Unemployment, Welfare, and Masculine Citizenship: So Much Honest Poverty in Britain, 1870-1930

by M. Levine-Clark

Overview

This book examines how, from the late nineteenth century through the 1920s, British policymakers, welfare providers, and working-class men struggled to accommodate men's dependence on the state within understandings of masculine citizenship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349483556
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/01/2015
Series:	Genders and Sexualities in History
Edition description:	1st ed. 2015
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Marjorie Levine-Clark is Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado Denver, USA. She has published widely on gender, health, labor, and social policy in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain, including the book Beyond the Reproductive Body: The Politics of Women's Health and Work in Early Victorian England (2004).

Table of Contents

1. 'So Much Honest Poverty': Introduction PART I: UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE CONTINUITIES OF HONEST POVERTY 2. Not 'Weary Willies' or 'Tired Tims': The Work Imperative in the Poor Law World 3. 'They were not Single Men': Responsibility for Family and Hierarchies of Deservedness 4. 'A Reward for Good Citizenship': National Unemployment Benefits and the Genuine Search for Work PART II: HONEST POVERTY IN NATIONAL CRISIS 5. 'Married Men had Greater Responsibilities': The First World War, the Service Imperative, and the Sacrifice of Single Men 6. 'The Whole World had gone Against Them': Ex-Servicemen and the Politics of Relief 7. 'No Right to Relieve a Striker': Trade Disputes and the Politics of Work and Family in the 1920s PART III: HONEST POVERTY AND THE INTIMACIES OF POLICY 8. 'Younger Men are given the Preference': Older Men's Welfare and Intergenerational Liability 9. 'He did not Realise his Responsibilities': Giving Up the Privileges of Honest Poverty Conclusions Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This book is beautifully written and intensively researched. It crosses many of the sub-fields of British history and thus will be relevant and important to scholars and students who are concerned with labour history, family history, gender history, economic history and the history of the welfare state." - Sonya Rose, University of Michigan, USA

"A book that really matters. Levine-Clark's brilliant articulation of the deep connections between work, gender, welfare and citizenship offers new ways to understand the emergence of welfare and the problem of unemployment in modern Britain. This should be required reading not only for historians but for economists, policy-makers and politicians." - Philippa Levine, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

"On what terms were unemployed men citizens of industrial Britain? Marjorie Levine-Clark exploits a rich seam of local material to shed new light on both the discourse of dignity among the unemployed and the welfare strategies of government. Analytical and empathetic, this book is a major contribution to labour history and to the critical study of masculinities." - John Tosh, University of Roehampton, UK

Editorial Reviews

Marjorie Levine-Clark opens her account of unemployment and masculinity with a comparison to the present. … the author provides a nuanced analysis of gender during the era of the contested discovery of unemployment. Overall, this is a well-researched and well-written book, and it makes an important contribution to British welfare history.” (Matt Perry, The American Historical Review, Vol. 121 (2), April, 2016)

“Levine-Clark tackles the expansion of welfare in Britain’s late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with a sharp, engaging focus on the state’s cultivation of working-class masculine hierarchies. … Levine-Clark’s careful exploration of gender and the meaning of employment offers a fresh perspective on work, the state, and political subjectivities, one that should influence future research.” (Katie Hindmarch-Watson, Journal of Modern History,Vol. 88 (4), 2016)

“Levine-Clark (history, Univ. of Colorado Denver) has written an extremely useful book on masculinity, unemployment, labor citizenship, and welfare. … Chapters of the work could be usefully assigned in advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in either gender or British history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” (R. J. Bates, Choice, September, 2015)

"Unemployment, Welfare, and Masculine Citizenship will appeal to those working in fields across the history of modern Britain, as well as scholars working on histories of the welfare state, gender, and other topics in international perspective. It seems likely that future research in the British context will help to highlight the myriad ways in which this particular system of welfare worked itself out across regional and social differences, and that Levine-Clark's work will serve as the first step in this new direction." - Reviews in History

From the Publisher