{"title":"Detours and Contours of Inherited Wealth: The Perennial Structures of Transmission Between Generations*","authors":"R. Descimon","doi":"10.1017/S239856820000008X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S239856820000008X","url":null,"abstract":"André Masson proposes replacing Gary Becker’s “theory” of generational altruism with a structural explanation inspired by Marcel Mauss’s famous essay The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (1923), which was rooted in indirect reciprocities between three generations. Masson thereby elaborates a gentle critique of the moral principles often lying beneath the analyses of liberal economists (such as the “demonstration effect,” disen-franchisement, or the theory of homo reciprocans). Accepting the ambitions of economic science, Masson nonetheless maintains a conception of the social sciences that is more competitive than cooperative and provides convincing analysis of the economic and social foundations of current intergenerational transfers. The argument developed in this critical note proposes both a historical reading of the ideology of intergenerational equity, which is only conceivable in the transition from the Trente Glorieuses to the Trente Piteuses, and a structural reading arguing that, for the wealthy classes during the European Old Regime, successful transfers of wealth between generations followed the same formal requirements as those in the twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":86691,"journal":{"name":"Annales Nestle [English ed.]","volume":"121 1","pages":"591 - 601"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72966018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Heart of the State, Site of Tension: The Archival Turn Viewed from Venice, ca. 1400-1700*","authors":"Filippo de Vivo","doi":"10.1017/S2398568200000030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2398568200000030","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, a new historiographical trend has focused on archives not as mere repositories of sources, but as objects of inquiry in their own right. Particular attention has been paid to how their continually evolving organization and management reflect the political presuppositions of the institutions presiding over them. This article acknowledges this archival turn and provides an example drawn from the famous case study of the Venetian chancery between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, at a time of substantial developments in the management of archives. It proposes a more inclusive and socially contextualized approach in order to demonstrate that archives were not just tools of power but also sites of economic, social, and political conflict. A close reading of the very document that led to the institutional view of the Venetian archive as the “heart of the state” reveals that the patrician rulers worried about both the fragility of their archive and the reliability of the notaries in charge of it. This perspective helps to explain the exalted representation of the archive in the late Middle Ages and the early modern era—a representation that, taken at face value, continues to inspire historical analysis today—by illuminating the practical difficulties surrounding archival methods at the time. The history of archives emerges as a promising field of inquiry precisely because it can shed light on both the history of the state and the social context in which the state’s actions had to be negotiated.","PeriodicalId":86691,"journal":{"name":"Annales Nestle [English ed.]","volume":"9 1","pages":"457 - 485"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87425917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Imaginary of a Sect: Literature, Politics, and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of the Camorra","authors":"Francesco Benigno","doi":"10.1017/S2398568200000054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2398568200000054","url":null,"abstract":"This article reconsiders the so-called “dangerous classes” by focusing on the historical origins of the Neapolitan camorra, one of the world’s major criminal organizations. In the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples, the term camorristi referred to marginalized individuals and extortionists who operated in prisons, gambling halls, and brothels. During the turbulent period of Italian unification, such figures were increasingly seen as belonging to a legendary, omnipotent, and influential sect: the camorra, an organized secret society with its own hierarchy, customs, and jargon. This image eventually permeated Italian society. This article examines the reasons behind this evolution by focusing on the (mainly literary) texts and (essentially political) dynamics behind it, which reveal a process of criminalization and folklorization. Such a discursive transformation had a major impact on the Italian collective imagination, one that persists today.","PeriodicalId":86691,"journal":{"name":"Annales Nestle [English ed.]","volume":"1 1","pages":"511 - 543"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S2398568200000054","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72522955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Unbearable Ambiguity of the Gift*","authors":"Alain Guery","doi":"10.1017/S2398568200000078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2398568200000078","url":null,"abstract":"In his book, Pour une histoire naturelle du don, François Athané questions the various anthropological, sociological, and philosophical discourses surrounding the fundamental social role of the gift. Taking as his point of departure the notion of the transfer of goods or services as a basic factor both in the exchange of gifts and of the gift itself, the author proceeds to deconstruct certain theories, beginning with Marcel Mauss’s The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (first published in French in 1923, and later published in English in 1954). Since such an approach does not permit considering the “gift—receipt—counter-gift” triad as a whole, it does not take into account the obligation to reciprocate highlighted by Mauss and thus deprives the gift of its constitutive role as a social link. Athané thus proposes a new interpretation of the place the gift occupies in human perception and social behavior. He refers to the universalizing nature of the gift as an expression of parental altruism. However, while this establishes a connection between nature and culture (the gift being the cultural form of this natural parental altruism), Athané makes no reference to the social and biological studies that were previously challenged by the authors he cites. This reconsideration of nature, in which society and its rules are said to originate, should give rise to new debates.","PeriodicalId":86691,"journal":{"name":"Annales Nestle [English ed.]","volume":"8 1","pages":"573 - 589"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75052395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tyrannical Vices: Resistance to Monopoly, Ideology, and the Market at the Dawn of Modernity*","authors":"Riccardo Rosolino","doi":"10.1017/S2398568200000066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2398568200000066","url":null,"abstract":"In early modern Catholic Europe, certain theologians imagined and legitimized the possibility that one monopoly could be fought by an equal and opposite monopoly. Market dynamics were thus described in terms of the theory of resistance derived from political thought. During the Old Regime, it was necessary to defend the market and its actors from monopoly, which was associated with hoarding and meant to create scarcity and higher prices. A monopolist could be either a single merchant or a group of them, and there was no distinction between buyers and sellers who behaved in such a way. Monopolistic behavior was usually referred to as a “conspiracy,” which carried obvious political connotations. It was both a crime and a sin in addition to being considered an act of violence and one of the primary means of violating the principle of commutative justice. Nevertheless, many thought that it was morally acceptable to neutralize a monopolistic action with a similar one. This idea was not restricted to the field of theology and was also taken up by jurists. Thus, the market was no longer simply a place of rules and a forum where goods were valued, but also a space where it was possible to defend oneself against those who manipulated it by applying the very same criminal tactics.","PeriodicalId":86691,"journal":{"name":"Annales Nestle [English ed.]","volume":"15 1","pages":"545 - 571"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81868380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Excluded: Begging in the Postwar Soviet Union*","authors":"E. Zubkova","doi":"10.1017/S2398568200000236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2398568200000236","url":null,"abstract":"To what extent was the Soviet state able to control (and oppose) the process of social exclusion and to what extent was Soviet society ready to integrate social outcasts? This article attempts to answer these questions by analyzing the phenomenon of begging in the Soviet Union between the 1940s and the 1960s. The article begins by studying the phenomenon of begging as a reaction to poverty, serving as a survival strategy for the lower social classes who were excluded from society due to poor standards of living. A brief historical overview of the campaign to combat begging in the the USSR from the Revolution of 1917 until the mid-1950s shows both the continuity and shifting perspectives of state reaction to this social problem. This article also analyzes begging, which was an important social phenomenon in the USSR after World War II, through the specific biographies of actual beggars. The article concludes with an examination of the public discourse on poverty in the 1950s and early 1960s, which reveals how both society and the state viewed the issue.","PeriodicalId":86691,"journal":{"name":"Annales Nestle [English ed.]","volume":"20 1","pages":"259 - 288"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82353697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inhabiting Culture on the Frontiers of Socialism (Gorna Džumaja, 1944-1948)*","authors":"Antonela Capelle-pogacean, Nadège Ragaru","doi":"10.1017/S2398568200000248","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2398568200000248","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the cultural shaping (through film and theater) of urban identities in Gorna Džhumaja, a border city located in Pirin Macedonia, at the dawn of Socialism. In a region that was at the center of Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Greek national conflict, thus rendering its future unpredictable, the establishment of Socialism between 1944-1948 coincided with intense social and national engineering. Developments in the domains of cinema and theater offer a heuristic lens through which to view these processes, notably because of the educational and political role they were attributed. Exploring changes in the cultural environment, designated toponyms, and everyday life of cultural institutions offers new insight into the complex interplay between the pre-Socialist and Socialist periods. It also provides an oblique view of how the Socialist city was fashioned through theatrical tours and ambulant cinema. Socialism thus emerges, beyond sovietization, as a product of transnational circulation.","PeriodicalId":86691,"journal":{"name":"Annales Nestle [English ed.]","volume":"66 1","pages":"289 - 326"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76065229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Everyday Life Under Communism: Practices and Objects*","authors":"L. Zakharova","doi":"10.1017/S2398568200000212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2398568200000212","url":null,"abstract":"Why should we consider the everyday life of ordinary citizens in their countless struggles to obtain basic consumer goods if the priorities of their leaders lay elsewhere? For years, specialists of the Soviet Union and the people's democracies neglected the history of everyday life and, like the so-called “totalitarian” school, focused on political history, seeking to grasp how power was wielded over a society that was considered immobile and subject to the state's authority. Furthermore, studies on the eastern part of Europe were dominated by political scientists who were interested in the geopolitics of the Cold War. The way the field was structured meant that little attention was paid to sociological and anthropological perspectives that sought to understand social interaction.","PeriodicalId":86691,"journal":{"name":"Annales Nestle [English ed.]","volume":"38 1","pages":"207 - 217"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80911625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Access to Communication Tools in Stalin’s Soviet Union*","authors":"L. Zakharova","doi":"10.1017/S2398568200000261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S2398568200000261","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the status and the place of such means of interpersonal communication as mail, the telegraph, and the telephone in Soviet society under Stalin. Access to tools of communication created a certain hierarchy in the Soviet Union: the telephone was only accessible in large cities, whereas postal services remained limited across the countryside. As it was being implemented, the Soviet project of a communicating society proved to be full of disparities, ultimately centered on the city-dwelling elite. While the radial scheme of communications networks favored contact between the capital and the provinces, the geographical proximity of the regions did not facilitate communications between their inhabitants. The construction of long-distance networks of sociability was affected by the territorial dimensions of the country, varying access to tools of communication, weak technological development, and bureaucratic malfunctioning.","PeriodicalId":86691,"journal":{"name":"Annales Nestle [English ed.]","volume":"84 1","pages":"357 - 391"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78219429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}