David's "Kinship, Law and Politics"

Joseph E. David, Sapir Academic College, Israel, has published Kinship, Law and Politics: An Anatomy of Belonging in the Law in Context series of Cambridge University Press:

Why are we so concerned with belonging? In what ways does our belonging constitute our identity? Is belonging a universal concept or a culturally dependent value? How does belonging situate and motivate us? Joseph E. David grapples with these questions through a genealogical analysis of ideas and concepts of belonging. His book transports readers to crucial historical moments in which perceptions of belonging have been formed, transformed, or dismantled. The cases presented here focus on the pivotal role played by belonging in kinship, law, and political order, stretching across cultural and religious contexts from eleventh-century Mediterranean religious legal debates to twentieth-century statist liberalism in Western societies. With his thorough inquiry into diverse discourses of belonging, David pushes past the politics of belonging and forces us to acknowledge just how wide-ranging and fluid notions of belonging can be.

Some endorsements:

'Not since Charles Taylor have scholars seen such a profound inquiry into the sources of selfhood and the nature of belonging in community. Joseph David draws on a stunning range of ancient and modern, familiar and forgotten figures to probe the depths of human nature and our essential bonds of marriage and family, friendship and faith, property and state. This is interdisciplinary and interreligious scholarship of the highest caliber.'

John Witte, Jr. - Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University

'Joseph David’s book is an immensely erudite and deep exploration of the meaning of belonging and identity. David’s brilliant examination of the belonging and identity in their different layers and in diverse historical settings, is of fundamental importance to the understanding of the complexity of the concept and the vital role it plays in contemporary political and cultural life.'

Moshe Halbertal - New York University

--Dan Ernst

Pande on child marriage in colonial India

         Ishita Pande (Queen's University, Ontario) has published Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age: Child Marriage in India, 1891-1937 with Cambridge University Press. From the publisher: 

     Ishita Pande's innovative study provides a dual biography of India's path-breaking Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929) and of 'age' itself as a key category of identity for upholding the rule of law, and for governing intimate life in late colonial India. Through a reading of legislative assembly debates, legal cases, government reports, propaganda literature, Hindi novels and sexological tracts, Pande tells a wide-ranging story about the importance of debates over child protection to India's coming of age. By tracing the history of age in colonial India she illuminates the role of law in sculpting modern subjects, demonstrating how seemingly natural age-based exclusions and understandings of legal minority became the alibi for other political exclusions and the minoritization of entire communities in colonial India. In doing so, Pande highlights how childhood as a political category was fundamental not just to ideas of sexual norms and domestic life, but also to the conceptualisation of citizenship and India as a nation in this formative period. 

Praise for the book:  

"In this theoretically rigorous feminist history, Ishita Pande shows us how and why imperial 'age of consent' controversies should more aptly be read as regimes of reproductive temporality that shape minority and majority political claims in South Asian modernity in all its worldly ambition. Sex, Law and the Politics of Age opens up the terrain of 'juridical childhood' to a whole new set of questions and methods, rethinking girlhood as a prism of colonial and postcolonial ambition and a secularizing epistemic lever in the process." -Antoinette Burton

"A fascinating read, this book adeptly and sensitively renders the child as a moral-political category, and a socio-cultural construct, of modernity in colonial India. Through a close reading of the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, Pande brilliantly intertwines debates on sexuality, childhood and age with the carving of a Hindu reformist nation." -Charu Gupta

"Here, finally, is a superbly researched and expansive South Asian/Indian history of the categories of age and consent, and their translations and tribulations within legal and social structures of surveillance and control. An indispensable book for scholars of law, gender and sexuality." -Anjali Arondekar

"Pande brilliantly deploys the generative power of gender analysis and queer theory to reinterpret one of the most widely-debated topics in colonial South Asian historiography: the question of ‘child marriage’. This rigorous and beautifully written book will be required reading for all historians and scholars of gender and sexuality in the twentieth century." -Todd Shepard 

You can join the author for an online book event, "Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age with Ishita Pande" on Monday, August 24, 2020 at 12.30-1.30pm CDT. Register here.

Further information about the book is available here.  

--Mitra Sharafi

Decoration Day

Don't you love this vintage picture? Source is here.

 I didn't remember ever hearing the history behind Memorial Day, so I finally looked it up. Did you know it was first started during the Civil War? I was rather amazed it had that deep of a history. 

Originally, it was called Decoration Day as it was set aside to decorate the graves of soldiers fallen in the line of duty. (It is thought this was based on an even older Southern tradition of once a year tidying and decorating family tombstones. It was also tradition to make a day of it and bring a picnic lunch!)

Above is the tiny bone picture frame of a  relative who gave his life in the Civil War. I am honored to have in our family history collection. His name was James L. Hall, he served in a Pennsylvania company and died in Andersonville Prison at the age of 34. Even though he isn't a direct descendant (his sister was my 4th great-grandmother), it is fascinating this little portrait has been handed down generation by generation.  

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend, remembering the soldiers who have fallen, yet celebrating the American life they fought for! 

Remembering.......

Since I have been doing genealogy the last couple of weeks, I thought it would be a fitting post to share a veteran in my family history. Our family like most, is full of veterans, men who have fought and served through all of this country's battles. Recently, I have been researching a Civil War veteran. We have our fair share of Civil War soldiers on the family tree, but this one is special, we have a picture of him!

His name is David Miller. He was born in 1833 to a War of 1812 veteran in Pennsylvania. For some time he has been quite a mystery. I have finally discovered his parents and grandparents names, which I am very excited about! I don't have a lot of other information on him though. He did return from the war, but died not too long after. He was a farmer, working land he inherited from his father. He had five children that lived their whole lives in the same area

This year is the 100th anniversary of WWI. It was very touching to see the memorial at the Tower of London that Hope & Wander posted about.

Unexpected

Every once in awhile I do something and end up with a really amazing picture. Usually I don't know what I did, but this time I had the camera on continuous while rotating it. Not sure if I could do it again, but it is pretty cool......

Family Photos

 

Recently a cousin found this photos among family papers. As they all came in doubles, she gladly passed copies on to us. This is my Grandpa with his mother Great-Grandma Anna. We did a bit of thinking and figuring and think these were taken just before he was drafted in 1941.

 Isn't Grandpa natty in his winter coat and fedora? This must have been a special occasion. He even has a white scarf tucked around his neck!

Here he is a few months later with one of his brothers. We think this was probably taken when he was on leave before being shipped over seas.

After serving in the Army, being wounded several times, Grandpa became a carpenter and settled in Chicago to raise a family. Even though he was not the easiest person to always get along with, like his mother Anna, he had a deep sense of family duty. Not just duty, but clannish-ness, a stick-together-through-thick-and-thin-always-there-for-each-other-ness. The highest praise his sisters could give was"he was the best brother". I am glad to say, it is becoming a family trait, passing down through the generations.

Great Grandmother Marie

Marie around 1916-18

Even though my Mom or I had never met my great grandmother Marie, we always remember her for her housekeeping abilities. She instilled such a strong sense of cleanliness, proper housekeeping and care of one's family in her daughter(my grandmother) it is still going strong!  

Maire with her children and husband.

I know that sounds like a strange legacy, but that is what we remember of Marie. We don't really know much about her, other then the usual facts. She married a not so stable man, had three children, divorced and later re-married. Her personality doesn't show up in any of the family stories and so she remains a bit mysterious.

 Marie, like any good housekeeper wearing a a cute apron!

Walking in Their Footsteps....

 Recently, my sister and I made a trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Our Grandma lives there, in the same town she grew up in and met and married Grandpa. The same town he grew up in and the same town Great Grandma Anna grew up in. We got a chance to visit the old farm and take lots of photos!

 The lane to get back to the car, left at the bottom of the hill at the gate.

I love the texture of the house, logs, chinking and a bit of siding. The farm is unoccupied and the grass is knee high. It made for very picturesque pictures!

Starting on the right, the milk house, pig sty, hen house and very last the outhouse. We are not sure why they are all built very close together, perhaps to make it easier to get to them in a blizzard....

 Isn't that a nice red? It looks like the tar paper came that color.

A picture of some of the other outbuildings. The only ones standing are the ones I mentioned above. It is sad they are all falling in, but not much anyone can do.....

Anna feeding her chickens in front of the barn.

I am so glad we got to visit the farm. It was so very nice to see where so much family history happened......



Great Great Grand Aunt Elsa

 This is my Grandmother's Great Aunt Elsa (right). That makes her my Great-great-grand Aunt!! Say that seven times fast! Born in Finland, she followed her sister to America in 1913 when she was 19 and became a successful seamstress. I bet she made her lovely outfit in the picture above!

  In 1923 she married Nilo and they settled on a small farm to raise sheep. Even though she wasn't a seamstress then, my grandmother remembers the lovely things she made and the sheep she raised. Aren't they a dapper couple?

This is one of her sewing books. Years and years ago poking around in Grandma's wonderful closets I came across it.

Published it 1930 by the Women's Institute of Domestic Art and Sciences. The set consists of eight booklets covering just about every subject on sewing. From how to choose the right fabric to basic sewing stitches to making collars and cuffs to fitting and alterations.

One of my favorite sections, how to make a Jabot!!

Another picture of Elsa and Nilo later in life. Love her hat!

Photos!

I am so excited to be sharing with you today old photos of aprons, not just aprons but my relations wearing aprons! I love old pictures, especially when they are of relatives. My sister is the unofficial family historian. She had taken it upon herself to digitize and catalog the family photos. At least once a year she goes to grandma's and gets another batch of photos. So these are freshly discovered!

First of all, here is Great-Grandma Anna. As you can see she has one of her trademark aprons on! She is holding two of her grandchildren. This is only the second picture I have of her is color. It was a very exciting find!

Aunt Margy (wearing a cute half apron with stripes!) with her son and an unknown lady. She is a great aunt on my Dad's father's side or something like that!

My grandma and her sister playing with their new dishes and wearing aprons!

I love this one, too cute.

Great-great Grandparents Andrew and Alma with their son. They were Finnish.

This week has been a little crazy as my car died on Saturday. Not just broke down, laid down and died dead!  So I am in the midst of car shopping, not the most enjoyable thing. I hope everyone's week is going well!

Great-Grandma Anna

If you have seen my website, you will know that my Great-Grandma Anna was my inspiration for starting Apron History. Today I will tell you a bit more about her.

wedding photo 1916

Anna was born in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 1896. She married my Great-Grandfather in 1916 and had 7 children. Unfortunately, he was killed in a mining accident in 1930.

family photo abt 1926
In 1933 she married a widower with 9 children and they had 2 more children. Between the two families they had three farms and 18 children! A lot of hard work! And in the middle of the depression! No wonder Anna always had an apron on! She was a hard working, cheerful woman, who never complained. Unfortunately, I never met her. She died before I was born. But she has left a wonderful legacy behind, of hard work, love of family and Aprons!

Anna and one of her daughters

Feeding her chickens!