Institution and Family: An Alternative View of Nineteenth-Century Child Saving
- 1 October 1986
- journal article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Social Problems
- Vol. 33 (6) , S33-S57
- https://doi.org/10.2307/800673
Abstract
Over the last decade, the history of deviance and social control institutions has become mired in a futile debate over the morality and motivations of reform and has insulated itself from the main theoretical and methodological developments in social history. I urge a materialist recasting of the field, in which attention would focus on client experience and on concrete reproductive functions performed by institutions to accommodate working-class families to increasing misery. I illustrate my arguments with case study evidence on the origins of nineteenthcentury child saving.Keywords
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