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Urban history and social class: two paradigms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Extract

For much of the 1970s and early 1980s historians using an urban focus to analyse social class, social stratification and political conflict led the field. The work of John Foster, Geoffrey Crossick, Robert Gray, Patrick Joyce and others helped set an agenda to which all social historians responded. Today research of a similar type can easily be found, but even whilst this shows a high degree of conceptual sophistication and empirical rigour it seems less central to the discipline and to the broad concerns of social history than was the case even a decade ago. In this speculative paper I reflect on some of the reasons for this and consider the contemporary prospects for studies of the relationship between urban history and social class.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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Footnotes

*

A version of this paper was read to an ESRC-sponsored conference on ‘New Directions in Urban History’, held at the University of Essex, in September 1992. I am grateful to Bob Morris for inviting me to speak, and the other contributors for a stimulating discussion.

References

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