Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Introduction: socialism and co-operation in Britain, 1850-1918 -- Part 1 Redefining socialism -- 1 "Labour and the Poor", Fraser's Magazine, January 1850, 13-18. -- 2 Report of the 2nd Co-operative Conference held at Manchester . . . 1853 (London: E. Lumley, 1853), 3-7. -- 3 Life and Last days of Robert Owen, of New Lanark (London: Holyoake & Co., 1859), 17-24. -- 4 "Industrial Co-operation", Fortnightly Review, January 1866, 479-488, 491-493, 497-499. -- 5 "The Land! The Land!", Co-operative News, 5 October 1872, 505-506.

This second volume considers various socialist impulses and developments after the collapse of the Owenite movement in Britain. Interventions by some leading Christian Socialists will illuminate one important tendency; publications by O'Brien another less vital strand. Central to this volume, however, will be far less well-known pamphlets, book extracts and articles in the periodical press by national and local co-operative writers and activists, who appropriated and transformed the legacy of utopian socialism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Old Owenites are naturally included, though more emphasis is given to reworkings by a younger generation of co-operators, now mostly forgotten. The volume will also cover relationships and controversies between co-operators and late nineteenth century state socialists, who attempted to portray the co-operative movement as merely diversionary for the working class.

Nineteenth-century England witnessed the birth of capitalist consumerism. Early department stores, shopping arcades and provision shops of all kinds proliferated from the start of the Victorian period, testimony to greater diffusion of consumer goods. However, while the better off enjoyed having more material things, masses of the population were wanting even the basic necessities of life during the 'Hungry Forties' and well beyond. Based on a wealth of contemporary evidence and adopting an interdisciplinary approach, Wanting and having focuses particularly on the making of the working-class consumer in order to shed new light on key areas of major historical interest, including Chartism, the Anti-Corn Law League, the New Poor Law, popular liberalism and humanitarianism. It will appeal to scholars and general readers interested in the origins and significance of consumerism across a range of disciplines, including social and cultural history, literary studies, historical sociology and politics

Abstract Over the past decade historians have paid increasing attention to the role of language. Under the influence of that disparate body of work referred to as "postmodernism ", some now argue for the determining nature of language rather than social reality. This article, which explores the debate on co-operation and the co-operative movement in British culture before 1914, stresses instead the indissoluble connection between language and historical reality. It is argued that the contests over the keyword co-operation highlight the fragility of bourgeois hegemony and suggests that the ability of subaltern groups to speak with assurance depended intimately upon the stability and progress of working-class association.

It is commonly accepted that the consumer is now centre stage in modern Britain, rather than the worker or producer. Consumer choice is widely regarded as the major source of self-definition and identity rather than productive activity. Politicians vie with each other to fashion their appeal to 'citizen-consumers'. When and how did these profound changes occur? Which historical alternatives were pushed to the margins in the process? In what ways did the everyday consumer practices and forms of consumer organising adopted by both middle and working-class men and women shape the outcomes? This study of the making of consumer culture in Britain since 1800 explores these questions and introduces students to the major historical debates in this vibrant field. It suggests that the consumer culture that emerged during this period was shaped as much by political relationships as it was by economic and social factors