Music in factories: a twentieth-century technique for control of the productive self

This paper discusses the historical use of music to produce more efficient, more committed, industrial workers. First emerging in academia early in the twentieth century, psychological interest in the industrial application of music had grown into a topic of popular interest and government investigation by the 1940s. Catalysed by the need for vast increases in production and the desire to cultivate ‘citizenship’ amongst industrial workers which the Second World War produced, consideration of how music could be employed as an affective soundtrack in factories—to raise employees' work rates, to increase their efficiency, to combat fatigue and boredom, to improve morale, to access and manipulate their emotions and loyalties—became a prominent area of psychological research. This paper examines that psychological research and its largest scale application in the BBC radio show Music While You Work, broadcast daily to millions of British factory workers from 1940 until 1967. The paper focuses particularly on conceptualizations of music's affective power and its utilization to exert ‘emotional control’ over spaces of work and the working self. This paper is centrally concerned with the practice of Music While You Work as a programme broadcasting specifically for factory spaces, and how this confronted the BBC's music policies for a national and domestic audience, impacting on the radical nature of the affective soundtrack to work which was produced.     

New maps and charts

Note on The Lake‐Dwellings of Europe.

The Realm of Nature—An Outline of Physiography. By Hugh Robert Mill, D.Sc., Edin., F.R.S.E. London : John Murray, 1892. Price 5s.

Galloway in Ancient and Modern Times. By P. H. M'Kerlie. Edinburgh : William Blackwood and Sons, 1891. Price 7s. 6d.

The Trade Policy of Imperial Federation from an Economic Point of View. By Maurice H. Hervey, Principal of Illawarra College, New South Wales. London : Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1892. Pp. x. + 182. Price 2s. 6d.

Two Happy Years in Ceylon. By C. F. Gordon Cumming. Illustrated, in 2 vols. Edinburgh and London : W. Blackwood and Sons, 1892. Price 30s.

Travels in the Mogul Empire, 1656–1668. By François Bernier. Edited by Archibald Constable, M.As. Soc. Beng., F.S.A. Scot. Vol. I. of Constable's Oriental Miscellany. Westminster : Archibald Constable and Co., 1891. Pp. li + 498. Price 6s. net.

The Real Japan : Studies of Contemporary Japanese Manners, Morals, Administration, and Politics. By Henry Norman. London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1892.

Japanese Girls and Women. By Alice Mabel Bacon. London : Gay and Bird, 1891. Pp. 333. Price 5s.

Coomassie and Magdala. The Story of Two British Campaigns in Africa. By Henry M. Stanley. New Edition. Pp. x + 402. Price 3s. 6d

The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North‐West of America. By Colonel W. F. Butler, C.B., F.R.G.S. Fourteenth Edition. Pp. x + 386. Price 3s. 6d. London : Sampson Low, Marston, &; Company, Limited, 1891.

Untrodden Jamaica. By Herbert J. Thomas. Kingston : Aston W. Gardner and Co., 1890. Pp. 90.

The New Jamaica. By Edgar Mayhew Bacon and Eugene Murray Aaron, Ph.D. New York : Walbridge and Co. Kingston: Aston W. Gardner and Co., 1890. Pp. xi + 243.

The Statesman's Year‐Book, 1892. Edited by J. Scott Keltie, Assistant‐Secretary to the Royal Geographical Society. Pp. 1151. Price 10s. 6d.

The Northern Counties Red Book and Chronicle Almanac for 1892. Inverness: Northern Chronicle Office. Pp. 88. Price 3d.

Smith American Railways. Argentina and Uruguay. By J. K. Carter, F.G.S. London : Fred. C. Mathieson &; Sons, 1891. Pp. xii.+ 204. Price 2s. net.

Britannic Confederation : A Series of Papers by Sir John Colomb, Professor Edward A. Freeman, George G. Chisholm, Professor Shield Nicholson, Maurice H. Hervey, and the Bight Honourable Lord Thring. Edited, with an Introduction, by Arthur Silva White, Secretary and Editor, Eoyal Scottish Geographical Society. With a new map of the British Empire. London: George Philip and Son, 1892. Pp. 180. Price 3s. 6d.     

Scotland's wartime airfields: Conflict and legacy

Prior to the outbreak of World War 2 there were very few active military airfields in Scotland but with the end of Appeasement in 1938 a major programme of expansion was underway. This paper traces the origins of the airfields used in World War 2 and discusses wartime roles and duties undertaken. Spatial distribution and socio‐economic effects are considered along with post‐war uses of this substantial legacy.     

Talcott Parsons as translator of Max Weber's basic sociological categories

The first four chapters of Max Weber's Economy and Society presented by Talcott Parsons in 1947 as Theory of Social and Economic Organization present a coherent and complete analysis of social, economic and political structures based upon a consistent theory of social action and its understanding. Parsons did not see them this way. His lengthy introduction sought to insert them into his own “action frame of reference”, and his rearrangement of the text made it difficult for a reader to understand why it was constructed the way that it is. This essay describes how Parsons came to be principal translator and editor of the text, examines the changes that he made to it, and links his editorial practice to the analytical procedures that he followed in his Structure of Social Action.