[Beggars and tramps in 1596-97: Francisco Vallés's letter to Cristóbal Pérez de Herrera]

This work consists in two parts : a prologue (dedicated to Prior F. Valles and to the political context of the beggars « reform » between 1596 and 1600) and a critical édition of the extended Epistle that Francisco Valles sent Pérez de Herrera in 1597 to encourage him to proceed with his charity reform.

Witchcraft, sexuality, and colonization in the early modern world

Thinking with demons: the idea of witchcraft in early modern Europe. By Stuart Clark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. xvii+827. ISBN 0–19–820001–3. £75.00.

The darker side of the Renaissance: literacy, territoriality, and colonization. By Walter D. Mignolo. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Pp. xxii+426. ISBN 0–472–10327. $39.50.

Oedipus and the devil: witchcraft, sexuality, and religion in early modern Europe. By Lyndal Roper. London: Routledge, 1995. Pp. ix+254. ISBN 0–415–10581–1. £13.99.

As Professor Richard Evans's spirited In defence of history attests, postmodernism continues to arouse strong passions and suspicions among distinguished practitioners of the discipline. This is hardly surprising: in their most extreme and undiluted form, the theories of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Hayden White, and more particularly their many disciples, are stubbornly corrosive of the ethos and rationale of history as conventionally taught and written. To insist that the production of knowledge is inherently – indeed insidiously – political, and to claim that the veil of language which divides us from the past can never be pierced is to unsettle many traditional epistemological assumptions. And yet postmodernism and the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ have posed timely and fundamental questions about truth, discourse, and objectivity which historians can ill afford to ignore. They have also helped to generate some of the most innovative and provocative historical writing in recent years. In different ways, each of the books under review engages with and reacts to the swirling debate about this influential and controversial body of ideas. All three make strenuous demands upon their readers; all three challenge us to reflect critically upon the methodologies we employ and the categories, concepts, polarities, and narrative paradigms to which we instinctively resort. Taken together they highlight both the potential strengths and weaknesses, the rewards and dangers of injecting theory into the study of witchcraft, sexuality, and colonization in early modern Europe and the New World.

[Silencing the innocents: punitive measures used in the rehabilitation of minors in disciplinary establishments maintained by the state, 1945-64]

Por meio da análise de documentos do Arquivo do Serviço Social de Menores do Rio Grande do Sul, o presente artigo pretende estabelecer a relação existente entre a prática punitiva em estabelecimentos disciplinares do SESME, no período de 1945-1964, e a existência de um médico, jurídico, filosófico e pedagógico que preconizava a disciplina enquanto estratégia de recuperação de menores, abandonados ou infratores, sob a custódia do Estado.

The "hukou" system and rural-urban migration in China: processes and changes

Until recently, few people in mainland China would dispute the significance of the hukou (household registration) system in affecting their lives – indeed, in determining their fates. At the macro level, the centrality of this system has led some to argue that the industrialization strategy and the hukou system were the crucial organic parts of the Maoist model: the strategy could not have been implemented without the system. A number of China scholars in the West, notably Christiansen, Chan, Cheng and Seiden, Solinger, and Mallee, have begun in recent years to study this important subject in relation to population mobility and its social and economic ramifications. Unlike population registration systems in many other countries, the Chinese system was designed not merely to provide population statistics and identify personal status, but also directly to regulate population distribution and serve many other important objectives desired by the state. In fact, the hukou system is one of the major tools of social control employed by the state. Its functions go far beyond simply controlling population mobility.

Women and genocide: notes on an unwritten history

Whatever has been written about the history of genocide has been based mainly on the experiences of men. Yet women's experiences with genocide have often differed from those of men in terms of participation, forms of victimization, and consequences. This essay explores these issues, focusing In particular on the relationship between women and the perpetration of genocide.

European law, medicine, and the social charter

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The theory and prevention of genocide

The development of a social-scientific theory of genocide has been neglected by most social scientists, viewed with suspicion by several Holocaust scholars, and advanced in a fragmentary and confused manner by those few scholars who have committed themselves to this task. This paper attempts to clarify the problems which confront those attempting a social theory of genocide and proposes solutions which, while recognising a necessary pluralism in social science methodology, seek to clear the way for the advance of theory construction. A theoretical account of genocide is proposed which draws on work in the social sciences and in genocide studies. It is argued that this account provides the grounds for cautious optimism about the development of a theory of genocide. A precondition for the fulfilment of this optimism is the abandonment by both opponents and advocates of social-scientific approaches to the understanding of genocide of the outdated assumption that social science must be informed by a positivist philosophy. The project of preventing genocide should not rest upon positivist illusions which are incompatible with the conception of moral agency which we must employ both in our ethical judgments and in our social-scientific understanding of genocidal evil.

A study of the readiness of Jewish/Israeli students in the health professions to authorize and execute involuntary mass euthanasia of "severely handicapped" patients

The responses of 92 Jewish/Israeli students in the health professions in Israel were studied in the context of a projected future situation where the subjects would be working as physicians/psychologists/social workers, first in a developing country somewhere in Africa, and then, in the second experimental scenario, at a well-known treatment institution in the center of Israel. A successive series of contraints were described that led to a scarcity of resources, in which context the health authorities considered it advisable first to limit and then to curtail the treatment of the severebly handicapped who could benefit least from treatment, and as the situation became more severe to implement a program of involuntary mass euthanasia. Although an eithical point of view would call for zero participation in the policies which would bring about dealths of patients, it had been predicted that as many as 15% of the subjects would agree to curtailing treatment, 5% to participate in planning involunary mass euthanasia, and 2% to execute the euthanasia themselves. However, the results were that in African 39% agreed to curtail treatment, 17% to plan euthanasia, and 11% them selves to terminate the patients' lives; in Israel the corresponding figures were 38%, 12%, and 9% - the differences between Africa and Israel were not significant. The study is seen as contributing to emerging knowledge (in the Milgram tradition) of the widespread availability of human beings to undertake policies which harm, hurt and kill other human beings when instructed to do so by a policy directive.

The Jewish refugee children from Europe in the eyes of the American press and public opinion 1934-1945

Between 1934-1945 approximately 1000 unaccompanied Jewish children, refugees from Nazism, reached the United States. These were but a fraction of the total number of Jewish refugees who reached the USA during this period. Yet the Issue of child refugees differed from that of adults in several ways and therefore received separate mention in the American press. This article charts and analyzes the press coverage of the refugee child issue during six chronological periods 1934-1938 and the arrival and acclimatization of the first child refugees from Germany, late 1938 - Kristallnacht and the aroused consciousness of the plight of persecuted children in Germany, 1939 - the Wagner-Rogers Bill to permit the extra quota entry of 20, 000 children from Germany into the United States; 1940 - the evacuation of British children to the United States and the furor over the use of American "Mercy Ships"; 1941 -1944 - the arrival of Central European refugee children who had found temporary refuge in France, Spain and Portugal; 1945 - the repatriation of evacuees and the reunion of refugee children with their surviving parents

Medical selection: Auschwitz antecedents and effluent

Medical selection in Auschwitz represents the penultimate application of the traditional paradigm of medicine; the physician as gatekeeper, and decision maker. The historical evolution of that role is considered in the context of public health, medical police, quarantine and immigration. In Nazi Germany the physician was assigned responsibility for selection on behalf of the state. The ethical implications of medical selection are considered in the context of medicine today in an age of sophisticated biotechnology, constrained resources, and an aging population; an age in which the medical profession has yet to establish a fundamental system of values.

The politics of famine: American government and press response to the Ukrainian famine, 1932-1933

The Soviet Ukraine suffered a man-made famine in 1932-1933 during which millions died. This was part of the central government's attack on Ukrainian nationality and culture. The United States Government received numerous contemporary intelligence reports on the famine from its European embassies, but chose not to acknowledge the famine publicly. Similarly, leading members of the American press corps in the Soviet Union willfully covered up the famine in their dispatches. In both cases, political considerations relating to the establishment of diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R. seem to have been critical factors in this cover-up.