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4 The French maisons sociales, Chicago’s Hull-House scheme and their influence in Portugal

  • Francisco Branco
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The Settlement House Movement Revisited
This chapter is in the book The Settlement House Movement Revisited

Abstract

This chapter traces the transnational translation of the settlement house model from the UK and the USA to France and from there to Portugal. The French settlement houses, maisons sociales, that emerged at the end of the 19th Century were influenced by social Catholicism and feminism. They also shared commonalities with, and exhibited divergences from the UK and US settlement house models. While residence, research and engagement in professional training were common, research in the maisons sociales was, unlike in the USA, not a means to further social policies but rather to enhance scientific knowledge. In the mid-1930s, the settlement house model was adopted in Portugal under the aegis of the single-party regime of the Estado Novo. Of the two organisations that engaged in the establishment of settlement houses in Portugal in the following decades, the Institute of Social Work in Lisbon (ISS) was strongly influenced by the French maisons sociales and by social Catholicism.

Abstract

This chapter traces the transnational translation of the settlement house model from the UK and the USA to France and from there to Portugal. The French settlement houses, maisons sociales, that emerged at the end of the 19th Century were influenced by social Catholicism and feminism. They also shared commonalities with, and exhibited divergences from the UK and US settlement house models. While residence, research and engagement in professional training were common, research in the maisons sociales was, unlike in the USA, not a means to further social policies but rather to enhance scientific knowledge. In the mid-1930s, the settlement house model was adopted in Portugal under the aegis of the single-party regime of the Estado Novo. Of the two organisations that engaged in the establishment of settlement houses in Portugal in the following decades, the Institute of Social Work in Lisbon (ISS) was strongly influenced by the French maisons sociales and by social Catholicism.

Chapters in this book

  1. Front Matter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. List of boxes, figures and tables ix
  4. Notes on contributors x
  5. Acknowledgements xiv
  6. Introduction 1
  7. The transnational transfer of the settlement house idea
  8. A brief transnational history of the Settlement House Movement 15
  9. Berlin’s municipal socialism: a transatlantic muse for Mary Simkhovitch and New York City 35
  10. The French maisons sociales, Chicago’s Hull-House scheme and their influence in Portugal 51
  11. Settlement houses and the emergence of social work in Mandatory Palestine 73
  12. The interface between the Settlement House Movement and other social movements
  13. University extension and the settlement idea 91
  14. Between social mission and social reform: the Settlement House Movement in Germany, 1900–30 109
  15. To be an Englishman and a Jew: Basil Henriques and the Bernhard Baron Oxford and St George’s Settlement House 129
  16. The English settlements, the Poor Man’s Lawyer and social work, circa 1890–1939 145
  17. Research in settlement houses and its impact
  18. Putting knowledge into action: a social work perspective on settlement house research 163
  19. Animating objectivity: a Chicago settlement’s use of numeric and aesthetic knowledges to render its immigrant neighbours and neighbourhood knowable 181
  20. Final reflections
  21. ‘The soul of the community’: two practitioners reflect on history, place and community in two community-based practices from 1980 to 1995: St Hilda’s Community Centre in Bethnal Green and Waterloo Action Centre in Waterloo, South London 201
  22. Conclusion 221
  23. Index 231
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