UNSPECIFIED (1996) The great chain of buying: Medical advertisement, the Bourgeois public sphere, and the origins of the French Revolution. [Journal Item]

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Abstract

Colin Jones uses advertiser-newssheets known as the Affiches to explore the worlds of medical consumerism and entrepreneurism in the last decades of the ancien regime. In a clever and compelling analysis, he describes a buoyant market for health goods and services that was exploited not only by the denizens of a Parisian ''Quack Street'' but also by individuals well ensconced within the ancien regime's medical establishment. Jones's reading of these newssheets leads him to argue that the prerevolutionary press served as a vehicle for consumer and entrepreneur self-awareness. He finds in their pages a nascent political consciousness that raises questions about the idea of a Habermasian ''bourgeois public sphere.'' Jones contends that the newssheets reveal a public sphere that connects economic and cultural developments in ways that are more in keeping with Habermas's original formulation than some recent usages of the German thinker's concept. By arguing for the strong market buoyancy of the ancien regime economy, the cultural dynamism of a significant sector of the professional bourgeoisie, and the political temper of the prerevolutionary press, Jones directly challenges revisionist thinking about the origins of the French Revolution.

Item Type:	Journal Item
Subjects:	D History General and Old World
Journal or Publication Title:	AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
Publisher:	AMER HISTORICAL REVIEW
ISSN:	0002-8762
Date:	February 1996
Volume:	101
Number:	1
Number of Pages:	29
Page Range:	13-&
Publication Status:	Published
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/19011

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