Diana,Princess of Wales

Abstract

Ben Shaw, mechanic of Preston, Lancashire, began to write his family history in 1826. It describes the disruptions caused by industrialization and migration to Ben and Betty Shaw and their extended families. This article reflects upon the domestic economies Shaw describes and sees these households as key institutions for mutually organised survival and betterment and as the focus for the diverse activities of women's work. Households were linked into wider support networks between kin and neighbours. Reciprocity was rarely calculative. Gendered power relations could also be close affective relations, despite conflict. Women were vital to this bargain between care and resources which, for this family at least, helped negotiate the contradictions in social identities shaped by both gender and class across the public/private divide