scholarly journals The Making of a Nineteenth-Century Profession: Shipmasters and the British Shipping Industry

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Burton

Abstract During the second half of the nineteenth century, the occupation of shipmaster was transformed. It was remade as a profession ofandfor the middle class. This development followed from the specialization and division of labour in the shipping industry, and reflected the social divisions of an increasingly class-stratified society. The thesis advanced in this paper assigns a key role in this process to the dynamic of industrial capitalism. The paper argues that class-specific recruitment to the shipmaster's occupation put the values of the professional middle classes to the service of shipowners in the extension of their control over labour. The study examines several facets of this transformation: the state's contribution in the abandonment of mercantilist regulation of maritime labour and the introduction of masters' and mates' certificates of competency in the midnineteenth century; the role of the technological change from sail to steam on the nature and organization of the workforce; the owners' efforts to reduce the shipmaster to a wage employee whose self-interests and self-image made him distinctfrom other workers; and the structural changes in both the shipping industry and the systems of recruitment and training which ensured that the profession of shipmaster would gradually emerge as a middle-class preserve. The remaking of the profession of shipmaster illuminates the larger processes of social differentiation and cultural/ideological production associated with the division and specialization of labour in Victorian Britain. Examining this case in detail advances our understanding of class division in industrial society, particularly as it relates to the important, but singularly neglected, middle-managment professions.

Author(s):  
Ushashi Dasgupta

This book explores the significance of rental culture in Charles Dickens’s fiction and journalism. It reveals tenancy, or the leasing of real estate in exchange for money, to be a governing force in everyday life in the nineteenth century. It casts a light into back attics and landladies’ parlours, and follows a host of characters—from slum landlords exploiting their tenants, to pairs of friends deciding to live together and share the rent. In this period, tenancy shaped individuals, structured communities, and fascinated writers. The vast majority of London’s population had an immediate economic relationship with the houses and rooms they inhabited, and Dickens was highly attuned to the social, psychological, and imaginative corollaries of this phenomenon. He may have been read as an overwhelming proponent of middle-class domestic ideology, but if we look closely, we see that his fictional universe is a dense network of rented spaces. He is comfortable in what he calls the ‘lodger world’, and he locates versions of home in a multitude of unlikely places. These are not mere settings, waiting to be recreated faithfully; rented space does not simply provide a backdrop for incident in the nineteenth-century novel. Instead, it plays an important part in influencing what takes place. For Dickens, to write about tenancy can often mean to write about writing—character, authorship, and literary collaboration. More than anything, he celebrates the fact that unassuming houses brim with narrative potential: comedies, romances, mysteries, and comings-of-age take place behind their doors.


Author(s):  
John Evelev

Picturesque aesthetics and an increased focus on men’s domestic life shaped the rapid growth of the suburbs in the mid-nineteenth century, one of the most consequential reconfigurations of American understandings of national space. This suburban development had its own popular literary genre in the period, the country book. Although the country book is now largely forgotten and many of its more prominent examples have lapsed into obscurity, canonical writers such as Herman Melville wrote in the genre, and Thoreau’s Walden can also be understood in the context of this genre. The country book’s vision of the suburbs as a site of picturesque male domesticity that allowed for both privacy and homosocial intimacy countered a dominant vision of urban masculinity as public, individualistic, and competitive. Although the country book in general offers an idealized vision of male suburban life, individual texts also often feature deferrals, debility, and even death that threaten both male privacy and intimacy. The country book promoted the imaginative investments in suburban development at the same time that it hinted at the contradictions at the heart of middle-class masculine identity that foreclosed on that dream. In this way, as with the park movement texts discussed in Chapter 3, the country books that supported mid-nineteenth-century suburban development expressed both the social aspirations and fears of bourgeois men.


1996 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Franz ◽  
Wernhard Möschel ◽  
Karl-Heinz Paqué

AbstractThe economic policy forum discusses the question of whether the German system of autonomous wage bargaining is still up-to-date. Wolfgang Franz considers two aspects. First, he examines to what extend the existing unemployment rate can be reduced by wage policy. Due to certain forms of unemployment, this can be done only partly by lower real wages. In addition, he shows that it can be rational for employees as well as for employers to agree on wages which are higher than the equilibrium wage. In the second part, he considers the question of whether centralised or decentralised negotiations over wages are more likely to solve the problem of unemployment. Arguments in favour of both options can be found. The paper concludes with some suggestions to make collective agreements more flexible.Wernhard Möschel compares the German system of autonomous wage bargaining with a cartel agreement which results in prices higher than the equilibrium price. Moreover, the globalisation of markets and new orientations in the international division of labour require more flexible solutions. However, the autonomous wage bargaining is a constitutional right which is rather unlikely to be changed. An agreement by the social partners on common measures such as setting minimum wages lower than the equilibrium wage is also not very likely. The paper thus suggests that employers may undertake unilateral actions such as restructuring their associations. This should be accompanied by specific government measures.Karl-Heinz Paqué argues that countries with a system of autonomous wage bargaining are characterised by persisting unemployment. This characteristic is the result of both structural changes of the economy and its consequences for the market value of labour. Two mechanisms exist in order to adopt to the different market conditions: a flexibilisation of the agreed wage rate structure or a general restraint in wage bargaining. However, both mechanisms have failed so far due to the lack of willingness by the social partners. Competition by outsiders on the labour market and a political “alliance for employment” could increase employment while keeping the system of autonomous wage bargaining. The paper concludes with stating that in the near future unemployment will be unavoidable.


1995 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Walsh

Among the churches of nineteenth-century Britain, the Anglican Church held a unique, and somewhat embarrassing, position. It was, of course, the established Church of England—an arm of the state, assigned the honor and duty of serving as the focus and guide of the nation's spiritual life. Its position was embarrassing by the mid-nineteenth century because it obviously was not fulfilling its ostensible role. The increasingly secular nature of industrial society on the one hand, and the Christian challenge of Nonconformity on the other, cost the Church membership among all classes of people. That loss significantly undermined the Anglican claim that the established Church served the religious needs of the whole nation, and it led to persistent Nonconformist cries for disestablishment. Furthermore, Christianity's appeal to its traditional following, the poor and lowly, seemed to evaporate in the industrial environment of the Victorian city. Not only did typical urban workers not go to church (or chapel, for that matter), they were generally rather hostile to organized religion and particularly to the Anglican Church. In the Church of governors and employers, where services and sermons often could appeal only to the educated, workers felt, not unjustly, uncomfortable and unwelcome.There were several internal impediments to increasing the popularity (and thereby the social influence) of the Anglican Church, not the least of which was the dominant theology of early Victorian England. During what Boyd Hilton has called the “Age of Atonement” (roughly the first half of the nineteenth century), evangelical thought both shaped and justified the economic and social assumptions which underlay the policies of competitive capitalism.


2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-166
Author(s):  
Velenczei Attila ◽  
Kovács Árpád ◽  
Szabó Tamás

Social and Structural Changes in Hungarian Talent Care: The case of a sports clubSociology of sport lacks information on the proper demographic description of athletes who are selected into a national sport talent care program. Therefore, the current study attempted to fill the gap in this area. Research from abroad has demonstrated that whilst sport appears to be a democratic social environment, the initial opportunities are not exactly equal. The majority of elite athletes come from the upper-middle class rather than the lower social classes (Coakley 1997, Eitzen & Sage 1997). The objective of the current study was to identify the social status of young athletes, from the Central School of Sports in Budapest, who took part in a Hungarian government-sponsored national sports talent care program. Another objective of the study was to assess possible changes on the social ladder with time. We were able to address the second issue through the examination of data collected 30 years ago in the same milieu and to compare it - with certain precautions - with a similar dataset obtained in the course of the current work. The interpretation of the data was based on the statistical analysis of the examined periods. The main findings indicate that most athletes in the Central School of Sports come from an upper-middle class social background, but there were some differences in the various types of sport. For example, pentathletes and water polo players come from the most advantaged social class. It appears then, that membership in a given social class is more important than the fair skill-based selection process.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-169
Author(s):  
Mikołaj Tarkowski

The article is devoted to the representative system, which was one of the elements of the social and political thought of the Russian philosopher Boris Chicherin, who worked in the second half of the nineteenth century. The author analyzes the structure of national representation and the factors which – according to Boris Chicherin – weakened or strengthened the system. In this article, the author emphasizes the role of different factors: social groups (aristocracy, middle class), political liberty and property, that were important for the formation of representative institutions. The analysis of the representative system would not be possible without presenting the basic outline of the conservative-liberal philosophy of the Russian thinker.


Author(s):  
Matthew P. Llewellyn ◽  
John Gleaves

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to present a richly contextualized global history of the role of Olympic amateurism, from Coubertin's Olympic revival in 1894 through the presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch and the advent of open professionalism during the late 1980s and 1990s. The social origins of amateurism sprung to life not from ancient Greece, but from Victorian Britain, where an upper-middle-class desire to set themselves apart from the perceived morally corrupt working classes employed amateurism as a legitimating ideology for elitist sporting preserves. The participatory and universal growth of the Olympic Games in the ensuing decades precipitated the emergence of political and commercial forces within the Olympic arena. The encroachment of governments eager to exploit the games for propaganda rewards, as well as commercial interests seeking to peddle products stamped with Olympic insignia, sullied the avowed sanctity of Olympic amateurism.


1991 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 596-617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart J. Brown

During the final months of the First World War, the General Assemblies of the two major Presbyterian Churches in Scotland - the established Church of Scotland and the voluntary United Free Church - committed themselves to work for the thorough re- construction of Scottish society. Church leaders promised to work for a new Christian commonwealth, ending the social divisions and class hatred that had plagued pre-war Scottish industrial society. Bound together through the shared sacrifice of the war, the Scottish people would be brought back to the social teachings of Christianity and strive together to realise the Kingdom of God. The Churches would end their deference to the laws of nineteenth-century political economy, with their emphasis on individualism, self-interest and competition, and embrace new impera- tives of collective responsibility and co-operation. Along with the healing of social divisions, church leaders also pledged to end the ecclesiastical divisions in Scottish Presbyterianism. The final months of the war brought a revival of the pre-war movement to unite the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church into a single National Church, and Scottish ecclesiastical leaders held forth to a weary nation the vision of a united National Church leading a covenanted Christian commonwealth in pursuit of social justice and harmony.


Prospects ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 143-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Kasson

This essay represents an effort to understand how members of the middle class adjusted to the emergent urban-industrial order in the nineteenth century. In particular, I wish to inquire into what changes in social behavior, in emotional regulation, ultimately in identity this order entailed. I shall pursue these issues through the study of what may at first appear an unlikely source: the multitude of American etiquette manuals published between 1830 and 1910. Such materials can substantially enlarge our understanding of how behavior and identity were shaped and the cultural and social orders adjusted and maintained, as middle-class Americans encountered the momentous changes of a new urban-industrial society. This essay will concentrate on urban experience because here the problems of adjustment were most intense; but I would argue that as the process of capitalist development and modernization advanced, the styles of life and modes of consciousness first developed in cities came to a large extent to dominate the nation as a whole.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document