A Bitter Living: Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern GermanyOxford University Press, 2003 - 394 sidor What role did women play in the pre-industrial European economy? Was it brought about by biology, culture, social institutions, or individual choices? And what were its consequences - for women, for men, for society at large? Women were key to the changes in the European economy between 1600 and 1800 that paved the way for industrialization. But we still know little about this female 'shadow economy' - and nothing quantitative or systematic. This book tackles these questions in a new way. It uses a unique micro-level database and rich qualitative sources to illuminate women's contribution to a particular pre-industrial economy: the German state of W rttemberg, which was in many ways typical of early modern Europe. Markets expanded here between 1600 and 1800, opening opportunities outside the household for both women and men. But they were circumscribed by strong 'social networks' - local communities and rural guilds with state support. Modern political scientists have praised social networks for generating 'social capital' - shared norms and collective sanctions which benefit network insiders, and sometimes the whole society. But this book reveals the dark side of 'social capital': insiders excluded and harmed outsiders, especially women, to the detriment of the economy at large. Early modern European economies differed widely in their restrictions on the role of women. But the monocausal approaches (technological, cultural, institutional) that dominate the existing literature cannot explain these differences. This book proposes an alternative approach driven by the decision individual women themselves made as they negotiated a wide array of constraints and pressures (including technological, cultural, and institutional ones). We are not only brought closer to the 'bitter living' pre-industrial women scraped together, but find out how it came to be so bitter, and how restrictions on women inflicted a bitter living on everyone. |
Innehåll
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
1 | 17 |
type of case Wildberg 16461800 and Ebhausen 16741800 | 31 |
2 | 48 |
27 | 56 |
THE SOCIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC FRAMEWORK | 65 |
1 | 85 |
DAUGHTERS AND MAIDSERVANTS | 103 |
WIDOWS | 212 |
93 | 289 |
INDEPENDENT UNMARRIED WOMEN | 293 |
56 | 313 |
A BITTER LIVING | 329 |
104 | 340 |
106 | 350 |
REFERENCES | 353 |
Vanliga ord och fraser
activities agriculture allocation Bietigheim burial donation cent century Chapter church court community courts corporatism database daughters district of Wildberg domestic Dürr early modern England early modern Europe early modern Germany early modern Switzerland earnings Ebhausen eighteenth eighteenth-century elsewhere in pre-industrial excluded female headship Female labour Female Male Frauenarbeit gender girls Goldberg guild guild regulations Gulden habe household production housework HSAS A573 Bü husbands I-VIII ibid income-earning independent unmarried females independent unmarried women industrial institutional KB Vol KKP Vol Kreuzer land late medieval Leonberg livelihoods maidservants male servants marital marriage married Medick medieval England Neckarhausen Neubulach nineteenth-century norms observed occupations offspring Ogilvie patterns pre-industrial Europe proto-industry Reyscher Sabean Sammlung Schwäbisch Hall sectors Shulamit significantly skills social capital social networks spinners spinning spinning-bees Sub-total Table technological Total Totenregister Ulbrich Unguilded craft village Vries wage weavers widows Wiesner wife wives woman worsted-weavers Württemberg
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