The Rise of Market Culture
The Textile Trade and French Society, 1750–1900

Professor Reddy traces the transition from pre-capitalist to capitalist culture in the French textile industry, 1750–1900.

William M. Reddy (Author)

9780521347792, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 September 1987

416 pages
22.9 x 15.5 x 2.5 cm, 0.623 kg

Combining the perspectives of anthropology and social history, Professor Reddy traces the transition from precapitalist to capitalist culture in the French textile industry from 1750 to 1900. He shows how and why a new conception of the social order based on the idea of the market began to emerge, and examines the attendant political and social conflict. Focusing on the northern regional centres in France which led the movement toward mechanisation, the author - employs the methods of cultural anthropology to find that even by 1900 French textile labourers had failed to develop a social identity commensurate with the idea of wage labour. This discovery leads him to a critique of the market idea that suggests radical and prevalent interpretations of the social history of industrialisation as well as of the concept of 'class consciousness'.

List of figures and maps
List of abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
Part I. A World Without Entrepreneurs, 1750–1815: 1. Commerce as conflict
2. The design of the spinning jenny
3. New terms and old practices
Part II. Uses of the Market Idea, 1816–1851: 4. The first crisis of management
5. Spinners on guard
6. Visions of subsistence
7. A search for identity
Part III. Unquestioned Assumptions, 1852–1904: 8. The clock time of the Second Empire
9. The moral sense of farce
10. Little insurrections
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliographical note
Index.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]