All the common rules of social life
Subtitle: the reconstruction of social and political identities by the Dorset Gentry, c.1790-c.1834
By: Michael John Flame.
Publisher: typescript
Published: 1997
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Language: eng
First sentence: My thesis is an attempt to address a problem that seems to me increasingly evident and stubbornly resistant to easy solution: How are social and political identities related to experience and made available for social action?
Description: This case history explores the governing purposes of the Dorset gentry from the early 1790s until the mid-1830s. It is not a conventional political and administrative history. It seeks rather to reveal the gentry's governing purposes through the processes and contexts of their construction of social and political identities.  It takes as its starting point the idea of the materiality of language itself. The idea that language does not reflect or refer to a pre-existing anterior reality but creates meaning by distinguishing explicitly or implicitly what something is from what it is not. This case-history explores the gentry's construction of the terms of an overarching discourse I have called the "common rules of social life'.  In particular the evolving narrative terms of an older patriarchal oeconomy, political economy and paternalism.  It does so to answer the question: 'By what means and for what purposes did this form of discourse and its narrative traditions become established by the gentry to prevail at this time in the past?' The answers are found in the ways and the contexts in which the gentry used this discourse.
   First, how did the gentry exercise their power so that this discourse might come into being? here the structures and institution of the Commission of the Peace are significant.  In particular the ways in which power was monopolized and used by a small fraction of active magistrates.  This fraction was active in the committees of the Commission of the Peace and at quarter and petty sessions. Their power came to be deployed to reform county government and poor relief to impose 'natural' moral market relations on Dorset society.
   Second, how was the discourse and its constituent elements exercised by the gentry to constitute identities, and how did they determine how people thought and acted?  her the case-history reveals the gentry's construction of identities for Dorset, the parish and the poor.  In particular the construction of an idea of Dorset as an arena of natural economic laws and moral endeavour.  These identities were taught to rich and poor alike as part of the gentry's purpose to remoralize Dorset society.
Notes: Thesis (PhD) - University of Warwick, 1997.

Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: pagenum: 1
label: One
class: subsection
title: Introduction; pagenum: 23
title: The Commission of the Peace: The gentry and the reform of county government in Dorset
class: part
label: Two; pagenum: 62
title: From Patriarchs to Paternalists: Gentry Identities and the "Common Rules of Social Life"
class: part
label: Three; pagenum: 101
label: Four
class: part
title: Gentry Identities and Ideas of Dorset; pagenum: 140
label: Five
class: part
title: From Civil Parish to Organic Community: The gentry and ideas of belonging; pagenum: 178
label: Six
class: part
title: The Gentry, The Poor Laws and the Burdens of the Poor; pagenum: 215
title: The contest between Paternalism and POlitical Economy: The gentry and reform of the poor laws
class: part
label: Seven; pagenum: 254
label: Eight
class: part
title: Gentry Identities and the Education of the Poor: Remoralising and revivifying Dorset society; pagenum: 291
label: Nine
class: part
title: Conclusion; pagenum: 305
label: Appendix A
class: part
title: The Gentry; pagenum: 312
title: The Commission of the Peace
class: part
label: Appendix B; pagenum: 341
title: The Poor Laws
class: part
label: Appendix C; pagenum: 351
title: The Church and Religious Observance
class: part
label: Appendix D; pagenum: 376
label: Bibliography
class: part
title: Bibliography