The illuminating history of milk, from ancient myth to modern grocery store. How did an animal product that spoils easily, carries disease, and causes digestive trouble for many of its consumers become a near-universal symbol of modern nutrition? In the first cultural history of milk, historian Deborah Valenze traces the rituals and beliefs that have governed milk production and consumption since its use in the earliest societies. Covering the long span of human history, Milk reveals how developments in technology, public health, and nutritional science made this once-rare elixir a modern-day staple. The book looks at the religious meanings of milk, along with its association with pastoral life, which made it an object of mystery and suspicion during medieval times and the Renaissance. As early modern societies refined agricultural techniques, cow's milk became crucial to improving diets and economies, launching milk production and consumption into a more modern phase. Yet as business and science transformed the product in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, commercial milk became not only a common and widely available commodity but also a source of uncertainty when used in place of human breast milk for infant feeding. Valenze also examines the dairy culture of the developing world, looking at the example of India, currently the world's largest milk producer. Ultimately, milk’s surprising history teaches us how to think about our relationship to food in the present, as well as in the past. It reveals that although milk is a product of nature, it has always been an artifact of culture.
A study of how people understood and used money from 1630 to 1800 in England. Deborah Valenze shows how money became involved in relations between people in ways that moved beyond what we understand as its purely economic functions.
Why study women and the industrial revolution? Deborah Valenze's groundbreaking reassessment of this classic problem in European history reminds us that questions of gender and work are at the center of our experience in the modern world. Too often, the study of industrialization charts an inevitable and largely technological course. Valenze sets aside this approach in order to examine the underlying assumptions about gender and work that informed the transformation of English society, and in turn, our ideas about economic progress. How did England change from an agriculturally based nation, in which female labor played an active and acknowledged part, to an industrial power resting on a notion of male productivity? Through selective treatments of agriculture, spinning, and cottage industries, Valenze shows how the rise of values of productivity and rationality subordinated women of the working class and strengthened an emerging ethos of individualism. She also analyzes the influential ideas of Thomas Malthus, Hannah More, and other authors, whose publications reinforced these same tendencies in the early nineteenth century. In an elegant and compelling account, Valenze charts the birth of a new economic order resting on social and sexual hierarchies which remain a part of our contemporary lives.
A radical new reading of eighteenth-century British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus, which recovers diverse ideas about subsistence production and environments later eclipsed by classical economics With the publication of Essay on the Principle of Population and its projection of food shortages in the face of ballooning populations, British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus secured a leading role in modern political and economic thought. In this startling new interpretation, Deborah Valenze reveals how canonical readings of Malthus fail to acknowledge his narrow understanding of what constitutes food production. Valenze returns to the eighteenth-century contexts that generated his arguments, showing how Malthus mobilized a redemptive narrative of British historical development and dismissed the varied ways that people adapted to the challenges of subsistence needs. She uses history, anthropology, food studies, and animal studies to redirect our attention to the margins of Malthus's essay, where activities such as hunting, gathering, herding, and gardening were rendered extraneous. She demonstrates how Malthus's omissions and his subsequent canonization provided a rationale for colonial imposition of British agricultural models, regardless of environmental diversity. By broadening our conception of human livelihoods, Valenze suggests pathways to resistance against the hegemony of Malthusian political economy. The Invention of Scarcity invites us to imagine a world where monoculture is in retreat and the margins are recentered as spaces of experimentation, nimbleness, and human flourishing.
In a study important to the fields of women's studies and English literature, as well as to the religious and social history of Britain, Deborah Valenze argues the significance of a cottage-based evangelicalism that responded to the transformation of England in the nineteenth century. She goes beyond previous treatments of popular religion by offering a glimpse into the lives of humble people for whom a domestic form of religion became the focal point of daily activity. In addition, she opens up a hitherto unknown aspect of the history of nineteenth-century women by demonstrating the importance of working-class female preachers--vigorous ministers who risked their physical well-being and reputations by traveling widely on their own and speaking publicly to audiences of both sexes. Using local histories, memoirs, and the history of Methodist sectarianism to explore conditions confronted by evangelicals, Dr. Valenze concludes that cottage religion provided the basis for domestic and spiritual ideals of laboring families during a period of tremendous upheaval. She shows how this ideology enabled women to challenge the institutions and values of industrial society and to exercise their power in both private and public spheres. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
A radical new reading of eighteenth-century British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus, which recovers diverse ideas about subsistence production and environments later eclipsed by classical economics With the publication of Essay on the Principle of Population and its projection of food shortages in the face of ballooning populations, British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus secured a leading role in modern political and economic thought. In this startling new interpretation, Deborah Valenze reveals how canonical readings of Malthus fail to acknowledge his narrow understanding of what constitutes food production. Valenze returns to the eighteenth-century contexts that generated his arguments, showing how Malthus mobilized a redemptive narrative of British historical development and dismissed the varied ways that people adapted to the challenges of subsistence needs. She uses history, anthropology, food studies, and animal studies to redirect our attention to the margins of Malthus's essay, where activities such as hunting, gathering, herding, and gardening were rendered extraneous. She demonstrates how Malthus's omissions and his subsequent canonization provided a rationale for colonial imposition of British agricultural models, regardless of environmental diversity. By broadening our conception of human livelihoods, Valenze suggests pathways to resistance against the hegemony of Malthusian political economy. The Invention of Scarcity invites us to imagine a world where monoculture is in retreat and the margins are recentered as spaces of experimentation, nimbleness, and human flourishing.
The illuminating history of milk, from ancient myth to modern grocery store. How did an animal product that spoils easily, carries disease, and causes digestive trouble for many of its consumers become a near-universal symbol of modern nutrition? In the first cultural history of milk, historian Deborah Valenze traces the rituals and beliefs that have governed milk production and consumption since its use in the earliest societies. Covering the long span of human history, Milk reveals how developments in technology, public health, and nutritional science made this once-rare elixir a modern-day staple. The book looks at the religious meanings of milk, along with its association with pastoral life, which made it an object of mystery and suspicion during medieval times and the Renaissance. As early modern societies refined agricultural techniques, cow's milk became crucial to improving diets and economies, launching milk production and consumption into a more modern phase. Yet as business and science transformed the product in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, commercial milk became not only a common and widely available commodity but also a source of uncertainty when used in place of human breast milk for infant feeding. Valenze also examines the dairy culture of the developing world, looking at the example of India, currently the world's largest milk producer. Ultimately, milk’s surprising history teaches us how to think about our relationship to food in the present, as well as in the past. It reveals that although milk is a product of nature, it has always been an artifact of culture.
In a study important to the fields of women's studies and English literature, as well as to the religious and social history of Britain, Deborah Valenze argues the significance of a cottage-based evangelicalism that responded to the transformation of England in the nineteenth century. She goes beyond previous treatments of popular religion by offering a glimpse into the lives of humble people for whom a domestic form of religion became the focal point of daily activity. In addition, she opens up a hitherto unknown aspect of the history of nineteenth-century women by demonstrating the importance of working-class female preachers--vigorous ministers who risked their physical well-being and reputations by traveling widely on their own and speaking publicly to audiences of both sexes. Using local histories, memoirs, and the history of Methodist sectarianism to explore conditions confronted by evangelicals, Dr. Valenze concludes that cottage religion provided the basis for domestic and spiritual ideals of laboring families during a period of tremendous upheaval. She shows how this ideology enabled women to challenge the institutions and values of industrial society and to exercise their power in both private and public spheres. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
John Wesley’s Primitive Physic (1747) achieved twenty-three editions in his lifetime, ensuring its popular – and controversial – status in eighteenth-century medicine. This is the first full-length study to examine the theological, intellectual and cultural background to one of the period’s most successful medical texts. By exploring Wesley’s work in the context of his theology, ‘A Cheap, Safe and Natural Medicine’ extends the on-going reconfiguration of the relationship between religion and medicine. Wesley was on a theological mission to recover the primitive purity of the first Christians. Yet the remedies contained within Primitive Physic suggest a pragmatic thinker, whose concern for spiritual health did not prevent him from providing practical assistance to those who needed it. The evolution of Wesley’s thinking also demonstrates some of the struggles he faced as leader of the Methodist movement, such as the way he handled contemporary criticism of Primitive Physic when religious ‘enthusiasm’ was often conflated with medical ‘quackery’. 'A Cheap, Safe and Natural Medicine' will be of interest not only to medical and literary historians, but to anyone who is interested in the way religion influences medicine.
The work patterns of European women from 1700 onwards fluctuate in relation to ideological, demographic, economic and familial changes. In A History of European Women's Work, Deborah Simonton draws together recent research and methodological developments to take an overview of trends in women's work across Europe from the so-called pre-industrial period to the present. Taking the role of gender and class in defining women's labour as a central theme, Deborah Simonton compares and contrasts the pace of change between European countries, distinguishing between Europe-wide issues and local developments.
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