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Immoral Habits: Delinquent White Girls in 1920s Cape Town and the Distribution of Blame
South African Historical Journal ( IF 0.526 ) Pub Date : 2020-01-02 , DOI: 10.1080/02582473.2020.1725783
Will Jackson 1
Affiliation  

ABSTRACT In much recent historical writing on the history of South African child welfare considerable emphasis has been placed on the poor white problem. The development of child welfare is typically seen as part of the wider project to uplift so-called ‘poor whites’. This article builds on this literature by focusing on one particular aspect of South African child welfare work – the attempt to discipline ‘uncontrollable’ youth. Case histories pertaining to out-of-control young people, I argue, reveal the intensity of the public antipathy towards adolescent female sexuality. This was not only a problem of ‘miscegenation’ or interracial sex. Case histories show how evidence of female sexuality was constructed in the day-to-day – by child welfare agents, state officials, community members and families themselves. Together, these voices worked to distribute blame. Interested parties drew on prevailing eugenicist ideas around mental weakness and moral aberration but these were filtered through a more impressionistic, common-sense vernacular that described how girls looked, what they wore, how they behaved and who they knew. As often as blame was located with bad mothers and bad homes, it was also directed at girls themselves, leading in many cases to long-term institutional confinement.

中文翻译:

不道德的习惯:1920 年代开普敦的犯罪白人女孩与责任分布

摘要 在最近关于南非儿童福利历史的许多历史著作中,相当重视贫困的白人问题。儿童福利的发展通常被视为提升所谓“贫困白人”的更广泛项目的一部分。本文以此文献为基础,重点关注南非儿童福利工作的一个特定方面——试图对“无法控制的”青年进行纪律处分。我认为,与失控的年轻人有关的案例历史揭示了公众对青春期女性性行为的强烈反感。这不仅仅是“异族通婚”或跨种族性行为的问题。案例历史展示了女性性行为的证据是如何在日常生活中构建的——由儿童福利机构、国家官员、社区成员和家庭本身构成。一起,这些声音起到了推卸责任的作用。有兴趣的各方借鉴了有关精神软弱和道德失常的盛行优生主义思想,但这些思想被更印象派、常识性的白话过滤掉了,这些白话描述了女孩的长相、穿着、举止和认识的人。责备的对象往往是坏母亲和坏家庭,也常常是针对女孩本身,在许多情况下导致长期监禁。
更新日期:2020-01-02
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