Flame, Michael John (1997) 'All the common rules of social life' : the reconstruction of social and political identities by the Dorset Gentry, c.1790-c.1834. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This case-history explores the governing purposes of the Dorset gentry from the early 1790's until the mid 1830's. It is not a conventional political and administrative history. It seeks rather to reveal the gentry's governing purposes through the processes and contexts of their construction of social and political identities. It takes as its starting point the idea of the materiality of language itself The idea that language does not reflect or refer to a pre-existing anterior reality but creates meaning by distinguishing explicitly or implicitly what something is from what it is not. This case-history explores the gentry's construction of the terms of an overarching discourse I have called the 'common rules of social life'. In particular the evolving narrative terms of patriarchal oeconomy, political economy and paternalism. It does so to answer the question: 'By what means and for what purposes did this form of discourse and its narrative traditions become established by the gentry to prevail at this time in the past? ' The answers are found in the ways and the contexts in which the gentry used this discourse. First, how did the gentry exercise their power so that this discourse might come into being. Here the structures and institutions of the Commission of the Peace are significant. In particular the ways in which power was monopolised and used by a small fraction of active magistrates. This fraction was active in the committees of the Commission of the Peace and at quarter and petty sessions. Their power came to be deployed to reform county government and poor relief to impose 'natural' moral market relations on Dorset society. Second, how was the discourse and its constituent elements exercised by the gentry to constitute identities, and how did they determine how people thought and acted? Here the case-history reveals the gentry's construction of identities for Dorset, the parish and the poor. In particular the construction of an identity of Dorset as an arena of natural economic laws and moral endeavour. These identities were taught to rich and poor alike as part of the gentry's purpose to remoralise Dorset society.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Gentry -- Great Britain -- Dorset -- History -- 18th century, Gentry -- Great Britain -- Dorset -- History -- 19th century, Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 18th century, Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century, English language -- Discourse analysis, Local government -- Great Britain -- Dorset -- History -- 18th century, Local government -- Great Britain -- Dorset -- History -- 19th century
Date:	November 1997
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Reid, Fred
Sponsors:	Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC)
Extent:	i, 395 p.
Language:	eng
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/3982

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