Classes, Cities and Families
Divisions of labour make classes
- In industrialised areas of Europe (i.e., western and northern Europe), socioeconomic changes created divisions of labour that led to the development of self-conscious classes, including the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
- Self-conscious is the operative word: a class here is a group that knows itself as one.
- In some of the less industrialised areas of Europe, the dominance of agricultural elites continued into the 20th century.
A 'self-conscious class' is one that...
The operative word in the CED's sentence.
Identity is built by joining things
- Class identity developed and was reinforced through participation in philanthropic, political, and social associations among the middle classes, and in mutual aid societies and trade unions among the working classes.
- The CED gives the mechanism — association — and different institutions for each class.
- So class is not just a position in production; it is a set of memberships that make the position felt.
Match each class to the CED's associations for it.
Class is a set of memberships that make the position felt.
Cities gain, the countryside loses
- With migration from rural to urban areas in industrialised regions, cities experienced overcrowding, while affected rural areas suffered declines in available labour as well as weakened communities.
- One movement, two costs — and the CED puts the rural cost in the same sentence as the urban one.
- An answer that describes only slum conditions has recorded half of what migration did.
Class formation, urban and rural change, or family life?
Sort each social development.
Select both costs of rural-to-urban migration the CED names.
One movement, two costs, one sentence.
Rural-to-urban migration cost the countryside too. The CED puts both in one sentence: cities experienced overcrowding, while affected rural areas suffered declines in available labour as well as weakened communities — an answer describing only slums has recorded half of it.
Select all the causes of improved working-class quality of life the CED lists.
Five causes; three of them results of the responses in 6.8 and 6.9.
The family reorganised
- Bourgeois families became focused on the nuclear family and the cult of domesticity, with distinct gender roles for men and women.
- Economic motivations for marriage, while still important for all classes, diminished as the middle-class notion of companionate marriage began to be adopted by the working classes.
- Leisure time centred increasingly on the family or small groups, concurrent with the development of activities and spaces to use that time.
The middle-class notion adopted by the working classes was ____ marriage.
Economic motivations remained important for all classes, but diminished.
And conditions improved, with named causes
- By the end of the century, higher wages, laws restricting the labour of children and women, social welfare programmes, improved diet, and increased access to birth control affected the quality of life for the working class.
- Five causes, listed — three of them the result of the responses 6.8 and 6.9 will cover.
- Affected is careful: the CED does not say the improvement was uniform or complete.
A weaver's son joins a union and a friendly society; a mill-owner's son joins a charitable board and a political club. Neither is told what class he belongs to. Both learn it from the room he sits in every week.
Divisions of labour led to self-conscious classes, including the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and class identity developed and was reinforced through participation in associations — philanthropic, political and social for the middle classes, mutual aid societies and trade unions for the working classes. Migration brought urban overcrowding and rural decline; families turned toward the nuclear family, the cult of domesticity and companionate marriage; and five named causes improved working-class quality of life by the century's end.