Cambio conceptual y cambio histórico. Del pauperismo a la «cuestión social»

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show how together with the development of the modern economy and of the industrialization process in Europe, it took place a conspicuous mental change reflected in ideas as well as in language. Therefore many authors were fully aware of such a social, economic and intellectual transformation and started to write about the new reality in rather new terms. The old view of poverty shifted to that of pauperism emphasizing the great extent to which misery had spread within the new industrial and urban society. But also the concept of pauperism and the means by which liberalism used to face it (charity and beneficence, mainly) were surpassed as new approaches to the social consequences of modern economy emerged. Thus new concepts such us «social question», «social problem» or «labour question» were coined by different schools of thought and thinkers in order to label and describe the new reality. This piece of work is an attempt to analyse all that issues from a conceptual history perspective taking account of Great Britain, France and specially Spain from the 1830s. up to the 1900s.