Places That Bond and Bind: On the Interplay of Space, Places, and Social Networks

Social networks of socially disadvantaged individuals can help them in coping with everyday life and avoiding social exclusion. At the same time, social ties also have the power to bind an individual to their disadvantageous situation, perpetuating the risks of social exclusion. One mechanism through which ties can be established are “foci”: extra‐network structures around which common interactions occur (e.g., family, workplace, clubs) that usually have spatial anchor points (places) where joint interactions happen. To better understand this interplay of places and networks, we use a methodological novelty that connects a person’s everyday places with their ego‐centred network (two‐mode network). We analyse in depth two cases (elderly women living alone) from a mixed‐methods study conducted in rural peripheries in eastern Germany, and we combine data from GPS tracking, qualitative interviews, and egocentric networks. A central finding of our analysis is that tie formation in places is more successful if ego has certain resources (e.g., cultural, financial, or time resources) that allow them to utilise places as foci—hence, ego and places must “match” in their characteristics. Beyond that, the existing foci (and their spatial anchoring as places in everyday life) in which ego is integrated must be considered as structures. Even if a person has enough resources and easy access to places with characteristics that promote contact, this does not automatically mean that they will form ties in such places, as the person’s network plays a major role in whether they frequent these places and establish new ties there

Gender and release from imprisonment: Convict licensing systems in mid to late 19th century England

This paper draws on the research undertaken into the lives and prison experiences of around 650 male and female convicts who were released on licence (an early form of parole) from sentences of long term imprisonment (three years to life) in England in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Our project confirmed the patterns of offending seen in other studies of female and male offending, namely, that women were committed to periods of long-term imprisonment overwhelmingly for crimes of larceny and sometimes low-level violence (or their criminal backgrounds indicated this type of low-level disorderly behaviour) and only in the minority for crimes of serious interpersonal violence. Similarly, the majority of men were also committed to the convict system for larceny. Yet how male and female offenders were treated by the prison licensing system did differ significantly. The vast majority of all prisoners, male and female, were released early on licence from their prison terms, even those who had committed very serious offences. All licences had several conditions in them and licence-holders were free so long as they met these conditions. Any breach of the above conditions meant that the individual would be returned to prison to serve out the remainder of their sentence.However, a proportion of female offenders were released slightly earlier than their male counterparts, though not directly into the community but on a conditional licence to Female Refuges. Out of the 288 women researched in our project, 200 of them were released in this manner; under further confinement in a refuge. Women stayed in such refuges for on average between six and nine months, before their final release was then approved by the Directors of the Convict Prisons

"Monstrous and indefensible"? Newspaper accounts of sexual assaults on children in nineteenth-century England and Wales

This material has been published in Women's Criminality in Europe, 1600–1914 edited by Edited by Manon van der Heijden, Marion Pluskota, Sanne Muurling, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774543. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution or re-use. © 2020 Cambridge University Press.Popular crime reportage of sexual violence has a long history in England. Despite the fact that from the 1830s onwards newspapers and periodicals – and sometimes even law reports – were increasingly liable to skim over the reporting of sexual offences as ‘unfit for publication’, this does not mean that such reportage vanished entirely. Instead, certain linguistic codes and euphemisms were invoked to maintain a respectable discourse. Given the serious problems with gaps in the surviving archival record for modern criminal justice, newspapers remain an essential tool for understanding the history of sexual violence in nineteenth century England and Wales. Using keyword searches in digitized newspaper databases such as the British Newspaper Archive and Welsh Newspapers Database, this chapter examines the continuities and changes in the reporting of sexual violence against children between 1800 and 1900, and explores what these euphemisms and elisions reveal about attitudes to gender and crime in nineteenth-century England and Wales.Peer reviewe

Histoire des années de jeunesse de Joh. Valentin Andreae

Pour comprendre l'œuvre littéraire qu'Andreae (1586-1654) édifia pendant toute sa vie, il est essentiel d'analyser d'une façon précise ses années de jeunesse. Maints éléments de son existence attirèrent sur lui les soupçons de ses contemporains : le climat psychologique particulier qui caractérisait sa famille, les tempéraments opposés de son père et de sa mère, les années d'études à Tübingen, l'interdiction d'étudier la théologie, l'amitié qui le liait étroitement à l'orthodoxie luthérienne ainsi qu'au chiliaste et paracelsien Tobias Hess et à Chr. Besold. A cela s'ajoutent une vie errante pendant de nombreuses années, et finalement la fréquentation intensive de la littérature « profane » (humaniste et hermétique) de son époque. Tout cela exerça sur lui un effet durable et constitue la toile de fond de ses œuvres de jeunesse importantes : les "Noces chimiques", la "Fama Fraternitatis" et le "Turbo". Ces œuvres significatives de l'évolution du jeune Andreae permettent de comprendre l'évolution personnelle qui, du « Curiosus » qu'il était, fit de lui un « Christianus ».Van Dülmen Richard. Histoire des années de jeunesse de Joh. Valentin Andreae. In: Revue de l'histoire des religions, tome 184, n°2, 1973. pp. 113-135