Languages of Class

Abstract

This collection of essays by Gareth Stedman Jones proposes a different way of seeing both historians' analytical conceptions of 'class', and the actual manifestation of class in the history of English politics and English culture since the 1830s. As the progenitor of the first generally acknowledged working-class movement, the English working class provided the initial empirical basis for not only the original Marxist theory of modern industry and proletarian revolution, but also subsequent historians' reactions against, or adaptations of, the Marxist theory of class. In Languages of Class Gareth Stedman Jones draws a distinction between two conceptions of class: the everyday and commonplace perception of its pervasiveness in England, and the Marxist idea of its revolutionary significance. He proceeds to challenge the predominant conceptions of the meaning and development of 'class consciousness' by stressing the political and discursive conditions in which particular languages appeared and receded. Among the themes of individual essays in the book are a rethinking of 'the making of the English working class' and the phenomenon of Chartism, a novel exploration of the formation and components of 'working-class culture', and, in the light of these, a new approach to understanding the history of the Labour Party.

Civil society and the nature of urbanism: Britain, 1750–1850

“…17 Evidence suggests that the creation and sustaining of these primary networks tended to be a female activity and that men had a greater preference for organized activity such as trade unions, friendly societies, workingmen's clubs and football supporters groups. 18 Margaret Stacey's study of Banbury showed how associational culture provided a basis for a wide variety of social relationships and identities with overlapping networks serving recent migrants in slightly different ways to families who had been resident for some time. 19 In other words, the creation of and resort to an associational culture was a choice for the urbanite and not some sort of necessity of survival.…”

National Conceptions of the New Urban Poverty: Social Structural Change in Britain, France and the United States

“…In turn, sociological language that describes poverty actively shapes national policies and enters into the reality of class (cf. Stedman Jones, 1983).…”

Time, Money, and Labor History's Encounter with Consumer Culture

“…is the period following the historian's expertise. 6 Ultimately the debate rests on a false dichotomy -that workers either successfully defended their traditional cultural autonomy or they succumbed to the moralism or consumerism of the bourgeoisie. Attempts to bridge the gap between these two approaches (for example, with the use of the metaphor of contested terrain or hegemony) are helpful, but they do not transcend the essentialism implied in the "negotiated exchange" between dominant and popular cultures.…”