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I	General Introduction to Themes & Objectives
II	Participants Introduce Themselves (I)
III	Beat Kümin: ‘Spatial Approaches to the Past’
IV	Steve Hindle: ‘Destitution, Liminality and Belonging: The Church Porch’
	Forum Thread

I: General Introduction to Themes & Objectives

 

II: Participants Introduce Themselves (I)

A round table introduction of spatial and research interests.

III: Beat Kümin: ‘Spatial Approaches to the Past’

This paper provides a general historiographical introduction. It sketches various ways in which scholars have utilized space to shed light on societies in the past, focusing in particular on essentialist, symbolic, evolutionary, structuralist, subversive and imagined approaches. The argument touches on some prominent theoretical schools (such as the French Annales) and emphasizes the general trend towards a ‘relative’ and ‘relational’ rather than ‘absolute’ conceptualization of space (as in the recent survey by German sociologist Martina Löw). The concluding section highlights challenges for future research and restates the need to use ‘space’ alongside other analytical categories, particularly ‘time’.

Some Suggested Reading

Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London, 1973; Paris 1949)
Peter Clark, English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution. Religion, Politics and Society in Kent, 1500-1640 (Hassocks, 1977)
Denis Cosgrove, ‘Landscape and Landschaft. Lecture delivered at the „Spatial Turn in History“ Symposium’, in: German Historical Institute, Washington: Bulletin 35 (2004), 57-71
Michael Crang and Nigel Thrift, ‘Introduction‘, in: idem (eds), Thinking Space (London, 2000), 1-30
Thomas F. Gieryn, ‘A Space for Place in Sociology’, in: Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000), 463-496
Martina Löw, Raumsoziologie (Frankfurt, 2001)
Michael P. Pearson and Colin Richards, ‘Ordering the World. Perceptions of Architecture, Space and Time’, in: idem (eds), Architecture and Order. Approaches to Social Space (London, 1994), 1-37

For further reading see the ‘Thematic Bibliography’ on the ‘Social Sites’ network website:

IV: Steve Hindle: ‘Destitution, Liminality and Belonging: The Church Porch’

This paper takes as its point of entry the practice, apparently frequent in English rural communities across the seventeenth century, of destitute people sleeping rough in the church porch. It investigates the circumstances whish gave raise to their destitution, emphasising the extent to which those who sought refuge were not the vagrants of the conventional literary stereotype but poor migrants seeking accommodation or employment in support of their families. It discusses the physical and architectural environment of the porch, suggesting that it in practice it provided only meagre comfort or shelter. The choice of the church porch as a place of refuge was, therefore, highly symbolic, and the paper investigates the strategic nature of the choice of the church porch as a social site in which to advertise poverty and seek charity, and suggests that the popular associations of the church porch with the rituals of late medieval piety and of the life-cycle do much to explain the enduring tradition that paupers had a customary right to sleep on church property if they had nowhere else to go. In turn, it will suggest, the church porch represented a significant cultural threshold across which paupers might step in seeking access to the circuits of charity and belonging in the local community. Tales of destitution tell us a great deal, therefore, about the special configuration of authority not only within parishes, but also between them.

Some Suggested Reading

Cave, C.J.P., ‘All Saints Church, Evesham: the wooden boss in the porch’, Trans. of the Worcs. Archaeological Soc. ns 16 (1940 for 1939)
Hindle, S., ‘A sense of place? Becoming and belonging in the rural parish, 1550-1650’, in A. Shepard and P. Withington, eds., Communities in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2000), pp.96-114.
McAleer, J.P., ‘The rooms over the porches of Bishop's Cleeve and Bredon parish churches: a question of dating’, Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. 120 (2002), 133-75
Menefee, S.P., ‘Dead reckoning: the church porch watch in British society’, in H.E. Davidson, ed., The Seer in Celtic and Other Traditions (Edinburgh, 1989), pp.80-99.
Pounds, N.J.G, A History of the English Parish: The Culture of Religion from Augustine to Victoria (Cambridge, 2000). Rodwell, W., and Rouse, E.C., ‘The Anglo-Saxon rood and other features in the south porch of St Mary’s Church, Breamore, Hampshire’, Antiquaries’ Jnl 64 (1984), pp. 298-325.
Smith, T.P., ‘Three medieval timber-framed church porches in West Kent: Fawkham, Kemsing and Shoreham’, Archaeologia Cantiana 101 (1985 for 1984).

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