Download or read book The Working Class in Britain written by John Benson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2003-08-22 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who made up the working class in Britain, who were the ordinary men and women and what were their aspirations? The first generation of postwar British labour historians tended to be preoccupied with working class activism. This texts attempts to chart not only this struggle, but to describe and analyse the rich and varied tapestry of working-class history as a whole. It demonstrates that "class" both existed and mattered although ordinary men and women had diverse lives and lifestyles. Professor Benson examines work, wages, incomes and the cost of living, family, kinship and community relations and the individual in the context of nation and class.

Download or read book The Remaking of the British Working Class 1840 1940 written by Andrew Miles and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mike Savage and Andrew Miles provide a comprehensive introduction to the working class in Britain in the years after 1840. This textbook: * Includes a provocative, timely and clear defence of class analysis * Breaks new ground in showing how social mobility and urban change affected working class formation * Demonstrates how the history of the working class is politically reconstructed * Shows how class and gender interact in mediating social and political change

Download or read book Leisure Citizenship and Working class Men in Britain 1850 1945 written by Brad Beaven and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bawdy audience of a Victorian Penny Gaff to the excitable crowd of an early twentieth century football match, working-class male leisure proved to be a contentious issue for contemporary observers. For middle-class social reformers from across the political spectrum, the spectacle of popular leisure offered a view of working-class habits, and a means by which lifestyles and behaviour could be assessed. For the mid-Victorians, gingerly stepping into a new mass democratic age, the desire to create a bond between the recently enfranchised male worker and the nation was more important than ever. This trend continued as those in governance perceived that 'good' leisure and citizenship could fend off challenges to social stability such as imperial decline, the mass degenerate city, hooliganism, civic and voter apathy and fascism. Thus, between 1850 and 1945 the issue of male leisure became enmeshed with changing contemporary debates on the encroaching mass society and its implications for good citizenry. Working-class culture has often been depicted as an atomised and fragmented entity lacking any significant cultural contestation. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary source material, this book powerfully challenges these recent assumptions and places social class centre stage once more. Arguing that there was a remarkable continuity in male working-class culture between 1850 and 1945, Beaven contends that despite changing socio-economic contexts, male working-class culture continued to draw from a tradition of active participation and cultural contestation that was both class and gender exclusive. This lively and readable book draws from fascinating accounts from those who participated in and observed contemporary popular leisure making it of importance to students and teachers of social history, popular culture, urban history, historical geography, historical sociology and cultural studies.

Download or read book Working Class Cultures in Britain 1890 1960 written by Prof Joanna Bourke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-01-28 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Integrating a variety of historical approaches and methods, Joanna Bourke looks at the construction of class within the intimate contexts of the body, the home, the marketplace, the locality and the nation to assess how the subjective identity of the 'working class' in Britain has been maintained through seventy years of radical social, cultural and economic change. She argues that class identity is essentially a social and cultural rather than an institutional or political phenomenon and therefore cannot be understood without constant reference to gender and ethnicity. Each self contained chapter consists of an essay of historical analysis, introducing students to the ways historians use evidence to understand change, as well as useful chronologies, statistics and tables, suggested topics for discussion, and selective further reading.

Download or read book Leisure citizenship and working class men in Britain 1850 1940 written by Brad Beaven and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bawdy audience of a Victorian Penny Gaff to the excitable crowd of an early twentieth century football match, working-class male leisure proved to be a contentious issue for contemporary observers. For middle-class social reformers from across the political spectrum, the spectacle of popular leisure offered a view of working-class habits, and a means by which lifestyles and behaviour could be assessed. For the mid-Victorians, gingerly stepping into a new mass democratic age, the desire to create a bond between the recently enfranchised male worker and the nation was more important than ever. This trend continued as those in governance perceived that 'good' leisure and citizenship could fend off challenges to social stability such as imperial decline, the mass degenerate city, hooliganism, civic and voter apathy and fascism. Thus, between 1850 and 1945 the issue of male leisure became enmeshed with changing contemporary debates on the encroaching mass society and its implications for good citizenry. Working-class culture has often been depicted as an atomised and fragmented entity lacking any significant cultural contestation. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary source material, this book powerfully challenges these recent assumptions and places social class centre stage once more. Arguing that there was a remarkable continuity in male working-class culture between 1850 and 1945, Beaven contends that despite changing socio-economic contexts, male working-class culture continued to draw from a tradition of active participation and cultural contestation that was both class and gender exclusive. This lively and readable book draws from fascinating accounts from those who participated in and observed contemporary popular leisure making it of importance to students and teachers of social history, popular culture, urban history, historical geography, historical sociology and cultural studies.

Download or read book A History of Irish Working Class Writing written by Michael Pierse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Michael Pierse is Lecturer in Irish literature at Queen's University Belfast. His research mainly explores the writing and cultural production of Irish working-class life. Over recent years this work has expanded into new multidisciplinary themes and international contexts, including the study of festivals, digital methodologies in public humanities and theatre-as-research practices. Michael has contributed to a range of national and international publications, is the author of Writing Ireland's Working Class: Dublin after O'Casey (2011), and has been awarded several Arts and Humanities Research Council awards and the Vice Chancellor's Award at Queen's"--

Download or read book War and Progress written by Peter Dewey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an account of how the daily lives of ordinary peoples were changed, profoundly and permanently, by these three momentous decades 1914-1945. Often depicted in negative terms Peter Dewey finds a much more positive pattern in the wealth of evidence he lays before us. His is a story of economic achievement, and the emergence of a new sense of social community in the nation, rather than a saga of disenchantment and decline.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Literature and Class written by Gloria McMillan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Literature and Class offers a comprehensive and fresh assessment of the cultural impact of class in literature, analyzing various innovative, interdisciplinary approaches of textual analysis and intersections of literature, including class subjectivities, mental health, gender and queer studies, critical race theory, quantitative and scientific methods, and transnational perspectives in literary analysis. Utilizing these new methods and interdisciplinary maps from field-defining essayists, students will become aware of ways to bring these elusive texts into their own writing as one of the parallel perspectives through which to view literature. This volume will provide students with an insight into the history of the intersections of class, theory of class and invisibility in literature, and new trends in exploring class in literature. These multidimensional approaches to literature will be a crucial resource for undergraduate and graduate students becoming familiar with class analysis, and will offer seasoned scholars the most significant critical approaches in class studies.

Download or read book Working Class Community in the Age of Affluence written by Stefan Ramsden and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-02-24 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has appeared to many commentators that the most fundamental change in what it is meant to be working-class in twentieth-century Britain came not as a result of war or of want, but of prosperity. Social investigators documented how the relative affluence of the 1950s and 1960s improved the material conditions of life for working-class Britons whilst eroding their commitment to the shared life of ‘traditional’ communities. Utilising an oral history case study of sociability and identity in the Yorkshire town of Beverley between the end of the Second World War and the election of Margaret Thatcher’s government, Working-Class Community in the Age of Affluence challenges this influential narrative. An introductory essay outlines how sociologists and historians understood the complex social, cultural and economic changes of the post-war decades through the prism of affluence, and traces how these changes came to be seen as deleterious to the ‘traditional’ working-class community. The book then proceeds thematically, exploring change across areas of social life including family, neighbourhood, workplace and associational life. This book represents the first sustained historical analysis of change and continuity in working-class community living during the age of affluence. It suggests not only that older social practices persisted, but also that new patterns of sociability could strengthen as much as undermine community. Ultimately, Working-Class Community in the Age of Affluence asks us to rethink assumptions about the decline of local solidarities in this pivotal period, and to recognise community as a key feature of working-class life across the twentieth century.

Download or read book Masculinity and the English Working Class written by Ying Lee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-06 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines representations of working-class masculine subjectivity in Victorian autobiography and fiction. In it, Ying focuses on ideas of domesticity and the male body and demonstrates that working-class masculinities differ substantially from those of the widely studied upper classes. The book also maps the relationship between two trends: the early nineteenth-century efflorescence of published working-class autobiographies (in which working men construct their identities for a broad readership); and a contemporaneous surge of public interest in "the lower orders" that finds reflection in the depiction of working-class characters in popular novels by middle-class authors. The book mimics this point of convergence by pairing three working-class autobiographies with three middle-class novels. Each chapter focuses on a particular type of work: domestic service, manual (not artisanal) labour, and literary labour (and the opportunities it offers for social advancement). Ying considers the specific ways in which classed and gendered consciousness emerges autobiographically and its significance in the writing of working-class subjectivity for public consumption. Then mainstream novels by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Kingsley are re-read from the perspective of these autobiographical pressure points.

Download or read book Social Classes and Social Relations in Britain 1850 1914 written by Alastair J. Reid and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-09-28 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The analysis of social classes and social relations in the second half of the nineteenth century has caused major debates among social historians. In this book, first published in 1995, Alastair Reid provides a critical summary of the different approaches to the subject, giving an account of how interpretations have developed since the 1960s, and highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. The author explains how the influence of social sciences in the 1960s led scholars to emphasise the rise to power of the bourgeoisie, and the increasing subordination of the industrial working class. Recently more detailed research has led to a return to the older historical emphasis on the persistence of aristocratic power, the increasing independence of the working classes, and the centrality of voluntary agreement in a social order based on consent. The conclusion suggests new ways in which the subject might be approached. A select bibliography allows the reader to pursue the topic in more detail.

Download or read book The Making of the English Working Class written by E. P. Thompson and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the common people and the Industrial Revolution: “A true masterpiece” and one of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the twentieth century (Tribune). During the formative years of the Industrial Revolution, English workers and artisans claimed a place in society that would shape the following centuries. But the capitalist elite did not form the working class—the workers shaped their own creations, developing a shared identity in the process. Despite their lack of power and the indignity forced upon them by the upper classes, the working class emerged as England’s greatest cultural and political force. Crucial to contemporary trends in all aspects of society, at the turn of the nineteenth century, these workers united into the class that we recognize all across the Western world today. E. P. Thompson’s magnum opus, The Making of the English Working Class defined early twentieth-century English social and economic history, leading many to consider him Britain’s greatest postwar historian. Its publication in 1963 was highly controversial in academia, but the work has become a seminal text on the history of the working class. It remains incredibly relevant to the social and economic issues of current times, with the Guardian saying upon the book’s fiftieth anniversary that it “continues to delight and inspire new readers.”

Download or read book Youth Movements Citizenship and the English Countryside written by Sian Edwards and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the significance and meaning of the countryside within mid-twentieth century youth movements. It examines the ways in which the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Woodcraft Folk and Young Farmers’ Club organisations employed the countryside as a space within which ‘good citizenship’ – in leisure, work, the home and the community – could be developed. Mid-century youth movements identified the ‘problem’ of modern youth as a predominantly urban and working class issue. They held that the countryside offered an effective antidote to these problems: being a ‘good citizen’ within this context necessitated a respectful and mutually beneficial relationship with the rural sphere. Avenues to good citizenship could be found through an enthusiasm for outdoor recreation, the stewardship of the countryside and work on the land. However, models of good citizenship were intrinsically gendered.

Download or read book Working Class Credit and Community since 1918 written by A. Taylor and published by Springer. This book was released on 2002-11-26 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the forms of credit which have historically been associated with the British working class. Taylor seeks to assess the effect of credit on working class communities, and relates this to the debate about community. This work is the first comprehensive examination of the history of these forms of credit to make comparisons between the periods before and after 1945. Based on extensive archival research and oral history interviews, this book combines lively individual accounts with theoretical arguments.

Download or read book Modern Britain Third Edition written by Edward Royle and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-04-10 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fully revised and updated, the third edition of this deservedly popular history book incorporates new currents in historical writing on matters such as the language of class, the position of women, and the revolution worked by the Internet and mobile technologies.

Download or read book Currents of Radicalism written by Eugenio F. Biagini and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991-06-28 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Those who were originally called radicals and afterwards reformers, are called Chartists', declared Thomas Duncombe before Parliament in 1842, a comment which can be adapted for a later period and as a description of this collection of papers: 'those who were originally called Chartists were afterwards called Liberal and Labour activists'. In other words, the central argument of this book is that there was a substantial continuity in popular radicalism throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The papers stress both the popular elements in Gladstonian Liberalism and the radical liberal elements in the early Labour party. The first part of the book focuses on the continuity of popular attitudes across the commonly-assumed mid-century divide, with studies of significant personalities and movements, as well as a local case study. The second part examines the strong links between Gladstonian Liberalism and the working classes, looking in particular at labour law, taxation, and the Irish crisis. The final part assesses the impact of radical traditions on early Labour politics, in Parliament, the unions, and local government. The same attitudes towards liberty, the rule of law, and local democracy are highlighted throughout, and new questions are therefore posed about the major transitions in the popular politics of the period.

Download or read book The Football Pools and the British Working Class written by Keith Laybourn and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-22 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first national study of the football pools in Britain which examines the politics and culture of the gambling on the football pools. It charts the rise of the football pools, focusing upon its rapid growth from the 1920s and its prolonged decline in British culture from the 1990s, partly as a result of the National Lottery. The book explores how this new gambling activity became a significant leisure opportunity for the working class - a way to feel that the individual skill of the punter could lead to the winning of some life-changing jackpot cheque being presented by a sporting personality of celebrity. Dominated by Littlewoods, and other large commercial companies, the weekly filling-in of the coupons was considered to be a safe form of investment, guaranteed by the integrity of the pool companies, rather than some seedy gambling operation. The Football Pools and the British Working Class looks at different elements of the football pools from what attracted people to this form of gambling to how the industry developed and adjusted to the suspension of the football fixtures in 1936, and the bad winter of 1962-3. Above all, it examines the deep hostility that surrounded the filling in of the football pools arising from the National Anti-Gambling League, religious groups, the football authorities and MPs. This book will appeal to all those interested in the history of British football and 20th century British working class culture.