Fighting Words : Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England / Marc W. Steinberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Steinberg, Marc W., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social conflict--England--History--19th century.

Social conflict.

Working class--England--History--19th century.

Working class.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (307 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

A key component of social life, discourse mediates the processes of class formation and social conflict. Drawing on dialogic theory and building on the work of E. P. Thompson, Marc W. Steinberg argues for the importance of incorporating discursive analysis into the historical reconstruction of class experience. Amending models of collective action, he offers new insights on how discourse shapes the dynamics of popular protest. To support his thesis, he presents studies of two English trade groups in the 1820s: cotton spinners from Lancashire factory towns and London silk weavers.For each case, Steinberg closely examines the labor process, industrial organization, social life, community politics, discursive struggles, and collective actions. By describing how workers shared experiences of exploitation and oppression in their daily lives, he shows how discourses of contention were products of struggle and how they framed possibilities for collective action. Embracing work in literary theory, sociocultural psychology, and cultural studies, Fighting Words claims a middle ground between postmodern and materialist analyses.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Tables

Preface

Abbreviations

PRELIMINARIES

Introduction: Theoretical and Historiographical Considerations

1. Patterns of English Labor Contention in the Early Nineteenth Century

2. A Tale of Two Areas

SPITALFIELDS

3. The Silk Trade: Memory, Market, and Means of Production

4. Local Political Culture: From Reciprocity to Hegemony

5. The Repeal of the Spitalfields Acts

6. Post-Repeal Collective Actions: Battling the Hydra of Degradation

ASHTON-STALYBRIDGE

7. King Cotton: Markets, Mills, and Mechanics

8. Class Structure, Class Cultures, and Social Lives

9. Local Political Culture: The Stranglehold of Wealth

10. The Vitriol of Conflict

11. Class War: The Spinners' Strikes of 1830 -1831

12. Class Formation, Collective Action, and the Role of Discourse

Appendix 1. Spitalfields weavers' collective actions, c. 1825-1831

Appendix 2. Ashton and Stalybridge spinners' collective actions, April 1830-January 1831

References

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-276) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 20. Sep 2019)

ISBN:

1-5017-1783-9

OCLC:

1080550106