Village Idiot as Social Product
This is a request for information. I'm trying to locate a paper I read 10 - 15 years ago, title and author unknown.
It's thesis was that "village idiots" were largely a product of social forces within the community, essentially a conspiracy: between the dominant mothers within the group, who obtained a useful scapegoat to take the rap for their own children's misdeeds: the weakest mother in the group, who obtained needed material support as charity from the stronger mothers: and the selected male child of the weakest mother, who received essentially a license to commit harmless but socially proscribed behavior.
If anyone can tell me the author or title of this paper, please let me know.
Graham Lawrence
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England
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