Fighting Words
Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England
Published on 24. June 1999
Book
Hardback
312 pages
978-0-8014-3582-9 (ISBN)
Description
A key component of social life, discourse mediates the processes of class formation and social conflict. Drawing on dialogic theory and building on the work of E. P. Thompson, Marc W. Steinberg argues for the importance of incorporating discursive analysis into the historical reconstruction of class experience. Amending models of collective action, he offers new insights on how discourse shapes the dynamics of popular protest. To support his thesis, he presents studies of two English trade groups in the 1820s: cotton spinners from Lancashire factory towns and London silk weavers.
For each case, Steinberg closely examines the labor process, industrial organization, social life, community politics, discursive struggles, and collective actions. By describing how workers shared experiences of exploitation and oppression in their daily lives, he shows how discourses of contention were products of struggle and how they framed possibilities for collective action. Embracing work in literary theory, sociocultural psychology, and cultural studies, Fighting Words claims a middle ground between postmodern and materialist analyses.
For each case, Steinberg closely examines the labor process, industrial organization, social life, community politics, discursive struggles, and collective actions. By describing how workers shared experiences of exploitation and oppression in their daily lives, he shows how discourses of contention were products of struggle and how they framed possibilities for collective action. Embracing work in literary theory, sociocultural psychology, and cultural studies, Fighting Words claims a middle ground between postmodern and materialist analyses.
Reviews / Votes
Steinberg effectively carries out the broadest task that he sets for himself in this perceptive and carefully researched book: to show the ways in which material and discursive processes work together in the shaping of consciousness.- Philip Harling (American Journal of Sociology) The inversion of the textual and the structural is the predominant tendency of the powerful school of social history and historical sociology whose impressive dimensions and stimulating factiousness can be appreciated in Steinberg's excellent bibliography. Fighting Words reveals its author to be one of the most accomplished students of this academy.
- Michael Dintenfass (Journal of Modern History) An ambitious book....well presented and documented....
- Michael Huberman, Dept. of History, University of Montreal (Industrial and Labor Relations Review) An important new addition to the literature on work, class, and economic and social history.
(Choice) In the end, this is a deeply satisfying book. The arid and antiquated debates between materialist and idealist approaches disappear in a perspective that examines how material conditions and their discursive representations interact in a dynamic system of social life. The social life is brought alive in the concrete, historically embedded history of that time and place. What more could one ask?
- William A. Gamson (Contemporary Sociology) Marc Steinberg has written a splendid and important book. It is rich, argumentative, and necessary.... Steinberg has opened a door to a new landscape of questions, where social movement scholars will wander in future with excitement and with new puzzles.
- Colin Barker (Mobilization) Sophisticated.... The author argues his case with passion.
- Miles Taylor (English Historical Review)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Ithaca
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paper over boards
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
907 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8014-3582-9 (9780801435829)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Marc W. Steinberg
Fighting Words
Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England
E-Book
05/2018
1st Edition
Cornell University Press
€163.99
Available for download
Person
Marc W. Steinberg is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Smith College.