商品簡介
One of the most important advances to emerge from the growing body of work on European welfare history has been a renewed focus on the experiences of the poor themselves. In particular, the study of narratives by and about the poor has brought their lives, experiences and opportunities for agency to the fore, putting the human and personal back into the study of poverty and welfare.
Poverty and Sickness in Modern Europe explores the experiences of the sick poor, drawing on cases from Austria, Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Spain and Sweden. The volume focuses on the analysis of pauper narratives, highlighting their value as sources for exploring the agency, rhetoric and experiences of the poor. The contributors draw on a variety of types of narrative, including autobiographies, newspaper stories, popular ballads, patient case notes, suicide letters and applications for citizenship. The result demonstrates that how a relief system treated its sick poor, and how those sick poor were able to navigate the system, tells us more about welfare history than analysis of any other group.
作者簡介
Andreas Gestrich is Director of the German Historical Institute London, UK.
Elizabeth Hurren is Reader in History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University, UK.
Steven King is Professor of Medical Humanities at Leicester University, UK.
