Foucault!!

This was, by far, my favorite book of the quarter.  I read it twice, and enjoyed it both times. One of the things that got me thinking the most was the idea of normality and abnormality.  Although I suppose I knew this in the back of my mind, I never thought about how society determines what is normal by first determining what is not normal, and that it needs abnormality for normality to exist. 

I also have conflicting ideas about how Foucault thought that one needed to have a good background in philosophy to understand his work.  While I do think that is is good to have knowledge, even a little bit of knowledge, about everything, I do think that if you read or learn something you are not prepared for, you can misunderstand it and make a whole bunch of mistakes.  Your limited background knowledge could lead you to wildly misinterpret the work, and then you go spouting it off to other people, so then they misunderstand it, and it is a big giant cycle of misinformation.

Beccaria

I was having difficulties understanding the text, and then I came across these questions:

"Is the punishment of death really useful, or necessary for the safety or good order of society? Are tortures and torments consistent with justice, or do they answer the end proposed by the laws? Which is the best method of preventing crimes? Are the same punishments equally useful at all times?"

These are the same questions I have been asking myself when reading about all the torture and death going on in all of the readings.  Obviously, a lot of the punishments the governments came up with were not working, because people would continue to commit the crimes.  Sometimes, such as in the case of infanticide, the punishment was one of the causes of the crime.  If only people in power has thought of this more, a lot of lives could have been saved.  Later, as I was still mulling over these questions, I came about this statement:

"Yet another method of preventing crimes is, to reward virtue"

What a brilliant idea!  I had read this once before (it was a children's book, but the idea was still there) and forgotten about it, but as I read this simple statement, it reminded me of the sheer genius of the idea.  If you train dogs with positive reinforcement, why not use the same concept with humans?

the end of Kunze

alrighty then.  Once again, I was very, very disturbed by all the torture going on.  Is it really necessary to torture the condemned before they die?  Doesn't that make you just as bad as the people you have sentenced to death? A lot of the things they did were so horrific to me that I could barely read it, such as the red hot pincers and forcing the child to watch.  The thing that got me through was thinking about The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  Whenever I think of burning witches, I think of Quasimodo saving Esmerelda, and that helps me to get through it.  But... speaking of the Hunchback, and Frollo, how did the officials justify this?  Didn't someone, anyone raise any objections to this?

Women as Witches, Men as Witches

I admit that I do not know a lot about real witchcraft - well, not real witchcraft, but more real than Disney movies.  However, I though I knew a fair amount about the basic lore, but I have never heard anything about using children's hands for magic.  And now that I do know, the thought disturbs me.  A lot.  Cutting off children's hands, and especially the hands of aborted babies, really makes my stomach turn.  It kind if makes me wonder about the people who came up with these ideas.  What was going through their heads when they made these accusations?  Another thing I decided I should have thought of was the Devil persuading witches to commit crimes.  Even though I have read things about warlocks and magicians using spirits to commit magic, for some reason I never made the connection between the Devil and witches before now.

Enlightenment Theory and Criminal Justice

Ahh, the old vinegar lady.  The whole situation surrounding her creeped me out a little bit.  Poisonous vinegar.  I found it funny how she was simply selling poison as a magic potion to people to kill their enemies and they decided she was a witch.  Anyone else with her powers of observation could have done the same thing and made a profit off of it.  Also, I found it quite entertaining that the reading mentioned how poison was how a woman killed, since Erin, Krista, and I have a joke about how poison is the weak person's way out and that it is only for prissy women.

Infanticide - Unwed Mothers Replace Witches

In a way, I feel bad for the mothers who were driven to commit infanticide.  No matter what they did, they would be punished.  If they revealed the pregnancy, they were punished.  If they killed the baby, they were punished.  If they concealed the baby, they were punished.  If the baby simply died, they were punished.  They really had no options available to them.  Sure, they probably shouldn't have been sleeping around in the first place, but in many cases the mom was probably promised marriage, only to have her whole world ripped out from underneath her.  I'm sure the officials meant well with all their rules and regulations, but in reality they pretty much caused more trouble than they saved.

European Witch Hunt - Witches Replace Jews

I must admit, I found this reading hard to follow and hard to get through.  I had difficulty following the author's train of though, and I would constantly get lost and have no idea what I had just read.  However, the one thing I did understand with complete (well, probably not complete, but pretty good) clarity was how the little boy was tortured so often.  It still disturbs me that humans can be so cruel as to torture a little boy, even though they did think he was party to horrific crimes, and then return him to his mother, only to torture him again.  To me, that is more awful than anything the family could have done.

From Sodomite to Queen

This reading assignment was all about homosexuality.  One of the things that I found the most surprising was the idea that, at one point, engaging in intercourse with both a man and a woman was considered super masculine because it meant that you dominated both sexes.  I must admit, I did not see that one coming.  Another thing I found surprising was how open some of the mollies were in the 1700s.  I always imagined homosexuality as being more secretive.  Oh, and I have to admit that I found it pretty entertaining how some of the Trumbach reading talked about how homosexual men would talk effeminately and would dress in elaborate, over the top clothing.  This description reminded me of today's stereotypes for gay men.

Dangerous Beauty

One Saturday night (or it might have been Friday, I don't really remember, but that's beside the point), I watched Dangerous Beauty with some friends from the class.  To our surprise, we thought it was an interesting film, and it kept our attention all the way through - however, for most of the movie we were trying to figure out where we had seen the actor who played Marco before (it's A Knight's Tale, in case you were wondering).  I have to admit, I felt pretty bad for poor Veronica.  All she wanted was to be with Marco, and things kept pulling them apart.  However, she did do pretty well for herself, selling her body aside.  And I also think that Marco was a little bit of an idiot, first turning her down, and then wanting her all to himself after she became independent.  Make up your mind, man!

It shocked me at first that the most educated women were the prostitutes, but I guess they would need some substance for the pillow talk with their high-end clients.  To be perfectly honest, I also thought it was unfair.  If a woman wanted to learn, her best chance was to become a courtesan.  It sort of stifles the woman empowerment a little.  Also, I thought that the "learning how to be seductive" lessons mirrored slightly etiquette and "how to be a lady" lessons, minus the "how to touch a man" and "how to eat bananas" part.

I was also appalled that Veronica's mom encouraged her to become a prostitute, but after reading the Roper reading it made more sense to me.  Not only was it the only way she could ever hope to get with Marco, but she also earned a great deal of money for her family.  On a similar note, I was surprised that the mother, who was once a courtesan, was able to overcome the stigmas associated with her former profession and become a respectable woman.

Finally, I noticed that, like in the readings and in lecture, the local prostitutes were made available for visiting dignitaries.  But then again, what else would you expect for a visiting king?  Bring out the fine china, bake the best food, make the most desirable prostitutes available.  You want to make a good impression, after all.

Prostitution: From Sinful Work to Crime - Perry 33-52, 137-152; Roper; Huppert 117-133

These readings surprised me in three ways...

First, I must admit, I was slightly surprised (although, now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn't have been) that prostitution was legal.  However, I was definitely not surprised that the public brothels were run by men, for men, and that the men profited, not the women.  Prostitution is as much about power as it is about sex.  The men needed the control over the women, and they could achieve this power by running the brothels and dictating the prostitutes lives.

I was also surprised at how the prostitutes were treated medically.  I did not expect that they would be required to have medical examinations to ensure proper health, although I do think that, if prostitution is going to be legal, that is a very good idea.  

Third, the justification for the public brothels was a little off to me.  Men needed an outlet for their sexual desires, so public brothels were legalized so that they did not go around raping and pillaging and plundering, and yet women were supposed to be more lustful than men?  It doesn't really make sense in my mind, although I suppose it does not need to make sense.    

witches in Beauty and the Beast

so... in class today, we were talking about how, after the Protestant Reformation, people no longer needed the poor so that they could do good deeds and so that the poor would pray on their behalf.  If a poor woman came begging at someone's door, they would be turned away and occasionally mutter under their breath.  Then, when something bad happened in the homeowner's life, he would blame the poor woman, because she was obviously a witch that put a spell on him.  This reminded me of my favorite movie, Beauty and the Beast!!  Remember the prologue:

Once upon a time, in a far away land, a young prince lived in a shining castle.  Although he had everything his heart desired, the prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind.  Then, one winter's night, an old beggar woman came to the castle, and offered him a single rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold.  Repulsed by her haggard appearance, the prince sneered at the gift, and turned the old woman away.  But she warned him not to be deceived by appearances.  And when he dismissed her again, the old woman's ugliness melted away to become a beautiful enchantress.  The prince tried to apologize, but it was too late, for she had seen that there was no love in his heart, and as punishment, she transformed him into a hideous creature and placed a powerful spell on the castle and all who lived there.  Ashamed of his monstrous form, the beast concealed himself inside his castle, with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world.  The rose she had offered was truly an enchanted rose which would bloom until his twenty first year.  If he could learn to love another and earn their love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken.  If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.  As the years passed, the prince fell into despair and lost all hope, for who could ever learn to love a beast?





Although it is not the same, because  the witch was trying to see if he was kind or not, and she was actually a witch and not a poor beggar woman, I thought it was pretty similar to the story told in class.

and here is the link to the youtube video because I love love love Beauty and the Beast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__x8CYAVMbk

Witches in Harry Potter

Okay, so I know there are witches in Harry Potter.  But what I am talking about are the medieval/early modern witches.  Although the witches in Harry Potter look, for the most part, like normal humans, and unless they are really bad at hiding out in the Muggle (non-magical) world, it is impossible to tell if a person is a witch or just a woman.  However, in the world of Harry Potter, there are hags, which conform to the earlier definition of a witch.  According to the Harry Potter Lexicon, they are described as "fairy tale witches" and they "eat children." Although they do not really feature a lot in the books, they are mentioned in passing, such as in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone when Quirrell mentions a quarrel with a hag, in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Gilderoy Lockheart's book Holidays with Hags, and whenever the gang goes into the Hog's Head Pub in Hogsmeade or to Knockturn Alley.

and, since we're on the subject of Harry Potter, here are some magical Harry Potter pictures of me in England (yes, that is the flying Ford Anglia from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

Information from http://www.hp-lexicon.org/bestiary/bestiary_h.html

Criminalization of the Poor: Perry 153-176 and Huppert 101-117

In Catholicism, one of the ways an individual can get into Heaven is by doing good works.  Therefore, men would build hospitals and women would become "Mothers of the Poor."  They would take care of the poor in the hospitals as if they were their own children, nursing them back to health.  The hospitals built were magnificent works of art, luxurious palaces of healing.  Although I was impressed that they would build such amazing hospitals, I was initially surprised at how adorned they were.  However, as I think about it more, it makes sense.  Since they were doing this in God's name, they would want to make them ornamented and beautiful, like the Catholic Churches.

In order to beg, the poor had to be issued a special "beggar's license."  Without it, if a person was caught begging, they would be severely punished.  The beggar's license was meant to serve as a stigma, as well as prevent people from pretending to be deserving poor from earning money on the streets.  I can see both pros and cons to this arrangement.  The begging license would prevent those who did not need the money from begging (because, like the street performers in major cities, they could possibly have earned a lot of money in a day) and it would ensure that more of the money from good-deed doing Catholics went to people who actually needed it.  However, it also branded the poor who possessed it, and they were marginal members of society, so it would be much more difficult for them to find legitimate jobs and pull themselves out of poverty.

The deserving poor were most often categorized as women, children, or the disabled.  This was because women made less money than men, so if the man of the family died, a woman could not support herself, but if the woman of the family died, the man could support himself more easily.  I expected  that this would be the case, so I was not particularly surprised.  However, although I did not expect this to be the case, it would have been nice if there had been some way to help the deserving poor besides allowing them to beg.

Some of the poor also turned to crime.  I can see how this would be desirable, because it would seem that oftentimes an individual could earn a lot more money in a much shorter time by crime than by honest labor. In addition, there could have been a sort of Robin Hood complex going on where they justified their crimes by telling themselves that they need the money, whereas the people they are robbing do not.

Although most of this information did not faze me, I was shocked and slightly horrified by the baby transporters.  I could not believe that people would actually do that, and that it seemed like there was so little concern for the high mortality rates of the infants.  I can only imagine the position someone would have to be in to take up a job like that. Also, how were they not convicted of infanticide?

"After the Black Death" by George Huppert pages 1-66

The beginning of After the Black Death examines the lives of the inhabitants of the small, isolated village of Sennely.  For the most part, life for the villagers was very difficult.  There was little money and little food, and if there was a bad harvest there was not much to fall back on.  Although the general assumption is that people from this time period married early, that is not the case.  Couples would wait until after their parents had died to marry so that there were not as many mouths to feed.  In addition, marriage was a contract, and two people did not usually marry for love.  

In contrast, cities were large and luxurious.  There were shops filled with food and drink in excess.  However, not everyone who lived in the cities lived in the lap of luxury.  A great deal of a city's inhabitants were poor or foreign.  In essence, a city was a commune run by the bourgeoisie.  They were the members of craft fellowships, the holders of the wealth, the voters.  The marketplace was also a wonder to behold.  Food prices were fixed, so there was no panic in the event of a bad harvest, no chance of bread riots in the streets.

Craft fellowships were extremely important.  All members of the husbands Craft would be present at his wedding (because, of course, he would not get married unless he had a Craft).  There was a strong sense of unity between the members of a Craft, but there was still a distinct hierarchy.  Cities were split another way as well - into wards, or neighborhoods.  Each ward was distinct, and there was a strong sense of pride in one's ward.  One would be born into their ward, so it encompassed everyone, rich or poor, working or not, man or woman.

Since the marriage age was later, there were many unmarried young men on the streets with unfulfilled needs.  There were rape gangs that would ravish young, unmarried women.  In an attempt to remedy the situation, public brothels were instituted and prostitution was legalized.

Most cities were run by elected officials.  Although, in practice, every male citizen was eligible to hold office, in reality the officials were mostly the wealthy elite.  And these elite did not work.  They produced nothing, so they sold nothing.  But they did become rentiers (sellers of rentes, or cash advances, who received annual payments and interest).  The Three Orders/Estates were the clergy (first estate), nobility (second estate), and everyone else (third estate).  But it was unclear where the rentiers fit into all this.  In order to be considered noble, they had to prove that their family had lived nobly for at least three generations.  However, they were disliked by nobles and commoners alike, and kept mostly to themselves.  Eventually they became their own class: the officeholders.

Like today, most people did not like to pay taxes.  It was not uncommon for rebellions or protests to occur.  Since it was usually the people who could not pay that were taxed the most heavily, there was some hatred for the elite and nobles.  They maintained their control with violence and intimidation.  This aristocracy was extremely small, and most of its wealth came from land.  They often fought among themselves, competing in an attempt to increase their own status by belittling others.

Trent 1475

This book was a whirlwind of accusations, torture, and faulty information.  When I first began, I wondered how an entire town - most of whom seemed to be on good terms with, if not friends with, the Jewish community of Trent - could turn against them so suddenly.  It brought to mind the movie Chocolat, where a mother and daughter moved to a small French town and opened a chocolaterie where they sold delicious confections that seemed to have magical healing properties.  The mayor tried to turn the town against them, proclaiming them to be ungodly and dangerous.  However, unlike Trent, the townspeople realized that the mayor's accusations were unfounded.  In Trent, the trial ended in the deaths of most of the Jewish community and the martyrdom on Simon, the little boy who was found dead.

Although I could understand the mob mentality of the Trentini, I could not understand how other towns or higher up authorities could allow the horrors of Trent to occur.  Although there was an investigation, it was long after the initial accusations, and it was not as effective as it could have been.  

Another thing that surprised me was that the body of Little Simon Martyr was kept in St. Peter's until the 1960's, mostly because I visited the basilica this June.  It was odd to think that I had been where the body of the little boy who had caused so much trouble and heartache was kept for nearly 500 years.

Goffman v Erikson

For homework we were instructed to read two texts on stigma: Stigma by Erving Goffman and "On the Sociology of Deviance" by Kai Erikson.  Although both of these were written on the same topic, I found them to be quite different.  For the most part, it seemed to me like Goffman focused on stigma at a more personal level; he gave multiple examples of a variety of individual's experiences living with a stigma.  He elaborated on the way stigmatized individual were treated by members of society on a microscopic level.  Erikson, on the other hand, seemed to focus on stigma on a more macroscopic level: how to determine if an individual has a stigma or not, how that stigmatized individual is treated by society as a whole, the role of the stigmatized in society.  By reading both texts, I felt I was able to gain a more rounded knowledge of stigmas and how they can affect individuals and societies.

Mandrake Root

When we were talking about mandrake roots in class, two things popped into my head.  The first was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, where they repotted mandrakes in Herbology class.



The second thing was Pan's Labyrinth.  Pan tells Ofelia to place a mandrake root in a bowl of milk underneath her pregnant mother's bed to ease her pregnancy.



images from http://wortsandcunning.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/the-magical-herbs-of-harry-potter/ and
http://wortsandcunning.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/the-magical-herbs-of-harry-potter/

Two Birds With One Stone

So... in my search to find a youtube video of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition skit, I came across this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSe38dzJYkY

Not only does it demonstrate (sort of, but not really) the Spanish Inquisition, it also reminded me of the way torture was used in Trent 1475.  Not the actual techniques, which were much harsher than pillow poking and a comfy chair, but the way that the victim didn't know what they were supposed to be confessing to, so they had to endure more torture until they learned what their torturers wanted them to admit to.

The Four Humors

Last week in class, we talked about the four humors.  So... I googled it to find out exactly what they were.  And here is what I found:

The four humors are vital body fluids which must be kept in balance to ensure good health.

blood - air
phlegm - water
yellow bile - fire
black bile - earth

Let's go into them in a little more detail, shall we...

Blood- the Sanguine humor.  It is the nutrient-rich hemoglobin portion of the blood which carried the vital life force and promotes happy feelings of joy and wellbeing

Phlegm- the Phlegmatic humor.  It is composed of all the clear fluids in the body which protects the body by expelling waste and such and makes one lethargic and sensitive.

Yellow Bile- the Choleric humor.  It carries little nutrients and is a yellowish residue which lives in the gall bladder (so of course it aids with digestion) and "provokes, excites, and emboldens the passions."

Black Bile- the Melancholic humor. It is a brownish grey sediment (platelets and such) that has barely any nutrients and has a cooling, solidifying effect on the body, which makes one pessimistic and depressed.

all credit goes to http://www.greekmedicine.net/b_p/Four_Humors.html for the information

Capital Punishment?

If a child hits their sibling, I do not think that the proper punishment is to hit them.  To me, that is counterintuitive. Instead of teaching the child the correct way to behave, you are merely reinforcing the idea that hitting is acceptable.  It brings to mind a woman I saw in a store one time, who hit her child's hands as a punishment for grabbing and then could not understand why the child was hitting himself.

Along these same lines, I do not believe in capital punishment.  

I understand that the crimes that an individual commits to be considered for capital punishment are far, far worse than hitting.  And I understand how some people believe so strongly in it.  However, I cannot advocate punishing a crime with the same behavior that caused the need for the offender to be punished in the first place.  With this kind of behavior, a whole new crop of questions pop up: When is it acceptable?  Who is allowed to decide if an individual should be killed or not?  And what gives the chooser this authority?  

In addition, I agree with Professor Stuart.  Funds could be better spent elsewhere.  Why spend so much money dealing with the aftereffects of crimes when the money could be spent preventing them from happening in the first place?  It is a lot less costly to fund preventative programs the keep people from becoming criminals than it is to deal with them after they have committed a crime.  Although these kinds of programs will not work with everybody, participants do show a lesser tendency to commit crime.  In addition, programs preventing recidivism have also proven to be successful in preventing repeat offenders.