Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History 1832-1982

ISBN-13: 9780521276313 / Angielski / Miękka / 1984 / 272 str.

Gareth Stedman-Jones; Gareth Stedman Jones

Opis

This collection of essays by Gareth Stedman Jones proposes a different way of seeing both historians' analytical conceptions of 'class', and the actual manifestation of class in the history of English politics and English culture since the 1830s. As the progenitor of the first generally acknowledged working-class movement, the English working class provided the initial empirical basis for not only the original Marxist theory of modern industry and proletarian revolution, but also subsequent historians' reactions against, or adaptations of, the Marxist theory of class. In Languages of Class Gareth Stedman Jones draws a distinction between two conceptions of class: the everyday and commonplace perception of its pervasiveness in England, and the Marxist idea of its revolutionary significance. He proceeds to challenge the predominant conceptions of the meaning and development of 'class consciousness' by stressing the political and discursive conditions in which particular languages appeared and receded. Among the themes of individual essays in the book are a rethinking of 'the making of the English working class' and the phenomenon of Chartism, a novel exploration of the formation and components of 'working-class culture', and, in the light of these, a new approach to understanding the history of the Labour Party.

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Class struggle and the industrial revolution; 2. Class expression versus social control? A critique of recent trends in the social history of 'leisure'; 3. Rethinking Chartism; 4. Working-class culture and working-class politics in London, 1870–1900: notes on the remaking of a working class; 5. Why is the Labour Party in a mess?; Index.