Working-Class Women and Republicanism in the French Revolution of 1848

Abstract

Following the February Revolution in 1848, working-class women as well as men attempted to hold the government to its promise of the right to work, through street demonstrations, individual and collective demands for work, and participation in the national workshops that had been established in an attempt to address the problem of unemployment in the capital. In the process, these activists articulated what scholars have labelled as a democratic socialist vision of republicanism. In June of 1848, women participated in the insurrection that sought to defend the vision of a social republic. While the republicanism of working-class men and bourgeois women such as George Sand has been examined, studies of working-class women in the first half of the nineteenth century have to this point focused on the romantic socialist influences that shaped their activities, in particular the Saint-Simonian movement. Drawing primarily on individual letters, police interrogations and newspaper reports, a vision of republicanism emerges that includes the ability for women to sustain their families through waged as well as household labour. This concept of republican virtue based itself not in suffrage but in women's capacity to act as both producers and consumers under just and equitable conditions.     

Archaeology, Memory and Oral Tradition: An Introduction

This paper serves as an introduction to this special edition of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology on the theme of archaeology, memory and oral history. Recent approaches to oral history and memory destabilise existing grand narratives and confront some of the epistemological assumptions underpinning scientific archaeology. Here we discuss recent approaches to memory and explore their impact on historical archaeology, including the challenges that forms of oral and social memory present to a field traditionally defined by the relationship between material culture and text. We then review a number of themes addressed by the articles in this volume.     

Feeding and Healing Bodies and Souls: German Women in Nursing, 1830s–1850s

Nursing care of the 1830s−40s required significant financial stewardship, material resources, spiritual fortitude and political support alongside the everyday routines of cleaning, cooking and home visiting. The minutiae of Catholic, Protestant and other Prussian institutional donations, budgets and schedules, government records and occasionally women's own writings reveal how German nursing was not a singular and timeless profession. Rather, the feminisation of nursing emerged out of a myriad of gendered ways elite, bourgeois, religious and working women collectively cared for the poor and the sick even before bacteriology and maternalist women's movements transformed nursing in the late nineteenth century.     

Native Providence: Memory,Community, and Survivance in the Northeast

Historical Archaeology -     

Women in the Formal and Informal Economies of Late Eighteenth‐Century Quebec, 1763–1830

This article challenges the conventional interpretation of the transition from French to British rule in Quebec, which has emphasised the increasing marginalisation of women in the colonial economy. Using hitherto unexplored criminal and civil court records and newspaper advertisements, reveals that women and in particular married women, both French and English speaking, were active in all facets of business life. Given the importance of imported British luxury items in the colonial economy following the American Revolution, this article argues that women occupied a particularly dynamic segment of business life in Quebec, and were especially prominent in the critical textile and fashion trades. A major theme of this article is to show the significance of informal trade networks in expanding economic development in the late eighteenth century, where women were demonstrably key players. The presence of women in both formal and formal economies goes far to locating Quebec in a burgeoning Atlantic economy, and to explaining the nature of consumer society in this new British colony.     

Correction: Native Providence: Memory,Community, and Survivance in the Northeast

Historical Archaeology -     

People and Their Buildings in the Working-Class Neighborhood of Hungate,York

The study of structures plays an important role in the global investigation of the archaeology of urban poverty. At Hungate, the built environment is central to our analysis of this “slum” neighborhood. By piecing together the long-term details for the construction, ownership, occupation, and adaptation of domestic structures in the form of sophisticated interdisciplinary plot histories, we can provide depth to the development of neighborhoods which came under the scrutiny of reformers such as Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree at the beginning of the twentieth century.     

Friendly Relations: Situating Friendships Between Men and Women in the Early American Republic, 1780–1830

Men and women who became friends in the early American republic struggled with societal worries about the purity and chastity of their friendships. More so than other pairs of friends, heterosocial friends had to attend to how their friendships appeared to those around them. One of the most important ways of doing so was positioning a friendship in relation to spouses. In an era when marriage was the central structure for relations between men and women and fears of seduction and ruin were rampant, friends of the opposite sex needed to integrate their friendships within their marriages. This paper examines how men and women did so through the lens of their correspondence. Navigating a society without clear boundaries or rules for conducting a friendship between a man and a woman, individual pairs of friends improvised to create safe friendships in person and in letters. The careful intertwining of marriages and friendships they created demonstrates the way intimate social relationships were embedded in the social fabric of the early American republic.     

Cult Places at Former Oppida in South‐East Gaul: Questions of Memory,Tradition and Identity

This paper offers a new perspective on the reuse of Celtic fortified hilltops by Gallo‐Roman shrines. Going beyond the simplistic explanation of continuity, I shall argue for the role of memory in the perception of the landscape and in the location of some Gallo‐Roman shrines. This paper opposes the argument for continuity of sacred spaces and Celtic cults during the Roman period despite abandonment of the settlements. The evidence supports a more symbolic protohistoric expression, beyond that attendant on the place of a cult. The continuity concealed breaks, changes and modifications. I put forward the concept of ‘fictive continuity’, after Hobsbawm. The reclamation of a place of memory assigns a greater visibility to these shrines, enhancing their topographical appearance at the highest points in their respective landscapes, thus enabling the sites to appropriate fully space and place and to ensure cohesion within the community.     

Tradition and Christianity: Controversial Funerals and Concepts of the Person among the Paiwan,Taiwan

This essay focuses on the complex and dynamic relationships between tradition and Christianity among the Paiwan, an Austronesian‐speaking people in Taiwan. The ethnography comes from a village in which adherents of traditional religion and Presbyterians live in the same area, but in separate quarters. They have close kinship and marriage ties; however, the funeral constitutes a major area of controversy and tension. I juxtapose their contrasting representations of death and funerals to highlight their differences and trace the source of their conflict to the ideological domain of concepts of the person. I argue that the differences in their funerals can be explained by the differences in the ways the two groups articulate two versions of the person. Adherents of traditional religion emphasize the holistic side of the person by calling the spirit of the deceased to reunite with the living, whereas Presbyterians stress the individualistic side of the person and maintain the boundary between the living and the dead. I propose that it is the co‐existence of two distinct concepts of the person and the different ways of articulating those concepts which shape the dynamic but often contradictory relationship between tradition and Christianity.     

Memory and Memorial: A Study of Official and Military Commemoration of the Dead,and Family and Community Memory in Essex and East London

Abstract

This article looks at the history and development of the ways in which the people of Essex and East London have, at all levels, commemorated those who served and died in the First World War. It covers a wide range of material to investigate social and political responses to the War Memorial. It examines personal and communal memorialising and acts of remembrance in the past and present. Next, official and military forms of commemoration are considered, including those of the local councils and the Essex Regiment and other associated groups. The issue of the community in commemoration is examined in depth. It provides evidence from a large number of differing sites. Finally, reflections on the validity of this study, and the broader implications for archaeology and society as a whole are discussed.     

Cultural Performance and the Reconstruction of Tradition among the Bunun of Taiwan

ABSTRACT This article aims to understand the meanings and impact of the reconstruction of tradition and the objectification of culture among the Bunun, an Austronesian‐speaking indigenous people of Taiwan. It situates the revival of tradition in the contexts of state appropriation and the development of ethnic tourism, and shows how the Bunun attempt to control their relationship with the state and the dominant society by reconstituting tradition in the present. The culturally specific ways in which the Bunun sustain local identity and sociality by reproducing their concept of personhood are highlighted. In doing so, I seek to move the analysis beyond the use of reified tradition as a political and identity symbol to address the broader theoretical concern of understanding tradition as a culturally specific mode of change.     

Marriage-Related Exchanges and the Agency of Women among the Langalanga,Solomon Islands

This article examines the transformation of marriage-related exchanges and the agency of women among the Langalanga people in the Solomon Islands. The Langalanga perspective is distinctive because they have been the main producers of shell money in the region, and the persistence of bridewealth is important for their economic and cultural lives. Looking into the three essential components: kwatena (bridewealth), duuna (micro exchange network among new affinal kins), and launia (bridal dress), I discuss the roles women play in the process of marriage-related exchanges, with particular attention to the affective dimension. In recent years, it has become more popular to dress the bride in the expensive launia, and some Langalanga brides, who live in urban areas, have begun to take possession of the valuables, which contributes to their growing economic independence and autonomy. I argue that while marriage-related exchanges sometimes constrain the autonomy of women in Melanesia, the Langalanga case provides an alternative view.