Title: The American bourgeoisie : distinction and identity in the nineteenth century /
Authors: Beckert, Sven.; Rosenbaum, Julia B.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan,
Year: 2010
Subjects: Middle class United States History
Abstract: "What precisely constitutes an American bourgeoisie? Scholars have grappled with the question for a long time. Economic positions-the ownership of capital, for instance-most obviously defines this group. Control of resources cannot explain, however, the emergence of shared identities or the capacity for collective action: after all, economic interests frequently drove capital-rich Americans apart as they competed for markets or governmental favors. This book argues that one of the most important factors in this respect was the articulation of a shared culture, but this aspect has been neglected by most scholarship on the issue. This volume engages a fundamental disciplinary question about this period in American history: how did the bourgeoisie consolidate their power and fashion themselves not simply as economic leaders but as cultural innovators and arbiters? How did culture help them formulate a sense of themselves as a distinct social group with shared identities, while simultaneously setting themselves apart from other Americans?"--
Contents: Machine generated contents note: PART I * Goodbye to the Marketplace: Food and Exclusivity in Nineteenth-Century New York--Anne Mendelson * Natural Distinction: The American Bourgeois Search for Distinctive Signs in Europe--Maureen E. Montgomery * Henry James and the American Evolution of the Snob--Alide Cagidemetrio * Patina and Persistence: Miniature Patronage and Production in Antebellum Philadelphia--Anne Verplanck * The Blending and Confusion" of Expensiveness and Beauty: Bourgeois Interiors--Katherine Grier * PART II * Institution-Building and Class Formation: How the Nineteenth-Century Bourgeoisie Organized--Sven Beckert * The Steady Supporters of Order: American Mechanics' Institute Fairs as Icons of Bourgeois Culture--Ethan Robey * A Noble Pursuit? The Embourgeoisement of Genealogy, and Genealogy's Making of the Bourgeoisie--Francesca Morgan * Elite Women and Class Formation--Mary Rech Rockwell * Rediscovering the Bourgeoisie: Higher Education and Governing Class Formation in the United States, 1870-1914--Peter Dobkin Hall * PART III * Public Sculpture and Bourgeois Self Image--Julia Rosenbaum * Class Authority and Cultural Entrepreneurship: The Problem of Chicago--Paul DiMaggio * Bourgeois Appropriation of Music: Challenging Ethnicity, Class, and Gender--Michael Broyles * The Birth of the American Art Museum--Alan Wallach * The Manufactured Patron: Staging Bourgeois Identity through Art Consumption in Postbellum America--John Ott.