Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, C.1780-1840

ISBN-13: 9780521477109 / Angielski / Miękka / 1995 / 444 str.

Dror Wahrman

Opis

This book explores the origins of the influential view of modern society that places a "middle class" at its center, as it developed in Britain during the so-called "Industrial Revolution." Using a wider variety of sources and closer methods of textual analysis than previous studies of languages of class, the author develops a nuanced model for the interplay of social reality and social language. He demonstrates that a "middle class"-based language of social description did not simply reflect changes in social structure, but was rather the outcome of political circumstances in a period of radical political change.

Recenzje

'For all those interested in the question whether class is best seen as a category of social and economic history or as an artefact of political discourse, Imagining the Middle Class is essential - and fascinating - reading.' Gareth Stedman Jones, King's College, Cambridge

Spis treści

1. Imagining the 'middle class': an introduction; Part I. Against the Tide: Prelude to the 1790s: was the French Revolution a 'bourgeois revolution'?; 2. The uses of 'middle class' language in the 1790s; 3. Friends and foes of the 'middle class': the dialogic imagination; 4. The political differentiation of social language: the debate on the triple assessment; Postlude to the 1790s: the uses of 'bourgeois revolution'; Part II. The Tug of War: 5. Taming the 'middle class'; 6. The tug of war and its resolution; Part III. With the Tide: 7. The social construction of the middle class; 8. The parallels across the Channel: a French aside; 9. The debates on the Reform Bill: bowing to a new representation of the 'middle class'; 10. Inventing the ever-rising 'middle class': the aftermath of 1832; 11. 1832 and the 'middle class' conquest of the 'private sphere'; Epilogue.