. Athanassopoulou (2007), 83–103; ‘Europäisches Projekt: über die Chancen und Hindernisse einer europäischen Zivilgesellschaft als Ziel europäischer Politik’, in Transnationale Zivilgesellschaft in Europa. Traditionen, Muster, Hindernisse, Chancen, eds. Christine Franz, Holger Kolb (2009), 61–75. Anne Revillard is an assistant professor in sociology at Université Paris 13– Villetaneuse (France). Her research interests include gender, social movements, public policy and sociolegal studies. Selected publications include: ‘“Le droit de la famille”: outil d’une justice de genre? Les défenseurs de la cause des femmes face au règlement juridique des conséquences financières du divorce en France et au Québec (1975–2000)’, l’Année sociologique 59, 2 (2009): 345–370; ‘L’expertise critique, force d’une institution faible? Le Comité du travail féminin et la genèse d’une politique d’égalité professionnelle en France (1965–1983)’, in Revue française de science politique 59, 2 (2008): 279–300; ‘Stating Family Values and Women’s Rights: Familialism and Feminism Within the French Republic’, French politics 5, 3 (2007): 210–228; (with Laure Bereni, Sébastien Chauvin and Alexandre Jaunait), Introduction aux Gender Studies. Manuel des études sur le genre (2008). Ays*e Saraçgil is an associate professor of Turkish language and literature and history of the Ottoman Empire at the University of Florence. Her research is mainly centred around the historical-socio-literary enquiry into the Turkish-Anatolian world in a broad time span which includes both the Ottoman and Republican eras. She analyses, with a multidisciplinary approach and using modern Turkish novels as a privileged source,

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itineraries of the re-definition of gender relations, family structures and social hierarchies. Currently she is working on the analysis of the literary representations of gender, family and social hierarchies and on Turkish nationalism. Selected publications include: Il Maschio Camaleonte. Strutture patriarcali nell’Impero ottomano e nella Repubblica turca (Milano 2001) (Turkish ed.: Bukalemun Erkek. Osmanlı I m Æ paratorlug¨unda ve Tu˝rkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Ataerkil yapılar ve Modern Edebiyat. IsÆ tanbul 2005); ‘Nazione e insegnamento della storia nella Turchia contemporanea’, Passato e Presente, vol. 72, (2007), pp. 43–70; ‘Cumhuriyetin anababaları. ebeveynlik ve milli toplumun ins*ası’, Kritik, vol. IV, (2009), pp. 183–221; ‘Il corpo della madre e la cultura della maternità’, Rivista di Psicoanalisi, vol. LVII, (2011), pp. 699–715; ‘Concetti e pratiche di socialità nell’Impero ottomano in età moderna’, in a cura di R. Bizzocchi Storia dell’Europa e del Mediterraneo, vol. XI. culture, religioni, saperi, pp. 613–652, (Roma 2011). Marcella Simoni is assistant professor in history and institutions of Asia at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy. She has been a post-doctoral research fellow at the Unversity of Venice, Italy, at the Centre Français de Recherche de Jérusalem (CRFJ) and a ‘Ville de Paris’ scholar at the Centre de Recherche Moyen-Orient et Méditerranée (CERMOM) of the INALCO. She has also been a visiting fellow at Brown University, at the University of Oxford and in Los Angeles. Her research interests include civil society, peace movements, history of medicine and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Selected publications include: A Healthy Nation: Zionist Health Policies in British Palestine (2010); At the Margins of Conflict: Social Perspectives on Arab and Jews (2010); co-editor with A. Marzano, Quaranta anni dopo. Confini, barriere e limiti in Israele e Palestina (1967–2007) (2007); ‘Roma e Gerusalemme’. Israele nella vita politica e culturale italiana (1949–2009), ECIG (2010); and, with A. Tonini, Realtà e memoria di una disfatta. Il Medio Oriente dopo la Guerra dei Sei Giorni ( 2010). She has also published a number of articles and essays in peer-reviewed international journals and books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dragica Vujadinovic; has been working as a full professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade, teaching political and legal theories, sociology and gender studies. She has also been the head of Master in European Integration at the Faculty of Law program. Selected publications include: Serbia in the Maelstrom of Political Changes (Belgrade 2009); Democracy and Human Rights in the EU, co-authored with M. Jovanovic; and R. Etinski (Maribor and Belgrade 2009); Civil Society in Contemporary Context (2009); Civilno društvo i politic=ke institucije (Civil Society and Political Institutions) (Beograd 2009); Politic=ka filozofija Ronalda Dvorkina (The Political Philosophy of Ronald Dworkin) (2007); co-editor of Between

286 • Notes on Contributors

Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia at the Political Crossroads, vol. III (Serbian 2007, English 2009); Between Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia – Civil Society and Political Culture, vol. II (Serbian 2004, English 2005); Between Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia – Institutional Framework, vol. I (Serbian 2002, England 2003).

INDEX

Subject Index activists, 14, 46, 56, 58, 115, 251, 256, 274, 277–278, 280 advertising, 6, 92, 188 AFEAS (Association Féminine d’Education et d’Action Sociale), 9–10, 88–99 America(n), 6, 9, 33–36, 46, 67–80, 150, 168, 180–181, 194, 229 Anatolian peasantry, 13, 217 Anglican Church, 12, 161, 167–168 authoritarian regimes, 12, 15, 22, 148, 271 autonomous individuals, 8, 43, 59 bourgeois, 8, 9, 48, 50–55, 67, 68, 74, 76–77, 80, 82, 103–106, 110, 126–127, 141, 173, 178, 187, 200 Britain, 7, 11–12, 18, 25, 29, 32, 33, 37, 45, 147–152, 156–167, 181, 184, 186, 190 Catholic, 9, 12, 14, 89, 91–93, 99, 123, 126, 127, 130, 131, 153–155, 161, 164, 166–167, 206, 242–248 CiSoNet (Civil Society Network), 3, 103, 143, 257 civil rights, 9, 55, 56, 67, 83 clan, 6, 14, 227, 228, 231 class(es), 5, 14, 19, 26, 27, 30, 33–34, 52, 54, 55, 59, 60, 67, 72–82, 106, 108, 110–117, 123, 126, 142, 155, 156, 164, 173, 176, 179, 200–202, 206, 215, 223, 228–234

commercial(ism), 3, 6, 26, 50, 112, 205, 209 common good, 3, 47, 49, 58, 112, 245 communal politics, 10, 118 conservative family values, 9, 89 consumerism, 8, 26, 35 custom, 4, 68, 72, 172 democracy, 11, 13, 25, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 43, 75, 105, 123, 130, 131, 142, 147, 149, 152, 172, 175, 180, 188–192, 199, 206, 216, 246–250, 256, 263, 270, 272 democratic state, 6, 8, 18, 24–26, 32–35 demographic, 4, 67, 94, 156, 165, 222, 233, 236 divorce, 10, 57, 70, 89, 91, 93, 96–98, 124, 131–132, 137, 143, 153, 154, 158, 213, 233, 253, 265–266 education, 9, 11, 26, 33, 59, 66, 79, 83, 88, 91–93, 105–106, 109–110, 123, 127, 129, 130, 132, 134, 141– 142, 150, 166, 173, 176, 179–182, 207, 208, 214, 223–228, 231, 235, 250–251, 263, 266, 268–275 equal rights, 12, 56, 57, 143, 215, 266 ethical, 5, 20, 103, 105, 110, 176, 265. See also values everyday life, 11, 93, 94, 105, 249, 264, 265, 269. See also normative familialism, 9, 11, 88, 89, 90, 91, 95, 142

288 • Index

family family change, 9, 10, 11, 89, 91, 98, 137 family life, 6, 8, 12, 21, 23–24, 30, 35, 110, 146–148, 151–156, 162, 165–167, 213, 262, 264, 269, 275. See also home life family members, 11, 73, 125, 247, 253 family structures, 6, 7, 14, 15 family traditions and hierarchies, 14, 236 family–civil-society relations, 5, 17 ideas of family life, 11, 148 nuclear, 6, 21, 26, 27, 28, 30, 36, 164, 204, 212, 214, 255, 265–266 feminist, 4, 7–10, 15, 19, 43, 44, 46, 51, 54–57, 60, 61, 66–68, 76, 81, 88–98, 127, 137, 168, 183, 211, 244, 253, 254, 258, 263, 268, 272–280 fertility, 15, 30, 91, 93, 122, 124, 126, 135, 140, 179, 232, 233, 266, 272 gender, 8–11, 14, 18, 20, 22, 31, 32, 44, 45, 48, 50–58, 60, 67, 73, 75, 76, 89, 90, 91, 93, 95, 98, 123, 126, 129, 140–143, 158, 163, 201, 207–208, 214, 229, 235, 243, 247, 250, 255, 262–280 gender equality, 15, 32, 264, 272, 274, 276 gender relations, 14, 15, 264, 268 gender roles, 9, 264, 268 gendered citizenship, 14, 256 German, 10, 21, 33, 36, 45, 50, 82, 104, 105, 108, 112, 168, 176 government, 3, 31–33, 71, 72, 81, 83, 96, 106, 112–113, 126, 143, 148, 152, 160, 171–173, 177, 179–193, 200, 205, 209, 212–217, 229, 232, 247–248, 250, 253, 255–258, 274, 280 historiography, 10, 68, 118, 119 home life, 6, 8, 22, 26, 33, 35. See also family life

ideologies, 4, 67, 90, 252 imperial, 13, 105, 113, 199, 202, 206–207, 210 independence, 5, 19, 29, 45, 49, 54, 58, 72, 103, 105, 113, 149, 152, 153, 163, 254 Islam, 13, 200, 201, 206, 212, 213, 216, 217 Israel, 6, 13, 14, 221–223, 230–238. See also Zionist Italy, 7, 11, 12, 18, 24–30, 36–37, 99, 147–153, 157–168, 188, 191, 277 Kemalism, 13, 15, 213–216 Kemalist revolution, 13 kinship, 4, 5, 9, 10, 20, 21, 25, 29, 30, 33, 59, 68, 103–119, 122, 148, 150, 151, 156, 165, 264, 265, 267 kin, 5, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 115–118, 126, 139, 234, 237–238 kin networks, 10 kin relations, 10, 115 kinship structure, 13 Kurdish revolt of 1925, 13, 216 labour market, 11, 92, 94, 123, 133, 134, 138, 139, 140, 142, 162, 163, 180, 183, 267, 269, 275 law, 4, 45, 57, 67, 89, 96–97, 104, 107, 109, 111, 114–119, 128, 132, 143, 153, 166, 174, 180–184, 189, 191, 193, 205, 207, 209, 213–214, 233, 245, 254–255, 267, 272–278 legal, 12, 15, 43, 56–57, 68, 76, 94– 96, 126, 128, 131, 143, 153–154, 158, 159, 171, 174, 182–185, 188, 190–191, 203, 212–214, 225, 243, 249, 250, 264, 272–274, 276 legislative intervention, 12, 148 liberal, 6, 19, 20, 25, 43, 47, 50, 53–54, 59, 76, 108–109, 124–126, 129, 209, 211, 244, 247–248, 250, 252, 256 love, 5, 21, 49, 71, 97, 104, 156, 167, 176, 178, 186, 190, 206–208, 266, 270

Index • 289

marriage, 5, 23, 27–30, 49, 59, 70, 97, 105, 109–110, 122, 124, 127–128, 135–137, 143, 148, 153–160, 163, 165–168, 204, 213, 224–228, 233, 235, 237, 265–266, 273 maternalism, 9, 89, 90, 93 Middle East, 13, 27, 197, 228 middle-class, 5, 6, 21, 22, 30, 45, 52, 56, 59, 76, 112, 173, 177, 180, 209, 230, 235 Milosevic regime, 15 minors, 12, 171, 174, 181, 183, 188, 192 modernity, 6, 155, 205, 209 modern life, 6, 36, 265 modernising, 11, 13, 138, 199, 206, 217, 229, 266, 271 morality, 7, 12, 58, 90, 126, 127, 155, 157, 167, 212. See also ethics, values NGOs, 15, 23,251, 271, 272, 274, 275, 278, 280 nineteenth century, 9, 10, 21, 45, 46, 48, 55, 56, 58, 68, 70, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80, 104, 105, 118, 126, 176, 177, 178, 180, 193, 200, 202, 203, 204, 208, 209, 211, 217, 222, 244, 245 normative, 3, 4, 31, 46, 47, 60, 119, 123, 126, 142, 148, 172, 193, 214, 227, 265 Ottoman, 13, 199, 200, 201, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212, 213, 214, 217 Palestinian, 6, 13, 14, 221, 222, 223, 224, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238 participation, 7, 8, 11, 243, 248, 250, 252, 257, 267, 270, 271, 272, 275 participation in civil society, 105, 131, 162 participation in labour, 134 participation in public debate and civic action, lack of, 81 participation in social life, 156

participation of individual in society, 150 participation with institutions, 130 participation, civic, 79 participation, equal, 59 participation, political, 55, 78, 200, 232 participation in democracy, 26, 32, 34, 35, 77, 119 participation, women, 58 in civil society, 79, 98 in the labour market, 140, 163 patriarchal, 11, 14, 15, 18, 27, 28, 52, 53, 68, 124, 150, 164, 183, 184, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 208, 244, 246, 248, 255, 256, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 268, 269, 270, 271, 276 philanthropic, 9, 67, 77, 112, 177, 180–181 Poland, 14, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258 political rights, 8, 13, 54, 55, 67, 76, 278 post-Titoist, 15, 271 power relations, 4, 148, 199, 207, 275 practice, 4, 19, 28, 31, 43, 47, 48, 50, 58, 60, 68, 103, 105, 112, 130, 188, 201, 203, 210, 214, 244, 245, 251, 271, 276 predetermined roles, 10 privacy, 8, 12, 24, 35, 54, 56, 265, 268 private sphere, 3, 6, 14, 18, 24, 31, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 68, 77, 98, 123, 141, 199, 213, 214, 226, 244, 245, 246, 247, 249, 255, 256, 263, 269, 270 privatisation, 6, 265 public sphere, 3–14, 18, 50–60, 66– 68, 75–82, 90, 104, 118, 141, 154, 167, 199, 216, 223, 229, 244–245, 252, 253, 256, 265, 267, 271 public-private divide, 8, 18 Quebec, 9, 88, 91, 94, 96, 98, 99 refugees, 14, 233, 236, 237, 278 representation

290 • Index

representation of the family, 202 representation of women, 92 in public ceremonies, 77 political, 280 of self, 77, 156, 157 representation, political, 200 in democracy, 8, 35 representational rights, 10, 118 Serbia, 14–15, 262–278. See also Milosevic, Titoist regime, Yugoslavia social capital, 7, 10, 110, 118, 131, 140, 142 social formation, 4, 27, 67, 104, 116, 204 social movement(s), 25, 81, 242 social movement theory, 9 social policy, 9, 12, 66–68, 72, 73, 78–80, 83, 127, 147–148, 151–153, 155–157, 162, 165–167, 263, 272 Spain, 10, 11, 29, 122, 126, 130–143 Franco regime, 11, 127 the state state institutions, 7 state intervention, 12, 88, 91, 151, 180, 244 state policies, 14, 15 state socialism, 14 strong family model, 11, 122, 137, 138, 142 Sweden, 7, 25, 28, 37 Turkey/Turkish, 6, 13, 15, 199–217, 228

Civil Code of 1926, 13 Constitution of 1924, 13, 216 See also Ottoman, Anatolian peasantry values, 3, 7, 9, 31, 49, 88–93, 96, 98, 124, 131, 137, 141–142, 149–158, 164, 166–167, 182, 205, 222–227, 230, 233, 245, 250, 252, 263, 265, 273, 276. See also ethics, morality vote, 12, 72, 143, 171, 188–193, 212, 214, 228, 251–252 Wajda, Andrzej; 241 Wałesa, Lech; 240-1 welfare policy, 12, 255 welfare state, 7, 11, 55, 66, 68, 78–81, 128, 139, 141–142, 147, 149–150, 153, 155, 158, 161, 166–168, 263 Wesley, Susanna, 175 White, E.B. (Charlotte’s Web), 184 Wilhelm, Georg, 45 Willmott, Peter 154 Wilson, Jacqueline, 184 Wilson, Woodrow, 179 women’s rights, 9, 14, 88–89, 94, 98, 123, 128, 235, 243 Yugoslavia, 14, 15, 262–263, 271–272, 277. See also Milosevic, Serbia, Titoist regime Titoist regime, 15, 271 Zionist, 13, 221–236

Index • 291

Name Index Abdulhamid II, 198, 207–8 Abramovitz, Shalom Jacob, 220 Adams, John Quincy, 70 Al Husseini, Amin, 221 al Khalidi, Hussein Fahri, 227 al Khalidi, Whalida, 227 Annenkov, Pavel Vasilyevich, 19 Arato, Andrew, 8, 59–60 Ariès, Philippe, 183 (L’Enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien régime), 171 Aristotle, 169 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 198, 201, 209, 211–5 Augustine, Saint, 172 Banfield, Edward (The Moral Basis of a Backward Society), 140 Barusewicz, Bogdan, 241 Belka, Marek, 245 Ben Gurion, David, 228–9 Benhabib, Sheila, 8 Bernini, Stefania, 4, 7, 11 Beveridge, William (Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services), 146 Bird, Florence, 92 Bourdieu, Pierre, 54 Braine, Bernard, 151 Chuliá, Elisa, 7, 10, 11 Cohen, Jean L., 8, 59–60 Comte, August, 209 Dahl, Roald, 184 de Chamford, Nicolas, 191 de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Baron, 45, 49 Demos, John, 73 Dewey, John, 190 Dickens, Charles (Oliver Twist), 176 Diderot, Denis, 45 Drouin-Paquette, Lise, 95 Dorn, Ludwik, 245 Dziwisz, Stanislaw, 241 Eden, Sir Anthony, 150

Edib, Halide, 215 Erasmus, Desiderius, 173 Ferguson, Fishkin, James, 33 Fitzjames Stephen, James, 189 Fliegelman, Jay, 69–70 Franco, Francisco, 11, 121, 125, 128–9 Fraser, Nancy, 8 Freud, Sigmund, 184 Gandhi, Mahatma, 215 George III, 69 Giertych, Roman, 249 Gillick, Victoria, 182 Ginsborg, Paul, 153 Glendon, Mary Anne, 212 Gökalp, Ziya, 210 Habermas, Jürgen, 4, 5, 8, 54, 67–68, 78–9, 198 Hagemann, Karen, 8 Hakkı, Ismail, 209 Harris, Jose, 25 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 5, 6, 20, 21, 45, 101, 174, 191, 241 Elements of the Philosophy of Right, The, 21 Hirschman, Albert, 129 Hume, 242 Isenberg, Nancy, 76 Iwaniec, Renata, 252 Jackson, Andrew, 70 John Paul II, Pope, 241 Kaczynski, Jaroslaw, 248 Kalil, Samiha, 233 Kant, Immanuel, 45, 49 Keane, John, 7, 12

Kemal, Namık, 207 Khleifi, Michel, 232 Kocka, Jürgen, 3, 251 Korolczuk, Elz˙bieta, 7, 14

Lenin, Vladimir, 19

292 • Index

Lindgren, Astrid (Pippi Longstocking), 184 Lipp, Carola, 7, 10, 20 Locke, John, 45, 49, 69, 242 Loring, Charles, 178 Louis XIII, 175 Luther, Martin, 171 Marcuse, Herbert, 186 Marshall, Thomas H., 55 Marx, Karl, 45 Michel, Sonya, 4,9 Mill, John Stuart, 190 Milosevic, Slobodan, 15, 261, 269 Modern Türkiye Mecmuası, 213 Mogannam, Matiel, 227 Moller Okin, Susan (Justice, Gender and the Family), 18–9, 28, 242 Nazzar, Sejez, 227 O’Neill, Paul, 182 Oliver, Jamie, 186 Pajetta, Gian Carlo, 153 Pas*a, Midhat, 207–8 Pas*a, Mustafa Res*id, 203 Pas*a, Ismail Enver, 209–10 Pateman, Carol, 8 Pérez-Díaz, Victor, 139 Phaneuf, George-Etienne, 91 Pius XII, Pope, 164 Pye, Lucien and Sidey Verba (Political Culture and Political Development), 147–8 Reed, Lou, 185 Revillard, Anne, 9 Rıza, Ahmed, 209

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 69, 108 Émile, ou de l’education, 174 Saint Exupéry, Antoine de (The Little Prince), 184 Sakakini, Khalil, 226 Saraçgil, Ayse, 7, 13 Sforim, Mendele Mocher (See Abramovitz, Shalom Jacob), 220 Shihab, Zlikha, 233 Sigourney, Lydia, 70 Simoni, Marcella, 7, 13 Sivan, Eyal, 232 Sroda, Magdalena, 245 Tabenkin, Yitzhak, 223 Tocqueville, 45, 192 Togliatti, Palmiro, 152 Townsend, Peter, 154 Trentmann, Frank, 104 Valiente, Celia, 139 Vallès, Jules (L’Enfant), 176 Vartanian, Hovsep (Akabi’s Story), 204 Vujadinovic, Dragica, 7, 14 Young, Iris Marion, 8 Young, Michael, 154 Wajda, Andrzej, 241 Wałesa, Lech, 240–1 Wesley, Susanna, 175 White, E.B. (Charlotte’s Web), 184 Wilhelm, Georg, 45 Willmott, Peter 154 Wilson, Jacqueline, 184 Wilson, Woodrow, 179