19th-20th centuries

The music publisher and owner of a flourishing music store in Barcelona, Rafael Guardia, created a type of business specialized in the sale of sheet music and musical instruments that enjoyed great success for more than a century. Located in “the Ramblas”, not far from the Gran Teatro del Liceo and the homonymous conservatory, it shared the stage ―from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries― with many other competing shops (Juan Ayné, Musical Emporium, Vidal y Roger, Juan Bautista Pujol, Dessy, Astort y Miralles, etc.), who had to devise new market techniques to gain a place among a growing clientele, struggling between the acquisition of new means of mechanical musical reproduction (phonographs, gramophones, piano players...), the rental or direct purchase of musical instruments “to make” live music, and the circulation of printed scores that, between dance orchestra, bands and chamber groups, and a domestic consumption of “saloon music”, gradually formed a repertoire claimed by a civil society that ranged from the wealthy bourgeoisie to new and growing middle classes, which struggled to prosper. A business, that of Rafael Guardia, which ―although barely, due in large part to the challenge of the Internet and the new modes of musical consumption― still exists today as “Casa Beethoven”.

ln the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries' discourses, some professions were seen as an extension of a "woman's natural duties", both maternal and domestic, which entailed helping, taking care of, and consoling their families and loved ones. These professions gained the status of female labour. Such is the case of nursing, which became a female career during the Estado Novo regime (1933-1974), while that fiel d professionalized, its teaching system was restructured, the need for more health professionals increased, and a progressive investment in sanitary conditions took place. Thus, gender assumptions influenced the ideological discourse of the profession as well as the representation of nurses, and had an impact on discrimination, labour restrictions, and handbook contents, among other consequences that shaped this profession.

The study makes comparisons among autobiographical descriptions of visiting other people’s homes in context of Polish culture which gives a great social value to the informal (noncommercial, private) hospitability. The research material includes about 300 episodes from 30 published memories. Limited by differentiated availability, purposive sampling of the materials was applied on the basis of the three combined criteria: diversity of the authors’ social background, the diversity of their biographical situation and possibly most detailed description of the experience.
The following research questions were asked: What kind of hospitality situations were included in the memoirs? What details of these situations were depicted in the description of a given experience? What meaning did the authors give to a specific event? What does the study of autobiographical (life-course) descriptions show for our understanding of the host-and-guest interactions?
The research has led to a number of theoretical hypotheses regarding the differentiated importance of hospitability in the circumstances of social stability and of intensive change or crisis. While in times of stability the guests via their visits could gain a chance for making a move to slightly higher social positions, in times of crisis both, jumping to more distant positions in social hierarchy (in both upward and downward directions), or the closing the doors for uninvited guests become more probable. The first situation occurs especially at the beginning of the crisis, but in time a socialization into a long-term threatening situation takes place, and strategies of closure and caring for the survival for the closest, narrow social circles begin to prevail. The above results would imply a more cautious look at the theoretical concepts that consider hospitality a social invention for circumstances of deprivation and also suggest revising the Polish national autostereotype as a culture based on continuous and unchanging generous hospitality.