Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)

O artigo aborda o papel e o lugar de Harriet Martineau na história da Sociologia, sua vida, obras e contribuições para o nascimento desta Ciência da Sociedade que, em sua época, estava se descolando do plano da Filosofia. Além disso, discute seu legado e inicia um diálogo entre a obra martineauniana e o cânone sociológico. Por fim, discorre sobre temas centrais para a autora e conclui ser necessária uma retomada persistente de uma agenda de pesquisa sobre Harriet Martineau e seus estudos sociais, face à institucionalização e história da Sociologia. O artigo reitera que o apagamento das clássicas da Sociologia é uma forma de violência de gênero e violência epistemológica que precisa ser combatida.

‘Learning the Lakes’: Harriet Martineau's A Complete Guide to the English Lakes and Pedestrian Authority

In 1845 Harriet Martineau experienced a rapid recovery from a debilitating but mysterious illness that had kept her house-bound for half a decade. She measured her increasing health by the miles she was able to walk, and rapidly found herself capable of considerable distances. Shortly after she moved to the Lake District. Here she set about consolidating her recovery and becoming acquainted with her new home by walking hundreds of miles across the whole area. These walks would be the basis for her guides to the Lakes, first a series of essays published in ‘A Year at Ambleside’ in 1850, then A Complete Guide to the English Lakes in 1855. This essay places Martineau's Lakeland guides in the broader context of nineteenth-century tourism, especially the picturesque guidebooks that recent scholarship has demonstrated both responded to and shaped the way visitors understood the area. Martineau's guides, unusual for being female-authored, offer, I argue, suggestive ways of further developing our understanding of the relationship between genre, place and literary authority during the mid-century Lakeland tourist boom.