Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism

The labour movement in Lebanon: Power on hold narrates the history of the Lebanese labour movement from the early twentieth century to today. Bou Khater demonstrates that trade unionism in the country has largely been a failure, for reasons including state interference, tactical co-optation, and the strategic use of sectarianism by an oligarchic elite, together with the structural weakness of a service-based laissez-faire economy. Drawing on a vast body of Arabic-language primary sources and difficult-to-access archives, the book’s conclusions are significant not only for trade unionism, but also for new forms of workers’ organisations and social movements in Lebanon and beyond. The Lebanese case study presented here holds significant implications for the wider Arab world and for comparative studies of labour. This authoritative history of the labour movement in Lebanon is vital reading for scholars of trade unionism, Lebanese politics, and political economy.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Gender, identity and civic culture: "The Florence of the north?" - the civic culture of Liverpool in the early-19th century; "a Christian and civilized land" - the British middle class and the civilizing mission, 1820-1842; homosociality and middle-class identity in early Victorian patronage of the arts; the bourgeois body - civic portraiture, public men and the appearance of class power in Manchester, 1838-1850; "thoroughly embued with the spirit of ancient Greece' - symbolism and space in Victorian civic culture; the middle class, modernity and the provincial city - Manchester, c1840-1880. Part 2 Gender, identity and consumer culture: middle-class "culture", law and gender identity - married women's property legislation in Scotland, c8150-1920; Mrs Pooter's purchase - lower middle-class consumerism and the sales, 1870-1914; the English weakness? gender, satire and "moral manliness" in the lower middle-class, 1870-1920; gender, consumer culture and the middle-class male, 1918-1939; an outbreak of Allodoxia? operatic amateurs and middle-class musical taste between the wars.

About the Author :
Alan Kidd is Reader in History at Manchester Metropolitan University. David Nicholls is Head of the Department of History at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Review :
...this book represents an invaluable contribution to middle-class studies. "-Victorian Studies"