Work and Revolution in France Essay -- History, French Labor Movement

William H. Sewell, Jr.s Work and Revolution in France The nomenclature of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (1980) is a qualitative analysis of the French labor movement, sweeping three radical revolutionary eras 1790s, 1830s, and 1850s. Sewells strategy encompasses aggregating and analyzing (1980 5) events that would in general be considered the banal factional struggles and encounters of individual French workers. He amasses these facts into a macro-history of the workers plight to class-consciousness from the ancien regime to the repressive post-revolutionary era of 1850s. Sewell frames his historical analysis within the context of the style the workers movement utilized the evolving rhetoric to advocate their pro-rights agenda. He performs a stringent investigation on the progression and determination of the use of specific terminology, steeringing his lense on how concepts of culture (i.e., ideas, beliefs, and behaviors) aid in shifts of existing structures.Sewells theore tical perspective is admittedly self-constructed. He borrowed shamelessly from such sources as the new history, talented history, cultural anthropology, and certain new strains of Marxism (1980 5). I find borrowing from cultural anthropology to be the most influential of these theoretical viewpoints, and Sewell highlights the importance of ethnographic field methods in his work. However, he is quick to acknowledge that, from a historical perspective, conventional ethnography, as we understand it, is not suffice in this context. While traditional ethnography tends to focus on non-Western, relatively small-scale and homogeneous societies (Sewell 1980 12), Sewells initiative is to analyze the complex society that was rent by all sorts of co... ...mes widening his scope could inflect his argument further. He does this in the conclusion of chapter 11 to display how and why the movement was at times, and ultimately, unsuccessful. Additionally, as he suggests the reasons why the bourge ois never authentically accepted and the peasantry never felt validated by the movement, he could strengthen his argument by further displaying other elements of cultural value outside of language, i.e. typic gestures used by the movement. In addition to symbols, I also feel that Sewell could have provided more definition surrounding the artisan culture (Hanagan 1981). Given the order of magnitude of the numerous trades, and the variety of societies, clubs, associations within each where and what are the cultural margins between the different trade corporations? Is there one united culture, or a pack within the varying factions?