The American bourgeoisie
Subtitle: distinction and identity in the nineteenth century
By: [edited by] Sven Beckert and Julia B. Rosenbaum
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Palgrave studies in cultural and intellectual history; Palgrave studies in cultural and intellectual history
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 284
ISBN-13: 9780230102941
Subjects: Middle class; History
Description: "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?"--

"Nowhere in the world did a bourgeoisie emerge as influential as that in the nineteenth-century United States. This group of upper class men and women combined familiar forms of economic might and political power with new forms of cultural clout, creating institutional structures, architectural designs, and aesthetic models that continue to shape our lives today, from the foodstuffs we fancy to the art collections we admire. How bourgeois Americans established a dominant class culture and forged a common cultural vocabulary is the subject of this volume"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Pt. I. Habits and manners. Goodbye to the marketplace : food and exclusivity in nineteenth-century New York / Anne Mendelson; title: "Natural distinction" : the American bourgeois search for distinctive signs in Europe / Maureen E. Montgomery; title: Henry James and the American evolution of the snob / Alide Cagidemetrio; title: Patina and persistence : miniature patronage and production in antebellum Philadelphia / Anne Verplanck; title: The "blending and confusion" of expensiveness and beauty : bourgeois interiors / Katherine C. Grier; title: pt. II. Networks and institutions. Bourgeois institution builders : New York in the nineteenth century / Sven Beckert; title: The steady supporters of order : American Mechanics' Institute fairs as icons of bourgeois culture / Ethan Robey; title: A noble pursuit? Bourgeois America's uses of lineage / Francesca Morgan; title: Elite women and class formation / Mary Rech Rockwell; title: Rediscovering the bourgeoisie : higher education and governing-class formation in the United States, 1870-1914 / Peter Dobkin Hall; title: pt. III. The public sphere. Ordering the social sphere : public art and Boston's bourgeoisie / Julia B. Rosenbaum; title: The Problem of Chicago / Paul DiMaggio; title: Bourgeois appropriation of music : challenging ethnicity, class, and gender / Michael Broyles; title: The birth of the American art museum / Alan Wallach; title: The manufactured patron : staging bourgeois identity through art consumption in postbellum America / John Ott.