“Family across cultures. New perspectives towards a global early modern period” (working titel)
Researcher: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Claudia Jarzebowski
There is no history without human agency. Family practices are at core when it comes to shaping social relations and building society. According to historiography one could claim (and for long it has been claimed) that one of the pathbreaking shifts in social history came with the bourgeois society and their inherent practices of how to build a family. This family is conceived as a core family determined by blood relations: mother, father, children/siblings. In pursuing a transcultural approach I wish to focus on family practices that do not necessarily lead into proving the bourgeois paradigm. In showing alternatives rooting in early modern global history my project consolidates research and empirical studies that contributes to historicizing the bourgeois paradigm and at the same time offers to modernity options that just now flow into the „West“ from other cultures, societies, regions, and also religions and ethical communities.
Period: November 2016 to October 2017