Engelsk titel: The origins of care – a historical view
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Författare:
Schiötz, Aina
Email: aina.schiotz@uib.no
Språk: Nor
Antal referenser: 51
Dokumenttyp:
Artikel
UI-nummer: 19040011
Sammanfattning
This article, which gives a historical overview over the field of care in Norway, has as its aim to give insight into which traditions and values today’s practices rest on. In order to understand and defend current arrangements, historical knowledge of the field is both useful and necessary. Our time’s public and private provisions for the poor and needy have developed through centuries. However, the authorities, the church and philanthropic organizations have met people in need in different ways, and their responsibilities and ways of cooperation have varied. Most of all, shifting ideologies have influenced caregiving and social welfare policy. On the backdrop of some theoretical considerations, the article sketches relief provisions over a span of centuries. The presentation starts in the Middle Ages – with emphasis on the Law of Magnus Lagabøte of 1274 that implemented the Christian principle of mercy in legislation – and ends by the end of the 1930s and the growth of the welfare state. The old age pension, introduced in Norway in 1937, might be characterized as a kind of “public care”. Here the pension serves as an example of the fundamental importance this kind of social security has had and still has in the lives of citizens in need, for their living conditions, and for their feeling of worth and dignity.