Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England

Marc W. Steinberg

Published by Cornell University Press 1999

Fighting Words

Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England

Marc W. Steinberg

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501717833

Overview
Contents

About this book

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...

Author / Editor information

Marc W. Steinberg is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Smith College.

Reviews

Miles Taylor:

Sophisticated.... The author argues his case with passion.

Colin Barker:

Marc Steinberg has written a splendid and important book. It is rich, argumentative, and necessary.... Steinberg has opened a door to a new landscape of questions, where social movement scholars will wander in future with excitement and with new puzzles.

William A. Gamson:

In the end, this is a deeply satisfying book. The arid and antiquated debates between materialist and idealist approaches disappear in a perspective that examines how material conditions and their discursive representations interact in a dynamic system of social life. The social life is brought alive in the concrete, historically embedded history of that time and place. What more could one ask?

Anna Clark, University of North Carolina, Charlotte:

Fighting Words represents an original and important contribution to debates about class in the nineteenth century and to the theoretical debates currently raging between those with materialist and linguistic perspectives.

An important new addition to the literature on work, class, and economic and social history.

Michael Huberman, Dept. of History, University of Montreal:

An ambitious book....well presented and documented....

Michael Dintenfass:

The inversion of the textual and the structural is the predominant tendency of the powerful school of social history and historical sociology whose impressive dimensions and stimulating factiousness can be appreciated in Steinberg's excellent bibliography. Fighting Words reveals its author to be one of the most accomplished students of this academy.

Philip Harling:

Steinberg effectively carries out the broadest task that he sets for himself in this perceptive and carefully researched book: to show the ways in which material and discursive processes work together in the shaping of consciousness.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Tables Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xvii
PRELIMINARIES
Introduction: Theoretical and Historiographical Considerations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Patterns of English Labor Contention in the Early Nineteenth Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
2. A Tale of Two Areas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	36
SPITALFIELDS
3. The Silk Trade: Memory, Market, and Means of Production Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
4. Local Political Culture: From Reciprocity to Hegemony Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
5. The Repeal of the Spitalfields Acts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
6. Post-Repeal Collective Actions: Battling the Hydra of Degradation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
ASHTON-STALYBRIDGE
7. King Cotton: Markets, Mills, and Mechanics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
8. Class Structure, Class Cultures, and Social Lives Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151
9. Local Political Culture: The Stranglehold of Wealth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
10. The Vitriol of Conflict Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
11. Class War: The Spinners' Strikes of 1830 —1831 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
12. Class Formation, Collective Action, and the Role of Discourse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Appendix 1. Spitalfields weavers' collective actions, c. 1825-1831 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Appendix 2. Ashton and Stalybridge spinners' collective actions, April 1830–January 1831 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 312
Illustrations
- Other: 7 tables
Keywords: British History; History

eBook

Published: May 31, 2018
ISBN: 9781501717833