« Cretins » and « idiots » in an Austrian Alpine valley in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: interests, social norms, and institutions involved in the attribution of « imbecility »

Abstract

On the basis of a regional case study, this article deals with the stigmatization of « mentally handicapped » people in the rural society of the Austrian Alps, using court files of persons who were placed under wardship because of « imbecility » or « feeble-mindedness ». Proceeding from exemplary case histories, first the interests and strategies involved in the procedure of legal incapacitation and in the social environment's attitudes towards the « mentally disabled » are considered, and second, the different concepts of normalcy and deviation of the local population, the authorities, and the medical experts. In the region under question, peasant inheritance strategies as well as a collective interest of the peasant class in cheap labour were apparently causal factors of the attribution of « imbecility ».