Chartism in 1848: Reflections on a Non-Revolution

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Weisser
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Standard Interpretation ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Social Scale ◽  
The Social ◽  
Great Confidence ◽  
Better Than

The standard interpretation of 1848 in Britain is that while Continental Europe reached a turning point and failed to turn, as the famous aphorism states, Britain reached its turning point in 1832, turned, and thus avoided revolution in that year of revolutions. The British middle classes, unlike their Continental counterparts, were loyal in 1848. They enjoyed a broader franchise, some reforming legislation already passed, and commitments to various welcome changes in the future made by diverse politicians. All of this gave the British middle classes great confidence in British institutions and their own future under them, as well as the belief that their country was fortunately different from all the other nations. Without the middle classes, the Chartists could have never succeeded with any kind of insurrection. So, while the capitals of Europe echoed with sounds of musketry and cannon, Britain was at peace because her Constitution was essentially better than anything that prevailed elsewhere.Modern historiography has done little to change this interpretation of 1848 that was first proclaimed by self-congratulatory and relieved Victorians. All the accounts stress the fortunate uniqueness of Britain and the key role of middle class loyalty. Priscilla Robertson wrote, “During the days of 1848, England stood apart, unshaken, apparently unshakable. Her reformers were already in power. …” In a recent study of the 1848 revolutions, Peter Stearns focuses on the ways the middle class abetted Continental revolutions at the same time that they were instrumental in preventing revolution in Britain. These are really restatements of Elie Halévy's classic explanation. While John Saville's treatment of 1848 differs from traditional accounts in several ways, particularly in stressing the vigor of the Chartist left's resistance after April 10, his explanation for the failure of revolution does not. He concludes that the British government could count on “whole-hearted support” much further down the social scale than could Continental governments. Moreover, despite all the newer research on political violence, crowds, and revolution, the standard interpretation of Britain's fate in 1848 remains: middle-class support for the regime was too strong while Chartist support for an insurrection was too weak.

Costruire per il ceto medio a Milano. Note sulla filiera imprenditoriale

TERRITORIO ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 88-94
Author(s):  
Luca Gaeta
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Property Market ◽  
High Concentration ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Construction Companies ◽  
Land Owners ◽  
The Social ◽  
City Construction ◽  
The City

The precise boundaries of the supply chain for the production of housing for the middle classes in Milan during the boom years are not clearly defined. And yet its activity is of crucial importance to an understanding of the social and tangible forms of the middle class city. Construction companies constituted the key link in relations between land owners, clients, architects and end users of the asset that is a home. This paper offers a provisional picture which documents the firms most active in the sector, the prevailing operating practices and two businessmen who were interviewed. The conclusions identify two lines for further research into the middle class city: the role of non-professional mediators in the property market and the high concentration of up-market new housing construction within the ‘cerchia dei bastioni' (inner part of the city).

Social Change, the Middle Class and the Emergence of ‘New Social Movements’: A Critical Analysis

1992 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Bagguley
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
New Social Movements ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Explanatory Factors ◽  
The Social

Most recent analyses of New Social Movements (NSMs) by British sociologists have concentrated on broad social changes or the middle classes as the key explanatory factors. This paper criticizes recent contributions to the analysis of NSMs which emphasize the development of ‘post-Fordism’ and ‘disorganized capitalism’, and recent attempts to understand NSMs as a reflection of ‘middle class’ interests or values. An alternative theoretical approach is outlined which places at the centre of the analysis the social relations in which NSMs are grounded, and which NSMs seek to transform. In this alternative account the middle classes play the role of ‘traditional intellectuals’, that is, they provide the key social resources for mobilization of NSMs and all social movements.

Realism and the Middle-Class Balancing Act

2019 ◽  
pp. 463-483
Author(s):  
Patrick Chura
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
William Dean Howells ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Social Scale ◽  
The Social ◽  
Realist Novels ◽  
The Subject

This chapter looks at the effects of capitalism and social stratification on notions of class identity in two groups of American realist novels. First, it analyzes a pair of literary responses by William Dean Howells to the 1886 Chicago Haymarket bombing as the lead-in to a discussion of realist works about voluntary downward class mobility or “vital contact.” With Howells’s A Hazard of New Fortunes as a reference point and paradigm, the chapter also explores the ideologies implicit in several novels about upward social mobility, noting how both groups of texts are ultimately guided by a genteel perspective positioned between dominant and subordinate classes. In similar ways, the novels treated in the chapter balance middle-class loyalties against identities from higher and lower on the social scale while sending messages of both complicity and subversion on the subject of capitalist class relations.

scholarly journals Resisting racial militarism: War, policing and the Black Panther Party

2021 ◽  
pp. 096701062199722 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nivi Manchanda ◽  
Chris Rossdale
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Black Panther Party ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Liberal Societies ◽  
Police Action ◽  
Black Panther

The past ten years have witnessed a revival in scholarship on militarism, through which scholars have used the concept to make sense of the embeddedness of warlike relations in contemporary liberal societies and to account for how the social, political and economic contours of those same societies are implicated in the legitimation and organization of political violence. However, a persistent shortcoming has been the secondary role of race and coloniality in these accounts. This article demonstrates how we might position racism and colonialism as integral to the functioning of contemporary militarism. Centring the thought and praxis of the US Black Panther Party, we argue that the particular analysis developed by Black Panther Party members, alongside their often-tense participation in the anti–Vietnam War movement, offers a strong reading of the racialized and colonial politics of militarism. In particular, we show how their analysis of the ghetto as a colonial space, their understanding of the police as an illegitimate army of occupation and, most importantly, Huey Newton’s concept of intercommunalism prefigure an understanding of militarism premised on the interconnections between racial capitalism, violent practices of un/bordering and the dissolving boundaries between war and police action.

scholarly journals Utz Richsner as Ideologue of the Schilling Uprising in Augsburg, 1524

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 91-116
Author(s):  
Robert J. Bast
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Close Collaboration ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Political Critique ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Reformation Movement ◽  
Previous Scholarship ◽  
Better Than

The 1524 uprising of evangelical artisans in Augsburg on behalf of the Franciscan preacher Johann Schilling counts as a turning point of the Reformation movement in that city. Relying on chronicles, government reports, and interrogation records, previous scholarship—none better than Jörg Rogge’s— has exposed the egalitarian theology and the social, economic, and political critique that united Schilling’s supporters. Yet the source of their ideology has always been unclear, for Schilling left behind neither treatises nor sermon transcriptions. That lacuna can be filled in part by re-examining sources largely overlooked: the four pamphlets published in 1524 by the weaver Ulrich (Utz) Richsner. A contextual reading of those pamphlets suggests a close collaboration between Schilling and Richsner, and a much more central role for Richsner in the movement around Schilling than has yet been recognized. La révolte en 1524 des artisans évangéliques d’Augsbourg pour le compte du prédicateur franciscain Johann Schilling est considérée comme un tournant dans le mouvement de réforme de cette ville. En se basant sur des chroniques, des rapports gouvernementaux et des minutes d’interrogatoires, la recherche — incluant les travaux inégalés de Jörg Rogge — a mis en lumière la théologie égalitaire ainsi que la critique sociale, économique et politique qui ont rassemblé les partisans de Schilling. Toutefois, les sources de cette pensée n’ont jamais été clarifiées, puisque Schilling n’a laissé ni écrits, ni transcriptions de sermons. Cette lacune peut être partiellement comblée en réexaminant des sources qui jusqu’à maintenant ont été négligées, c’est-à-dire les quatre libelles publiés en 1524 par le tisserand Ulrich (Utz) Richsner. Une lecture de ces textes dans leur contexte suggère une collaboration étroite entre Schilling et Richsner, ainsi qu’un rôle beaucoup plus important de Richsner dans le mouvement entourant le procès de Schilling, deux aspects méritant davantage notre attention.

Modernity and cultural citizenship in the Netherlands Indies: An illustrated hypothesis

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henk Schulte Nordholt
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Cultural Citizenship ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Netherlands Indies

Conventional historiography presumes a linear development from urbanisation, the rise of indigenous middle classes and the spread of modernity towards nationalism as the logical outcome of this process. This article aims to disconnect modernity from nationalism by focusing on the role of cultural citizens in the late colonial period for whom modernity was a desirable lifestyle. The extent to which their desires and the interests of the colonial regime coincided is illustrated by a variety of advertisements and school posters, which invited members of the indigenous urban middle class to become cultural citizens of the colony.

scholarly journals ‘Below English Line’: An ethnographic exploration of class and the English language in post-liberalization India

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 576-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
SAZANA JAYADEVA
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
English Language ◽  
Critical Element ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
And Performance ◽  
English Training

AbstractAnthropological studies of India's post-liberalization middle classes have tended to focus mainly on the role of consumption behaviour in the constitution of this class group. Building on these studies, and taking class as an object of ethnographic enquiry, I argue that, over the last 20 years, class dynamics in the country have been significantly altered by the unprecedentedly important and complex role that the English language has come to play in the production and reproduction of class. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork—conducted at commercial spoken-English training centres, schools, and corporate organizations in Bangalore—I analyse the processes by which this change in class dynamics has occurred, and how it is experienced on the ground. I demonstrate how, apart from being a valuable type of class cultural capital in its own right, proficiency in English has come to play a key role in the acquisition and performance of other important forms of capital associated with middle-class identity. As a result, being able to demonstrate proficiency in English has come to be experienced as a critical element in claiming and maintaining a space in the middle class, regardless of the other types of class cultural capital a person possesses.

The Middle Classes in Non-Western Societies: Inner Dynamics and Self-Assertion Perspective

2015 ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
A. Volodin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
The State ◽  
Western World ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
The Social

The present article focuses on the entity of middle classes in non-Western societies. The social formation of this kind is a relatively new phenomenon. As far as the modern Western societies are concerned, the social and political “materialization” of the above-mentioned entity has covered the period of no less than five centuries. The middle class in modern transitional societies began to emerge quite recently, with a few notable exceptions, after gaining sovereignty. That is one of the reasons why political systems in the non-Western world are mostly fragile and susceptible to instability of different kinds and origins. The so called “Arab awakening” gives a vivid example for the “underdevelopment” of indigenous middle classes. Whilst in the advanced industrial societies middle classes were (and are) the building blocks of social structure, economic and political development, elite recruitment, etc., among the non-Western societies (with the salient exception of the North-East Asia) the process of the middle class institutionalization as well as its economic and political self-assertion is still under way, somewhere at the initial stage of development. Comparing various non-Western societies from the middle class inner dynamics as well as self-assertion perspective, the author concludes that in the ultimate analysis, the maturity of this process is dependent on the pro-active and creative role of the State. The latter serves as the main driving force of the middle class consolidation and the instrument of political and economic systems for increasing and advancing development. The cases of India, on one hand, and Indonesia, on the other, demonstrate convincingly that the State remains the leading institution of the society able to accelerate economic growth and development, but also to stimulate the emergence and socio-political assertion of the middle class in contemporary non-Western world.

The Lady Lisle

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Ifill
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Child

The Lady Lisle features two near-identical boys from different ends of the social spectrum. The possibility of altering the development of their inborn natures through upbringing and education is explored and contested when the two are swapped by the villain, Major Varney. The upper-class child is sent to a middle-class school where he is raised in such a way as to negate detrimental qualities which initially seemed innate. Contrastingly, the lower-class child, James, impersonates the true heir and proves to be selfish, violent and eventually murderous, like his father. Yet it is never entirely clear to what extent James’s behaviour is due to heredity or to his emotionally abusive upbringing. A shift in narrative tone is identified which moves from making allowances for James due to ‘nurture’ towards castigating him as bad by ‘nature’. In this way Braddon raises questions about the malleability or fixity of the personality, about how we define, recognise and value naturalness, but ultimately combines the forces of education and hereditary degeneracy in order to segregate the lower classes, and to bring the morally upright middle classes together with the affluent upper classes.

Changing Student Populations in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Neville Bonner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Medical Education ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Medical Training ◽  
University Education ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Elite ◽  
Professional Class

By the turn of the twentieth century, the drive to make medicine more scientific and comprehensive and to limit its ranks to the well prepared had had a profound effect on student populations. Almost universally, students were now older, better educated, more schooled in science, less rowdy, and able to spend larger amounts of time and money in study than their counterparts in 1850 had been. Their ranks, now including a growing number of women, were also likely to include fewer representatives of working- and lower-middle-class families, especially in Britain and America, than a half-century before. Nations still differed, sometimes sharply, in their openness to students from different social classes. The relative openness of the German universities to the broad middle classes, as well as their inclusion of a small representation of “peasantry and artisans,” wrote Lord Bryce in 1885, was a sharp contrast with “the English failure to reach and serve all classes.” The burgeoning German enrollments, he noted, were owing to “a growing disposition on the part of mercantile men, and what may be called the lower professional class, to give their sons a university education.” More students by far from the farm and working classes of Germany, which accounted for nearly 14 percent of medical enrollment, he observed, were able to get an advanced education than were such students in England. A historic transformation in the social makeup of universities, according to historian Konrad Jarausch—from “traditional elite” to a “modern middle-class system”—was taking place in the latter nineteenth century. In France, rising standards in education, together with the abolition of the rank of officiers de santé—which for a century had opened medical training to the less affluent—were forcing medical education into a middle- class mold. In the United States, the steeply rising requirements in medicine, along with the closing of the least expensive schools, narrowed the social differences among medical students and brought sharp complaints from the less advantaged. The costs of medical education in some countries threatened to drive all but the most thriving of the middle classes from a chance to learn medicine.

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