title: The cosmos of the Paris apartment: working-class family life in the nineteenth century.
abstract: Drawing on Bachelard's notion of “cosmicity” this article investigates the living conditions of Parisian working-class families in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century social critics claimed that the lack of privacy in urban apartments made decent family life impossible. However, evidence from judicial dossiers concerning attentat à la pudeur (intimate assault against children) illuminates the lived experience of children and their families in Paris apartments. Rather than a sharp divide between public and private, children experienced their apartment homes as the core of a social and spatial world under the surveillance of parents, neighbors, and other children.
authors.affiliation: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
authors.forename: Eliza
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ferguson
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living / Q000523:psychology; D005191:Family Characteristics / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history; D005192:Family Health / Q000208:ethnology; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006796:Household Work / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history; D006798:Housing / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history; D010287:Parent-Child Relations / Q000208:ethnology / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D010297:Paris / Q000208:ethnology; D055818:Public-Private Sector Partnerships / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history; D012923:Social Class / Q000266:history; D012927:Social Control, Informal / Q000266:history; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors / Q000266:history