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Luxury and labour : ideas of labouring-class consumption in eighteenth-century England
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White, Jonathan (2001) Luxury and labour : ideas of labouring-class consumption in eighteenth-century England. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1374340~S1
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 (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor |
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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 | ||||
Official Date: | April 2001 | ||||
Dates: |
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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 |
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