Children of Fate
Childhood, Class, and the State in Chile, 1850-1930
Published on 9. October 2009
Book
Paperback/Softback
376 pages
978-0-8223-4574-9 (ISBN)
Description
In modern Latin America, profound social inequalities have persisted despite the promise of equality. Nara B. Milanich argues that social and legal practices surrounding family and kinship have helped produce and sustain these inequalities. Tracing families both elite and plebeian in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Chile, she focuses on a group largely invisible in Latin American historiography: children. The concept of family constituted a crucial dimension of an individual's identity and status, but also denoted a privileged set of gendered and generational dependencies that not all people could claim. Children of Fate explores such themes as paternity, illegitimacy, kinship, and child circulation over the course of eighty years of Chile's modern history to illuminate the ways family practices and ideologies powerfully shaped the lives of individuals as well as broader social structures.Milanich pays particular attention to family law, arguing that liberal legal reforms wrought in the 1850s, which left the paternity of illegitimate children purposely unrecorded, reinforced not only patriarchal power but also hierarchies of class. Through vivid stories culled from judicial and notarial sources and from a cache of documents found in the closet of a Santiago orphanage, she reveals how law and bureaucracy helped create an anonymous underclass bereft of kin entitlements, dependent on the charity of others, and marginalized from public bureaucracies. Milanich also challenges the recent scholarly emphasis on state formation by highlighting the enduring importance of private, informal, and extralegal relations of power within and across households. Children of Fate demonstrates how the study of children can illuminate the social organization of gender and class, liberalism, law, and state power in modern Latin America.
Reviews / Votes
"Children of Fate is a remarkable historical account of the intertwining of family law, vernacular kinship practices, and class in late-19th-century Chile." - Clara Han, PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review "In Children of Fate, Milanich provides a richly textured study of childhoodand filiation in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Chile that culls important stories from new archives and analyzes the liberal state's role in 'generating kinlessness.'. . . The resulting study provides an insightful and often heart-rending account of the vicissitudes of children without parents-and adults without kin-in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Chile."
- Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, Journal of Interdisciplinary History "Through a study of deeply rooted sociocultural structures . . . , Children of Fate seeks to understand how inequality has been produced, reproduced and perpetuated over time, resisting the cycles of economic growth and public policies that would supposedly end it. . . . Children of Fate stands out . . . for the importance of its subject and for contributing to a necessary and urgent discussion in Chilean society, reminding us that reducing social inequality cannot be left to economic growth but requires a cultural change that . . . even today has yet to materialize."
- Pablo Whipple, A Contracorriente "In this beautifully written and well-crafted book, Nara B. Milanich convincingly argues that the family served as the nexus for class formation in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Chile. . . . [T]his study makes a major contribution to the burgeoning historiography of children in Latin America. In addition, Children of Fate should become required reading for students of class and state formation beyond Latin America." - Robert Alegre, Labour/Le Travail "Children of Fate is truly original, with an extraordinary level of insight and analysis. Nara B. Milanich shows how class identity was manipulated by the liberal state in a way that maintained hierarchies, and she illustrates her arguments with rich examples gleaned from extensive archival research. A brilliant, first-rate book."-Elizabeth Kuznesof, author of Household Economy and Urban Development: Sao Paulo, 1765 to 1836 "Children of Fate tells a thoroughly engrossing, emotionally moving story about children in Latin American history. Nara B. Milanich's extremely powerful and original arguments about family, law, class relations, and state formation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin America have major ramifications for rethinking Latin American social and labor history and will undoubtedly help reshape the agenda of future social and political history in the field."-Heidi Tinsman, author of Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950-1973 "Children of Fate is a remarkable historical account of the intertwining of family law, vernacular kinship practices, and class in late-19th-century Chile." - Clara Han (PoLAR) "In Children of Fate, Milanich provides a richly textured study of childhood
and filiation in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Chile that culls important stories from new archives and analyzes the liberal state's role in 'generating kinlessness.'. . . The resulting study provides an insightful and often heart-rending account of the vicissitudes of children without parents-and adults without kin-in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Chile."
- Elizabeth Quay Hutchison (Journal of Interdisciplinary History) "In this beautifully written and well-crafted book, Nara B. Milanich convincingly argues that the family served as the nexus for class formation in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Chile. . . . [T]his study makes a major contribution to the burgeoning historiography of children in Latin America. In addition, Children of Fate should become required reading for students of class and state formation beyond Latin America." - Robert Alegre (Labour/Le Travail) "Through a study of deeply rooted sociocultural structures . . . , Children of Fate seeks to understand how inequality has been produced, reproduced and perpetuated over time, resisting the cycles of economic growth and public policies that would supposedly end it. . . . Children of Fate stands out . . . for the importance of its subject and for contributing to a necessary and urgent discussion in Chilean society, reminding us that reducing social inequality cannot be left to economic growth but requires a cultural change that . . . even today has yet to materialize."
- Pablo Whipple (A Contracorriente)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
North Carolina
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
16 illustrations, 1 map
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
567 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8223-4574-9 (9780822345749)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2009
1st Edition
De Gruyter
€208.99
Available for download
Person
Nara B. Milanich is Assistant Professor of History at Barnard College.
Content
Illustrations and Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: State, Class Society, and Children in Chile 1
I. Children and Strangers: Filiation in Law and Practice
1. The Civil Code and the Liberalization of Kinship 41
2. Paternity, Childhood, and the Making of Class 70
II. Children of Don Nobody: Kinship and Social Hierarchy
3. Kindred and Kinless: The People without History 103
4. Birthrights: Natal Dispossession and the State 128
III. Other Peoples' Children: The Politics of Child Circulation
5. Vernacular Kinships in the Shadow of the State 157
6. Child Bondage in the Liberal Republic 183
Epilogue: Young Marginals at the Centenary: One Hundred Years of Huachos 216
Appendix 239
Abbreviations 245
Glossary 247
Notes 249
Bibliography 309
Index 333
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: State, Class Society, and Children in Chile 1
I. Children and Strangers: Filiation in Law and Practice
1. The Civil Code and the Liberalization of Kinship 41
2. Paternity, Childhood, and the Making of Class 70
II. Children of Don Nobody: Kinship and Social Hierarchy
3. Kindred and Kinless: The People without History 103
4. Birthrights: Natal Dispossession and the State 128
III. Other Peoples' Children: The Politics of Child Circulation
5. Vernacular Kinships in the Shadow of the State 157
6. Child Bondage in the Liberal Republic 183
Epilogue: Young Marginals at the Centenary: One Hundred Years of Huachos 216
Appendix 239
Abbreviations 245
Glossary 247
Notes 249
Bibliography 309
Index 333