Benoît Majerus

Thibauld Moulaert

Iris Loffeier

Ageing populations have gradually become a major concern in many industrialised countries over the past fifty years, drawing the attention of both politics and science. The target of a raft of health and social policies, older people are often identified as a specific, and vulnerable, population. At the same time, ageing has become a specialisation in many disciplines - medicine, sociology, psychology, to name but three – and a discipline of its own: gerontology. This book questions the framing of old age by focusing on the relationships between policy making and the production of knowledge. The first part explores how the meeting of scientific expertise and the politics of old age anchors the construction of both individual and collective relationships to the future. Part II brings to light the many ways in which issues relating to ageing can be instrumentalised and ideologised in several public debate arenas. Part III argues that scientific knowledge itself composes with objectivity, bringing ideologies of its own to the table, and looks at how this impacts discourse about ageing. In the final part, the contributors discuss how the frames can themselves be experienced at different levels of the division of labour, whether it is by people who work on them (legislators or scientists), by people working with them (professional carers) or by older people themselves. Unpacking the political and moral dimensions of scientific research on ageing, this cutting-edge volume brings together a range of multidisciplinary, European perspectives, and will be of use to all those interested in old age and the social sciences.

Contested Knowledge in Science and Politics

Framing Age

Joris Vandendriessche

Medical histories of Belgium reshapes Belgian history of medicine by bringing together a new generation of scholars. Going beyond a chronological narrative, the book offers new insights by questioning classic themes of the history of medicine: physicians, institutions and the nation state. While retracing specific Belgian characteristics, it also engages with broader European developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Medical histories of Belgium will appeal to Historians of Belgium in various subfields, especially cultural history and political history and medical historians and medical practitioners seeking the historical context of their activities.

New narratives on health, care and citizenship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Medical histories of Belgium

Pit Péporté

Michel Margue

Sonja Kmec

Les « lieux de mémoire » lancés par Pierre Nora dans les années 1980 ont connu un grand succès dans différentes historiographies européennes. Le présent ouvrage veut faire sortir ce concept du cadre national dans lequel il reste encore trop souvent enfermé. Ce désenclavement passe par une ouverture méthodologique aux autres disciplines qui réfléchissent sur le couple identité/mémoire, ainsi que par une analyse historiographique de son utilisation et enfin par une inscription dans une réflexion transnationale. Comment les « lieux de mémoire » s'inscrivent-ils dans le champ plus large des memory studies ? Comment le concept a-t-il « migré » de la France vers l'Allemagne, les Pays-Bas ou la Suisse ? La polysémie du mot explique-t-elle son succès ? Voici quelques-unes des questions auxquelles une vingtaine d'auteurs essaient de donner une réponse. Der von Pierre Nora in den 1980er Jahren popularisierte Begriff der lieux de mémoire (Erinnerungsorte) hat in der Historiographie vieler Länder Europas große Resonanz gefunden. Der vorliegende Band hat vor, den nationalen Rahmen, in dem dieser Begriff noch zu oft benutzt wird, zu überwinden. Diese Annäherung setzt eine methodologische Eröffnung voraus. Dabei werden die anderen Disziplinen, die sich mit dem Begriffspaar Identität/Gedächtnis auseinander setzen, berücksichtigt. Die historiographische Analyse des Begriffes und eine resolute transnationale Verortung tragen dazu bei die Debatte zu erweitern. Wie integrieren sich die «Erinnerungsorte» im weiteren Feld der memory studies? Wie ist der Begriff von Frankreich nach Deutschland, in die Niederlande oder in die Schweiz «migriert»? Bildet die Mehrdeutigkeit des Wortes einen Schlüssel für seinen Erfolg? Solche Fragen versuchen die ca. 20 Verfasser dieses Sammelbandes zu beantworten.

innovations méthodologiques, approches comparatives, lectures transnationales

Dépasser le cadre national des "Lieux de mémoire"

Monika Ankele

In the past, our ideas of psychiatric hospitals and their history have been shaped by objects like straitjackets, cribs, and binding belts. These powerful objects were often used as a synonym for psychiatry and the way psychiatric patients were treated, yet very little is known about the agency of these objects and their appropriation by staff and patients. By focusing on material cultures, this book offers a new perspective on the history of psychiatry: it enables a narrative in which practicing psychiatry is part of a complex entanglement in which power is constantly negotiated. Scholars from different academic disciplines show how this material-based approach opens up new perspectives on the agency and imagination of men and women inside psychiatry.

Material Cultures of Psychiatry

The grand duchy of Luxembourg is a showcase example for the constructed nature of national identities. This book explores this construction process from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, focusing on representations of the past, space and language.

Benoît Majerus

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