Adaptation to Industrialization: German Workers as a Test Case

1970 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 303-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter N. Stearns
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
First Time

Historians, in their somewhat defensive perusal of sociology for sweeping theoretical statements, perhaps underestimate the careful, often narrow, empiricism of much sociological research. Sociologists unearth facts for subsequent historians to work on and sometimes to interpret more broadly. Historical sociologists to the contrary, fact-grubbing services are mutual in the two disciplines. German sociologists were the first to study the social effects of industrialization extensively. By the early twentieth century, when masses of workers were still entering factory industry for the first time, sociologists were ready to investigate the process of adaptation through systematic interviews. British researchers in the same period, besides being dedicated amateurs for the most part, focused on the urban poor and on material conditions too exclusively still. French efforts were even more scattered. Maurice Halbwachs did some valuable studies of consumption patterns, while Le Play and his school contributed rather conservative portraits of individual workers. For purposes of understanding the working class in manufacturing, German sociological research was long unrivaled.

scholarly journals Boarding and lodging practices in early twentieth-century Scotland

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEFF MEEK
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Economic Importance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Position ◽  
Insight Into

ABSTRACTThe social and economic position of lodgers in Europe and North America has attracted considerable scholarship, yet the financial and interpersonal relationships between lodgers and boarders and their hosts in working-class homes is somewhat underdeveloped. This article examines patterns of lodging and boarding in working-class homes in Scotland between 1861 and 1911, focusing upon multiple layers of connection between paying guests and householders. This article demonstrates that connections had national and ethnic roots, and that taking in lodgers and boarders was of prime cultural and economic importance for many. The ability to offer space played a crucial role in the social and economic status of single, separated and widowed women, and this article offers an insight into the sometimes troubled relationships between landladies and their tenants.

Urban Ethnography's “Saloon Problem” and Its Challenge to Public Sociology

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greggor Mattson
Keyword(s):  
Urban Poor ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Public Sociology ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
National Debate ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
Positive Functions

This essay assesses the legacy of urban ethnography's (UE) early engagement with the “saloon problem.” Early sociologists (1880–1915) intervened in the national debate on alcohol on the basis of their long–term, in–depth understanding of the urban poor. Ethnographers highlighted the role of the saloon as a haven for maintaining social ties while socializing immigrants to American norms. Instead of prohibition or temperance, sociologists advocated replacing the saloon's positive functions with more democratic institutions, especially an egalitarian domestic sphere. This position was shared by both academic and settlement house sociologists whose saloon investigations offer a coherent sociological research paradigm that antedates the Chicago School. The activism of early sociologists exemplifies the characteristics of Michael Burawoy's recent call for public sociology. Yet the early sociologists failed to redeem the saloon amongst Progressives, who increasingly rallied around the National Anti–Saloon League and constitutional Prohibition. By only investigating alcohol in its public manifestations, sociologists failed to challenge the way the social problem was framed and may even have contributed to the stigmatization of the saloon. This voyeuristic opportunism has plagued the American tradition of urban ethnography, the ineffective legacy of which poses a challenge to a contemporary revival of public sociology.

scholarly journals Protection Against Labor Troubles

1986 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-165
Author(s):  
Herman Lebovics
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
French History ◽  
Foreign Competition ◽  
Economic Cycle ◽  
Economic Nationalism ◽  
Social Question ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
First Time

By introducing an economic cycle of a new sort in Europe the Great Depression of 1873–96 encouraged the alignment of iron and textile industrialists’ interests with those of the great growers and livestock raisers. The French version, perhaps best labelled the alliance of cotton and wheat, is the concern here, for since profits and sales for both agriculture and industry traced parallel curves, for the first time in French history, representatives of these interests could unite and press the new republican leadership for common relief against depression and intensifying foreign competition. They were also impelled to unite in the face of the growing militancy of the new working class emerging in the provinces. Their spokesmen of the Association de l'Industrie Française and the associated Société des Agriculteurs addressed themselves to the new incarnation of the social question by offering protective tariffs – and protected jobs and pay checks – to workers striking more frequently and organizing more solidly than ever before. Their slogan was “the protection of national labor”. Having no reforms to offer, the Opportunist republicans and their ex-monarchist allies offered the emergent industrial working class safe incomes and economic nationalism.

Coercion and Choice

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-507
Author(s):  
Elisa Camiscioli
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
White Slavery ◽  
Economic Vulnerability ◽  
Police Investigations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Working Class Women

Abstract This article employs police investigations of the “traffic in women” between France and Argentina in the first three decades of the twentieth century to highlight the multiple narratives in play when contemporaries talked about trafficking and relayed their experiences of it. While the dominant narrative of “white slavery” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries emphasized coercion, sexual exploitation, and victimization, many young working-class women described the journey to Argentina in terms of perceived opportunity, whether for money, travel, or freedom. This is not to downplay the social and economic vulnerability of these women and the precarious lives they led in French and Argentine cities. Instead, the article emphasizes the inadequacy of many existing frameworks for discussing sex trafficking, and prostitution more generally, as they rely too heavily on a stark division between coercion and choice. Cet article repose sur une analyse d'enquêtes de police portant sur la « traite des femmes » entre la France et l'Argentine durant le premier tiers du vingtième siècle. Il met l'accent sur la multiplicité des discours évoquant la traite, et l'expérience des femmes impliquées. Si, à la fin du dix-neuvième et au début du vingtième siècle, le discours dominant à propos de la « traite des blanches » souligne la coercition, l'exploitation sexuelle et la victimisation, de nombreuses femmes appartenant à la classe ouvrière décrivent leur périple en Argentine comme une opportunité de gagner plus d'argent, de voyager, ou de saisir leur liberté. Cet article ne vise cependant à minimiser ni le rôle de la vulnérabilité économique et sociale de ces femmes, ni leur vie précaire dans les villes de France et d'Argentine. Il cherche plutôt à mettre en évidence le caractère inadapté des différents paradigmes existants pour aborder le sujet du trafic sexuel, et plus généralement de la prostitution, ainsi que la manière dont ces paradigmes reposent sur une division trop marquée entre le choix et la contrainte.

The Ideal Christmas Dinner

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
cathy kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
First Time ◽  
Twentieth Century America ◽  
The Ideal

Christmas dinner emerged for the first time as an important and distinctive meal in mid-nineteenth century America, fueled by changing attitudes towards the Christmas holiday, changing meal patterns, and the need to unify Americans after the Civil War and to assimilate waves of immigrants. Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol provided an ideal template for meals centering on turkey and plum pudding, and that model has continued to inform many middle and working class tables. But by the end of the nineteenth century, cookery writers for the more affluent market began to disdain turkey at Christmas, and the uniform tapestry of Christmas foods began to unravel. Christmas dinner in twentieth-century America became more a statement of class than of national identity.

THE ANXIETIES OF TIME IN THE SOCIAL LYRICS OF KYAZIM MECHIEV

Kavkazologiya ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 181-193
Author(s):  
T.Sh. BITTIROVA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
First Time

This article aims to determine the place of the topic of social justice in the work of the classic of Karachai-Balkarian literature Kyazim Mechiev and the forms of its artistic embodiment. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time the poet's social lyrics are viewed in a broad historical context, in relation to the chronotope. The results obtained showed the scale of the poet's thinking, his sensitivity to historical and political transformations in the life of highland society. The work establishes how the events of the early twentieth century are refracted through the author's worldview and what place the theme of social protest occupies in the poetic heritage of the classic of Karachai-Balkarian literature K.B. Mechiev. Analyzed the poems of K. Mechiev, dedicated to the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary events, the civil war, their accordance to historical realities. The article reveals the depth and scale of reflection of the challenges of the time in the poet's work, his pain, despair and hope.

Divided Households

1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-398
Author(s):  
Kathryn M. Neckerman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Extended Families ◽  
Kin Relations ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Extended Households ◽  
Economic Motives

The structure of the extended family is often described as a strategy for coping with poverty, unemployment, or migration (Agresti 1979). Whether extended kin relations are thought to be short-term and calculative (Anderson 1971) or bound by ties of reciprocity (Hareven 1982), the extended household itself is assumed to be adaptive to the material conditions under which working-class families live. This characterization is supported by studies of the present-day poor (Angel and Tienda 1982; Stack 1974; Stern 1993). Although Ruggles (1987) questions the importance of economic motives for nineteenth-century extended families, he suggests that by the early twentieth century there is evidence that extended households were increasingly strategic.

Prehistory and its perception in a Melanesian Archipelago: the New Caledonia example

Antiquity ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 77 (297) ◽  
pp. 505-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Sand ◽  
Jacques Bolé ◽  
André Ouetcho
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Field Data ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Strategies ◽  
Double Impact

What were the social structures of prehistoric Melanesia really like – and how did they evolve? This study of the archaeology of New Caledonia shows how the west has had a double impact on its prehistory. First, explorers altered the social structure by their arrival and the introduction of western diseases, and then anthropologists created an image of communities which were ancient, simple and static. New archaeological field data by contrast is mapping nearly 3000 pre-European years of occupation which was marked by dynamic social and cultural change involving sophisticated economic strategies. The evidence suggests that the European anthropologists of the twentieth century were actually interpreting the social effects of the European explorers of the nineteenth century. The new archaeological model is providing food for thought for the modern multi-cultural country of New Caledonia.

Peasant Migration and the Russian Working Class: Moscow at the End of the Nineteenth Century

Slavic Review ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 652-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Eugene Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Legal Obligation ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Factory Workers ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Village ◽  
The City

Almost a hundred years have elapsed since Russian Marxists and Populists began their polemics over the social effects of industrialization, and seven decades have gone by since Bolsheviks and Mensheviks first clashed over the “ripeness” or maturity of the Russian working class. Nevertheless, debate continues to this day over the outlook of the prerevolutionary Russian working class.No one disputes the fact that in the decades before 1917 a majority— albeit a shrinking proportion—of factory workers came from the peasant estate (soslovie). Before the Stolypin legislation of 1906, a peasant who moved to the city or factory found it almost impossible to end his legal obligation to the village commune where he was born, and roughly 90 percent of the industrial workers in the city of Moscow were legally peasants. The question remains, however, whether the ties imposed by the passport system and obligatory land allotments were an empty formality: Were the “peasants“ in Russian factories peasants in name only? How did the move to the cities and factories affect their ideas, values, or behavior ?

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