Historians, Social Scientists, Servants, and Domestic Workers: Fifty Years of Research on Domestic and Care Work Raffaella Sarti Department of International Studies. History, Languages, Cultures University of Urbino “Carlo Bo” Piazza Rinascimento 7, 61029 Urbino PU, Italy E-mail: raffaella.sarti@uniurb.it Abstract Historical research on domestic servants has a long tradition. Research, however, has become more systematic from the 1960s onwards thanks to social historians, historians focusing on the family, historical demographers and (particularly from the 1970s) women's and gender historians. For a long time, scholars assumed that domestic service (especially by live-in workers) would decline, or even disappear, because of household modernization, social progress, and development of the welfare state. The (largely unexpected) “revival” of paid domestic and care work in the past three decades has prompted sociologists and other social scientists to focus on the theme, opening new opportunities for exchange between historians and social scientists. This article provides a review of the research on these issues at a global level, though with a focus on Europe and the (former) European colonies, over the past fifty years, illustrating the different approaches and their results.
Historians, Social Scientists, Servants, and Domestic Workers: Fifty Years of Research on Domestic and Care Work ********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** Il saggio è pubblicato anche in Dirk Hoerder, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Silke Neunsinger (a cura di / eds)., Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers, Leiden, Brill, 2015, pp. 25-60 (Book DOI: 10.1163/9789004280144; ISBN13: 9789004280137; E-ISBN: 9789004280144; DOI del saggio 10.1163/9789004280144_003). Sono stati i curatori di tale volume a proporre di pubblicare il saggio in anteprima su “International Review of Social History”. **********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
SARTI, RAFFAELLA
2014
Abstract
Historians, Social Scientists, Servants, and Domestic Workers: Fifty Years of Research on Domestic and Care Work Raffaella Sarti Department of International Studies. History, Languages, Cultures University of Urbino “Carlo Bo” Piazza Rinascimento 7, 61029 Urbino PU, Italy E-mail: raffaella.sarti@uniurb.it Abstract Historical research on domestic servants has a long tradition. Research, however, has become more systematic from the 1960s onwards thanks to social historians, historians focusing on the family, historical demographers and (particularly from the 1970s) women's and gender historians. For a long time, scholars assumed that domestic service (especially by live-in workers) would decline, or even disappear, because of household modernization, social progress, and development of the welfare state. The (largely unexpected) “revival” of paid domestic and care work in the past three decades has prompted sociologists and other social scientists to focus on the theme, opening new opportunities for exchange between historians and social scientists. This article provides a review of the research on these issues at a global level, though with a focus on Europe and the (former) European colonies, over the past fifty years, illustrating the different approaches and their results.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
