Reconstructing and Reimagining the Family: Health Sciences and Welfare on Families in Southeastern Europe (1945 -1989)

Place: École Française d’Athènes, Athens
Date: 8 September 2023
Deadline for submission: 04/06/2023

At the end of the Second World War families all over Europe faced harsh realities: missing, killed, and injured members, loss of home and recourses, dislocation and separation. At the same time, “the family” was recognized as “the natural and fundamental group unit of society […] entitled to protection by society and the State”. (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16, 1946).It was placed at the foreground of a series of discourses and practices aiming at reconstructing Europe, and at guarantying its economic, political and social stability and progress. In a nutshell, the rebuilding and development of post-war societies went through the rebuilding of families, which was often envisioned as reform or even as “modernization” of the family. Subsequently, over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, political, economic and cultural changes had varied and profound effects on families and the notion of “the family”. These developments can be fruitfully explored from the perspective of health sciences and welfare interventions.

More specifically, we are interested in the following research questions:

Which medical sciences were claiming expertise on the family after the Second World War? Did they include specialties beyond pediatrics, obstetrics-gynecology, psychiatry and child psychiatry? Which ones were newcomers and which had been already established during the interwar period? Did their approaches change in the course of the twentieth century?

• To what extent welfare agents and workers (experts and volunteers) cooperated with health scientists and/or adopted and furthered discourses and practices on health in their work with families? Can we discern a trend of “psychosocial welfare”, namely an approach binding social welfare with interventions on relationships within the family and, more specifically, on mental and emotional health? Did the “psy” become central in understanding and working with families, as it has been argued for countries of Western Europe?
• What was the role of professionals, such as nurses, social workers and therapists, but also of social scientists, in the health schemes around families? Special emphasis is placed on social work, which although not a science, drew heavily on sciences, both the social (mainly sociology) and the “psy” sciences (psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis), thus proving a useful case study.

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Please address your queries and send your proposal (300-word abstract, along with and a one-page cv) to Despo Kritsotaki (despo.kritsotaki[at]gmail.com) and Nicolas Henckes nicolas.henckes[at]cnrs.fr).

Submission of proposals by 4.6.2023.
Notification of acceptance: 19.6.2023.

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