The American Bourgeoisie: Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History)

This volume engages a fundamental disciplinary question about this period in American history: how did the bourgeoisie consolidate their power and fashion themselves not simply as economic leaders but as cultural innovators and arbiters? It also explains how culture helped Americans form both a sense of shared identity and a sense of difference. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-8 Front Matter....Pages 9-9 Goodbye to the Marketplace: Food and Exclusivity in Nineteenth-Century New York....Pages 11-26 “Natural Distinction”: The American Bourgeois Search for Distinctive Signs in Europe....Pages 27-44 Henry James and the American Evolution of the Snob....Pages 45-61 Patina and Persistence: Miniature Patronage and Production in Antebellum Philadelphia....Pages 63-85 The “Blending and Confusion” of Expensiveness and Beauty: Bourgeois Interiors....Pages 87-100 Front Matter....Pages 101-101 Bourgeois Institution Builders: New York in the Nineteenth Century....Pages 103-117 The Steady Supporters of Order: American Mechanics’ Institute Fairs as Icons of Bourgeois Culture....Pages 119-134 A Noble Pursuit?: Bourgeois America’s Uses of Lineage....Pages 135-151 Elite Women and Class Formation....Pages 153-166 Rediscovering the Bourgeoisie: Higher Education and Governing-Class Formation in the United States, 1870–1914....Pages 167-189 Front Matter....Pages 191-191 Ordering the Social Sphere: Public Art and Boston’s Bourgeoisie....Pages 193-208 The Problem of Chicago....Pages 209-232 Bourgeois Appropriation of Music: Challenging Ethnicity, Class, and Gender....Pages 233-246 The Birth of the American Art Museum....Pages 247-256 The Manufactured Patron: Staging Bourgeois Identity through Art Consumption in Postbellum America....Pages 257-276 Back Matter....Pages 277-284 What precisely constitutes an American bourgeoisie? Scholars have grappled with the question for a long time. Economic positions - the ownership of capital, for instance - most obviously defines this group. Control of resources cannot explain, however, the emergence of shared identities or the capacity for collective action: after all, economic interests frequently drove capital/rich Americans apart as they competed for markets or governmental favors. This book argues that one of the most important factors in this respect was the articulation of a shared culture, but this aspect has been neglected by most scholarship on the issue. This volume engages a fundamental disciplinary question about this period in American history: how did the bourgeoisie consolidate their power and fashion themselves not simply as economic leaders but as cultural innovators and arbiters? How did culture help them formulate a sense of themselves as a distinct social group with shared identities, while simultaneously setting themselves apart from other Americans?