White, Jonathan, 1973- (2001) Luxury and labour : ideas of labouring-class consumption in eighteenth-century England. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis examines changing ideas of labouring-class consumption in eighteenthcentury England. Recent social and economic history has rewritten eighteenthcentury England in terms of the formation of a commercial society. Against this backdrop, intellectual and cultural historians have uncovered the formation of concepts and practices appropriate for a civilised commercial society. Yet, in spite of the growing evidence that they were increasingly participating in the developing world of goods, little work has focused on the public discussion of the labouring classes' consumer desires. The study is based on the close analysis of pamphlet literature discussing the labouring classes. It tracks the ideas through which the propertied classes viewed labouring-class consumption and attempted to determine the exact status and function of their desires in a commercial society. From within an early eighteenth-century position which viewed the appetites of the poor as being a species of luxury, the thesis tracks the emergence of categories and concepts that made it possible to recognise the labouring classes' consumer desires as part of commercial society's progressive development. In the later years of the century, this optimism faded as the interests of capital accumulation and the demands of labourers were increasingly recognised to be contradictory. Ultimately, the thesis argues that we cannot understand the ideological representation of the needs and desires of the poor without also tracing the changing conceptualisation of their labour, in the same way that we cannot understand the formation of a commercial society without reference to proletarianisation and the attack on customary culture. The coalescing practices of a commercial society, and their ideological expression, rested upon the ever greater alienation of the labouring classes, from their human needs and powers.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Consumption (Economics) -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century, Working class -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century, Low-income consumers -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century, Great Britain -- Economic conditions -- 18th century
Date:	April 2001
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Berg, Maxine, 1950-
Sponsors:	Arts and Humanities Research Board (Great Britain) (AHRB) ; University of London. Institute of Historical Research ; University of Warwick
Extent:	v, 381 leaves
Language:	eng
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/36401

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