Overview
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.
Full Product Details
Author: Nara B. Milanich
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.60cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.549kg
ISBN: 9780822345749
ISBN 10: 0822345749
Pages: 277
Publication Date: 09 October 2009
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Awaiting stock
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Reviews
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 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 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: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 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
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 political history and will undoubtedly help shape the agenda of future work 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 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 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 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 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: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 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
Author Information
Nara B. Milanich is Assistant Professor of History at Barnard College.
