Abstract
“There is deadly poverty”. A municipal visitor to the poor described the situation of a family in Amsterdam in 1871. Help was urgently needed. Poor people could ask for assistance from their church. There were also private aid organizations. In addition, there was the municipal poor relief. The dissertation of
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Jan van der Maas The municipal poor relief in Amsterdam between civilizing and bureaucratizing from 1870 to 1940 analyses the procedures of municipal poor relief.
A first question is which motives justified providing poor relief. Early on, mainly moral principles were used. Who did not behave properly had a good chance of not getting help. This urge to civilize arose out of a bourgeois civilizing offensive. The concept of a bourgeois civilization offensive as initiated by Bernard Kruithof served as a guideline for answering this question. The poor had to be educated, it was supposed, because they themselves would be guilty of their impoverished condition. Their rough manners, their laziness, their shamelessness, and their lack of self-control meant that they could not use money wisely. As long as they had these bad qualities, the poor would always remain poor. The remedy for poverty was therefore seen in the education and civilization of the poor. But gradually poor relief became more and more objective. If your income was estimated to be too low, municipal poor relief provided support. In addition to this objectification a process of bureaucratization of the poor relief can be observed. The question of the role of the civilization offensive in municipal poor relief can be answered as follows, taking all the foregoing into consideration. In 1871 this urge to civilization was still clearly present. The poor person’s behaviour was an important benchmark for refusing or allocating help. Gradually the idea that the poor had to comply with all kinds of norms and values became less and less important in decision-making. In 1936, there were almost exclusively value-free motives to substantiate acceptance or rejection. A process of objectivation was completed.
The second question is how this process of bureaucratization developed. Municipal poor relief is analysed on the basis of the bureaucratization theory by Max Weber. The process of bureaucratization was strongly stimulated by the strong growth of the municipal poor relief. This welfare system became the main source of aid, while the ecclesiastical and private care greatly diminished in importance. Bureaucratization is all about objectivation. Moral considerations do not play a role in decision-making. Purely rational considerations lead to decisions that are taken without regard to persons. In answering the question of how bureaucratization took place between 1870 and 1940, it must first be noted that the apparatus of municipal poor relief already exhibited some bureaucratic features as early as 1871. Poor relief developed over the course of sixty years into a completely bureaucratic organization. The Poor Relief Committee (Burgerlijk Armbestuur), in theory an autonomous organization, became increasingly dependent on the municipal administration. The establishment of the Civil Institution for Social Support (Burgerlijke Instelling voor Maatschappelijken Steun) in 1927 strengthened this process. Poor relief became a full municipal service. At the end of this study six life stories describe the lives of poor families in detail. This makes it possible to look into the daily life of very ordinary citizens of Amsterdam.
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