| Abstract: | L’articolo cerca di presentare alcune caratteristiche del “sistema” sociale asburgico nell’area dell’Istria nel XIX secolo, percepite soprattutto attraverso la prospettiva dell’(in)abilità al lavoro come criterio chiave per determinare l’ammissibilità all’assistenza sociale. L’autrice osserva le modalità di approccio alle questioni sociali in questo periodo storico, in cui gli interventi a sostegno della vecchiaia, della malattia e della disoccupazione sono spesso incentivati dalle crisi. L’attenzione è rivolta anche alla questione del finanziamento della carità, che dipendeva in gran parte dai singoli comuni, e a un fonte importante dei fondi sociali – la beneficenza privata, che può essere collocata nel contesto dell’etica borghese.The article aims to present some of the characteristics of the 19th–century Habsburg welfare ‘system’ in the province of Istria, as perceived mainly through the perspective of (in)ability to work as a key criterion for determining eligibility for social assistance. Welfare issues were not addressed in a sufficiently systematic way at the time, nor were they long–term measures, but instead they mainly involved ad hoc solutions to individual problems, which suggests that the drivers of social welfare were mainly crisis circumstances. Seasonal poverty was also a pressing problem, especially in rural areas, but in general old age, illness and unemployment were identified as central drivers of poverty. The bourgeois work ethic (which helped to shape the regulation of charity) is also relevant in this context, since it understood the alleviation of poverty primarily in terms of providing work or training for individuals living in poverty. At national and provincial levels, the concept of charity was limited to institutional care, which covered only a small part of the social issues. The financial burden for all other forms of welfare rested with the municipalities, which had to find their own ways of providing resources, relying to some extent on the bourgeois ethic of philanthropism, but also on inter–municipal solidarity. |
|---|
