Spreading the Light: Work and Labour Reform in Late-Nineteenth-Century Toronto (Studies in Gender and History) - Softcover

Burr, Christina

9780802079084: Spreading the Light: Work and Labour Reform in Late-Nineteenth-Century Toronto (Studies in Gender and History)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802079083 ISBN 13: 9780802079084

Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr, 1999

This book explores new evidence on the gendered nature of working-class experience and on gender relations within the Toronto working class. Christina Burr presents case studies of the printing and garment industries to demonstrate how class, race, and especially gender were integral to the politics of work and labour reform in nineteenth-century Toronto.

One of the unique features of the study is Burr's use of workers' poetry, fiction, and political cartoons as source material. Language, symbols, and popular culture, in addition to economic factors, are examined to reveal how the working class experienced their world. Burr employs a deconstructionist cultural materialist approach to explain the strategies by which power relations were produced and reproduced by Toronto labour reformers.

In addition to being a valuable scholarly contribution, Spreading the Light is a focused study that will prove to be a popular book in Canadian social history, women's history, and labour history courses.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

CHRISTINA A. BURR is an assistant professor in the Department of History, University of Windsor.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.