CfA: Reproductive Governance from Below: Childbearing, Trust, and Community Norms in East Central Europe, 1850–1945
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is December 1, 2025.
The deadline for the accepted papers: April 1, 2026.
This Special Issue encourages reconceptualization of fertility as a structuring force, reversing conventional explanations of demographic behavior. Rather than treating reproduction as a passive outcome of ethnicity, religion, or economy, it analyses the decisions made by families and communities, challenging the teleology of demographic transition theory while moving beyond classic family history and historical demography. The Special Issue focuses on East Central Europe, especially the Habsburg Empire and successor states, where similar institutions produced divergent reproductive strategies. This imperial context offers an ideal comparative laboratory, combining shared legal frameworks with varied kinship systems and community norms. The innovative aspect of this approach lies in the reversal of causality: instead of reading fertility as a reaction to external pressures, the Special Issue shows how practices of childbearing reshaped authority, economic strategies, and community cohesion. It foregrounds reproductive governance from below, calling attention to the ways in which midwives, older women, and village judges, for instance, sustained or contested norms. This perspective complements analyses of church and state, stressing interactions between formal and informal authorities. Methodologically, the Special Issue integrates historical anthropology, microhistory, and gender history with demographic tools, network analysis, and GIS. It pioneers the use of underexplored “crisis archives,” such as the documents produced during abortion trials and inheritance disputes, presbytery minutes, folklore, and various ego-documents, which, precisely because they emerge from moments of tension, reveal hidden negotiations of norms.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
the role of trust, reputation, and the influence of informal authorities (midwives, older women, village judges) on reproductive decision-making
the role of informal and formal authorities: comparing community actors with clergy, teachers, and officials across local contexts
the role of community cooperation, female solidarity, and the informal market for abortion through abortion trials
the role of “folk” knowledge about birth control, with particular regard to the roles of doctors, midwives, and older women
the light shed on childbearing practices by conflicts and crises, as evidenced in abortion trials, reconciliation papers, inheritance disputes, and domestic-violence cases
the role of reproductive strategies and abortion decisions in rural Jewish and Roma communities
methodological reflections on analyses of childbearing practices and the sources on which these analyses are based.
We welcome submissions from scholars in various disciplines, including history, the history of science, the history of education, art history, literary history, and cultural studies. We especially encourage submissions that offer interdisciplinary perspectives and engage with current historiographical debates.
Please send an abstract of no more than 500 words and a short biographical note with a selected list of the author’s three most important publications (we do not accept full CVs) no later than December 1, 2025.
Proposals should be submitted to the special editor of the issue by email:
koloh.gabor@abtk.hu
The editors will ask the authors of selected papers to submit their final articles (max. 10,000 words) no later than April 1, 2026.
The articles will be published open access after a double-blind peer-review process. We provide proofreading for contributors who are not native speakers of English.
All articles must conform to our submission guidelines.
The Hungarian Historical Review is a peer-reviewed international quarterly of the social sciences and humanities, the geographical focus of which is Hungary and East-Central Europe. For additional information, please visit the journal’s website: https://hunghist.org/
Contact:
koloh.gabor@abtk.hu
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