Suzanne Desan
- Published in print:
- 1989
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520064287
- eISBN:
- 9780520908925
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520064287.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Theory and Practice
This chapter investigates the underlying historical conceptions and agendas of E. P. Thompson and Natalie Davis as seminal figures in the development of the cultural approach. It also discusses the ...
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This chapter investigates the underlying historical conceptions and agendas of E. P. Thompson and Natalie Davis as seminal figures in the development of the cultural approach. It also discusses the most essential aspects of their work on popular activism, focusing on Davis' article “The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France” and Thompson's “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century.” Both of these authors shared a common point of emphasis as they uncovered new topics and methods of analysis—the decisive role of culture as a driving force of historical change. They have decisively shown the significance of cultural and communal factors in motivating activists and illustrated the independent and active role of rioters in making their own history. Additionally, they have advanced the cultural approach to crowd violence by demonstrating the need to pose critical questions about communal notions of legitimacy and meaning.Less
This chapter investigates the underlying historical conceptions and agendas of E. P. Thompson and Natalie Davis as seminal figures in the development of the cultural approach. It also discusses the most essential aspects of their work on popular activism, focusing on Davis' article “The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France” and Thompson's “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century.” Both of these authors shared a common point of emphasis as they uncovered new topics and methods of analysis—the decisive role of culture as a driving force of historical change. They have decisively shown the significance of cultural and communal factors in motivating activists and illustrated the independent and active role of rioters in making their own history. Additionally, they have advanced the cultural approach to crowd violence by demonstrating the need to pose critical questions about communal notions of legitimacy and meaning.
David Baker
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804738569
- eISBN:
- 9780804772907
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804738569.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
In early modern England, while moralists railed against the theater as wasteful and depraved, and inflation whittled away at the value of wages, people attended the theater in droves. This book draws ...
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In early modern England, while moralists railed against the theater as wasteful and depraved, and inflation whittled away at the value of wages, people attended the theater in droves. This book draws on recent economic history and theory to account for this puzzling consumer behavior. The author shows that during this period, demand itself, with its massed acquisitive energies, transformed the English economy. Over the long sixteenth century, consumption burgeoned, though justifications for it lagged behind. People were in a curious predicament: they practiced consumption on a mass scale but had few acceptable reasons for doing so. In the literary marketplace, authors became adept at accommodating such contradictions, fashioning works that spoke to self-divided consumers: Thomas Nashe castigated and satiated them at the same time; William Shakespeare satirized credit problems; Ben Jonson investigated the problems of global trade; and Robert Burton enlisted readers in a project of economic betterment.Less
In early modern England, while moralists railed against the theater as wasteful and depraved, and inflation whittled away at the value of wages, people attended the theater in droves. This book draws on recent economic history and theory to account for this puzzling consumer behavior. The author shows that during this period, demand itself, with its massed acquisitive energies, transformed the English economy. Over the long sixteenth century, consumption burgeoned, though justifications for it lagged behind. People were in a curious predicament: they practiced consumption on a mass scale but had few acceptable reasons for doing so. In the literary marketplace, authors became adept at accommodating such contradictions, fashioning works that spoke to self-divided consumers: Thomas Nashe castigated and satiated them at the same time; William Shakespeare satirized credit problems; Ben Jonson investigated the problems of global trade; and Robert Burton enlisted readers in a project of economic betterment.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804738569
- eISBN:
- 9780804772907
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804738569.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter considers William Harrison's Description, where he complains that middlemen are ruining local economies all over England, and suggests that Harrison is not simply the retrograde ...
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This chapter considers William Harrison's Description, where he complains that middlemen are ruining local economies all over England, and suggests that Harrison is not simply the retrograde clergyman he appears, nor as inattentive as he seems. It is rather that he does not quite know what he knows, or does not know how to express what he knows, about demand. His Description implies a gathering tendency of behaviors, desires, and thought that has yet to find a fully articulated rationale, and which must co-exist, perforce, with a very powerful strain of entrenched opinion.Less
This chapter considers William Harrison's Description, where he complains that middlemen are ruining local economies all over England, and suggests that Harrison is not simply the retrograde clergyman he appears, nor as inattentive as he seems. It is rather that he does not quite know what he knows, or does not know how to express what he knows, about demand. His Description implies a gathering tendency of behaviors, desires, and thought that has yet to find a fully articulated rationale, and which must co-exist, perforce, with a very powerful strain of entrenched opinion.
John Langdon
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198723134
- eISBN:
- 9780191804205
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780198723134.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Medieval History
This chapter emphasizes that the inland waterway system of medieval England, particularly before the beginning of the Black Death, has become the subject of considerable interest and debate in the ...
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This chapter emphasizes that the inland waterway system of medieval England, particularly before the beginning of the Black Death, has become the subject of considerable interest and debate in the past decade. Not only has the extent of England's navigable waterways in the period been disputed, but also there is disagreement about how it interacted with the medieval English economy as a whole. This chapter considers the regional variation of agricultural productivity that has made the issue of water transport, a critical feature in trying to explain complicated patterns of medieval land exploitation. The extent of the inland waterway system, its evolution and complexity in terms of the hydrological, environmental, and topographical conditions under which it had to operate, as well as its interaction with economic interests, are also analyzed.Less
This chapter emphasizes that the inland waterway system of medieval England, particularly before the beginning of the Black Death, has become the subject of considerable interest and debate in the past decade. Not only has the extent of England's navigable waterways in the period been disputed, but also there is disagreement about how it interacted with the medieval English economy as a whole. This chapter considers the regional variation of agricultural productivity that has made the issue of water transport, a critical feature in trying to explain complicated patterns of medieval land exploitation. The extent of the inland waterway system, its evolution and complexity in terms of the hydrological, environmental, and topographical conditions under which it had to operate, as well as its interaction with economic interests, are also analyzed.
