the middle ages feudalism in the middle ages answer key

#THE MIDDLE AGES FEUDALISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES ANSWER KEY FREE#

The growing economic autonomy that women experienced in the cities also corresponded to a conscious control over their bodies. Overall, women in medieval cities experienced less subordination to the male population than did their counterparts in the countryside.

In the 14th Century, it was not unusual for them to live alone or to raise children without the tutelage of their husbands. They used to take up employment as bakers, wool-carders, ale-brewers, or even schoolteachers and doctors. Interestingly, the commodification of labor relations had opened up new possibilities to them. They had lost direct access to the common lands and the right to inherit their husbands' properties however, in the cities they had acquired a higher degree of social autonomy. The enclosure of the commons had undoubtedly put them in a subaltern position in the countryside and significantly changed their mode of living. For women, however, the consequences of this process were less straightforward. Wealthier landowners could now employ dispossessed peasants, who had lost their land, as wageworkers. Profound social and economic inequalities emerged within feudal society, particularly in rural villages, where social solidarity had broken apart. In the Late Middle Ages, the increasing commodification of labor relations had brought about complex consequences for lower classes in general and women in particular.

These historical events resulted in a new gender division of labor that restricted the role of women to the subaltern function of reproduction of the labor force. Central to her analysis is the persecution of witches, known as the great witch hunt, together with the violent sexual politics of the Late Middle Ages. Bringing together Marxian literature on primitive accumulation, feminist approaches, and Foucauldian theory, she provides in her book Caliban and the Witch a detailed historical account of how the control of the female body was crucial for the development of the capitalist mode of production. In contrast, Federici looks at this process along gender lines. Traditionally, Marxism has paid particular attention to the emergence of capitalism from the standpoint of the commodification of land and labor.

These works focus on historical phenomena that have received less attention in orthodox readings of primitive accumulation. Among feminist scholars, the works of Silvia Federici have shed light on the changing role of women in the capitalist mode of production. The transition from feudalism to capitalism was not, however, a linear process, but it was characterized by particular dimensions such as gender and race. They employ the concept of feudalism in their attempt to identify and explain characteristic functional elements of traditional societies (politics, economics, law, social stratification, culture, religion) as closely interwoven segments of integral social systems.Ĭarlo Inverardi-Ferri, in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (Second Edition), 2020 Commons and Gender Division of Labor They view feudalism as a type of society with specific characteristics.

#THE MIDDLE AGES FEUDALISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES ANSWER KEY FREE#

Authors who concentrate on the structural transformation of societies strive to free the term feudalism from ideological connotations and legal constraints. In keeping with the usage of the school of legal history in the nineteenth century, legal historians use feudalism as a technical term to describe the legal order of the feudal system. Marx argued that feudal society created the conditions for the emergence of a new class, the bourgeoisie, which eventually overturned barriers to production, produced the capitalistic economic system, and established universal equality under the law. According to Karl Marx, feudal society with its characteristic conditions of dependence, ownership, and production constituted a development of society that contributed to progress. Enlightened and liberal-minded authors used the term feudalism polemically within a socio-political framework in order to criticize the social order of the time as a system of despotism, anarchy, and violence. The concept of feudalism originated between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries as an expression of liberal social criticism. Schreiner, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

The middle ages feudalism in the middle ages answer key