Trade unions and workplace organization: regulating labour markets in the Belgian and American flat glass industry and in the Amsterdam diamond industry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

In all three industries, internal subcontracting as a way to organize the workplace determined the emergence of craft unionism in the nineteenth century. In both Belgian and American window-glassmaking craft unionism, originally based on exclusion of low-skilled workers who had been underhands in the system of subcontracting, persisted well into the twentieth century, until full mechanization made artisanal glassblowing obsolete. Only then all workers could be united in an industrial union. In diamond manufacturing, craft unions were replaced by a unified industrial union already in the 1890s. In all three industries, trade unions had the biggest impact when they were able to regulate product markets and industrial competition through labour market control. Methods, time frames and duration of labour market control differed considerably, however.     

Social change and social conflict in nineteenth century England: A comment

This article addresses the potential for food movements to bring about substantive changes to the current global food system. After describing the current corporate food regime, we apply Karl Polanyi's ‘double-movement’ thesis on capitalism to explain the regime's trends of neoliberalism and reform. Using the global food crisis as a point of departure, we introduce a comparative analytical framework for different political and social trends within the corporate food regime and global food movements, characterizing them as ‘Neoliberal’, ‘Reformist’, ‘Progressive’, and ‘Radical’, respectively, and describe each trend based on its discourse, model, and key actors, approach to the food crisis, and key documents. After a discussion of class, political permeability, and tensions within the food movements, we suggest that the current food crisis offers opportunities for strategic alliances between Progressive and Radical trends within the food movement. We conclude that while the food crisis has brought a retrenchment of neoliberalization and weak calls for reform, the worldwide growth of food movements directly and indirectly challenge the legitimacy and hegemony of the corporate food regime. Regime change will require sustained pressure from a strong global food movement, built on durable alliances between Progressive and Radical trends.     

Narratives of race and nation in china: Women's suffrage in the early twentieth century

This paper explores the ways in which the Chinese women's suffrage movement used racializing narratives to alter the boundaries that had excluded women from full participation in politics in the first two decades of the 20th century. It extends existing work on the connection between narratives of race and women's suffrage in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA to explore how “race” was mobilized in China in the late-Qing and early Republican period. The article has three main areas of innovation. First, it explores the deployment of racializing narratives within the broader discourses of modernity circulating in China wherein modernization was premised on a racialized notion of national identity—that is “modernization as Han chauvinism.” Second, this article aims to participate in the process of extending the history of women's suffrage from primary reliance on class analysis and towards methods that explore the multiple categories of exclusion and inclusion. Third, this article aims to explore the manner in which narratives of race were invoked within a feminist political campaign that occurred in a nation without a history of European colonization. The article demonstrates that the multiplicity of possible gains sought under the banner of “race” makes it an unreliable category to invoke for struggles that are ultimately determined by “gendered” divisions.     

The figure of woman and the fantasy of the modern Australian nation: travelling to the ‘Empty Centre’

How does a political entity such as nation so seduce and beguile that it appears to its subjects to constitute the very grounding of identity, the very grounding even of meaning itself? One of the ways it does this, for both male and female national subjects, is through the image of Woman, a phenomenon most evident in the cultural productions of a nation—its novels and films, its poetry and painting. It is in these ‘texts’ that the reach of the image of Woman in reproducing the particular fantasies that sustain the belief in our national identity, our ‘unique way of life’ can be seen. In his novel The Plains, Gerald Murnane satirises the Australian fantasy of nation that elevates Woman to such a status that she becomes both the sublime image of the very essence of nation and an always unattainable object of desire. As Lacanian theory tells us, this fantasy of Woman as the impossible sublime object is a form that is most often found on the male side of sexuation. The image of Woman that sustains such fantasies is an empty container, a pure image that contains only its own constitutive no-thing, but an image that nevertheless is compelling, that captures the gaze, appearing to offer all. That is, it has a fascinatory effect. Given that masculinist fantasies of nation continue to appear in all Australian cultural forms, reproducing predominant national meanings, it remains a vital part of the Australian feminist project to analyse these contemporary expressions of the place of Woman in national reproduction and how the masculine fantasy of Woman sustains a particular form of nation. Gerald Murnane's recently republished literary novel The Plains remains as relevant to these questions as it was when it was first published in 1982. This article offers a Lacanian analysis of the function of Woman in Murnane's The Plains, a novel which is itself preoccupied with the use made of the image of Woman in the reproduction of prevailing national fantasies.     

Class dynamics and ideological construction in the struggle over fairness: a neo-Gramscian examination of the Fairtrade initiative

This paper develops a neo-Gramscian conceptual framework in order to examine the ideological constructs and political dynamics that frame the day-to-day workings of the certification-based Fairtrade initiative. To accomplish this goal, the paper resorts to the notion of a ‘comprehensive concept of control’, which accounts for the main ideological elements that constitute the Fairtrade vision of the world. The analysis of these imaginaries is complemented with an examination of the concrete ways in which they have been institutionalized in the Fairtrade system and the specific power relations between class fractions they promote. This is followed by an exploration of the way in which Fairtrade articulates the contradictory interests of a variety of class fractions, bringing them together under the shared objective of advancing the situation of small producers and workers in the global South. The paper finishes with a reflection on the main limitations inherent to Fairtrade’s concept of control and the political dynamics it entails.     

Two models of infant welfare in the first half of the twentieth century: New Zealand and the USA

In New Zealand, as elsewhere in the Western world in the early twentieth century, maternal and infant health became a national concern and the task of organising health services was taken up by women in a voluntary capacity. In the USA this culminated in the Sheppard-Towner (Maternity and Infancy) Act of 1921. However, within a decade American paediatricians had assumed control of the services. By contrast, the services in New Zealand remained in the hands of a female-run voluntary organisation, the Plunket Society. From the foundation of the Society in 1907, health services for mothers and their infants became the site of territorial disputes between various health providers – the Health Department, the Plunket Society and paediatricians. This article explores why and how the Plunket Society managed to retain control of this important area of public health in the face of challenges by these other health providers. It will be argued that the reasons relate to the tenacity with which the ‘maternalists’ claimed the territory as their own, their informal access to channels of power, their public support, and their success in maintaining medical respectability through their own honorary and paid professional staff.     

Women's employment and industrial organisation: commercial lace embroidery in early nineteenth-century Ireland and England

Abstract

The early nineteenth century saw expanding work opportunities for women in commercial lace embroidery in Britain. This article traces the connection between the development of commercial lace embroidery in several locations – Nottingham, Essex and Limerick. Despite the fame of the Irish industry, it has received almost no academic attention. The differing structures of the Irish and English industries are examined. Aspects of lace manufacture highlight the increasing emphasis on cleanliness and the respectability of women's work in the nineteenth century. The authors suggest that to appreciate fully the impact of the Industrial Revolution on women's employment opportunities, we must look to the periphery of the national economy, as well as the centre.     

Representation of the female body by early and late adolescent girls

A group of 153 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade girls and a group of 95 college women produced human figure drawings. Comparisons were made between early and late adolescents and, within the group of early adolescents, between pre- and postmenarcheal girls, of the frequency with which secondary sexual characteristics, namely, breasts, were explicitly depicted on the female figures. Early adolescents were found to represent breasts more explicitly than late adolescents. Parallel results were found for pre- and postmenarcheal girls in the seventh grade. The results suggest that early adolescents emphasize and are preoccupied with body parts whose changes signal the beginning of puberty, while later adolescents, being past the period of most rapid growth and change in body contour, have a more integrated body image.This research was supported in part by Wellesley College Faculty Development Awards to each of the two authors.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Clark University. Major interests are clinical psychology and personality development. Correspondence should be addressed to this author.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Tufts University. Major interests are psychobiology and adolescent development.     

Mona Caird (1854-1932): wild woman,new woman,and early radical feminist critic of marriage and motherhood1

Abstract

This paper, which makes available previously unknown pictures and personal information drawn from interviews, introduces aspects of the life and work of a neglected First Wave feminist writer. In particular, it examines Caird's analysis of the social construction of marriage and motherhood and the dynamics of mother-daughter relationships. The conceptual framework within which Caird wrote, while being embedded in its historical context, bears striking resemblance to some theories within Second Wave thought, especially those of Carol Gilligan and Adrienne Rich. The paper addresses the problem of how to negotiate the danger of ahistoricism when establishing ideological and conceptual links between feminists of different historical periods, and argues for regarding Caird as a radical feminist in the making.     

Gender and the law of provocation in the long twentieth century

ABSTRACT

Provocation was an important common law doctrine, separating murder from manslaughter: a matter of life and death. It was particularly significant in the context of ‘domestic violence’. This article examines the doctrine as a lens through which to view gender relations in the long twentieth century. The doctrine developed from its origins in the early modern period until mid-twentieth century. Throughout this lengthy period provocation was narrowly confined for both genders. However, case law developments in mid-twentieth century gave rise to a doctrine which was unforgiving for abused women. At about the same time, statutory and case law changes produced a much broader partial defence of provocation available to men who had killed their wives. It was not until the very end of the century, and the beginning of the twenty-first century, that a more gender-neutral concept of provocation began to emerge as a result of feminist campaigning.