interesting articles on non-obvious protests

I'm currently looking at protests that were not as overtly obvious as demonstrations, meetings or strikes. Such protests could include arson; trespass along or reopening of closed footpaths, deliberate slacking off at work; wearing of political symbols in everyday life.

All fall under the shady category of 'social protest' or defence of custom, but I'm wary that I don't fall into the old trap of classifying crime as protest. They fall perhaps more neatly under the category of 'pauper/labourer agency'; that is, giving a voice and credit to the actions of the most disadvantaged or voiceless in Georgian society.

Here's a selection of articles and books I've been reading recently:
  • M. Huberman, Escape from the Market: Negotiating Work in Lancashire (CUP, 1996)
  • P. King, 'Gleaners, Farmers and the Failure of Legal Sanctions in England, 1750-1850,' Past & Present, 125 (1989)
  • R. J. Soderlund, 'Resistance from the Margins: the Yorkshire Worsted Spinners, Policing and the Transformation of Work in the Early Industrial Revolution,' Int. Rev. Social History, 51 (2006)
  • S. Poole, 'A lasting and salutary warning: Incendiarism, Rural Order and England's Last Scene of Crime Execution,' Rural History, 19:2 (2008)
  • P. D. Jones, 'I cannot keep my place without being deascent: Pauper Letters, Parish Clothing and Pragmatism in the South of England, 1750-1830,' Rural History, 20:1 (2009)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Commemoration of the execution of 17 Luddites, York, 19 January 2013

Image
On Saturday 19 January, York's Alternative History held an afternoon of talks and commemoration for the Luddites tried and executed at York. placards outside York Castle In the huge space of the Guild Hall, Adam Gutteridge , one of the organisers, introduced the themes of the day. His speech echoed the two interesting articles publicising the event in the Guardian (by local historian Paul Furness, here , and by another organiser Helen Graham, here ). They argue that now that York's industrial economy is no more (chocolate and railways), York has remade itself round the past: an economy of tourism. Yet the past as presented to tourists and indeed to residents, is a sanitised and normalised history, centring round Vikings, medieval religion, and Georgian middle-class pleasures. The recent York 800 celebrations had no place for the popular protest and resistance that had a distinguished history in the city. I began the talks by explaining the context and meaning of the ...
Read more

Protest history workshop #3, Cheltenham, 2/3/13

Image
TNA, PL 27/9 'Sarah Short refused to sign this Examination before me, R. Wright'. Manchester, 5 May 1812. TNA, PL 27/9. Charged with being at the Luddite attack on Burtons' powerloom mill at Middleton, Lancs, on 21 April 1812, this woman made a defiant act of resistance by refusing to sign the record of her examination by the Manchester magistrate Ralph Wright of Flixton Hall. But is this protest? Did it work? Can protest be individual? What is the difference between protest, collective action, resistance and opposition? can we include all types of opposition within the term 'protest'? These were questions we had asked at the first workshop on ' new approaches to the history of protest ' back in 2011, and returned to last weekend at the third workshop at the University of Gloucestershire. I started off the day with some reflections on the spatial turn in history (see extended version in my HWPP paper ) combined with some questions about th...
Read more