By interpreting marriage as a life-cycle phenomenon with procreative sex as its ultimate aim, historians have given primacy - whether wittingly or unwittingly - to the act of intercourse between man and a woman, and relegated a range of other sexual activities to a position of lower value. In contrast, this chapter argues not only for the presence of other forms of sexual gratification within Tudor and Stuart society, but suggests in addition that rather than view them as the precursor to full penetrative intercourse, they should be understood as satisfactory and fulfilling expressions of sexuality in their own right. The final chapter examines the role of the marriage discourse in directing the employment opportunities, social status and cultural identity of single people in seventeenth century England. Here the effects of the discourse, which sought to promote the inevitability of entry into marriage as a general truth, are revealed in a gendered approach to training and employment, differential levels of access of men and women to land and property, and a concept of personal and social identity that for women was linked almost exclusively to marriage as a lifecycle phenomenon. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the extensive social and cultural ramifications of a rise in the proportion of lifelong celibate females, a situation that, regardless of its causes, required single women to reassess the image of themselves as wives and mothers and construct an alternative personal and social identity outside the standard marital paradigm.

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The principal aim of this thesis is to examine the ideas that were held on the subject of landed property in England between approximately 1790 and 1850. In the opening chapters the debate about landed property in the 1790s is considered. Under the impact of the French Revolution and because of the disturbed economic situation, differing attitudes towards land became sharply defined. The ideas of the main protagonists, William Godwin, Arthur Young and T.R. Malthus are examined as well as those of other writers. Eventually, Malthus's opinions proved strongest and became the basis of a socio-economic orthodoxy that was strengthened and elaborated by Ricardian economics and Benthamite philosophy. According to the majority of political economists and social philosophers, it was desirable that land should be held privately, although this meant that the great majority were excluded from ownership. It was also regarded as necessary for agriculture, if it was to operate efficiently, to be organised on the tripartite system of large landlord, tenant farmer and landless labourer. However, this conventional view had its critics, and the thesis discusses some of the theories that were advanced against it. While conservatives opposed even moderate reforms, radicals were responsible for a number of proposals. Some, like the Owenites, believed in communities; others favoured land nationalisation, while there was support also for the almost-vanished yeoman, as idealised by Cobbett. These groups, together with the views of orthodox economists, represent part of the background against which J.S. Mill's ideas emerged. The second part of the thesis attempts to trace the way in which Mill's attitudes towards landed property developed up to the publication of his Principles of Political Economy in 1848. By that date he had abandoned much of the conventional thought on the subject, and the reasons for this are suggested.

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Empirically the central problematics addressed in this study are twofold. Firstly, an account was sought to explain the apparent retention of control over the division of labour by workers in the 1930's, and their apparent loss of this control in the 1980's. Secondly, the view of the British Shipbuilding Industry presented by those working within the labour process tradition is questioned. Such work, claiming general applicability, was often partial in its geographical focus, upon the Clyde and Tyne, and in its presentation of social action at the point of production, focusing on issues of change rather than routinisation, and on the activist account of labour within the workplace. In framing a largely non-activist account of the relationship between Capital and Labour on the wear from the 1930's to the 1980's it was important to develop an adequate theoretical framework. This task is addressed in Chapter One where the issue of the nature of structure and agency are dealt with, and an attempt is made to "unthink dualism" on the basis of a "receding ontology” of material determination. This theory is related to the labour process tradition which is demonstrated to be an unsatisfactory basis for the development of the empirical concerns. Rather, the concept of the employment relationship is shown to be a more satisfactory focus. On this basis the study looks at continuity and change within the industry and community on the Wear. Extraordinary episodes in the history of the industry, such as the employment of women during the Second World War, are detailed, as well as the more routine aspects of work in a shipyard. In relating these aspects to the wider community the debate engages with general accounts of the nature of the working class. The importance of a "cultural” perspective is developed throughout the work and control is seen to depend not only upon strategies of capital and labour, but also upon the development of moral legitimacy within relations of dominance and subordination.

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No description available.