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Perspective, sources and methodology in a comparative study of the middle class in nineteenth-century Leicester and Peterborough

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

P. Jones
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Extract

Social history, and urban history in particular, has become increasingly concerned, in recent years, with studying the middle class. Historians have progressed from a concern with the ‘success’ or ‘rise’ of the middle classes, to a study them per se both in quantitative and qualitative terms: questions concerning their wealth, consumption patterns, residential preferences, representation within the political leadership as well as their beliefs, values and role in attention. Urban historians have a particular interest in the study of the local middle class, in a way that takes into account the finer detail of different kinds of urban environment and the complexities of the urban experience. Since much of urban history has been at pains to discover the variety of patterns in urban development and urban society, it is not surprising that recent specialized studies of individual towns and cities have revealed a great variety in the bases of class relations. Indeed, the traditional Marxist notion of a single national class interest is now open to qualification. The disparity between London and the provinces in respect of class interests has long been recognized. An extension of the proposition inherent in that disparity will contend here that there were different types of middle class located in different types of urban environment. Such a proposition is not in itself pathfinding or particularly new. There are problems, however, in deciding in what ways such a differentiated pattern can be drawn out, examined and presented in coherent form.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 14 , May 1987 , pp. 22 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

Notes

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