The paper will examine the ways in which Palestinian children became key consumers of new forms and institutions of commercial leisure as well as its co-producers in the city of Haifa in Northern Palestine during the British Mandate period. An examination of Haifa’s locale provides us with a unique historical case study as in a short period of time this city experienced accelerated economic, social, spatial and demographic processes that thoroughly impacted children’s life. Under the context of the national struggle over Palestine, competing interests and aspirations regarding Haifa’s future on the part of the British colonial government, the Zionist movement, and local Palestinians, led to a massive development of the city, which evolved from a small town into an industrial metropolis, a hub of employment and a regional crossroad. These processes resulted in a vast expansion of the urban infrastructures that laid the foundation for the flourishing of cultural life. A whole range of public and commercial institutions of modern leisure as well as new patterns of cultural consumption quickly sprang up in various parts of the city, changing the face of urban culture. The possibilities for leisure consumption proliferated, becoming accessible to the city’s various social groups. Relying on oral interviews, Ephemera collections, photographs and memoirs, in addition to Arabic newspapers and archival material, the paper will analyze how these extensive processes were experienced by Arab-Palestinian children. It will illuminate how Haifa’s urban transformation undermined the familiar traditional order that dictated access to the public sphere, which in turn encouraged children to take part in the city’s cultural life. At the same time, due to the increasing national struggle, the social importance of children and youth grew stronger, while new and substantial expectations were placed on their shoulders with regards to the future of the budding nation. The paper will show how the shifts in the social status of children brought about inter-generational tensions that were intensified in light of the political tension.

Turkish Püerikültür, defined as “the science and the art of childrearing” by the intellectuals of the newly established Turkish Republic, gained popularity in 1930s. The (newborn) Turkish Republic, identifying itself as the healthy son of the sick man (Ottoman Empire), instrumentalized healthy child-rearing as a political tool in forming its political agenda on demographic recovery and national survival. My research focuses on the emergence of a new set of ideas and practices of childrearing in the formative years of modern Turkey (1923-45). I analyze the ways in which the political and the intellectual webs surrounding the Children’s Protection Society (CPS) and their discussions on child-care, can provide us with a new understanding of post-war reconstruction of demography in Turkey. I ask how the doctor members of the CPS, most of whom were also members of the Turkish parliament, merged the nineteenth century Ottoman ideas of demographic reform with the popular pedagogical trends and eugenics of interwar Europe to provide the young Turkish state with an innovative nationalist rhetoric and practices of childrearing. This chapter aims to analyze the particular nature of Turkish puericulture, by concentrating on three different books sharing the same title, Püerikültür, written by three medical doctors, all members of the CPS: Dr. Besim Omer Akalin (1862-1940), Dr. Ihsan Hilmi Alantar (1881-1962), and Dr. Kudsi Halkaci. Trying to analyze the perceptions of (1) Besim Omer, an Ottoman pasha, a gynecologist influenced from French puericulture, (2) his student Ihsan Hilmi, a pediatrician influenced by German eugenics, (3) and Kudsi Halkaci, a local doctor working for the local branches of the Children’s Protection Society, this study focuses on the emergence of a new set of ideas and practices on childrearing. Drawing on the larger debates on population-control and degeneration, I also seek to understand how they blended the late 19th century Ottoman ideas of population reform, and interwar trends of European eugenics. Further, I argue that Turkish puericulture was refashioned with the transformative power of tarbiya, putting emphasis on the correct forms of nurturing and moral education rather than selective breeding.

This paper will explore the ways in which the early-modern Ottoman Empire understood aging. Exploring the life stages with an emphasis on the ways in which childhood, and youth were constructed and understood. In western European history Philippe Aires controversial argument about the non-existence of childhood prior to the 17th century has been discredited. This, regrettably, has not been made manifestly clear in the pre-modern Ottoman Empire. The history of childhood remains largely unexplored in this period, which this paper also seeks to address. By drawing on advice literature, legal opinions, poetry, and other sources I argue that the Ottomans had fairly a fairly stable sense understanding of aging. General going from childhood, youth, adulthood, and lastly senility. The Ottoman Empire had a rich body of material to draw from in demarcating its life stages in the period from 1500-1720. From Medical Treatises under the influence of Ibn Sina and his Qanun, to Advice texts such as The Qabusname, or the Ahlak-? Ala'i. There was a clear understanding of childhood and youth as being periods of growth and exploration in need of outside mentoring. Youth and its mental and physical developments was understood as terminating fairly late, at around thirty, with real “adulthood” not starting till this period or even later at forty. There was more to this than biological processes however, experience, and social norms also contributed to the life stages. Ideally speaking, one was to move from a carefree and “hedonistic” mode of living to a more subdued old age, concerned with social mores, family matters, and religion. The Ottomans though had a multiplicity of genres to draw on, and different texts demarcate these stages in various ways, for example the Garibname only has three life stages, childhood, youth, and old age, but a similar concern with moral and physical development. What unites the works to be discussed in addition to chronology is that all the arguments of the authors are derived from Greek thought, the three part division from Aristotle, the four from Galens etc, and a keen concern for ones social and physical development over these stages, and educating the reader to there purposes and ends. Childhood and youth were malleable stages integral to ones adult life. Education, and experiencing the world were elements that were stressed, as well as preparing the individual for old age and death.