Journal of Social History articles from March 2008

Journal of Social History archives from March 2008

Different paths to mass consumption: consumer credit in the United States and West Germany during the 1950s and '60s.
March 22, 2008... A 1971 comparative study surveyed differences and similarities in consumer behavior and aspirations in Europe and the United States. Among the first and most glaring discrepancies the authors found was the use of consumer credit: "About...

Homemaking and the aesthetic and moral perimeters of the Soviet home during the Khrushchev era.(Nikita Khrushchev )
March 22, 2008... In February 1956, at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev denounced the Stalin "cult of personality" in his famous "Secret Speech," thereby providing official sanction for the de-Stalinization of...

Hewn from stone: (re)presenting Soviet material cultures and identities.
March 22, 2008... This paper discusses the use of precious and semi-precious stone (1) in 1920s and 1930s Soviet material culture, and links this discussion to an established discourse in Soviet historical studies--that of the remaking of Soviet labor. I connect...

Popular culture and modernity: dancing in New Zealand society 1920-1945.
March 22, 2008... What are we here for anyway? To be a slave to pleasure? No, we are here to build character and citizenship. Letter signed "Eyewitness" in The New Zealand Listener 'Acts of Dancing', 29 December 1944. In recent years the issue...

Creativity under constraint: enslaved Afro-Brazilian families in Brazil's cacao area, 1870-1890.
March 22, 2008... On the nineteenth of August, 1889, freed man Jose Pedro de Calasans "humbly and respectfully begged" the governor of the Brazilian state of Bahia to grant him and his family free passage on the next steamship to the coastal city of Ilheus, the...

The long and varied relationship of Andrea Mora and Anzola Davide: concubinage, marriage and the authorities in the early modern Veneto.(SECTION II FAMILY LIFE AND EMOTION)
March 22, 2008... In 1565, Anzola Davide, a pretty young woman from the village of Lovadina, in the Trevisan countryside, went to live with a moderately successful merchant named Andrea Mora. (1) A sexual relationship developed between them rather quickly;...

Imperial emotions: affective communites of mission in British Protestant women's missionary publications c1880-1920.
March 22, 2008... Introduction This paper explores the ways in which the imagery and vocabulary of emotion circulated to create affective communities of mission in the missionary texts of Empire, bringing Indian and British subjects into the 'heart' of...

Between wage labor and vocation: child labor in Dutch urban industry, 1600-1800.
March 22, 2008... Introduction Francoise Loeram was only twelve years old when the Leiden draper Piere Blisijn employed her to spin for him for two years in 1640. In exchange, the girl received food, lodgings and a set of clothes, and at the end of her...

Status and "defunct" offices in early modern Korea: the case of Five Guards generals (Owijang), 1864-1910.
March 22, 2008... A striking feature of nineteenth-century Korea is the proliferation of generals. Seasoned military officers received appointments as generals of the Five Guards (Owijang), but so did local yamen clerks, Manchurian language interpreters, palace...

A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. By Aristide R. Zolberg (New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press, 2006. viii plus 658 pp. $39.95). ...

Contentious Politics.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Contentious Politics. By Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow (Boulder: Paradigm, 2007. ix plus 245 pp. $22.95). Six years ago three foremost students of contentious action, Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, published a path-breaking...

The New Geography of Global Income Inequality.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... The New Geography of Global Income Inequality. By Glenn Firebaugh (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. xiv plus 272 pp. $60.00). Glenn Firebaugh's The New Geography of Global Income Inequality has a clear thesis that it...

Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty and Inequality.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty and Inequality. By Joel F. Handler and Yeheskel Hasenfeld (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 401pp.). This highly valuable book is, perhaps, unfortunate in its name. Judging the book by its title,...

The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens and the Making of a Mass Public.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens and the Making of a Mass Public. By Sarah E. Igo (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. 398 pp.). In 1947 a CBS radio broadcast predicted that the pending publication of Sexual Behavior in...

Political Change and the Rise of Labour in Comparative Perspective.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Political Change and the Rise of Labour in Comparative Perspective. Britain and Sweden 1890-1920. By Mary Hilson (Lund, Sweden: Nordic Academic Press, 2006. 352 pp.). Mary Hilson has written an in-depth study of the development of labor...

War in Human Civilization.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... War in Human Civilization. By Azar Gat (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. xv plus 822 pp. $35.00). Azar Gat's newest book joins the recent scholarship attempting to explain the "riddle" of war. After writing books on military...

Working Women in English Society, 1300-1620.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Working Women in English Society, 1300-1620. By Marjorie Keniston McIntosh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xiv plus 291 pp. $75.00 HB or $32.99 PB). With its broad focus, simultaneous publication in hardback and paperback,...

Rape and Sexual Power in Early America.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Rape and Sexual Power in Early America. By Sharon Block (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. ix plus 247 pp.). "He threw me on the Bed... he caught hold of me and threw me down.... I struggled each time--but consented at...

Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910. By Kalin Gross (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006. vii plus 280 pp. $21.95). Colored Amazons examines an important, yet neglected, topic in...

Japanese American Midwives: Culture, Community, and Health Politics, 1880-1950.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Japanese American Midwives: Culture, Community, and Health Politics, 1880-1950. By Susan L. Smith (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. ix plus 280 pp. $25.00). This book examines both the experiences of Japanese immigrant midwives...

The Eloquence of the Body: Perspectives on Gesture in the Dutch Republic.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... The Eloquence of the Body: Perspectives on Gesture in the Dutch Republic. By Herman Roodenburg (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2004. 208 pp.). Herman Roodenburg begins his delightful new book on the bodily manners of the Dutch Golden Age...

Sports: The First Five Millennia.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Sports: The First Five Millennia. By Allen Guttman (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004. 448 pp. $34.95). In this his eleventh book on sport, dean of sport historians, Allen Guttmann, has produced an ambitious, accessibly...

Next to Godliness: Confronting Dirt and Despair in Progressive Era New York City.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Next to Godliness: Confronting Dirt and Despair in Progressive Era New York City. By Daniel Burnstein (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. 232 pp. $38.00) In Next to Godliness, Daniel Burnstein examines how Progressive...

A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960. By Abigail A. Van Slyck (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. xvii plus 295 pp.). Summer camps for youth seem like a permanent fixture of...

Sports in American Life: A History.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Sports in American Life: A History. By Richard O. Davies (Malden, MA: Blackwells, 2007. xxix plus 485 pp.). This book is a strike. An experienced academic who has authored books on sports, gambling, small towns, and national culture,...

The Development of Mexico's Tourism Industry: Pyramids by Day, Martinis by Night.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... The Development of Mexico's Tourism Industry: Pyramids by Day, Martinis by Night. By Dina Berger (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. xvii plus 164 pp.). Unwind on the white, pristine beaches along the coast. Get swept away in the...

Great Depressions and the Middle Class: Experts, Collegiate Youth and Business Ideology, 1929-1941.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Great Depressions and the Middle Class: Experts, Collegiate Youth and Business Ideology, 1929-1941. By Mary C. McComb (New York: Routledge, 2006. viii plus 207 pp. $95.00). Languages of class and discourses about class are minefields...

Parish and Belonging: Community, Identity and Welfare in England and Wales 1700-1950.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Parish and Belonging: Community Identity and Welfare in England and Wales 1700-1950. By K. D. M. Snell (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xiv plus 541pp. $110). Although the English parish has intrigued historians...

Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness. By Matt Wray (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. xiii plus 213 pp. $21.95). In this compelling study, sociologist Matt Wray explores a seemingly paradoxical matter: If...

Small-Town Martyrs and Murderers: Religious Revolution and Counterrevolution in Western France, 1774-1914.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Small-Town Martyrs and Murderers: Religious Revolution and Counterrevolution in Western France, 1774-1914. By Edward J. Woell (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2006. 292 pp.). The town of Machecoul is familiar to historians of the...

To the editors.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2008... Perhaps because of her professed inability to understand my argument, Hannah Decker's review of Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis (Journal of Social History, Fall 2005, volume 39, issue 1) focused on what she...