Searchers of the Dead: Authority, Marginality, and the Interpretation of Plague in England, 1574–1665

Munkhoff, Richelle

doi:10.1111/1468-0424.00127

Cited by 47 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Searchers risked not only death but also social isolation for their contact with the sick and were also accused of witchcraft on occasion. While these impoverished widows were remunerated for their reports and had the theoretical possibility to refuse becoming a searcher, they stood to lose their alms if they actually did so, ensuring that they would not do so in practice (Munkhoff, 1999).…”

Section: Political Arithmetic and The Early Royal Society In Englandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Datafication, Power and Control in Development: A Historical Perspective on the Perils and Longevity of Data

Cieslik

Margócsy

2022

Progress in Development Studies

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The collection, processing, storage and circulation of data are fundamental element of contemporary societies. While the positivistic literature on ‘data revolution’ finds it essential for improving development delivery, critical data studies stress the threats of datafication. In this article, we demonstrate that datafication has been happening continuously through history, driven by political and economic pressures. We use historical examples to show how resource and personal data were extracted, accumulated and commodified by colonial empires, national governments and trade organizations, and argue that similar extractive processes are a present-day threat in the Global South. We argue that the decoupling of earlier and current datafication processes obscures the underlying, complex power dynamics of datafication. Our historical perspective shows how, once aggregated, data may become imperishable and can be appropriated for problematic purposes in the long run by both public and private entities. Using historical case studies, we challenge the current regulatory approaches that view data as a commodity and frame it instead as a mobile, non-perishable, yet ideally inalienable right of people.

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Section: Political Arithmetic and The Early Royal Society In Englandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Datafication, Power and Control in Development: A Historical Perspective on the Perils and Longevity of Data

Cieslik

Margócsy

2022

Progress in Development Studies

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“…31 These tasks bring parallels with findings from England and France where women became key examiners and codifiers of infected corpses and took in nonfamily members who were sick, for example, with dysentery. 32 Women also found themselves placed within public health institutions. For example, in Mons during the plague of 1515, the urban administration resolved on the 9 th of May to put a number of women into the hospital of St. Nicolas to treat the afflicted.…”

Section: Care Inside and Outside The Householdmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Female Experience of Epidemics in the Early Modern Low Countries

Curtis

2020

Dutch Crossing

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Recent literature has argued that women in parts of the early modern Low Countries experienced high levels of 'agency' and 'independence'-measured through ages and rates of marriage, participation in economic activities beyond the household, and the physical occupation of collective or public spaces. Epidemic disease outbreaks, however, also help bring into focus a number of female burdens and hardships in the early modern Low Countries, possibly born out of structural inequalities and vulnerabilities obscured from view in 'normal times', and which is supported by recent demographic research showing heightened adult female mortality compared to male during epidemics. For women, these included expectations of care both inside and outside the familial household, different forms of persecution, and social controls via authorities from above and internal regulation within communities from below-though these were also restrictions that women of course did not always passively accept, and sometimes violently rejected.

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“…these women continue to remain on the margins of history, despite the fact that the parish office of searcher endured until the 1830s. 34 Partly this is due to the very limited evidence of the searchers' labours. As with keeping, one can only 'see' the searcher when she was appointed to the office, or when the parish decided to pay (or more accurately, to record payment) for her services.…”

Section: Becoming 'Searchers' Of the Plaguementioning

confidence: 99%

Poor women and parish public health in sixteenth‐century London

Munkhoff

2014

Renaissance Studies

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While there is much excellent scholarship on the topics of poor relief and plague management in England, less attention has been paid to how they function together, especially given that they were housed in the same administrative unit of the parish. This article focuses on one key area of overlap: the medical labour performed by poor women as nurses or ‘keepers’ for their neighbours and as ‘searchers’ for epidemiological purposes in the period 1560–1600. Examining primarily parish records, such as churchwardens’ account books and vestry minutes, I make a three‐fold argument: first, women's labour became systematized as part of charitable parish care, as keeping duties rose to the level of visible economic exchange; second, the labour of keeping provided the foundation for the development of women's roles as plague searchers; and third, together those roles indicate a deliberate structure implemented in London to confront issues of public health (poverty, vagrancy, epidemics) that is worth considering in its own right.

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Searchers of the Dead: Authority, Marginality, and the Interpretation of Plague in England, 1574–1665

Cited by 47 publications

References 2 publications

Datafication, Power and Control in Development: A Historical Perspective on the Perils and Longevity of Data

Datafication, Power and Control in Development: A Historical Perspective on the Perils and Longevity of Data

The Female Experience of Epidemics in the Early Modern Low Countries

Poor women and parish public health in sixteenth‐century London

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