Inklusion/Exklusion – serie

Wie sah ländliche Armut in Europa aus? Konnte nicht jeder auf dem Land Tiere halten oder Beeren im Wald sammeln? Nimmt man nicht sogar heute noch an, dass Solidarität unter Landbewohnern sehr verbreitet ist? Historiker und Historikerinnen aus fünf europäischen Ländern skizzieren ein bislang vernachlässigtes Forschungsfeld: Thematisiert werden Kontinuitäten und Brüche in der ländlichen, im Vergleich zur städtischen Armenfürsorge ebenso wie konfessionelle und aristokratische Wohltätigkeit. Ein breites Spektrum an Quellen dient dazu, die Wahrnehmung von Armen und ihre Behandlung durch private und öffentliche Institutionen der Sozialfürsorge zu analysieren. Machtverhältnissen zwischen Männern und Frauen, Adel und Bauern oder Verwaltern und Bedürftigen wird besondere Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt.How did rural poverty look like in the European past? Could not everybody in the countryside keep chickens, or pick berries in the woods? Is not the solidarity of villagers commonly known even today? The volume draws together historians from five European countries to map out a field of research which has long been neglected by welfare as well as agricultural historians. Continuities and changes within rural as compared to urban poor relief, of ecclesiastic and of aristocratic charity are described. A wide range of sources is taken into account to show how the rural poor were perceived and treated by private and public institutions of social assistance. Power relations between men and women, aristocrats and peasantry, or administrators and the needy are especially focussed upon.

This collection presents research results of the Collaborative Research Centre 600 ‘Strangers and Poor People. Changing Patterns of Inclusion and Exclusion from Classical Antiquity to the Present Day’ at Trier University. It deals with central problems of social inclusion in societies of Europe and the Mediterranean World since Antiquity. The articles assembled here explore fundamental dimensions of the self-concepts of societies and social groups. From the perspectives of different disciplines, as History, History of Law, Literature Studies and Social Sciences, they focus on five main research areas: theoretical concepts of inclusion and exclusion, rights of membership and the inclusion of strangers in political spaces, religious dimensions of poor relief from the Middle Ages up into the twentieth Century, poor law and politics of poverty and the semantics of inclusion and exclusion.