Birth consumer society pdf

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Edition Notes Includes bibliographical references and index. E5 M37 The Physical Object Pagination viii, p. Community Reviews 0 Feedback? Lists containing this Book. Loading Related Books. May 4, Edited by ImportBot. August 2, Edited by IdentifierBot. April 16, Edited by bgimpertBot.

December 12, At the same time, probate inventories revealed the emergence of new stan- dards in home furnishing and decoration in a growing number of mainly middle-class households. A new material culture characterized by an increased demand for comfort and convenience, materials that were prone to breakability and obsolescence, and exotics en- tered the Leuven home.

What follows is divided into four sections. As an introduction to the case of Leuven and to clarify the context in which the Jansenist controversy occurred, the first section shortly focuses on the transformations of the Leuven guild economy.

The second section elaborates on the Jansenist quarrel and the way craftsmen and shopkeepers experienced it, whereas the third section examines the consequences of the anti-Jansenist repression for the participation in confraternity life.

Finally, the fourth section discusses the growing impor- tance of consumption as an alternative to signalling trust in confraternities. Transformations in the Leuven guild economy Leuven was a medium-sized town with a stable population of some 15, inhabitants between and The city was located in the densely urbanized duchy of Brabant part of present-day Belgium , in the vicinity of Antwerp, Brussels and Mechlin.

Apart from the 18th-century beer trade, Leuven had no important export industry. The Leuven econo- my was traditionally centred upon its function as caretaker for the town, the university, and 2 G. Krediet bij de Antwerpse middenstand in de achttiende eeuw, Amsterdam , pp. Ill-reputed craftsmen might lose trust among the neighbourhood and risked to go out of business. Subsistence crises, on the other hand, eroded the market share of the food guilds.

This growing trend towards import from neighbouring cities and the countryside prompted Leuven guildsmen to reconsider their market strategies.

As a general solution, guildsmen sought to expand their trade privileges by combining member- ship in different guilds. By , well over half of the masters from the food and the cloth- ing industry were members of at least two guilds.

A quarter of the bakers even combined three professions. Bakers mainly entered the guilds of the mercers-grocers, the grease mon- gers, and the brewers.

In the 18th century, over 30 per cent of the mercers-grocers had registered in another guild before which still leaves apart the mercers that enrolled in a second or third guild later on. Next to their usual assortment, bakers added secundary provisions, beverages, and groceries to their merchandise, but also fuel, candles, cloth, clothing accessories, and haberdashery.

Ongelijkheden in de opbouw en de ontwikkeling van het Brabantse stedelijke netwerk ca. Krediet bij de Antwerpse middenstand, cit.

The distinction between various guilds became less palpable and made the identification of craftsmen with a particular craft less self-evident. Henceforth, a baker was not just a baker, but also a grease monger and a mercer-grocer, who had duties and loyalties towards each of those guilds. Furthermore, when fashion, taste and design took over as stan- dards of product appreciation, the role of guilds as mediators of trust was affected even more. De Munck and Van Damme argue that the personal reputation of the shopkeeper became ever more important as a warrant of quality.

At the same time, the shopkeeper was assuming a much more important role as adviser and indicator of fashion and taste. Heretics and cripple foxes: Jansenism and the negotiation of trust According to Garrioch, Jansenist openness towards lay initiative in confraternity life and parish affairs provided the Paris middle classes opportunities for the accumulation of social capital and prestige.

Merchants and public servants took up offices in vestries and confraternity boards which allowed them to engage in the parish administration and the or- ganization of local religious life. Anti-Jansenist efforts to eliminate Jansenism and to bring the administration of the parish under episcopal control, therefore, represented a serious threat to the position of the middle classes and the foundation of their social iden- tity.

In essence a dispute over theology, the Jansenist controversy came to determine the way the parish was run and hence the prospects of social mobility for the middling sort. It has even been argued that Jansen- ism never left the university in Leuven. As Golden pointed out, French Jansenism soon became interwoven with gallican and regalist sentiments, which af- firmed the supremacy of the French Church and Crown above the Papal authority. Antwerpse kleinhandelaars, cit. Yet during the 17th century and the first decades of the 18th century, the Jan- senist controversy largely remained a theological quarrel over divine grace, free will and predestination.

They might not have come to the fore, but several testimonies from burghers, and even from craftsmen, indicate that they were familiar with at least the general lines of the polemic. In the pa- rish, the Jansenist struggle was fought in terms of rights, honour, reputation, and the borders of community. This section argues that the Jansenist conflict undermined the effectiveness of participation in parish life as a means to produce prestige and trustworthiness.

PUT, M. Verbrugghen in de St. As in political issues,25 divisions ran through the middling sort. Diverging sympathies existed even among the craftsmen of one and the same guild.

Rather, ordinary people seemed to be mobilized passive or to take action active when their reputation or the honour of their community was threatened.

Two examples should illustrate our claim. The attorney-general reacted by violently arresting Marcelis and, humiliatingly, carrying him around the city to send him off to the prison in Brussels. Continue the game; we will not tolerate this any longer, even when it costs bloodshed. IDEM, Brussels , pp. His dead body was mutilated and hanged.

Take the pains to find out who wrote this letter. Many inhabitants of this City are as- tounded by the major quarrel and hatred we daily observe among the regular clergy and other priests. We request you, friars, to mind your own monasteries, and to leave the parishes to the parish priests. Some priests you call Modernists, you and your stooges we call old vipers. What seemed to matter first and foremost to the parishioners, was that their priest was a faithful and upstanding pastor who fulfilled his duties.

The parish priest embodied the parish community; he represented it and was the guardian of its honour. Sacraments were perceived as rituals of social unity, of belonging, which expressed and reproduced the ties of community, and not of exclusion.

The refusal of sacraments was, in effect, equal to exclusion from the community. SCOTT eds. Against all divine and human rules, they treat him in public like one of those wretches mentioned in the Roman Ritual and the Mechlin Catechism; and, by an arbitrary act, they expell him from the exterior communion of the holy Church. The denial of this right, then, put the transaction between Church and individual under strain. It denied the faithful the right to salvation and damaged his reputation in this world.

Honour and reputation defined the bounds of community. Rumours and gossip at once confirmed these bounds, at once re-defined them. In , a group of anti-Jansenists even feigned a fake Jansenist brotherhood, complete with statutes, minute book, membership list and the like, to make their adversaries look conspiratorial and to compromise them. Clearly, such usage of charged terms intended to draw boundaries between those who should be considered sincere members of the community, and those who should be expelled.

See as well: P.