Synopses & Reviews
When Porfirio Díaz extended his modernization initiative in Mexico to the administration of public welfare, the families and especially the children of the urban poor became a government concern. Reforming the poor through work and by bolstering Mexicos emerging middle class were central to the governments goals of order and progress. But Porfirian policies linking families and work often endangered the children they were supposed to protect, especially when state welfare institutions became involved in the shadowy traffic of child labor. The Mexican Revolution, which followed, generated an unprecedented surge of social reform that was focused on families and accelerated the integration of child protection into public policy, political discourse, and private life. In ways that transcended the abrupt discontinuities and conflicts of the era, Porfirian officials, revolutionary leaders, and social reformers alike invoked idealized models of the Mexican family as the primary building block of society, making families, especially those of Mexicos working classes, the object of moralizing reform in the name of state construction and national progress. Domestic Economies: Family, Work, and Welfare in Mexico City, 1884-1943 analyzes family practices and class formation in modern Mexico by examining the ways in which family-oriented public policies and institutions affected cross-class interactions as well as relations between parents and children.
Review
"Blum's work is a major contribution to the nascent field of childhood history in Latin America. She draws from the historiography of gender and welfare to reflect how class, race, and gender interplayed in defining family relations and nation-state formation in modern Mexico."—Sandra Aguilar, H-Net Sandra Aguilar
Review
"Ann Blum makes an important contribution to the history of childhood, family, and labor and helps tie together labor, cultural, and political histories."—Susie S. Porter, Americas H-Net
Review
"Blum uses an impressive array of sources—legal codes, decrees, censuses, court cases, articles, and welfare records. Her work sits at the intersection of multiple historiographies, not just family history, but also the history of women, gender, legal, labor, medical, and childhood as well."—Nicole Sanders, Mexican Studies Susie S. Porter - Americas
Review
"[Domestic Economies] is a ground-breaking and important work that contributes not only to our understandings of family and work in Porfirian and revolutionary Mexico but also to wider historiographies of welfare, social policy, labor, and women."—Patience A. Schell, American Historical Review Nicole Sanders - Mexican Studies
Review
and#8220;[Seen and Heard in Mexico] skillfully weaves together a variety of complex and significant threads while keeping at its center the important topic of the construction of childhood as a central component of postrevolutionary citizenship and nationalism.and#8221;and#8212;John Lear, professor of history at the University of Puget Sound and author of Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City
Synopsis
During the first two decades following the Mexican Revolution, children in the country gained unprecedented consideration as viable cultural critics, social actors, and subjects of reform. Not only did they become central to the reform agenda of the revolutionary nationalist government; they were also the beneficiaries of the largest percentage of the national budget.
While most historical accounts of postrevolutionary Mexico omit discussion of how children themselves experienced and perceived the sudden onslaught of resources and attention, Elena Jackson Albarrand#225;n, inand#160;Seen and Heard in Mexico, places childrenand#8217;s voices at the center of her analysis. Albarrand#225;n draws on archived records of childrenand#8217;s experiences in the form of letters, stories, scripts, drawings, interviews, presentations, and homework assignments to explore how Mexican childhood, despite the hopeful visions of revolutionary ideologues, was not a uniform experience set against the monolithic backdrop of cultural nationalism, but rather was varied and uneven. Moving children from the aesthetic to the political realm, Albarrand#225;n situates them in their rightful place at the center of Mexicoand#8217;s revolutionary narrative by examining the avenues through which children contributed to ideas about citizenship and nation.
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About the Author
Ann S. Blum is an associate professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is the author of numerous book chapters and articles, which have appeared in publications such as Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico and Journal of Womens History.