Scenes of commission: Royal commissions of inquiry and the culture of social investigation in early Victorian Britain

Frankel, Oz

doi:10.1080/10848779908580008

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 10 publications

(3 reference statements)

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“…Edward Gibbon Wakefield was thoroughly immersed in discourses that connected political economic conditions to character formation and to the relations between the sexes. 30…”

Section: Pedigreementioning

confidence: 99%

Colonization, Education, and the Formation of Moral Character: Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s A Letter from Sydney

Curtis

2019

HSE/RHE

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Edward Gibbon Wakefield proposed a scheme of “systematic colonization” that he claimed would guarantee the formation of civilized moral character in settler societies at the same time as it reproduced imperial class relations. The scheme, which was first hatched after Wakefield read Robert Gourlay’s A Statistical Account of Upper Canada, inverted the dominant understanding of the relation between school and society. Wakefield claimed that without systematic colonization, universal schooling would be dangerous and demoralizing. Wakefield intervened in contemporary debate about welfare reform and population growth, opposing attempts to enforce celibacy on poor women and arguing that free enjoyment of “animal liberty” made women both moral and beautiful.

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“…Edward Gibbon Wakefield was thoroughly immersed in discourses that connected political economic conditions to character formation and to the relations between the sexes. 30…”

Section: Pedigreementioning

confidence: 99%

Colonization, Education, and the Formation of Moral Character: Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s A Letter from Sydney

Curtis

2019

HSE/RHE

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“…The reports of the Poor Law Commissions and other investigative bodies provided empirical material for foundational works in social theory—Marx's ([1887] ) Capital , most obviously—but also for a genre of popular literature. As Oz Frankel points out, the Victorian reading public had a large appetite for the more sensational parts of commission reports and related reports of government inspectors, while Harriet Martineau's enormously popular series of didactic tracts drew directly upon such material (Frankel ). In these ways, the modes of thinking and the concepts of the social science made it into both state policy and mainstream culture.…”

Section: Reflexive Governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Missing Memory of Canadian Sociology: Reflexive Government and “the Social Science”

Curtis

2016

Canadian Review of Sociology

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The modest literature on the history of Canadian Sociology takes the appearance of a named academic discipline as its object. Canadian Sociology is held to have had some precursors in the 1880s, but really to appear only in the 1920s. It is described as a foreign import and as an activity first of intellectual speculation and moral reform. Observational and analytic practice are absent before 1880. The activities of state agents and government departments in the social field are not discussed. This article offers a richer account through an examination of the larger field from which Sociology was extracted, "the social science," which was practiced actively in colonial Canada from the early nineteenth century. The social science shaped and was itself shaped by colonial conditions. The article outlines three interrelated moments in social science to carry its claims: inventory-making, the emergence of "population-thinking," and "reflexive government." Attending to the social science underlines the complex and convoluted relations of sociology with state power. Les rares oeuvrages académiques portant sur l'histoire de la sociologie canadienne prend pour objet l'apparition du terme dans le contexte universitaire. Dans cet optique, ils signalent certains précurseurs de la sociologie canadienne dès les années 1880, mais en fait ils affirment que cette discipline n'apparaît que dans les années 1920. Cette discipline est présentée comme une importation académique et, d'abord et avant tout, comme de la spéculation intellectuelle et comme un projet de réforme morale. D'après cette vision, les pratiques d'observation et d'analyse sociales ne semblent pas exister avant 1880, et les acteurs politiques et administratifs sont absents du terrain. Notre article propose un examen plus riche du vaste champ duquel la sociologie académique fut arrachée: activement pratiquée au Canada à l'époque coloniale dès le début du XIXe siècle. La science sociale forma et fut formée par les conditions sociales et politiques existant dans la colonie. Notre article expose trois moments pertinents et inter-reliés de la science sociale: la fabrication d'inventaires sociaux; l'émergence du , et l'exercice du . La réintégration de l'histoire de la sociologie canadienne dans la science sociale accentue la relation complexe et incontournable entre sociologie et pouvoir étatique.

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“…Having witnessed the disastrous handling of Crown Lands in the 1830s and the efforts to simply shovel paupers into the Upper Canadian backwoods, Spragge watched as settlers began to "exhibit the melancholy spectacle of responsible beings ignorant of the obligations and duties due from them to God, and to man." 30 Colonization was to be a grand political project, involving not merely settlement via 29 For more on the connection between commissions of inquiry and the genealogy of the social science, see Frankel, O. 1999 the building of roads, but also creating systems of religious and educational instruction, thus ensuring the development of persons of "orderly habits and well-regulated minds."…”

Section: The Public Lands Committeementioning

confidence: 99%

Rule of the Routes: Infrastructure, Colonization, and ‘the Social Science’ in the Canadas from Conquest to Confederation

Steckle¹

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Scenes of commission: Royal commissions of inquiry and the culture of social investigation in early Victorian Britain

Cited by 6 publications

References 10 publications

Colonization, Education, and the Formation of Moral Character: Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s A Letter from Sydney

Colonization, Education, and the Formation of Moral Character: Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s A Letter from Sydney

The Missing Memory of Canadian Sociology: Reflexive Government and “the Social Science”

Rule of the Routes: Infrastructure, Colonization, and ‘the Social Science’ in the Canadas from Conquest to Confederation

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