Public Drinking in the Early Modern World: Voices from the Tavern, 1500-1800

Until recently the role of the public drinking house has been approached from elitist, folkloric and anecdotal perspectives. The work of a new generation of social historians, however, has raised the tavern’s profile in the academic consciousness and confirmed its position within the mainstream of social and cultural history. It is now recognized that an understanding of the centrality of public drinking to the development of both elite and popular culture is vital to studies of social behaviour. The study of taverns has also been at the forefront of emerging interest in the history of consumption and material culture, and has contributed to a richer understanding of economic history. Constructions of gender and identity are also visible through research into the patterns of behaviour and discourse in and around the public house. This four-volume reset edition presents a wide-ranging collection of primary sources which uncover the language and behaviour of local and state authorities, of peasants and town-dwellers, and of drinking companions and irate wives. The documents are translated and set in their social and historical context, providing a multidisciplinary collection that will be of great importance to scholars of all areas of social and cultural history of the early modern period. The vast majority of this material is published here for the first time, ensuring that the collection will open up new avenues of research. Volume 1 draws heavily from the Parisian police archives and includes inspectors’ reports, complaints by the general public and details of court cases to build a picture of drinking in early modern France. Volumes 2 and 3 address public drinking in the Holy Roman Empire through a variety of chronicles, civic ordinances, court records, travel reports and surveys of public houses. Volume 4 locates taverns within a broader analysis of America’s public houses, drawing on visual material as well as journal entries, business reports and newspaper articles. Each volume is accompanied by editorial introductions and is annotated to provide readers with a high-quality resource of scholarly material.

Trust and Social Networks in a Changing Europe.

This project set out to investigate the effects of the recent massive social transitions in Eastern Europe on the everyday social lives of the inhabitants of three very different nations: Georgia, Russia and Hungary. It focused in particular on the availability and nature of the support networks available to three different segments of each of the societies (manual workers, students and entrepreneurs) and the impact of network participation on psychological and physical well-being. The group set four specific questions to investigate: the part played by individual psychological beliefs in the formation and maintenance of social networks and the consequent formation of trusting relations; the implication of the size and quality of these networks for mental health; the nature of the social groups inhabited by the respondents and the implication of their work schedule and daily routines on the maintenance of a social and family life; and an analysis of how cultures vary in their social networks and intimacy. Three different methods were used to examine social support and its implications: structured questionnaires, semi-structured short interviews and a media analysis of newspaper materials. The questionnaires were administered to 150 participants in each country, equally divided between students studying full time, manual workers employed in factories, and business people (small kiosk owners, whose work and life style differs considerably from that of the manual workers). The questionnaires investigated various predictors of social support including the locus of control, relationship beliefs, individualism-collectivism and egalitarianism, demographic variables (age, gender and occupation), social support, both in general and in relation to significant events that have occurred since the transition from communism. Those with an internal locus of control were more likely to report a higher level of social support, as were collectivists, while age too was a significant predictor, with younger respondents enjoying higher levels of support, regardless of the measures of support employed. Respondents across the cultures referred to a decline of social support and the group also found a direct correlation between social support and mental health outcomes. All 450 respondents were interviewed on their general responses to changes in their lives since the fall of communism and the effects of their work lives on their social lives and the home environment. The interviews revealed considerable variations in the way in which work-life offered opportunities for a broader social life and also provided a hindrance to the development of fulfilling relationships. Many of the work experiences discussed were culture specific, with work having a particularly negative impact on the social life of Russian entrepreneurs but being seen much more positively in Georgia. This may reflect the nature of support offered in a society as overall support levels were lowest in Russia, meaning that social support may be of particular importance there. The way in cultural values and norms about personal relationships are transmitted in a culture is a critical issue for social psychologists and the group examined newspaper articles in those newspapers read by the respondents in each of the three countries. These revealed a number of different themes. The concept of a divided society and its implications for personal relationships was clearest in Russian and Hungary, where widely-read newspapers dwelt on the contrast between "new Russians/Hungarians" and the older, poorer ones and extended considerable sympathy to those suffering from neglect in institutions. Magyar Nemzet, a paper widely read by Hungarian students reflects the generally more pessimistic tone about personal relationships in Russia and Hungary and gave a particularly detailed analysis of the implications this holds for human relations in a modern society. In Georgia, however, the tone of the newspapers is more positive, stressing greater social cohesion. Part of this cohesion is framed in the context of religion, with the church appealing to a broader egalitarianism, whereas in less egalitarian Hungary appeals by the Church are centred more on the nuclear family and its need for expansion in both size and influence. The division between the sexes was another prominent issue in Hungary and Russia, while the theme of generational conflict also emerged in Hungarian and Georgian papers, although with some understanding of "young people today". The team's original expectation that the different newspapers read by the different groups of respondents would present differing images of personal relationships was not fulfilled, as despite variations in style, they found little clear "ideological targeting" of any particular readership. They conclude that the vast majority of respondents recognised that the social transition from communism has had a significant impact on the well-being of social relationships and that this is a pertinent issue for all segments of society. While the group see the data collected as a source to be worked on for some time in the future, their initial impressions include the following. Social support is clearly an important concern across all three countries. All respondents (including the students) lament the time taken up by their heavy work schedules and value their social networks and family ties in particular. The level of social support differs across the countries investigated, with Georgian apparently enjoying significantly higher levels of social support. The analysis produced an image of a relatively cohesive and egalitarian society in which even the group most often seen as distant from the general population, business people, is supported by a strong social network. In contrast, the support networks available to the Russian respondents seem particularly weak and reflect a general sense of division and alienation within the culture as a whole. The implications of low levels of social support may vary across countries. While Russians reported the lowest level of mental health problems, the link between social support and mental health may be strongest in that country. In contrast, in Hungary it is the link between fatalism and mental health problems which is particularly strong, while in Georgia the strongest correlation was between mental health and marital quality, emphasising the significance of the marital relationship in that country.

Women's Dress as an Expression of Social Development in Bohemia in the Years 1850-1950"

The nature of Czech fashion was shaped both by the social environment - not particularly wealthy, modest, influenced by the Protestant tradition - and by efforts towards women's emancipation. This resulted in a rejection of unnecessarily quirky elements in fashion as early as the 1870s. As far as style was concerned, Czech fashion followed the Viennese, German and French, and from the 1890s also the English models, and also found inspiration in contemporary aesthetic principles. National political ambitions appeared in inspiration drawn from folk costume. Feminist struggles and sports paved the way for the acceptance of reformist and practical dress, in which Czech designers took an active part. These trends reached a peak around 1929, with the design of a complete "civilised" women's apparel, based on trouser suits. The peak periods in the development of Czech fashion were the 1920s and 1930s, when a number of top fashion houses were established and both fashion and society magazines with original fashion designs, photographs and articles were published. These produced a specifically Czech fashion, showing French inspiration but opting rather for an English style, which was artistically advanced, practical, luxurious and democratic. After 1948, fashion too fell under the centralised control of the communist regime.

Between Equity and Empathy: Social Professions and the New Accountability

This article explores the practical and ethical implications of the ‘new accountability’ (working to procedures, targets and standards) based on interviews with British social professionals. Although similar tendencies are present in other European countries, in Britain the rule-bound nature of social work is more intense. Practitioners who regard the ‘new accountability’ positively justify their views with reference to utilitarian and rights-based arguments relating to the promotion of good outcomes, the achievement of equity, respecting the consumer rights of service users and the rights of other stakeholders to information and value for money. Those practitioners who view the new accountability requirements negatively seem to speak in a different ‘moral voice’, which can be linked to more personal and situated approaches to ethics, stressing the importance of particular relationships in context, trust, sensitivity and a sense of ‘vocation’. Both ‘voices’ are part of professional practice, but the new accountability stresses the former at the expense of the latter. For social work to play the critical role identified by Walter Lorenz, maintaining a creative balance between equity and empathy will be important.

Social Work as Laboratory for Normative Professionalisation

In most Western countries, the professional status of social workers is instable and insecure. Of course, most Western countries are themselves instable, ridden with feelings of insecurity and in search of reassurance and promises of control. But social work hardly lends itself as a projection screen for visions of professional control and efficiency in the face of insecurity. On the contrary: within the present cultural and political climate, social work connotes primarily with unpopular social problems, with people unable to cope adequately with the competitiveness and the rate of change of post-industrial societies, that is to say: it connotes more with dependency and helplessness then with autonomy and control. Moreover, whereas public discourse in most Western country is dominated by a neo-liberal perspective and the intricate network of economic, managerial, consumerist and military metaphors connected with it, social work still carries with it a legacy of 'progressive politics' increasingly labeled as outdated and inadequate. Although the values of solidarity and social justice connected with this 'progressive heritage' certainly have not faded away completely, the loudest and most popular voices on the level of public discourse keep underscoring the necessity to adapt to the 'realities' of present-day postindustrial societies and their dependence on economic growth, technological innovation and the dynamics of an ever more competitive world-market. This 'unavoidable' adaptation involves both the 'modernization' and progressive diminishment of 'costly' welfare-state arrangements and a radical reorientation of social work as a profession. Instead of furthering the dependency of clients in the name of solidarity, social workers should stimulate them to face their own responsibilities and help them to function more adequately in a world where individual autonomy and economic progress are dominant values. This shift has far-reaching consequences for the organization of the work itself. Efficiency and transparency are the new code words, professional autonomy is dramatically limited and interventions of social workers are increasingly bound to 'objective' standards of success and cost-effectiveness.

The Effects of Social Anxiety on the Development of Romantic Relationships in Adolescence

The present study sought to investigate the ways in which social anxiety impedes the development of romantic relationships across adolescence. Previous research has demonstrated a natural progression for romantic associations during adolescence in which teens transition from same- to mixed-sex peer groups, and finally to dyadic relationships with romantic partners (Connolly, Furman, Konarski, 2000; Dunphy, 1963). This model of development was the basis for the present investigation. Social anxiety was examined in terms of how it impacted affiliations at the same- and mixed sex peer group levels, and ultimately the formation of romantic relationships. This project involved administering a series of questionnaires and rating scales to students enrolled in the 9th through \2l grades. Participants included 457 adolescents (196 males, 261 females) recruited from public high schools in the state of Maine. The questionnaires assessed social anxiety, peer acceptance, heterosocial competence, gender composition of adolescent peer networks, dating history, and relationship quality with significant others in the adolescent's life. Higher levels of social anxiety were expected to be associated with impairment at each of these three levels. Given the proposed developmental progression, the effects of anxiety were theorized to be most pronounced within the older cohort of adolescents. Moreover, gender was expected to affect the pattern of results. Social anxiety is most prevalent among females (LaGreca, 1998; LaGreca & Lopez, 1998), who are also thought to progress along the proposed developmental trajectory more quickly than their male counterparts. Therefore, social anxiety was expected to impact the females to a greater degree at each of the three levels. Correlation coefficients, multivariate analyses of variance, and regression analyses were used to evaluate the data. Overall, despite some discrepant findings, the results supported the hypotheses. Social anxiety was affiliated with problems in the same-sex peer group, the mixed-sex clique, and, for older adolescents, romantic relationships. As expected, social anxiety affected females the most at each level. There seems to be a maladaptive pathway that socially anxious teens are following that is markedly different than their non-anxious counterparts.

Textos y contextos en narraciones orales de migrantes provincianos

La tesis se centra en el estudio de las narraciones orales de migrantes provincianos, afincados en el conurbano platense, desde 1940. Las narraciones orales se denominan, en esta tesis, de retroalimentación ya que narradores y receptores recrean su origen, sus estrategias de reinserción en una nueva comunidad y de supervivencia de sus tradiciones. Estos textos han sido considerados de acuerdo con su problemática genérica (Bajtin; 1979) como narraciones de ficción (cuentos, chistes, fábulas) y de no-ficción (crónicas personales, anécdotas) y, asimismo, observar procesos de entextualización, cuando una misma narración presenta caracteres de ambas clasificaciones. De este modo, cada texto delimita su género en la situación de narración (Bauman y Briggs: 2003) Dichas narraciones deben ser analizadas por sus contextos de enunciación (Bausinger: 1988, 8-28). Los contextos de enunciación, según Hermann Bausinger, son textual, la conversación en sí misma, situacional, las circunstancias de emisores y receptores, social, del grupo de narración, de su grupo de pertenencia y de los grupos con los que interactúa, y societal, en cuanto a las relaciones con la sociedad mayoritaria son fundamentales al punto de que dos versiones de una misma narración se analizan de acuerdo con contextos de enunciación diferentes, con significaciones sociales disímiles. Dentro de los contextos de enunciación, la tesis propone el análisis del contexto ideológico (Coto: 2008), como signo de la intersubjetividad entre narradores y receptores. El contexto ideológico se analiza a partir de la selección de lexemas relevantes con sus definiciones contextuales, para constituir redes de enunciados, que revelan la ideología de narradores y receptores. La tesis propone establecer una matriz ideológica individual y grupal, observando los lexemas recurrentes en versiones de una misma narración, sus adiciones, supresiones y cambios de significación. Además, los textos puede compararse de acuerdo con sus relaciones intratextuales, intertextuales y extratextuales, en el marco de la genética textual (Palleiro: 2004). Finalmente, la tesis propone una metodología de análisis de las narrativas orales, en el marco de la cultura popular, tradicional y folklórica, con la observación de estrategias narrativas y macrorreglas (Van Dijk: 1983), estilo y (Kerbrat-Orecchioni: 1983) y representatividad sociolingüística. (Van Dijk: 1999 y Magariños: 1993). Estas consideraciones prueban la importancia de esta tesis para los intelectuales dedicados al análisis del discurso y a la interpretación de discursos sociales de grupos minoritarios, es decir, docentes, narradores orales, sociólogos y antropólogos. Asimismo, puede ser muy útil para animadores culturales y comunicadores sociales. La tesis postula continuar estos estudios, observando las relaciones entre narrativas de ficción y de no ficción, como el rumor, la leyenda urbana y la crónica periodística

Una articulación de arte y política : Dislocaciones y rupturas en la poética de Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1968-1975)

Esta tesis, que integra los estudios de la Sociología del Arte, se centra en la vinculación de la poética del artista Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1928 - 1997) con la política y lo político, así como con los procesos sociales más generales entre 1968 y 1975. Vigo ocupó una posición emergente en el desarrollo del arte platense y desplegó producciones que emprendieron una poética rupturista con lo establecido por algunos de los cánones tradicionales del arte y sus instituciones, y elaboró propuestas estéticas innovadoras que abarcaban las artes visuales en sus diversas formas. Se analizan en esta tesis los modos por los que Vigo al mismo tiempo que apunta a cuestionar las estructuras y manifestaciones de las Bellas Artes, lo hace con las formas dominantes de la cultura a través de obras y textos que tendían a desestabilizar los roles de autor, espectador y obra, así como a involucrarse de distintos modos en los acontecimientos políticos de la época. Se estudian, además, las producción de acciones artísticas en el espacio público, que Vigo llamó señalamientos, la utilización y apropiación del discurso y aspectos materiales de lo judicial-administrativo y la edición de la revista ensamblada Hexágono '71 (1971 -1975). En estas zonas de la poética de Vigo se consideran las diversas relaciones entre arte y política, las cuales no han sido lineales ni unidireccionales, sino modos de distorsionar y disentir con las jerarquías, lugares y funciones de los sujetos y objetos del entramado social. Para la realización de la tesis se produjo un diseño metodológico cualitativo, se utilizaron fuentes documentales y entrevistas. Se desarrolla un análisis de las obras del artista, más que remitiéndolas a una corriente artística particular, haciendo foco en su relación con la situación social y política, especialmente en sus vinculaciones con el particular proceso de subjetivación política de la época. Se procuró para ello realizar una investigación que se detenga de manera pormenorizada en el trabajo artístico y sus particularidades (materiales, técnicas, formas, estrategias de intervención), así como en sus discursos escritos, plasmados en ensayos, artículos y otros textos, para avanzar desde allí hacia un análisis interpretativo y comprensivo de las conexiones y de los efectos que perseguía tal trabajo con los procesos políticos. Se presentan en los Anexos matrices de datos de los señalamientos y de Hexágono '71, así como un índice razonado de la misma

Una articulación de arte y política : Dislocaciones y rupturas en la poética de Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1968-1975)

Esta tesis, que integra los estudios de la Sociología del Arte, se centra en la vinculación de la poética del artista Edgardo Antonio Vigo (1928 - 1997) con la política y lo político, así como con los procesos sociales más generales entre 1968 y 1975. Vigo ocupó una posición emergente en el desarrollo del arte platense y desplegó producciones que emprendieron una poética rupturista con lo establecido por algunos de los cánones tradicionales del arte y sus instituciones, y elaboró propuestas estéticas innovadoras que abarcaban las artes visuales en sus diversas formas. Se analizan en esta tesis los modos por los que Vigo al mismo tiempo que apunta a cuestionar las estructuras y manifestaciones de las Bellas Artes, lo hace con las formas dominantes de la cultura a través de obras y textos que tendían a desestabilizar los roles de autor, espectador y obra, así como a involucrarse de distintos modos en los acontecimientos políticos de la época. Se estudian, además, las producción de acciones artísticas en el espacio público, que Vigo llamó señalamientos, la utilización y apropiación del discurso y aspectos materiales de lo judicial-administrativo y la edición de la revista ensamblada Hexágono '71 (1971 -1975). En estas zonas de la poética de Vigo se consideran las diversas relaciones entre arte y política, las cuales no han sido lineales ni unidireccionales, sino modos de distorsionar y disentir con las jerarquías, lugares y funciones de los sujetos y objetos del entramado social. Para la realización de la tesis se produjo un diseño metodológico cualitativo, se utilizaron fuentes documentales y entrevistas. Se desarrolla un análisis de las obras del artista, más que remitiéndolas a una corriente artística particular, haciendo foco en su relación con la situación social y política, especialmente en sus vinculaciones con el particular proceso de subjetivación política de la época. Se procuró para ello realizar una investigación que se detenga de manera pormenorizada en el trabajo artístico y sus particularidades (materiales, técnicas, formas, estrategias de intervención), así como en sus discursos escritos, plasmados en ensayos, artículos y otros textos, para avanzar desde allí hacia un análisis interpretativo y comprensivo de las conexiones y de los efectos que perseguía tal trabajo con los procesos políticos. Se presentan en los Anexos matrices de datos de los señalamientos y de Hexágono '71, así como un índice razonado de la misma