OUP: Ogilvie: A Bitter Living: Women, Markets, and Social Capital i

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Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany

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European History

Early Modern History - 1500 to 1700

Social & Cultural History

Winner of the René Kuczynski Prize 2004

A Bitter Living

Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany

Sheilagh Ogilvie

412 pages | 3 figures, numerous tables | 234x156mm

978-0-19-820554-8 | Hardback | 12 June 2003

Price: £83.00

This item is printed to order and supplied on a firm sale basis. Items which are printed to order are normally despatched and charged within 5-10 days.

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Significant new research linking gender and economic history
Controversial approach to theory of 'social capital'

What role did women play in the pre-industrial European economy? Was it brought about by biology, culture, social institutions, or individual choices? And what were its consequences - for women, for men, for society at large? Women were key to the changes in the European economy between 1600 and 1800 that paved the way for industrialization. But we still know little about this female 'shadow economy' - and nothing quantitative or systematic.

This book tackles these questions in a new way. It uses a unique micro-level database and rich qualitative sources to illuminate women's contribution to a particular pre-industrial economy: the German state of Württemberg, which was in many ways typical of early modern Europe. Markets expanded here between 1600 and 1800, opening opportunities outside the household for both women and men. But they were circumscribed by strong 'social networks' - local communities and rural guilds with state support. Modern political scientists have praised social networks for generating 'social capital' - shared norms and collective sanctions which benefit network insiders, and sometimes the whole society. But this book reveals the dark side of 'social capital': insiders excluded and harmed outsiders, especially women, to the detriment of the economy at large.

Early modern European economies differed widely in their restrictions on the role of women. But the monocausal approaches (technological, cultural, institutional) that dominate the existing literature cannot explain these differences. This book proposes an alternative approach driven by the decision individual women themselves made as they negotiated a wide array of constraints and pressures (including technological, cultural, and institutional ones). We are not only brought closer to the 'bitter living' pre-industrial women scraped together , but find out how it came to be so bitter, and how restrictions on women inflicted a bitter living on everyone.

Readership: Scholars and students of early modern European history; historians of gender and women's history; demographic and economic historians

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